by Ryan Harding
Most of the plate glass had been shattered like the lobby windows at the lodge. She noted a large chunk set at the bottom of the door, thinking she could have simply stepped through instead of bothering to open it, when someone wandered into view. Eliza squinted, not sure if she really saw them.
Valerie? Haunted though she had been by her sister for years, her presence still comforted her. Looking to lead her away forever.
Then the person swam into focus.
Annette.
Eliza managed only a hoarse whisper. “Run!”
Annette wandered around the lot just the other side of the old-style pumps in a stupor, like she was looking for a gas station attendant or her missing car.
Eliza lost focus and her head tilted. She opened her eyes and saw words in another language. With concentration she understood the letters were backwards. Enough remained to make out Al’s Service Station and hours of operation. There were dark spray patterns on the glass and inside wall. Someone died in here but the body was gone. The smell of blood was strong. Her blood.
Drip, drip, drip.
Pat, pat, pat.
Outside Annette slowly approached.
Why don’t you run, dammit?
Too tired to voice a warning, Eliza watched her eyes close, a bystander within her own body.
A scream shocked them back open.
Annette’s arms and legs flailed as she floated through the air toward the open window. How peculiar that Annette could fly.
Only she couldn’t.
She dipped down and Agent Orange materialized behind her, his fingers laced through Annette’s hair. He palmed her skull like a basketball and forced her throat against the remains of plate glass. Eliza saw the resistance and then the sudden downward thrust as the skin and tissue of the throat split with a crunch.
Eliza jerked her head toward a large round sign that blocked the entryway into the service bays. It said “Gulf.”
Worse than the gurgling, Eliza heard sawing sounds as Orange raked Annette’s throat back and forth across the glass. It squeaked like he was cleaning the windows. Back and forth, squeak-squeak-squeak. The glass snapped out of the frame. He pinned Annette’s body against it and twisted her head. Once, twice, the neck snapped away from the torso with a moist crunch, but only let go after a final vigorous heave that snapped the relenting muscles. He tossed aside the body, a sickening thump that echoed under the gas station canopy.
Eliza watched him watching her through the shattered window.
Too late, asshole. I beat you to it. Thanks for Lee, though.
She wanted to raise a middle finger to him, but her arms were dead weights on either side of the chair, numb at the incisions she made along both wrists and forearms. All of her now numb, fading. She closed her eyes, faintly hearing the bell as he entered, and tumbled toward a lasting sleep.
Fourteen
Adam found that the broken shop windows provided a backlight of sorts if he held items between himself and the scant light. It was the best opportunity to see—“seeing” in this case being the identification of objects by shape.
For whatever reason the shop owners left some stock behind, but the years took their toll on product placement; it was like someone ran through the aisles knocking boxes to the floor. The person may have been lucky enough to get past the tripwire at the entrance but his luck ran out if reduced to launching wing-tips at Agent Orange. Patrick identified the tripwire and told Adam and Gin to stay in the aisles and out of the stockroom. As if. Neither of them wanted to brave spider webs and the assorted things they heard scurrying in the shadows back there.
We need as many shoe strings as you can get. And new shoes, get yourselves some new shoes—preferably hiking boots—and socks if you can find them.
Gin found a bag of socks as soon as they entered. Ever since then they had been trying to find the shoes. Patrick needed a size ten and a half—“Wide, I have a fat foot”— to which Gin had replied, “Any particular brand?” He ignored the sarcasm.
“Yay,” Gin said from the next aisle over. “Found my size. Just in time for my funeral.”
It was almost instinctual to say something positive, something like “You’re not going to die” in the same way he might have responded “Those shoes look great on you” if she doubted her fashion sense. Yeah, “You’re not going to die” would sound trite and stupid, the kind of thing he might have said to his mother when they were making their napalm salvation.
“What did he mean by the clothes not being right?” Adam asked as he unstrung the laces from another bad fit. Talking might alert Orange, but not talking let his attention wander back to his parents.
“Who knows?”
Adam heard the frictional whirr of a shoelace sliding through the last two eyelets. Gin had out-laced him three shoes to one by now and she’d already found a pair of shoes that fit her. If these were the type of skills that would ensure their survival she was on the fast track.
“We had a lead on Agent Orange and we’re blowing it because MacGruber has no clue. All the laces in this place won’t help him string together a plan.”
Adam snickered. “You think he’s stringing us along?”
“Doubt it’s because he’s into string theory.”
“Or he wants to hamstring Orange.”
“I’m a frayed knot.”
The trip to Morgan had been quiet on the Agent Orange front even as Patrick grew increasingly erratic. He’d snapped at Adam when he made jokes—quiet jokes—but Patrick took to mumbling and didn’t seem at all concerned when he broke the silence. Maybe Annette hadn’t been in drug withdrawal but instead had some sort of weird virus and Patrick caught it. Maybe Patrick self-medicated, too. Took one to know one.
When they’d arrived at the outskirts of Morgan and passed the first set of staked heads Patrick sniffed all of them, shook his head, ran ahead to the next set of staked heads and smelled all of them, too. Afterwards he’d let out a resounding “Fuck!” to which Gin whispered, “Hey Orange, here we are in Morgan. RSVP.”
The woods couldn’t encroach with all of downtown Morgan’s pavement as badly as it did on the houses at the outskirts of town. One and two story brick buildings with no space between lined both sides of the street for two blocks. Beyond that it looked like man-made structures gave way to forest again because Adam could see tree leaves catching moonlight. He guessed the Morgan Manor was on the other side of the town because they hadn’t passed anything resembling a motel. It would have been hard to see regardless. Patrick had to point out several houses Adam and Gin had missed because the woods swallowed them.
It wasn’t easy to see structures with only moonlight—harder still to find shoes without it. Watch me end up with women’s kicks.
Agent Orange left three headless bodies in the streets, all within close proximity of the intersection that bisected the town. Not the best omen if they had made a final stand together. Patrick checked the bodies from several different angles, avoiding the blood spatter at first but eventually not caring as he made a good show of imitating a beleaguered coroner who didn’t know where to start. His ultimate conclusion: The clothes don’t make sense.
Adam couldn’t see their clothes well enough to figure out what Patrick meant, but instead of sighing like Gin he at least made an effort to make sense of it. Gin had become more and more hostile to Patrick. If she’d once seen him as some sort of holy man who could lead them out of this wilderness, she’d lost her faith by the time they’d set things on fire at the lodge.
He’s less than half an hour away, Patrick said before giving them instructions to find shoes and shoestrings. That was at least twenty minutes ago.
“Best use of a half hour ever,” he said quietly, a little desperate that he wasn’t holding up his end of the mission.
He found a left shoe that fit but its mate got separated in the random pairs and boxes strewn everywhere. His size was nine so he’d found some for Patrick based on how loosely the shoes fit. It might not
be the right size but the more time they spent in the shoe store the more Adam sensed impending doom just around the corner.
“I’m ready when you are,” Gin said. “Probably have a dozen spider bites. Freaking webs all over the place.”
He became careless about checking his own shoes for spiders five minutes ago.
He found a right shoe that fit and it wasn’t until they reached the doorway that he realized he had two different styles and one had slightly more room than the other. According to Kevin you could get your ass kicked at school for such an oversight (no bullshit). It didn’t matter here, though. They could come back in daytime.
If we live that long.
“If he doesn’t have a good reason for this we’re out of here,” Gin whispered.
She took such a comically wide step over the tripwire he wondered if she was being sarcastic. That or she feared it was like a live wire that might arc and fry her.
“Be careful,” she warned.
Like Adam she collected her shoestrings in a box, but hers was bigger and overflowed, the laces like multi-colored worms.
“You’re coming with me if I ditch him, right?”
“Yeah,” Adam said automatically, both thrilled and horrified. “We don’t have to give up the laces, though, do we? They could be our best defense if Orange catches us.”
Gin smiled at him. “We can throw the boxes at him.”
“He’ll go down in a tangle of shoestrings.”
“The more he struggles the tighter they’ll get.”
“We’ll string him up.”
“He’ll be fit to be tied.”
It was funny how much comfort it gave him to share these awful jokes with her. A lot funnier than the jokes themselves, though probably little wasn’t.
If Patrick went anywhere during their shoestrings mission, he had since returned to the middle of the intersection, kicked off his shoes, removed a sock, and now held it in the air. A dark pile of clothing lay on the street near him.
“He’s the alternate universe version of Mister Miyagi where ‘wax on, wax off’ was just a way to get his car detailed.”
Adam chuckled like he knew what she was talking about.
“There’s no method to his madness. Where should we go?” Gin asked. She pointed to the hardware store. “Bet Orange has that place rigged, probably more traps than the doorway, but you know…hardware store. Potential weapons.”
“After all these years?” Adam asked.
The building had no windows and you could only tell what it used to be from the partial words ARDWAR STO still visible on the sign above the crooked awning. The place next to it might have been a post office; there was a blue collection box at the curb.
“Aren’t all the useful things gone by now?” Adam asked.
“Psshht, they totally missed these deadly laces, didn’t they?”
“This is true.”
“We could find a yardstick or a leveler or even a bucket. You’re such a downer, Kirshoff.”
All trace of Gin’s mirth vanished when she looked at Patrick. With her attention on Patrick, he could look at her. She was so beautiful. So cool. So sexy. He loved her, to which his mom would have surely said, “You don’t love her, Adam, you don’t even know her.” To which Adam could say, “I’ll never be proven wrong.” He probably wouldn’t live long enough.
Sadly, that also meant he wouldn’t get to know her very well. She may not be his girlfriend, but she was his girl friend. (“Friend zoning” was one of the few things Kevin would proclaim to actually be bullshit, but Adam couldn’t bring himself to care.)
Only a few of the businesses were boarded. Others had dark openings where boards either rotted away or someone (Stalkers and stalkees) removed them. Miraculously, there were windows here and there to reflect the moonlight. It looked so much brighter outdoors after the shoe store, but it was little comfort with Agent Orange on his way. They had to do something, go somewhere, but the potential traps were as dangerous as the hunter.
Patrick threw his sock to the street and removed his pants.
“Think he’d notice if we just walked away in our new kicks?” Gin whispered.
“He notices everything.”
“Everything but nothing that matters.”
Patrick stripped off his underwear and held it up to the moon, a cross between an escaped mental patient and a werewolf.
“Holy shit, he’s really lost it,” Gin whispered. She looked at the box of shoe laces as if it were a manifestation of his madness, suddenly unmasked, and they were fools to believe it could ever make sense.
Patrick pulled a dark piece of clothing from the pile which turned out to be pants. He pulled them on as they approached. And didn’t bother hiding himself.
Awk-ward.
“You found the shoes,” Patrick said as he mercifully zipped up. He took Gin’s box of laces and sifted through them. “Great haul.”
“So, uh, what’s with the striptease?”
“Our clothes are embedded with small, trackable devices.”
“I thought electromagnetics were sketchy in here.”
He held up his underwear. “This is strictly short-range stuff.”
“Good thing they aren’t long johns?”
Patrick fixed her with a hard stare. “Be careful. There’s a fine line between cynicism and healthy skepticism.”
“Whatever, Patrick. We didn’t follow you to Morgan to see your dong. Hey, maybe you don’t even need us now that you have a lifetime supply of shoelaces.”
“There will be a recovery team once this is over. We’ll be tracked by our clothing.”
“I’m not ditching my panties. Just not going to happen. We’ll take our chances.”
Come on Patrick, try harder, Adam thought. Patrick might be flying by the seat of his (new) pants but if his madness got Gin out of hers, it deserved a hearing. It wasn’t like Adam had anything to look forward to that wasn’t long, shiny, and sharp.
“Look, I can be…rather singular in my purpose. And I like to know what I’m saying is true because speculation can do more harm than good. If I’ve given you reason to doubt what I’m telling you—”
“You haven’t given us a reason to believe anything you’ve said. Gotta admit, I’ve been a little wary since you dropped the whole NSA and offshore accounts bomb, but sniffing those heads and now waving your underwear around? Agent Orange is on his way here and you’ve got us clothes shopping, so yeah, I’m starting to think you’d have a tinfoil hat if you found a grocery store.”
“Which bone did you break? Arm or leg?” Patrick asked, not identifying which “you” he meant.
Gin answered “arm” the same time Adam said “leg.”
After a surprised but cautious glance at Adam, Gin asked, “How did you know we had breaks?”
“The extraction team may not recover the head along with the rest of the body so we must have been selected because of secondary identifying characteristics. Annette will be the easiest since her breast implants have serial numbers.”
Annette had implants? Adam figured he would have noticed something like that, but he hadn’t given her much thought with Gin and Eliza around. Besides, she was older than his…
Wait, mom said she spent time in the hospital after the wreck.
“They took me because of a broken arm?”
“And a stalker, though I’m betting you wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t broken your arm.”
“So now it’s not Hoon, it’s my arm?”
Patrick picked up his original pants.
“My mom broke her pelvis in a car accident,” Adam whispered. “Dad had a replacement knee.”
“And you’re home schooled and you guys were on vacation when the time came for a round-up.” Patrick shook his head. “Didn’t stand a chance.”
“This could be coincidence, Adam,” Gin said. “So explain the head-sniffing weirdness.”
“Did you notice some of the heads at the lodge were better preserved than othe
rs?”
“No.”
“Who would, right? No one looks at them any longer than they have to.” Patrick stuffed his underwear into a pocket of his old pants along with his previous socks. “The recovery team will come in here with more heads to replace the ones they remove.”
“That makes no sense. They’re out there killing people to replace the heads of the ones they let Agent Orange kill?”
Gin gave the bag of tube socks to Patrick, who tore into it eagerly. They were calf length with three colored bands near the top. Patrick sat in the street and pulled on the new decades-old socks.
“They don’t need to kill anyone on the outside. There are plenty of sources. People willingly donate their bodies to science when they die. Hell, the spooks can get heads from Mexican cartels.” Patrick motioned to the nearest set of staked heads. “Orange doesn’t collect heads so much as use them to terrorize. Get in our heads.”
“He collects ears,” Adam said. He handed the box of shoes to Patrick.
“Yeah, he’s weird that way, but he doesn’t look at these heads and wax nostalgic about Group A from last June. They decay and they’re unrecognizable after a few days anyway. As long as it’s on a stake, why would he think twice about it? Great fit on these boots. Thanks.”
Patrick stood and hurried to the pile of clothing.
“Why extract our bodies?” Gin asked. “Why take the risk?”
“This many bodies can’t suddenly appear after one of these heightened alert drills. Stalkers would see them and the National Guard might see them—the Guard won’t have anything to do with this operation other than serving as gatekeepers. They probably have to fall back to a safe perimeter until the sirens stop.
“If today is any indication, a bunch of us were abducted for Kill Zone fodder. All these disappearances year after year would add up, so some of us have to be found again. And each year some of the dead here will be found elsewhere, closing out old missing persons cases.”