by Ryan Harding
Breathe.
The bank on the opposite side seemed as far away as the horizon, three hundred yards at least, but she just needed to get enough of a lead on Orange to—
Something splashed in front of her face. She stopped her stroke on reflex, even though she understood the whole point of this was to distract her. It didn’t matter. She sucked in water and choked, but somehow still managed to scream. She didn’t need to look back at the dock to see what became of Marcus now. His head bobbed on the surface and tilted over to expose a stare that seemed accusatory to her even as it suggested a horror so profound as to be indescribable; something Orange pointed Marcus’s eyes to see, and something they would always see. She saw the jagged underside of his neck, the tangled viscera of arteries and veins and a knob of clipped bone.
She launched herself to the right, prepared to swim laterally for a mile to get around it if she had to. She couldn’t look at it another second, seized by the cold certainty she would go absolutely insane if she were to touch it. She’d been with Marcus eight years since assisting in the rehab of his shoulder following a car wreck, and she believed she’d always be with him (much to the chagrin of her mother and father). To see the eyes which had shown her such longing now communicating only the despair of eternal horror, she felt the temptation to view all of this as an impossibly lucid dream, but she knew Marcus would have mocked her for even trying.
We’re here and it’s real, he’d said at the lodge, when they thought they were alone in this. The worst things don’t make no sense, but they don’t have to. They’ll happen to you while you’re sittin’ there askin’ yourself how they could, doing nothin’ about it, and you may as well already be dead then.
No, not dead then, but he was now. She thought she may have screamed again, but everything was one great cacophony; the thrashing of her arms and feet, her hoarse gasps for air, the pounding of blood in her temples. Even the ache of her burning lungs seemed to have its own sound. She angled herself across the lake once more, confident she was past the thing she needed to forget and must not touch.
There was a pneumatic burst behind her that canceled all other sound. The harpoon gun. She tensed, expecting the impact of the spear through her back, but it never came. She allowed herself a peek and saw Orange in a tug-of-war with the harpoon, hauling it back to the boat.
He missed me.
Not only missed, but apparently didn’t have enough rope to reach her in the first place because she was out of range. If he wanted her now, he’d have to dive in.
I don’t care if you’ve come back from the dead a hundred and forty-seven times, let’s see how fast you can swim 50 yards wearing those big-ass boots, you psychotic piece of shit. You can’t catch me now.
Thank God Marcus tossed that bow into the lake. He’d given her a chance.
Her eyes burned and everything blurred. She pushed the thought aside, hauled herself down that unseen rope one handful at a time. She didn’t know what she would do when she reached the bank, but hopefully a military patrol would cruise by soon enough. She’d hide as long as she had to. She didn’t believe he’d swim all the way out to trap the woods over there, but right now she didn’t care. She’d be lucky if she could crawl ten feet once she made it, but he’d have to be one racist bastard to keep coming with so many others still scattered on the mainland any—
The pneumatic burst came again.
Unless you pulled the drain stopper on this lake with that harpoon, I don’t know why you’d even waste—
The calf of her right leg exploded in pain. Her first thought was cramp. She’d been too far away for the harpoon before, had gotten even farther away, and his canoe was about as mobile as a beached whale.
She rolled over on her back and slipped under the surface. Her scream instantly went flat and watery as the heaviness of the lake crashed into her ears. A dark red cloud flowered beside her leg, not quite enough to obscure the object lodged there. The harpoon, of course. He’d cut the rope on the spear and taken one last shot to stop her.
She maneuvered herself above the surface again with the kick of her left leg and a crippled backstroke. The sky loomed above her, indifferent. Orange stepped off the canoe, apparently not bothered by the prospect of swimming with such heavy clothing and bootwear. Nor had he reason to be. Suzanne couldn’t beat him to the other bank now and probably couldn’t make it halfway anyway.
She screamed for help toward the houses, the instinct insuppressible despite knowing how much consideration they’d given the same plea from Lawrence an hour ago.
Can’t nobody do nothin’ for Sling Blade now, Marcus puffed in the sprint.
She thought it sounded like a warning, in case she had ridiculous designs about turning back.
I didn’t hear anything, she’d said.
Hell no we didn’t.
And they’d run that much faster and still hadn’t heard it when the screaming began in earnest a minute later and didn’t stop for several minutes that brought goosebumps all up and down her arms and tightened her scalp until she swore she felt every individual strand of hair. The same way nobody could hear her now.
It occurred to her she’d never heard an explosion back at the house. Patrick’s napalm solution must have been as devastating as a carpet burn. Maybe AO finished off everybody in the house, though she didn’t think he could have gotten them all so soon. He’d prioritized her and Marcus either because he thought they were going to get away for good or he was really pissed off about Marcus stealing his bow. Either way, they should have taken their chances in the woods, traps or not.
She kept up the backstroke, but couldn’t involve her right leg for fear she’d kick the arrow with the left. A half-sunken boat was her nearest option, maybe thirty yards, a bit further from the shore than whichever one Marcus originally spotted from the lake road. It offered nothing beyond the hope she would find something to defend herself, maybe her own speargun.
His hooded mask bobbed above the water as he approached. However unstoppable he might seem in his pursuit, she was correct about his poor mobility with all the equipment. She would have easily beat him to the other side.
If there was a weapon, she was going to do her damnedest to hurt him bad.
The boat grew bigger as she closed the distance. It was a houseboat, and in a minor stroke of luck she was on the partially sunken side. She pushed toward a brass railing which disappeared underwater, spinning over like a seal to cross the last few yards with a faster paddle. She instinctively kicked with the right leg and regretted it. Pain ignited her calf, but her hands clamped the brass. The blood in her arms had been replaced with lead. It was a significant victory to move along the rail a few feet where she had more space to embark, but she still had to haul herself up with about five hundred pounds of wet clothes and a useless leg.
She knew how to get motivated, though. She checked on Orange, who’d gained a lot of ground, as though she’d seen him in a passenger rearview mirror before and finally turned to see him with her own eyes. Twenty yards away, a shark in camouflage, much faster than when he first plunged in.
She took a deep breath, imagined Marcus shouting at her: Suzanne, if you don’t get up on that boat right now, he’s got you!
His paddling sounded only a few yards behind. She boosted herself, left hand on the bottom bar to snatch the higher bar with her right. Her wet fingers nearly slipped as she hauled her left leg up from the lake and planted it on the boat. She breathed out as she rose with all her weight on the foot, could practically feel cogs grinding in her knee to propel her weight. She kept the right foot away from the boat as she lifted.
Suzanne was surprised her knee didn’t give out. She was able to drag herself onto the deck of the houseboat. She gingerly set the right foot down when she found an angle that wouldn’t knock the harpoon against the rail. Somewhere Marcus shook his head at all the time squandered. She kept her hands clawed around the rail because the sunken angle of the boat wanted to pitch her back into t
he water. She didn’t need to look back to know he had almost caught her. He could probably splash water onto the deck now. She knew she would never manage to lift both her legs over the top bar, so she hugged herself to the bars and slipped her left leg through the opening as though climbing through a barbed wire fence. This allowed the right leg to dangle over the water, and she was certain Orange would snatch her ankle like a monster under the bed.
Hurry! Marcus’s voice and maybe her own fear in harmony with it.
Once the left foot felt stable enough to hold her weight, she crouched and slid her upper body all the way through. Now water was splashing on the deck from Orange as he closed the gap. He appeared in the corner of her eye with her pierced leg still hovering overboard. She let herself fall backward and guided her right foot through the gap as she did. Orange’s machete hacked into the boat where her foot hung a second before. The spear bumped the bottom bar on her way down. The blade dug through more meat in her calf before it settled back into its original groove. Suzanne shrieked with the shock of pain. She struck the deck in cruciform, careful to keep her head lifted up from the deck—any brush with unconsciousness would surely become permanent—and her right leg raised. The original pain became an awful throb, but this new slice felt hot and urgent.
Orange snatched her left ankle, his grip an immediate vise; something she sensed could smash and crumble the bones beneath like a package of ramen noodles. It felt like a spear shot into that side too.
“Spear,” she whispered, seeing it in her leg.
Go, now! Marcus urged in her thoughts. You know what you have to do.
She knew.
She bent her right knee to her chest, calf ablaze as if to tease the new pain about to spark her nerve endings. She ripped the harpoon out with much more strength than it required, knowing she would only get one chance. Fresh blood spilled from the cuff of her pants. She leaned forward to plunge the harpoon like a knife. She screamed from both her agony and a summons of courage. She lost some of the velocity to angle the spear through the brass bars, but it stabbed into Orange’s forearm with plenty of power. Although she was not rewarded with any wounded cries, he released her ankle instantly.
She didn’t let go of the weapon, kept her fingers curled around it and yanked it from his arm as she tried to scuttle back from the edge of the houseboat. The impulse was to strike again, but he had lifted his machete up and she didn’t doubt he could disarm her in the literal sense before she stuck the spear into his throat. Her foot slid on the deck and slipped right back to the edge. The back of her head struck the deck and a black swarm threatened to block out her vision, offering an escape from the pain in her body and mind alike. She shook her head to clear it. She planted her foot against the rail and shoved herself backwards, out of his reach. She slid on the sloped angle, turned face-down and got to her elbows and knees.
She tried to crawl on her forearms back up to the cabin of the houseboat. She had the weapon, but it still seemed like a slingshot versus a stealth bomber. Ideally she’d find something better in the cabin. Another speargun. One of those fisherman hooks. A bazooka.
He didn’t even make a sound when I stabbed him, Marcus.
Orange could be killed, at least temporarily, so he wasn’t invincible. What did it take to put him down, though?
She only heard her scramble up the slight incline. Orange had vanished. No splashing now. She swiveled her head in all directions as she dragged herself to the cabin door. He didn’t reemerge.
It was not an elaborate ship, not much more than thirty feet, but something she and Marcus would be thrilled to have. It was probably nice once upon a time. The cabin was small, intended more for a bachelor than a family. The studio apartment of houseboats. She just knew it would be locked, but the door wasn’t even shut. She pushed it open and braced herself with the handle to stand upright. She tested her weight on her right foot; too much and she’d drop over like a bowling pin.
She grew lightheaded at the sight of her own trail of blood. As if drawn to it, Orange burst up from the lake near the sunken edge, already halfway on the boat. Suzanne threw the door shut and fumbled for the lock, but quickly discovered its best days were long past. It jutted from the door like a loose tooth. Darkness descended upon her as tangibly as the sun vanishing behind clouds. The lock scarcely mattered since he could smash through it anyway, but it was ominous to see others had adopted this path and their footprints simply vanished in the middle of the survival trail.
Probably not their heads, though.
The cabin consisted of only two rooms connected by a hallway which also doubled as kitchen. The helm was here and past it she saw Orange stand to full height through the window. He stared back, as motionless as a reflection, and then his boots clomped on the deck as he went for the cabin. Not running now, but hurrying.
Suzanne hobbled to the kitchen/hallway, still clinging to the spear. She’d hoped for a huge carving knife on the counter, but it was empty. The sink offered nothing but dusty glasses. She noticed black smears on the wall behind her and thought better of yanking open a drawer. She hopped into the bedroom at the same time she heard the loud crash of the cabin door.
He’s in. Find something!
The bedroom was wrecked, like the boat capsized then somehow righted itself. The mattress had upended, knocking over two chairs. She set the spear against one of them, grabbed the other and slung it down the hall. A weak stalling tactic, but she also needed extra room. The bedroom didn’t have a true door, merely a flimsy wooden sheet that folded in like an accordion. She slid it over to close off the doorway and buy herself maybe half a second.
Marcus again: There’s gotta be something in here you can use!
She could stake him with broken fragments of wood, but that was like giving up a knife for a can opener compared to her spear. Several drawers dipped from a dresser with nothing more formidable than sweater vests and socks.
She limped around the mattress and lifted it upright until it pitched against the doorway. Not a moment too soon as Orange demolished the accordion door with a boot.
She jumped against the mattress, hoping to catch him off guard as he burrowed through the splintered door. She didn’t bounce back, so it must have worked with help from the incline. She’d barely stepped back when the mattress suddenly grew a machete. She ducked her head to the left, enough to save herself but not avoid harm altogether. Her right ear caught fire and blood rushed down the back of the ear to her shoulder, much warmer than the clinging dampness of the lake. Her knee buckled and she struck a tin box which had been covered by the mattress.
She cupped a hand to her ear, which filled with blood immediately. Nausea rolled through her guts. Where her fingers normally would have brushed her auricle, there was a gap. He’d sliced off nearly a quarter of her ear. A nub of soft cartilage dangled.
She felt like she hadn’t stopped screaming for the past ten minutes.
Orange pulled the machete through the mattress. She braced her left leg against the bed, though he probably only had to lean to bring it down on top of her. The tip of the machete harmlessly punched through the mattress far from her foot. It disappeared as soon as it appeared and then returned in another spot as if he were testing for her location.
She stretched to retrieve the spear from beside the chair and quickly turned back to the mystery box. She nudged the arrow of the harpoon beneath the lid of the tin box and pushed it as far away as she could, knowing she’d still probably end up with charred Wile E. Coyote chic if he’d rigged it.
Good, long as it blows us both sky high and I get his ass back.
The blade slammed through again, this time in a downward arc which would have impaled her through the breast bone if she stood upright.
She held her breath and knocked the lid open, face turned away with her eyes squeezed shut. No explosion. She looked back, expecting to see a bounty hardly worth the risk she’d taken; surgical tape, a Band-Aid, maybe a pair of tweezers to help keep her from
passing through death’s door.
There was an orange gun in the box with a black grip.
Her eyes could have burst from the sockets. The retreating machete hardly registered. She barely felt the blood pour down her cheek and the slope of her neck.
A million questions exploded in her mind all at once: Did he trap the gun instead of the box? If not, why not? Is it loaded? Perhaps biggest of all: Will it even work?
She had never used a flare gun before, but had done target shooting at Marcus’s insistence. She pulled the box closer and heard something roll around inside—cartridges for the gun.
Load one and shoot him in the face! Marcus ordered.
Suzanne fumbled with the gun to pull it open. The last inches of the machete slid away from the mattress. His leg burst through the center of the mattress with an explosion of feathers, which floated to the ground with all the time in the world. She twisted and buried the spear into the soft flesh above his knee. Once again no scream, but he pulled the leg back as quickly as if he’d set it down in a campfire.
She lost the harpoon this time; it vanished with him. She was committed to the flare gun now. She rushed to the box, fed a cartridge into the slot, brushed a feather away, and snapped the gun back together. She righted the fallen chair and used it to boost herself back up. The mattress jumped at her face as Orange threw himself into it like a tackling dummy. She involuntarily held up her hands to block it. It knocked the gun from her fingers and sent her close behind. She struck the box springs in the corner and rolled over, her eyes seeking the bright orange through a blizzard of white feathers. The gun bounced off the box springs and rattled in the corner, a yard away. She scrambled for it.
Orange trampled the bent mattress, the machete sheathed. The spear jutted from his leg. If it hurt him, it sure as hell didn’t slow him down much. Suzanne clasped the orange barrel and tried to find a proper grip as she raised it in a sweeping arc back in his direction. She got her head around in time to see him launch himself across the five feet which separated them. He caught her wrist, slamming it against the box springs. His full weight crashed down, flattening her to the bed. It knocked the wind from her. She focused on the gun even though her lungs felt pancaked behind her ribs.