“Essentially,” Russell says, “you ladies have a leak. And this lunatic knew about it.”
“It’s Heather,” Julia says.
Julia doesn’t use the words most people use like I think or in my opinion. She just states her opinion like it’s a fact.
“Heather wouldn’t do that,” I say.
“She doesn’t feel the same loyalty we do,” Julia says. “She tried to write a book before, so we know she’s not opposed to the idea, and she always needs money.”
“It can’t be Heather,” I say.
“Of course it’s Heather,” Julia says. “I tried her halfway house, but she hadn’t come back from group. It’s likely she heard about Volker and took off because she knew we’d kick her ass.”
“But you think I’m crazy,” I say.
“What?” Julia asks.
“At group. You said that I was the reason group stuck together, not Heather. That I was the crazy one. You made a big thing out of it.”
“Well . . .” Julia looks around my apartment. “This doesn’t exactly look like the product of a healthy mind.”
“Not to be rude,” Russell says, “but I had no idea you were a total lunatic.”
“Shut up,” Julia tells him. “Lynnette, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings and violated your trust. But right now, Heather is writing a book and that puts us all in danger. Any book about group is practically a how-to manual for every unstable fan with an urge to take a shot at the castrating mommy figure who killed their psycho supergod.”
“Heather doesn’t have the patience to write a book,” I say. “And she’s too selfish to split the money with a ghostwriter. The book’s not important. How’d Volker get Adrienne’s home address?”
“He’s a stalker,” Julia says. “They stalk. You’re missing the point. Do I really need to explain what will happen if some Final Girl Support Group tell-all comes out courtesy of Heather DeLuca?”
We’ve all spent a lot of time in the public eye, but the public doesn’t know about group. I think of our monsters rotting in prison and on death row and their fans on the outside; I think about the press who suddenly seem to have a taste for our blood again now that one of us has been murdered. I think of what would happen if they knew we met once a month in a church basement in Burbank.
“I still don’t get why he’s here,” I say, pointing at Russell with my chin.
“He called me about what that kid said about Volker,” Julia says. “He also asked if I knew where you live. I didn’t know he was going to follow me here.”
“I did manage to get your door open,” Russell brags, as if his pants aren’t stained with his own piss. “Proving that I am not unresourceful. You’ll find that cooperating with me will only be of benefit.”
“He told you what Volker said?” I ask. This obnoxious bottom-feeder has been a mosquito in all our ears for years. Maybe I can still turn this around. “How do you know he’s not lying to you?”
Russell lets out a frustrated sigh, probably wishing we were men because then he could communicate with us like adults, and he strides to the window, pausing dramatically by my blackout curtains, striking a pose known as Counselor Addressing the Jury.
“You ladies have always underestimated me,” he says. “I suggest, however, we enter into a new spirit of cooperation.”
He has my curtains parted, looking down at the street. I never open my curtains. It presents a target. The windowsill is thick with dust and dead spiders.
“Close them,” I say.
“Someone called the police,” he says, looking out at the street. He yanks my curtains back. The flood of light drives me deeper into the room. “This block is positively crawling with law enforcement.”
“California has castle doctrine,” I say. “I am perfectly justified in firing my weapon inside my home.”
Glass breaks with a metallic snap and the street noise gets louder as something slaps the opposite wall. Plaster dust puffs up. Thunder rolls down the street outside.
slap-pow boooom
There’s another one. The curtains in Russell’s hand twitch and something shoves Julia backward in her chair, her head making a hollow-coconut thonk on the floor. Fresh air blows through two holes in my window. I stare at a shard of glass that hangs for a second, then separates and tinkles off the windowsill. Then my windows explode.
slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow boooom
My castle becomes a shooting gallery. Lead teeth shred the curtains into tatters, blast glass across the floor, chew the plaster walls into chips. White dust chokes the air and coats my throat. A sniper. I see pale muzzle flashes from the roof across the street. It’s higher. They have perfect sightlines. I never thought of a sniper. I never thought they’d try to kill me from so far away.
The noise sounds like my world ripping itself in half and it’s never going to stop.
Russell cowers on the floor, shoulders hunched, holding his hands over his head.
Everything goes silent.
“They’re shooting!” Russell shouts in the sudden silence. “They’re shooting at us!”
Electricity races down my spine and I drop my gun, rising to a crouch, sprinting across the room, making for Fine.
Got you, I think at him, as I scoop him up. I’m not leaving you behind.
Then I turn to where Julia lies tangled up in her chair. She doesn’t move. I take one long step toward her and the world explodes again.
slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow boooom
“No! No! No!” Russell shrieks. “Help me!”
I try for Julia but the wall divots in front of me, plaster dust covers my eyes. I reverse, digging my feet into the floor, overbalance backward, and go down hard on one hip. Fine spins across the floor, trailing dirt.
“Fine!” I shout as he comes to a rest in the far corner. Russell launches himself off the floor and runs for the front door, stepping down hard on one of my hands.
slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow boooom
He flies sideways and hits the wall limp, then drops to the floor. I am on my feet, trying again for Julia, but the gunfire drives me back, makes my brain go red, and before I can think I’m changing direction, grabbing my go bag, slapping in the code on the keypad and the bolts smack open. I prepare for a bullet to tear through my back. Everything I’ve spent years being terrified of is happening all at once. My old scars ache like fresh wounds. My entire field of vision is the door to the hall. I’m not looking so paranoid right this minute.
slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow
The cage vibrates all around me.
slap-pow slap-pow slap-pow
I owe that guy a thank-you for selling me defective mesh. I throw the hall door wide, and I run.
I’m sorry, I think over my shoulder at Julia and at Fine.
Lynnette! Fine shouts after me, or maybe it’s Julia. Don’t leave me!
Then I’m in the hall, leaving my home behind, leaving my best friend behind, leaving Julia behind. It turns out that when push came to shove, I only saved myself.
—American Screams: Mapping Horror’s Heartland, second edition, by Nick Eliot, 1998
THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP’S NEW NIGHTMARE
I make a left and run past one cracked-open apartment door after another, each one featuring a stacked totem pole of faces too scared to help but too curious to stay inside. I crash through the door at the end of the hall and bang down the stairwell, praying the police are coming up the elevator, securing my go bag straps over my shoulders, running too fast to feel guilty about Fine, too fast to think about Julia, taking the concrete stairs five at a time, pulling my plastic paint scraper out of the side pocket of my backpack.
I will come back for Fine.
I promis
e.
I didn’t have a choice.
Julia will understand.
At the bottom of the stairs is the emergency door leading out back with a Detex pushbar and a red sign that says Push to Open, Alarm Will Sound. The bolt is exposed and, just like I’ve practiced a hundred times, I slide the paint scraper between the pushbar and the doorframe and pop the bolt without activating the alarm. The door casually clicks open like it’s no big deal and I slip outside.
The air is gray, the sky filled with orange clouds as the sun sets over the hills. The back of the building faces a chain-link fence and beyond that is the back of an identical set of shitbox apartments. I toss the paint scraper and sprint across cigarette butts and crushed beer cans to the low hole in the fence that I snipped a long time ago and check once a month.
I slither on my belly into the next parking lot. As I trot across the old asphalt I strap on the fanny pack that was duct-taped to my go bag, comforted by the weight of the M&P Shield inside. It doesn’t have a lot of stopping power, but beggars can’t be choosers.
I don’t think. I let the program take over. I trot onto the street, slowing to a fast walk, heading away from my apartment, not looking back. Behind me, I can hear Fine’s cries fading away inside my head. I left him. I’m sorry.
I left Julia.
I stay with the program.
Turning away from my building, I make my way to the parking garage. A siren rips through the twilight as my house turns into a cop magnet sucking all available emergency vehicles to itself. Another one dopplers past. This city is a trap. I can’t breathe.
It takes exactly fifteen minutes to reach the parking garage. I go up stairwell A with my car key in my hand, heading for my escape vehicle on the third level.
I decided long ago that I couldn’t risk having my home address in the DMV system, but I have a couple of fake IDs that’re good enough to use in an emergency, and for the past five years I’ve rented a space in this garage for a Chevy Lumina I bought for eight hundred dollars. Once a month I make sure she still runs. I keep camping gear in her trunk, and the plan is to drive toward El Paso, then disappear off the grid along the way. It’s a big country and I can move fast.
The first thing I see when I come off the stairs is my car sitting too low at the other end of the deck. Hand on my Smith & Wesson inside the fanny pack, it takes until I’m halfway there to see the problem: someone slashed all four tires. My mind goes white but I trust the program and without hesitating I turn and trot down stairwell B. I feel eyes crawling all over me.
I don’t believe in coincidence. Somehow someone knew about my vehicle and they compromised its integrity. Closed this escape route.
I don’t scream because they might still be watching. I don’t have a panic attack because I force my lungs to fill with air, even as they try to cramp closed. I don’t run down the center of the street shooting anyone who looks suspicious because I planned for this. I have a backup plan for my backup plan because one is none, and two is one. Dani taught me that.
I find L.A. City Cab in my contacts and press call. I meet the black-and-yellow by the doughnut place on the corner and take a picture of his hack license. The driver monologues about his T-shirt business while I sit against the door, go bag in my lap, barrel of my Smith & Wesson pointed at the back of his seat. How did someone find my car? They must have followed me one night. They must have planned this far in advance and now I’m playing catch-up, which means everything’s on their terms. But Van Nuys Self-Storage is my ace card.
I get out on the corner and pay cash, then duck around the block, walking against traffic to the massive beige storage bunker. The lockers are on the first floor and I enter my door code to get into the facility and head for A132. It holds a duffel bag containing three thousand dollars in cash, three changes of clothes, another gun and ammunition, a credit card, and more fake IDs. The plan is to head for Union Station and go anywhere domestic, chosen at random. I’ve got enough money to lay low for a while, and when things settle I can consider my next move.
My only excuse is that the inside of my skull is a swarm of bees. That’s my only excuse for why it takes until I’m halfway to my locker to realize the lock isn’t mine. I put on a gold Yale combination lock. This is a silver weatherproofed Master Lock. I freeze. I am so scared my knees won’t bend. My feet root themselves to the concrete. I feel the CCTV camera boring into the back of my neck. I feel someone watching me from the dark halls.
They knew. They knew about both my escape routes. I can’t trust anything that’s inside my locker now. My IDs are compromised, the emergency credit card, they maybe marked my paper money and tampered with my ammo. They could be watching me right now.
I tear my feet away from the floor and force my heavy legs to turn around now because if they knew about this route they might still be here, waiting for me to show up. I walk as fast as I can on numb feet because I can feel someone in a hoodie coming up behind me, pressing me to the lockers, butcher knife moving like a sewing machine needle in and out of my kidneys, but the room is empty.
I am a turtle without its shell, no protection, just raw flesh exposed to the world. I am roadkill. That’s what Heather called me once. Not even a real final girl, just someone who stumbled into a monster’s path.
No plan survives contact with the enemy, but I didn’t expect all my plans to fail so quickly, so completely. Both my escape routes out of town have failed. I trusted Julia with my address, and she failed. I thought I could use Russell, and that failed. I thought my cage would work, and it failed. I thought I would protect my friends but I ran away and left Julia to die, and I failed, I failed, I failed.
I’m sorry, Fine.
The next thing I know I’m on a Burbank bus. Time has been spliced out of my life and I drop back into my surroundings with a jerk. I examine everyone’s shoes but realize that I have no idea where I am. Just when I needed it the most, my focus, my concentration, my own brain has betrayed me.
I hit the emergency stop and get off and trot down the street against traffic, trying not to run, dissolving into the crowd, slipping onto an Orange Line bus just as it’s about to pull out.
I sit behind a transit cop, windows on my left, hand resting on my fanny pack, and I force my brain to slow down and think about facts.
Someone was shooting at me.
They knew both my exit routes.
Julia is dead.
Scratch that last one. Never count a final girl out until you see the body. We’ve all taken damage before and kept on ticking. She’s alive. I didn’t leave her behind to die. She’s alive. She has to be. Then I add another one to the list:
People are in my home.
Right now, tactical boots and duty shoes are stomping across my floors, kicking Fine, shattering his pot, crushing his roots, looking through my rooms. Getting on my computer. Searching for me. Four gun safes and Russell’s corpse are enough to get them interested in who I am. I need help.
I hit the request stop button, get off, and immediately see the empty streets and realize I made a mistake. I’m too exposed out here. I dump my phone in a garbage can, find an open Starbucks, and go inside. I take a table in back by the bathrooms.
Inside my go bag is a disposable cell phone, fully charged, loaded with my contacts. I crack it open and make my call.
“Hello.” She answers on the second ring.
“Dr. Carol,” I say. “It’s Lynnette. Someone just attacked me. I need help.”
She takes it cooler than I thought she would.
“Where are you?” she asks. “I’ll come pick you up.”
“Tell me your address,” I say. “I’d rather come to you.”
“I’d rather not have you in my home right this minute,” she says. “Not if you’re in danger. Please understand.”
“Someone tried to shoot me,” I say. “They shot all of us. Me, Julia
, a reporter.”
“Lynnette,” she says. “Where are the police in all this?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I ran. It was . . . they were shooting at me. Through my window.”
“And you’re sure it wasn’t just kids? Or fireworks?”
“Julia got hit,” I say.
“Oh, God,” Dr. Carol says, and it’s the first time she sounds less like a professional and more like a person. “Is she hurt?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I ran.”
“You ran?” There’s judgment in her voice.
“After I called 911,” I lie, then lie more. “I made sure Julia was okay first. I wouldn’t just leave her bleeding on my floor.”
Except I did leave her bleeding on my floor.
“What hospital did they take her to?” Dr. Carol asks.
“They were shooting at me,” I say. “I didn’t stick around to make small talk with the paramedics. I did the right thing.”
“You did the right thing,” she agrees. “Meet me at my office. Give me half an hour to get there.”
“No way,” I say, looking at my bus map. “Nowhere that’s part of your pattern.”
I give her an address and tell her to meet me there in fifty minutes. We hang up and I take a minute to check my bag. I’m so caught up in making sure there’s a round in the chamber of my M&P, checking the box cutter in my pocket, taking out my TAP card for the bus, that I don’t notice the shape loom up beside my table.
“We’re closing in five minutes,” the manager says. I almost cut him.
Instead, I duck my head and nod and apologize, acting in a way that is totally forgettable, and I head out the door and begin my system, switching buses, doubling back, knowing that now, without a doubt, someone is trying to follow me. That makes it easier.
* * *
—
I’m at the Starbucks on the corner of Montana and 7th in Santa Monica, drinking my second bottle of water (panic is dehydrating), and it’s full dark when I see Dr. Carol’s black Audi S5 roll past. She’s taking the corner slow, looking for me on the other side of the street, when I pull open the front door and drop into the passenger seat.
The Final Girl Support Group Page 5