by Adam Cesare
“Suit yourself.”
His patient fought him, but he got the plastic mask off and . . .
And . . . holy shit. He’d been joking about the new-in-town thing, but he recognized the woman on the table.
It was their waitress from the Eatery. Her distinctive beehive hairdo had been tamped down inside of a skullcap, probably to keep her looking as uniform as she could with the big clown.
“I don’t know what you did to get like this,” Glenn started, holding her steady so she’d look him in the eye. “But ma’am, you are severely injured and I’m trying to help you.”
He squeezed her good hand, tried to put as much bedside manner into his voice as he could muster, under the circumstances.
“Now, can you please remind me of your name?”
“Muh . . .” She swallowed. “My—my name is Trudy.”
“Okay. Trudy. I’m Dr. Maybrook. You waited on my daughter and me—”
“I know. I remember,” she said as she forced up a smile, “and I hope your little slut dies slow out in that field!”
She tried spitting at him but couldn’t connect.
Glenn dropped the woman’s hand, stood back from the table, his head throbbing like he’d been sucker-punched.
Quinn! They’d asked for Quinn when they’d taken him. Somehow she was involved; somehow his daughter had become a target.
Trudy was laughing again, cackling really, half out of her mind from pain and warped by evil.
“Think about what you do next very carefully, Dr. Maybrook,” the voice above him said. “Your daughter isn’t dead . . . yet.”
He nodded, a big exaggerated movement that could be picked up on a camera to show that he understood.
Glenn Maybrook put aside the Hippocratic Oath for a moment and poked the end of the tweezers deep into the exposed, chipped bone of Trudy’s radius.
He did some harm.
Trudy gave half a strangled scream before promptly blacking out from the pain.
There. Now he could stabilize his patient.
Once that was done, he needed to find a way out of this. A way to get back to Quinn.
Twenty-Two
It pained Quinn to admit it, but Ronnie and Matt had been right.
Credit where credit was due: heading to the road turned out to be the right move.
She knew as soon as they stepped out of the corn and saw headlights growing on the horizon.
They were going to be saved.
Cole grabbed Quinn’s hand. “Be ready.”
She nodded.
Quinn waved with the rest of them, but kept glancing to the ditch, then the cornfield beyond. It was hard to move through the rows without leaving a trail. From the slight elevation of the road she looked out at the stalks.
Quinn had wasted two shots, firing blindly back at the clown with the machete, as they’d run to the road.
There was no indication that they’d been followed. It seemed like the clown had given up, but Quinn watched over her shoulder anyway. She felt certain their attacker would be diving through onto the road at any moment.
But the clown must have either gotten lost or given up.
A truck slowed. Quinn was ready to run to it, jump in the bed, if need be.
Quinn could hear country music as the truck approached, louder as the windows rolled down a quarter of the way.
“Please help us!” Cole yelled.
With the glare of the headlights, Quinn couldn’t see the driver’s face. And as the truck began to creep, she gripped harder at Cole’s hand, dug her nails in. He squeezed back and she realized that they were both expecting the same thing:
They were thinking this was too easy, that there’d be a man in a clown mask driving the truck.
“Whatyer ya doin’ out here?” the driver yelled, a drawl thicker than any Quinn had heard during her time in Kettle Springs. The driver kept on the brakes but didn’t stop, moving them out of the way with the rumble of his grille. The group split as the truck nosed forward.
Matt and Ronnie stayed with the passenger side, Cole and Quinn on the driver’s side, ready to talk with the driver. She made sure to point the gun at the asphalt, not wanting to scare him.
“Whatever it is, I don’t want any part in it,” the man said.
“They’re trying to kill us. You have to help us!” Quinn said, shaking away Cole’s hand and reaching out for the driver’s side mirror, ready to pull the truck to a stop if she had to.
The cab of the truck smelled like skunk and burned metal. Any other day, the driver would have been a complete ghoul, someone to cross the street to avoid. But he wasn’t wearing a Frendo mask, wasn’t flecked with blood, so to Quinn he looked like a superhero.
“Who’s trying to kill you?” the driver said through the window, addressing Cole, not Quinn, then nodding over to the two teenagers dressed like clowns, at his passenger’s side window. “And why are they dressed crazy? It ain’t Halloween.”
He kept the truck moving, but slow. Quinn could tell he didn’t like this situation any more than they did.
“Sir, we need help,” Quinn said. The truck rolled, tires crunching gravel and old blacktop. But slower now, slower. She kept her hand on the cool metal joining the mirror to the door. “There are masked psychos out here. They killed our friends. They may still be killing our friends. We got away, and we need to get the police.”
All she needed was for the driver to take a second, listen to her words, register the terror in their faces, that they weren’t joking.
He stopped, thank God.
But then there was a thud on the far side of the cab.
Matt had kicked the passenger’s side door, then slammed a slick, open hand on the window, the glass around his fingers fogging.
“Would you let us in, you methhead, podunk fuck!” Matt yelled. “This is an emergency!”
The driver turned to Quinn, eyes sad, resigned: “Not playin’ your games, kids.”
There was a rev of ignition, the truck peeling out. The mirror was yanked out of Quinn’s grip. Cole threw an arm around her waist and pulled her back, her feet nearly crushed under the truck’s rear tires.
They watched his taillights go, the fields and road becoming much darker in their absence.
Nobody said anything until hope of a ride was truly lost as the truck disappeared behind a bend.
“What the fuck, Matt?” Cole yelled. “Why’d you do that?”
“Me? How was I supposed to know that coward was going to take off—”
“Shut up,” Quinn said to him. “Just shut up.”
Matt didn’t argue. He just shrugged and went back to holding on to Ronnie like she was the only thing keeping him standing.
Quinn paced up the road a few strides, then back, keeping her eyes on the horizon, searching for movement in the corn. There was nothing—just rows and rows of crops split by an empty stretch of highway.
“Look, Quinn,” Ronnie started. “Matt made a mistake, but that doesn’t make you King Shit.”
“You know what?” Quinn sputtered, the gun feeling powerful in her grip, assuring her at the very least that she was Princess Shit . . .
Cole put a hand on her shoulder to calm her before she could say something to make the situation worse. “Done is done,” he said. “Let’s just focus on getting out of here alive.”
“Okay. Which direction is the Tillerson house?” Quinn asked. “We’ll walk that way. If another car comes, we’ll try again.”
Matt and Ronnie didn’t argue.
“North. We’ll see the turnoff. That way,” Cole answered, and pointed.
They began walking. The silence uncomfortable. Quinn couldn’t shake the images of Rust. His bloody undershirt, his stubble, his goofy smile, the fuse. And Janet, her skin perfectly buffed, lips glossed, her bursting through the corn to warn them that there was more than one clown.
But Quinn didn’t have to be alone with her memories for long.
They didn’t get far.
“Look!” The first exclamation sent the skin on her neck prickling.
“Oh, hell yes!” Matt cheered.
The road at their backs was bathed in red-and-blue lights.
The cops had arrived.
Or, at least, a single cruiser.
It was enough. The sheriff was here.
“Took him long enough,” Ronnie said. Never satisfied, even as the boys cheered and waved.
The sheriff pulled to a stop a few feet in front of them and opened his door. He didn’t shut off his lights.
He was just as big as Quinn had remembered from the parade and the diner, taking time to put his hat on his head, even as Quinn and Cole started babbling at him.
“Thank God you’re here.”
“Call for backup!”
The sheriff didn’t answer, simply crossed to them, his cruiser sideways, not completely blocking the road but pulled into both lanes.
“Where’s the party?” he asked. “I need you to break it up now, Cole.”
“Dunne,” Cole said, stepping forward. “I know I’m not your favorite person, but there’s people out there dressed as Frendo. It’s . . . nuts. They’re killing everyone. You need to do something.”
“Sheriff,” Dunne said flatly.
“What?!”
“I’m not ‘Dunne’ to you. I am not your buddy. So before you start in, you will call me ‘Sheriff Dunne’ and treat me with respect.”
The expression on Cole’s face quickly transitioned to disbelief. Quinn watched Cole pull his sharp features under control, contort them into something that approached a combination of sincerity, respect, and patience.
“Sheriff. I apologize. You need to get on your radio and call for backup. There’s at least one left. Maybe more.”
“One what?”
“One clown, Sheriff. They’ve got crossbows. Axes, too. They’re—”
“And you’ve got guns.” He looked to Quinn, acknowledging her for the first time, noting that she was still holding a shotgun. “And these two dumbasses are dressed like Frendo.” He indicated Ronnie and Matt. “How much have you had to drink, boy? Am I on camera right now? Where’s the fake blood from? Or did you kill a pig—”
“Sheriff, please, you have to listen,” Cole said.
“My switchboard’s Christmas lights right now. Maggie’s off for the night, so I had to pick up myself. Someone tells me Tillerson’s B-field’s on fire. I hang up. Then someone else gets on the line, tells me that it’s a mushroom cloud, that the Iranians have really done it this time. Have dropped the big one,” the sheriff said, waving Cole out of his face with one hand. “There is a panic brewing, and I drive all the way out to investigate and yours is the first face I see, Hill.”
Quinn saw Cole swallow hard. Take a deep breath. He had a thousand things to say, but like Quinn, he was too dumbstruck to even know where to start.
“Sheriff Dunne. You have to understand that I know how this looks, but—”
“Enough out of you,” the sheriff said with finality. Dunne looped a thumb into his gun belt and adjusted himself. Something about him looked uncomfortable. He was sweating despite the cold air and seemed to be looking back over his shoulder. Quinn couldn’t figure out for what. “Uh, Queen, Trent. Or, you.” He pointed to Quinn with a thick finger.
“Maybrook,” Quinn said, offering her last name.
“Why are good kids like you involved with a loser like this? Cole, get in the car. I’m going to run you for causing a public nuisance.”
“This is insane. People are dead!” Cole protested. “And they’re still out there; the clowns are still out there killing people!”
With that, the sheriff snapped. He grabbed Cole by the neck with one hand, and bent Cole’s wrist behind his back with the other. “Yeah, people are dead. Your mama, your sister. People seem to die when you’re around, Hill. And I’ve had about enough.”
“Let go of me—” Cole started, then tried his best to turn back as Sheriff Dunne ripped open the rear door and shoved him in.
Quinn started toward them, but a cool hand appeared on her shoulder, gently tugging her back. “Don’t,” Ronnie whispered. “You’ll make it worse.”
“Just tell him the truth, Quinn!” Cole shouted as Dunne slammed the door.
Twenty-Three
Cole Hill had always kept his hair a little longer than the squares had.
Growing up, it wasn’t that he disliked the town’s population of farmhands and altar boys. Or that he thought he was better than them because his family had money.
No. A buzz cut simply wasn’t his style. Even from a young age, Cole knew he was different. Janet called it star power, but, in hindsight, she might have been using the term sarcastically.
Cole lay facedown in the back of the car, hair flopped into his eyes, staying where Dunne had thrown him longer than he needed to, wedged between the cushion and the front seats. He felt defeated, but weirdly safe. Cocooned in here, he felt the knot in his chest unclench for the first time in hours.
And it wasn’t like the kids of Kettle Springs had stayed squares. Seemed like during middle school, around when everyone got a phone, they grew into themselves.
Lately, when he hadn’t much felt like getting out of bed, never mind getting a haircut, Cole’s hair had gotten even longer, but it hadn’t been a deliberate fashion choice.
His eyes stung with salt; the hair covering his vision was oily from where Dunne had grabbed him and forced his head down.
The sheriff’s hand had been sticky, the size, heat, and consistency of a glazed ham, fresh from the oven.
Dunne was an asshole. And maybe he had an unhealthy obsession with Cole Hill’s behavior since Victoria’s death.
But Dunne wasn’t stupid. Wasn’t negligent. Cole took solace in that.
The big bastard would listen to Quinn and then he would take action. He’d have the state troopers and the FBI out in that cornfield before first light, guns drawn, evidence bags unfurled.
But really sweaty hands, big guy . . .
For some reason Cole was fixating on that detail as he picked his face up from the rubberized back seat of the cruiser. With all the time he’d spent in the holding cell and small interrogation room in the Municipal Building, Cole had never once been in the back of Dunne’s squad car. The seat wasn’t leather, wasn’t pleather, but smelled funny, must have been some special material that could be hosed down if someone bled or puked onto it.
Cole pawed at the seat, climbing up so he could watch out the window as Quinn explained what was going on to Dunne.
He watched Quinn, her expression pleading. These windows must have been treated, somehow, were double thick or bulletproof, or something, because Cole couldn’t make out the words.
He could see that Quinn was trying her best to remain calm, but he watched fat teardrops gather at her chin, some dripping off, some gliding down her neck, as she related what’d happened to them tonight.
Ronnie and Matt flanked her, each nodding silent assent.
Dunne listened but didn’t nod himself. He didn’t look incredulous or skeptical, but he wasn’t digging out his handkerchief, either. He stood back at a remove, Ronnie’s and Matt’s eyes ping-ponging between the new girl and the sheriff, Ronnie’s hand on Quinn’s shoulder.
Cole could see the dark spots, growing darker on Dunne’s chest and shoulder as the man listened, occasionally offering a quick one- or two-word prompt that must have been “yes” or “go on” as Quinn seemed to get more visibly frustrated.
Dark spots.
That wasn’t sweat. That was blood. And it was coming from the inside of Dunne’s uniform. Like he’d recently changed his clothes, was bleeding into this new shirt.
Halfway through making this connection, Cole’s hands had dipped down to the car door’s handle, but there was no handle. This wasn’t a normal car door.
It was the back of a cop car. There were no power windows, no pull knobs to unlock the door. And there was an iron mesh partition d
ividing the front and back seats. This car was built to keep people—criminals—in.
FUCK. How could Cole be so stupid?
He slammed both hands on the window and was able to pull Quinn’s attention.
She looked to him, confusion blooming. Ronnie’s hand already dipping, grabbing at the rifle.
“One! Of! Them!” Cole screamed, timing his words with slaps at the glass, needing to be heard and understood quickly.
Sheriff Dunne simply smiled, dipping his left hand down to his service weapon, the leather buckle already unsnapped. Cole hadn’t even noticed him do that.
Quinn tried to duck away and pull up with her weapon at the same time. She was fast but not fast enough. Dunne flashed out with his right arm, grabbing her in a headlock as Ronnie pulled the rifle away.
Not looking at the girl, but keeping eye contact with Cole as he screamed and beat at the glass, Sheriff Dunne removed his gun from his belt and brought the butt down on the side of Quinn’s temple, dazing her.
He let her out of the hold, giving himself some distance to wind up and aim, then hit her again with another quick knock. The impact of the gun’s butt sent her to the asphalt, sprawled on her back.
Quinn was unconscious, possibly dead.
Ronnie and Matt looked down to Quinn at their feet, then back up to Dunne, who was rubbing at his shoulder, wincing, cursing something about the wound there.
Ronnie made eye contact with Cole and smiled.
Sheriff Dunne pointed to Ronnie and Matt, then said something, delivering an order and hiking his thumb back to the cornfield.
Matt knelt, gathering up Quinn in a fireman’s carry, and disappeared down into the ditch, headed for the corn.
Ronnie adjusted her grip on the rifle, propping it in one hand, then looked back to Cole, and mouthed Pow! while shooting a quick gun-finger in his direction.
“Fuck you!” Cole screamed, which seemed like the only logical response to the betrayal.
Ronnie gently shook her head like We both know you won’t and followed Matt down into the cornfield.
Dunne adjusted his hat and pointed his chin into his collarbone as far as it would go, looking down at the roses of blood that were spotting the front of his shirt. He frowned.