by Ryan Harding
“Oh, my God.” Eliza held up her hands to the heavens. “Traps, remember?”
Lee shrugged without turning back. “That just seems too obvious, doesn’t it?”
With his back to her, Eliza ran a full gauntlet of exasperated expressions. Her face had never felt so rubbery.
Lee was the sole survivor of his group. Really? He was either unbelievably lucky, or they were unbelievably stupid.
“If he knows someone will look, he’s going to rig something, Lee. He’d be insane not to. I mean, insane in another way.”
Lee shrugged again. “We’ll be careful.”
“We?” she echoed. “Do you speak French?”
Lee scowled back at her. “Let’s stay on topic here, okay? You can hear my whole bio when we get past the wall.”
A stretch of road ran horizontally through the grass in a straight line. The highway continued through a break in the trees to their left. The right showed only desolate road and bordering woods, a mirror of the one in front of the Morgan Falls Lodge. An abandoned gas station created a corner, and the Chicken Exit stood slightly apart from the tarmac. Tall weeds sprang up through the many cracks in the gas station lot. A lone number nine dangled from the sign overhead. Gas was well under a dollar a gallon when they evacuated the town.
They crossed the road. A mini-field of heads stood before the Chicken Exit, a Who’s Who? of people who didn’t want to walk another foot when they could call in the jeep with the huge turret gun. A few were little more than skulls by this point, albeit with clumps of long stringy hair. Most of the others showed signs of a long vigil with ragged skin worn from decay. Several mouths hung open in frozen screams.
The decomposition detonated in their nostrils almost instantly, finding Lee first.
“Oh, bro, that is rank.”
At least she and Annette received fair warning.
One step the air was fresh, the next a sickening bouquet of rot. Eliza would have thrown up from this forty-five minutes ago had she not effectively purged herself over Nathan and Lawrence. Annette showed no reaction other than a more thoughtful look with her fingers to her lips.
Eliza jumped when a black bird cawed and streaked past them to light on one of the newer additions to the not-so-decorative garden. The crow buried its beak into the meat of the remaining eye in the head, tugged back and forth until it wrenched it from the socket, and flew away with the morsel as though worried it would draw a crowd. No scavengers went hungry here.
“I know that one,” Lee said.
For a moment, Eliza thought he meant the bird.
“His name was…shit.”
A man called Shit?
“I don’t remember his name. He didn’t last very long, though. It was like, ‘Hola, mi nombre es …’ whatever, and then thunk! I knew where we were with a quickness, ‘cause like I said, quim, cars, and Agent Orange. But it didn’t matter. Forewarned was four dead in the blink of an eye, half of us gone with the motel still in sight.”
“But you didn’t come from this way,” Eliza said. “And he’s here.”
“What the hell are you trying to say?”
“I just mean he must have brought the…the head all the way over here. Maybe that’s where he came from when he got on our trail.” She kept a neutral expression, but his defensiveness stunned her.
What was that all about?
“Well, let’s hope he takes his time hanging up the decorations from your friends,” Lee said. It tightened her jaw even though she hoped something similar a moment ago.
Lee crouched and used his stick to prod a stone out of the earth. Nothing happened. He picked it up. It was a misshapen triangle, bigger than his palm.
“We can toss this to set anything off, but if he went through all this trouble—” He gestured to the heads. “—I don’t think he rigged it. Just seems like he’s trying to scare us away.”
There were four vertical rows to either side of a narrow path through the middle, enough of a divide to walk through. That seemed a little too convenient to Eliza.
“He put something in there, Lee.”
“So I’ll walk around.”
“He might expect that.”
“Well, Jesus, do you think he flew out with a jetpack? He had to leave room for himself! You’re being paranoid.”
And you’re not being paranoid enough.
Lee faced the collection, stick in one hand, stone in the other. The stakes seemed to form a maze.
Annette returned from the void and resumed her rubbernecking. She noted Lee’s staring contest with the head. “Make your play, bitchlick,” she said.
Lee whirled around. “Hey, you want to try this?”
Eliza grabbed Annette’s hand so she didn’t take him up on it.
“That’s what I thought.” Lee turned back to the Chicken Exit and regarded his stick. He reached and tentatively poked a head in the front row, ready to jump back. It was a rare trophy without the frozen scream, but the push unhinged its jaw. A tiny ball of writhing maggots rolled off its partially eaten tongue to spill in a clump on the grass.
“Oh God.” Eliza turned away, wondering if she would throw up after all. She breathed in through her mouth as her eyes teared. When she thought she had control again, she turned back around. The reek of putrefaction seemed worse now. She pulled her shirt up over her nose.
Annette had drawn even with Lee.
“I’ve got a plan,” Lee announced.
“Let’s just go to the checkpoint,” she said through the fabric.
“I’ve seen three of these things and this is the only one blocked off. He brought one of our people’s heads here to scare us off because it works!”
“If he didn’t want anyone to use it, he’d just blow it up.”
“He might not have explosives falling out his asshole, either. Just watch and learn.” Lee reared back and kicked the nearest head. It stood in a row to the left side. The pole snapped and the projectile of the head struck the one behind it. It tilted over, uprooting from the soil as it hit the ground between the rows.
If Eliza’s mouth were visible, they would have seen it open in shock. “What are…you can’t do that!”
Lee looked back at her, the picture of cool. “Why not? Not like they’ll hear me anyway. He took their ears.”
“You’re still kicking them.”
“Have it your way.”
He inched forward and this time pushed a stake in the front row with his free hand. It careened backward, took out two more behind it. He dropped his stick and rubbed his palms together vigorously, shuddering. “Mad nasty. There’s some kind of ooze on it.”
He sniffed at his hand and yanked it away instantly. “Damn, that’s so rank. Don’t touch any of them.”
Eliza rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry.”
“No, I’m not,” Annette said.
Lee crossed back to her, still rubbing his fingers. “Well, look who decided to join us.”
“I’m not going to die,” she said.
“Well, yeah, duh. That’s what I’ve been saying all along if we just get—”
“You don’t know shit.”
Lee went from puzzled humor to looking like he wanted to tear her arms from the sockets.
“She’s not talking to you,” Eliza informed him. She pointed to the heads.
“We’re still here,” Annette told them.
Lee smirked. “I’m so glad we brought her with us. She’s been a huge help.”
He reclaimed the stick and stepped back into the phalanx, tapping it out in front of him like a cane. He drew close to another stake and kicked it in the center, but it snapped, dropped to the ground and did not knock over any others. He sighed, shrugged, and pushed the next candidate and the next. They fell like corn stalks. Now he had a full path to the phone through the throng.
“There might be one of those toe poppers,” Eliza warned. “If it doesn’t work, you’ll be dragging your foot for over a mile. And if they won’t open the gate—”
“Okay,” Lee said to shut her up. He hopped between the obstacles to get to his stone, grabbed it, and hurried back to his furthest point of entry. “Just keep watching for him.”
Eliza did, though it was hard not to watch Lee in the home stretch. There were so many places in the woods for Orange to emerge. He might have kept pace with them in the trees through their whole exodus.
“He’s not here,” Annette assured her. “He’s building his death temple. Blood will be the mortar. They say we’ll be part of it, but I won’t. You might and he might.” She shrugged with what might have been apology. “I’ll live.”
“Thanks. Maybe tell Lee to radio ahead for some Valium.”
Annette scowled. Perhaps she really had returned to the land of the here and now.
“Sorry,” Eliza said and patted Annette on the back. “Just scared to death.” She peeked over at Lee, who tapped the ground for the remaining five feet to the concrete. “Just humor me and watch with me anyway, okay?”
Annette gave that same shrug from a second ago. Not apology; apathy. “Oh, sure, they’re just dead. What could they know?”
According to you, they don’t know shit.
They heard a thump as Lee harmlessly bounced the stone on the ground in front of him. He took a long step to where it struck the ground and then another one to get to the stone platform of the Chicken Exit.
“Watch out for the phone itself,” Eliza said.
“Sure. And hey, keep thinking of stuff. We don’t want to get the hell away from here too fast. There’s no sport in that.” Nonetheless, he edged his way to the corner of the concrete base and crouched. He angled his stick between the phone and the handset and knocked the phone aside. It pleased Eliza that he turned his head when he did it (an instant before she did the same thing herself) to protect it from a potential blast of shrapnel.
The phone dropped to the end of its metallic coil, twisting and swinging. No trap. She’d expected something which would force them to move on without Lee. Maybe they could get help here after all.
“Hurry!” she said. “Try it!”
“Watch and weep.” He seized the phone and brought it to his face. “We’re about to blow this popsi—”
He screamed, a shrill sound Eliza might have expected from a female. Blood burst down his chin.
Poisoning? Eliza wondered. Burning?
He dropped the phone instantly, though she didn’t understand how it toppled over but remained attached to his face. Then she saw his lower lip yanked halfway down his chin. Something stuck in the mouthpiece perforated his lip and anchored it. Wild eyed, Lee pinched with one hand and pulled the phone with the other. He sank to his knees as red rivulets seeped through his fingers.
His anguished cry found form in a single word: “Shit!” Then two more: “Ah, fuck!”
“He’ll hear you,” Annette said mildly.
He took his palms away, caught the steady drip with one of them. “So what, twat?” He pulled his hands away from his clenched face and broke into a coughing fit. “Rank,” he managed to choke out.
A moment passed.
“Well,” Annette said, “did it work or not?”
“Did it work?” Lee said it in as childish a way possible to mock her. “I just had some needle from 1987 in my mouth! I’ve probably got hep C or fucking AIDS now!”
“You need to try it,” Eliza said. “Be sure.”
“Unbelievable.” He took the phone again in a pincer grasp, inspected it closely, pushed the earpiece to his head and tapped the disconnect button several times after carefully examining that, too. He slung it back at the handset as hard as he could. “Fuck no it doesn’t!”
He had the presence of mind to retrieve his stick before he jumped down from the Chicken Exit and stalked through the fallen columns.
“Be care—”
“I don’t give a shit!”
She and Annette backed away from the heads. They both cringed as he goose-stepped on the stakes and whatever else came underfoot. There was a jagged tear in the flesh under his mouth, and blood continued to trickle.
“You should do something about—”
He grabbed Eliza’s arm and pulled her with him.
“Hey!”
“We need to haul ass,” he said. “We wasted too much time.”
Eliza stumbled beside him. The shirt came down from over her nose. She yanked her arm away. His hand carried a death stench like bad cologne. “Come on, Annette, hurry.”
Annette speed-walked to catch up to them and took hold of Eliza’s hand.
“At least we’ll be away from that awful smell,” Eliza said. She glared at Lee. “Most of it, anyway.”
They advanced more recklessly now. What Orange did to the Chicken Exit amounted to little more than a joy buzzer shock, if substantially more painful. Maybe he exhausted his trap supply on the staked victims. He could only linger near the checkpoint so long before the military opened fire. Maybe he wouldn’t try to stop them this close.
She didn’t feel safer, though. The shadows lengthened in the dying light, and the woods pushed in on them. The pounding in her head probably enforced that. She’d never been thirstier in her life. There were more noises in the trees now; maybe birds settling back, but maybe not.
It slowed her down, but she looked back periodically. Lee was right—they (he) squandered a lot of time for Orange to make up some ground.
It’s all in your mind, she thought. She almost wanted to laugh. Just like Valerie.
He knew where they were. They could have scattered in ten different directions and he’d still know, like Jack looming over the hedge maze model in The Shining. This didn’t ring false in her thoughts. Her feet carried her faster, now ahead of Lee, pulling Annette like a kite behind her. She wanted to drop Annette’s hand and run, not stop until she hit the checkpoint. She’d pound her fists at the wall and shout for help until they let her through.
She forced herself to walk at a pace on the verge of jogging, and that’s when the ground dropped out from underneath her.
Twelve
If the know-it-all didn’t have a death-grip on the crazy chick, it would have been curtains. Lee’s first responsibility was to himself, naturally, so he didn’t dare move in that direction at the first sign of trouble. In fact, he hit the deck in case the trap launched some sort of projectile. A retard from his group met the wrong end of one of those things. Lee couldn’t remember the name of that sorry bastard either, but the trap swung some massive briar-looking deal into his knee caps hard enough to shatter them and wrecked the shit out of his legs. The idiot screamed blue murder in a world where silence was golden. A debate began about the best way to carry him, although Lee heard precious little of it because he opted for the best way, period, which was to leave those dipshits to face the slayer.
Good luck with your twig gurney or whatever, assholes…I’ll find my own exit.
They could only blast him as a selfish coward if they actually made it back to the real world, and their altruistic suicide strategy didn’t make that much of a threat.
The rigors of self-preservation now satisfied, he allowed himself to assess the predicament of his companions. He couldn’t remember their names, but the one who gave him a shitty look for calling them “girls” (which he pretended to ignore, just to get her goat) was halfway down a hole. The nutcase clearly broadcasting from radio station K-UNT held her around the hand and wrist.
Well, the know-it-all was right about the traps after all. The phone thing still pissed him off, but less so now that he hadn’t tripped the more dangerous one. The honor of that booby trap went to the one with the boobies. Funny stuff. He was pretty sure that counted as irony.
“Lee, help us!”
He dusted the loose grass from his pants and adjusted his headband. He figured the crazy one had super strength and wouldn’t drop her pal into the death pit. The friend was much hotter, but really, the groupie scene back home made them both look like crones. Even just playing
local shows with a predominance of cover songs in the set list, those chicks in the audience were down to fuck. He’d been so astonished at the beginning of the sexual odyssey he actually asked a girl, “You realize we didn’t write ‘More Than a Feeling,’ don’t you?” She didn’t answer. Couldn’t get his throbbing gristle in her maw fast enough.
Lee scoped the surroundings real fast to make sure Major Maniac didn’t run up their asses with a chainsaw. Still safe, but he’d feel better when the Chicken Exit wasn’t a stone’s throw away.
“Hang on, girl,” he said.
“It’s Eliza!” she snapped.
“My bad.” Meaning, So what? He could know her name, birth date, and last four digits of her social, and he’d still boot her into hell’s hole without a second thought if he needed to.
He put an arm around the schizo’s waist, took Eliza’s wrist with his other hand, and pulled backward. Eliza came up and out and they all fell in a pile, the nutcase’s ass right on Lee’s package. She took her time rolling off. He didn’t mind. It took the sting from the pain in his mouth. Would that leave a scar?
Lee crawled to the edge of the hole when at last freed. Orange covered a trapdoor with tall grass indistinguishable from the rest of the field. Any weight sent someone eight feet below to a column of spikes. Eliza came a snatch hair away from a new career as a pincushion. Some of the points were sharpened stakes of wood, but he’d tied knives to a few.
That beats a stick any day of the week.
“I need your help, gir…ladies,” he amended. “I can reach a knife if you two hold my legs.”
They both grabbed a leg and he walked on his hands over the edge and down the length of the trapdoor. Lieutenant Lunatic dug out the hole to keep the door at an angle, assuring someone would bounce into the impaling grid—six rows of five stakes, approximately five feet high. He could drop between the rows, but had no room for a running start to jump back up. Maybe the women could haul him out, but he saw himself plunge back into the hole if someone lost their grip, stakes and blades punching through his major organs, dick included. J’nope.
“A little more,” he said. Pressure grew against the walls of his skull. Droplets of blood coursed off his lip to patter his nose. One of them scored a direct hit down one of his nostrils. He pushed away his dread at the thought of an infected needle. Maybe not AIDS, but some kind of unpronounceable bacteria that would rot his face off, make him look Harvey Dent.