The Final Girl Support Group

by Grady Hendrix

  It takes me a minute to notice that the car isn’t moving anymore. The only sound is the engine revving while I dumbly mash down on the accelerator. I’m trapped in a world of rubble. I put it in reverse and the tires spin, then catch, then there’s drywall sliding off the roof and down the windshield and falling off the hood as the Lumina drags itself backward out of the house. There are sick, wheezing sounds coming from beneath the hood and one of the headlights is dead. I see the damage. The entire side of the house is caved in, and shattered sheets of drywall avalanche out of the entry wound. As I watch, the roof slowly sags sideways, and the kitchen ceiling collapses in an explosion of white dust.

  I leave the car running and get out but it instantly stalls. It’s shocking how quiet the night is. The only thing I can hear are crickets. I pick my way through the rubble the house vomited across the dirt. I tried to aim the car at the front door, away from the corner where Stephanie sat, but by the time I made contact I was barely in control. I grab the edge of the hole I tore with the Lumina and haul myself inside. Big slabs of drywall slide beneath my feet. Thick white dust hangs in the air. A wave of wreckage smashed into the opposite wall, but to my left, the room looks pristine. Stephanie sits in her chair, frozen in shock, hands wrapped around her head, knees pulled up to her chest. The car kicked up the TV and it took Chrissy square in the chest, smashing her backward through the Sheetrock. Her jeans-clad legs stick out from underneath. I don’t see Keith anywhere.

  I turn away. I don’t want to look at Chrissy’s body. I make a blind spot in my mind and swear not to look in that corner of the room again.

  “Steph, I’m here,” I say, wrenching my hips out of joint as I pick my way over the rubble to her. “Are you okay?”

  “You drove the car into the house,” she says, numb.

  “I came back,” I say. “I came back.”

  I help her up out of the chair and jump when something grabs my ankle. I’m so keyed up I scream even before I look down and see Keith’s bloody white arm sticking out from under a pile of drywall, hand clamped around my leg.

  “No, no, no, no,” Steph says, seeing it and backpedaling out of my arms, shaking her head.

  “Steph,” I say. “Don’t panic.”

  The hand bears down, pressing my bones together, and I bring my other foot up and stomp on his fingers, hard. I hurt myself more than I hurt Keith. The pile of rubble shifts as Keith starts to haul himself out. I kneel, pick up a long wooden splinter, and punch holes in his hand again and again, the splinter getting slick with his blood. His hand finally spasms open and I yank my foot away.

  The rubble erupts as Keith stands, silent and unstoppable. His spine has been twisted out of shape and he’s bending over too far to one side. I’m frozen, just a few feet away, Steph in my arms. Keith takes a step forward and his legs give out. He goes down on his hands and knees, then turns his red-rimmed puppy-dog eyes to me.

  “Hurts,” he says.

  I hear vertebrae popping as he stands back up and the spell is broken. Limping, hobbling, slipping, falling, I drag Stephanie through the hole and out of the house. I get her to the car and shove her into the passenger seat. Her eyes fix on something over my shoulder and I turn. Behind us, Keith has dragged himself out of the shattered side of the house, hunched over but moving, his baseball bat held in one hand like a cane. I slam the door and run to the driver’s side, going around the back of the car, not wanting to pass too close to Keith.

  I get in and lock the doors. Keith keeps coming. I turn the key and nothing happens. Keith takes another lurching step. I turn the key again and the starter grinds but the engine doesn’t catch. Final girls learned a long time ago not to rely on things other people take for granted. We all know that elevators and telephones never work when we need them. And cars. Especially cars.

  Keith lets go of the side of the house and takes three fast steps toward the headlight, and then he sees me through the windshield and focuses, and comes for me.

  I turn the key again. The starter grinds and I sob as the spark catches and it roars to life. For a second, I contemplate stomping on the accelerator and crushing Keith between the front bumper and the house so that black blood fountains out of his mouth, and then I think of Chrissy’s legs sticking out from beneath the television set and stomach acid scorches my throat.

  I throw it into reverse and get the hell out of there.

  The Chevy screams at me all the way, and its engine keeps racing for no good reason, but I get us to a doc in a box out on the highway and for five hundred fifty dollars they throw six stitches in Stephanie’s scalp and give her some Demerol. Back on the highway I get us eighty miles away, then find a Motel 6, and I drag Stephanie to bed. I get her shoes off, make sure she has water, because waking up with dry mouth from Demerol can be horrible, and then I put the chain on, push the chair up against the door, and slump down in the bathtub and cry.

  I’m a murderer. I killed Chrissy. I stopped the life of a human being. Chrissy was terrorized like me. Stalked like me. Saw her friends die like me. And I killed her. I bite a towel while I scream because I don’t want Steph to hear. The other final girls were all blooded, they all had to kill their monsters to stay alive, but not me. I possummed my way out. Killing was what the Walker brothers did to me, not what I did to anyone else. Like Chrissy said, I create, I don’t destroy.

  Of course, what have I ever created except an empty fortress that I locked myself inside, a life with no friends except for a plant that was only alive inside my head? And my book? And those letters?

  All I ever created was shit.

  My thoughts feel heavy and absolute, irrevocable and final. I have murdered someone. Whenever I watched a movie and some hero refused to kill the villain because “then I’ll be as bad as he is,” I dismissed it as a bunch of moralistic hand-wringing by balding Hollywood scriptwriters who had only ever killed the last roll of toilet paper. But they tapped into a universal truth. I’m living in a new world now, and in this world I am a murderer.

  I can’t take it back, I can’t fix it, I can’t make it better, but I can do one thing about it.

  I can never do it again. I swear harder than I’ve ever sworn anything since I was a little girl: I will not kill again. No matter how many lives it will save. No matter how much it puts my own life at risk. No matter what. No more killing.

  At some point I fall asleep because when I open my eyes I’m cold and I have a headache and my neck is sore. I stand up and stretch, feeling the vertebrae in my back pop one by one. A slit of sunlight pours through the windows where I didn’t get the curtains quite closed. Stephanie lies in the exact same position I left her in, but after a nervous moment I see her chest softly rise and fall. I relax. No one else is dead.

  I lost my fanny pack in Chrissy’s house, so it won’t be long before the cops find my Dr. Newbury ID and then they’ll contact Dr. Carol and she’ll tell them about me, and they’ll have my name and last known location. While the cops hunt me down, she’ll isolate everyone someplace. Sagefire, probably, her yuppie wellness retreat outside L.A. I need to warn them.

  I lift Stephanie’s phone off the bedside table and step outside. I’ve seen her tap in her PIN enough times to memorize it (1223) and I unlock her home screen and don’t read any of the eighteen unread texts because I respect her privacy. I try Dani but the phone just rings, same with Marilyn, Heather’s number is still not back in service, and that’s it. Julia’s still unconscious in the hospital, and then I realize: Skye. He wrote down his number, and I dig out that piece of paper, and I call.

  “What happened?” he asks, picking up on the first ring.

  “Skye?” I say. There’s a long pause. “It’s Lynnette Tarkington.”

  “I figured,” he whispers. “Who else would call me at six forty-five in the morning from a number I don’t know. Dude, what did you do?”

  “Nothing they say about me is true,�
� I warn him.

  “They say you abducted that girl,” he whispers. “They say you stole some retired cop’s car and beat him up and left him on the side of the road. They say you escaped custody and are a fugitive who’s wanted for questioning.”

  “Yeah, well, okay,” I admit. “Those things are true but everything else is a lie.”

  “My mom’s super pissed,” he says.

  “You need to go stay at a friend’s,” I say. “Get your little brother and go someplace. Get out of your house.”

  “Can’t,” he says. “Mom’s taking everyone on a road trip.”

  “No,” I tell him. “That’s a bad idea.”

  “She’s pretty passionate about it,” he tells me. “She’s taking Pax and me and a bunch of people up to Sagefire. Pax loves it up there.”

  “What people?” I ask. “Who’s going?”

  “Look,” he says. “I’ve got to go. She’s going to kill me if she finds out you called.”

  He hangs up and when I call back I get voicemail.

  It’s too far back to L.A. Sagefire is only an hour and a half outside the city. We can’t get there in time. I imagine her loading up Marilyn and Dani and Heather, going to the hospital to pick up Julia. Getting them all alone at her retreat. I can’t think about it.

  I call Julia, because even though I’m going to get her voicemail I want to hear someone’s voice.

  “Who is this?”

  Her voice is strong and clear.

  “Julia?” I say.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she says. “Lynnette?”

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “I’m not okay. I got shot three times in the legs. Did you abduct a kid? Are you insane?”

  I need to assess her condition.

  “Does it hurt?” I ask.

  “Getting shot in the legs?” she asks. “What, because I’m paralyzed? You think it doesn’t hurt? Here’s an idea, Lynnette. Why don’t you go get shot in something you don’t use, like your head, and report back, okay? Jesus Christ. Dr. Carol told me you’d had a breakdown.”

  “Have you seen her?” I ask.

  “She’s picking me up later,” Julia says. “They’re discharging me this morning. You were right about one thing—we are all in danger. From you. Dr. Carol’s taking us somewhere safe until you’re in custody.”

  “Sagefire,” I say.

  “Well, there goes that plan,” Julia says. “I can’t believe I came to you thinking Heather had written that book and it was you. And now you’ve kidnapped a child. I thought I knew you.”

  “It’s Stephanie Fugate,” I tell her. “The girl from the Camp Red Lake massacre. I’m keeping her safe. Listen, I saw Chrissy—”

  “You’re keeping a kid safe and you took her to see Crazy Chrissy?” Julia shouts. “You really are out of your mind.”

  “Julia,” I say. “You know me, so please, listen for one minute. How did Christophe Volker get Adrienne’s home address? How did he know how to sneak into Camp Red Lake? Why did Harry Peter Warden and Billy Walker both implicate Dani and me at the same time? Someone shot you. Someone tried to kill me in jail. Someone’s coordinating all this and Chrissy knew who.”

  “And?” she says.

  “It’s Dr. Carol,” I say. “I’ve seen proof.”

  “Proof from Crazy Chrissy?” Julia says.

  “Trust me,” I tell her.

  “You’ve made that an impossibility,” she says.

  “Then be safe,” I say. “Don’t trust anyone. I’m begging you. Call Marilyn and get her security guys to pick you up, and get her and Dani and Heather and just go anywhere for forty-eight hours. That’s all I’m asking. Don’t tell me where you’re going. Don’t tell Dr. Carol where you’re going. Just go. We’re alive because we were the smart ones. We’re the ones who didn’t go in that basement. We didn’t open that door. Please.”

  There’s a long silence.

  “Are you still there?” I ask.

  “Well, I’m not going to tell you if I’m doing it or not,” she says.

  “Right, of course, great,” I say, and then I think about Pax and Skye. “Wait, before you go, Dr. Carol has two kids. See if they’ll come with you. I mean, they’re her kids but I don’t think she should be around anyone right now. Not until I’ve . . .” Fact is, I don’t know what I’m going to do. “Not until I’ve talked to her.”

  “Good-bye, Lynnette,” Julia says. “I hated your book.”

  I feel drained. I go back into the room, put the phone back by Stephanie’s head, and I’m drinking a cup of terrible in-room tea when I notice her looking at me. She touches her stitches.

  “Am I okay?” she asks.

  The shaft of sunlight coming through the curtains is strong and bright and dust motes dance where it bisects her stomach.

  “They said you didn’t have a concussion,” I tell her. “Drink some water.”

  Steph sits up in bed, grabs the bottle, and gulps it down.

  “You saved me,” Steph says, unable to believe it. “You saved my ass. He was going to beat me to death with that bat and all of a sudden everything exploded and that TV knocked her block off.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.

  “She deserved it,” she says.

  “I’m not a killer,” I say, which is going to make it very hard to deal with Dr. Carol.

  “That’s not a good survival instinct,” Steph says.

  I’m irrationally angry with her for making it sound so easy, but I don’t want to fight. I open up my go bag and focus on lining up what I have left on the table. Leatherman, small Maglite, lockblade, GPS, twenty-five feet of nylon rope, four pairs of flexi-cuffs, $830 in cash.

  “Ugh, I stink,” Steph says. She gets out of bed and paddles to the bathroom on stiff feet and drinks from the tap, then fills her bottle again and gulps it down.

  “If it’s me or them,” she says, wiping her chin, “it’s going to be them, every time. That’s all there is to it. You better get used to that.”

  “I don’t want to get used to murder,” I say.

  “I didn’t realize you were such a bleeding heart,” she says, flopping back on the bed and adjusting the pillows behind her.

  My .22 is the last thing I take out of my bag. I put it on the desk.

  “We’ll throw that off the first bridge we find,” I say.

  “Hell, no,” Stephanie says, getting up and crossing the room. “No one’s making me their punk again. You may have gone all kumbaya but I still want some stopping power.”

  She picks it up and aims it at the door, holding it to one side like she’s seen in the movies.

  “I don’t want to kill anyone else,” I say.

  “Then leave it to me,” she says in a voice that’s too tough, too confident.

  She doesn’t know what murder really is. But I let her have the gun. Eventually, she’ll learn how useless it is.

  At the bottom of my go bag is War Ghost, Pax Elliott’s homemade comic book. It feels like he hustled me out of a hundred dollars for it two months ago, not seven days ago. I hope Julia does what I asked. I don’t want to have to deal with those boys when I go see Dr. Carol up at Sagefire.

  “We’ll head for L.A.,” I tell her. “We can refill your prescription on the way.”

  I flip through the comic book. The drawings are about what you’d expect: amateurish and horrible. I can barely tell what I’m looking at.

  “I don’t think the car can make it,” Steph says. “We may have to rent one. Do you have a credit card?”

  I’m looking at a page in the comic, and I can’t answer. An oversized figure with his mouth wide open, full of jagged teeth, and Xs for eyes, has sunk his talons into a lion and is ripping its head off. Red scribbles are everywhere. A wide-open mouth is a sign of sexual abuse; claws
for hands represent possible violence, as does the oversized body in relation to the small child he looms over. Overuse of one color may be a sign of emotional imbalance. So are the Xs for eyes, and the fangs. But it’s what’s written on the monster’s chest that takes my breath away.

  Sky.

  “If you have a credit card we’ll just rent a car, right?” Stephanie repeats.

  Sky Man is so evul he tears the head off cats, the caption reads. Big cats, little cats, our cats, neighborhood cats. Sky Man hates cats.

  My hands go numb.

  “Are you listening to me?” Steph asks. “You say this is so urgent, so let’s get back to L.A. But we have to rent a car.”

  I page back with trembling fingers and read from the beginning. Page after page features a monstrous Sky Man looming over PX-1, a tiny robot who cowers from his rage.

  Sky Man can shoot a gun real fast, the caption reads.

  “I can shoot through a building from across the street,” Sky Man brags in a word balloon, holding a rifle with a scope. “I kill all the Last Ladies!”

  Sky Man is burning down a building.

  “Take that, Dream King!” he shouts.

  Sky Man will kill the Mean Girls, the caption reads over a picture of Sky Man chopping off the heads of six women. One is in a wheelchair. Crayon blood fountains from their necks. Six necks. There are six of them. Six final girls.

  “Are you totally spaced out?” Stephanie asks. “Hello?”

  Sky Man says that when he is finished, the caption reads, we will be the only people left in the world and all the enemies will be deaded. Sky Man will kill them all the enemies! Then mommy will come home again!

  Sky Man. Skye Elliott.

  I think about Chrissy getting an email from Dr. Carol’s account.

  I remember standing in Skye’s room and him saying, I set up all the email servers for my mom’s business.

  Dr. Carol’s son. Her home office. Her computer. How he got my book. How he saw her notes. How he knew all about us. How he got us to do his work for him. The monster is coming from inside the house.