by Ike Hamill
With all the blood, Bo’s wrist slipped from the injured man’s grip. His elbow caught the man right on the chin and the man sagged. His strength had been sapped by the blow. Bo followed with a shove and managed to get himself out from underneath. Pieces of glass tinkled to the floor and crunched underfoot as Bo rose up. He aimed a kick at the shadow on the floor. The man grunted when Bo’s foot hit his midsection. Bo kicked again and his shin connected with skull.
He turned to see the door-busting man raise his rifle at Danielle and Chloe. He was so close. He couldn’t possibly miss again.
“Stop!” James shouted.
Something sparked in his hand and a yellow flame sprouted from a lighter.
“Heh,” the man said. He returned his attention and his aim to the women.
James brought the lighter to the stack of papers. The room came alive with the light from the burning papers. Smoke billowed from James’s hand.
Danielle and Chloe were frozen, afraid to move with a gun pointed at them.
Bo reached for the shotgun, but knew he wouldn’t reach it in time. Any second, the report of the rifle would spell doom for either Danielle or Chloe. There was no way to stop the inevitable. It was written in the dancing shadows of the man’s face. James dropped the papers as the flames consumed them. They fluttered to the floor, shifting the shadows that ran up the walls.
Instead of firing, the man slowly lowered his rifle.
Bo’s hand found the shotgun and he lifted it to the man. This time he would kill. He wouldn’t hesitate.
Somehow between having that thought and bringing the shotgun up to his shoulder, Bo’s resolve evaporated. The man with the rifle dropped to his knees and let his gun fall.
A second later, as the smoke from James’s fire reached him, Bo understood. He understood how impossible it would be to shoot Danielle, or Chloe, or even the man with the rifle. Even the notion of pointing a weapon at them was insane. They were people. Their struggle was his own.
“We don’t have much time,” James said. The flames were dying out and the light was extinguished with them. James crossed to Chloe and grabbed her shoulder. “We all have to write.”
“What?” Chloe asked.
Danielle seemed to understand. She pushed her friend towards the closet. James was already back inside. He came out with a candle and some paper. James lowered himself to the floor and began writing.
“I don’t understand,” Chloe said. “What’s happening.”
“We’re going to copy what James writes,” Danielle said. “Is that it?”
James nodded and waved.
Danielle positioned herself over James’s shoulder and began watching the words flow from his hand.
“What about him?” Chloe asked. She pointed at the man who had laid his rifle on the floor. He was sobbing into his hands.
“He’s fine,” Danielle said. She took a second sheet of paper and began to copy James. “That’s not what I wrote,” she said to him
“Close enough,” James said over his shoulder.
Chloe brought two more candles out from the closet, and Bo was able to see the man at his feet.
The window glass had cut his arms and face. He was bleeding and trying to rise. Without thinking, Bo reached down and helped him up to his knees. The man didn’t try to attack again. He nodded to Bo and settled back to a seat on the floor.
Bo dragged the shotgun over to the others. He gestured to the sobbing man. “Can you go over there and sit with your friend?” Bo asked.
The man nodded and began to crawl. He left his rifle behind. Bo picked it up. Before taking a seat on the couch, Bo walked to the front door and pushed it shut with his foot. It didn’t latch, of course, but at least it was closed.
A little war fired off in Bo’s synapses. On one hand, there was no way to be sure that the threat was over. The intruders had been disarmed and appeared to be docile, but what if there were others out there? On the other hand, it felt like the danger was over. He had no urge to do anything more than sit and rest. Panic had pushed his body to the edge, and now he needed a moment to let everything calm back down.
“Bo, keep your eye on them,” Chloe said.
“Yes,” Bo said. He sat on a chair and rested the guns at his sides.
Behind him, he heard paper fluttering as it was passed from James to Danielle.
“Don’t just read it,” Danielle said to Chloe. “Copy it down.”
“Okay,” Chloe said.
# # # # #
They left the men behind in the cabin. The door-busting man had stopped sobbing long enough to tend to the other one’s wounds. Danielle clutched the copies to her chest and walked behind James, who wrote as he walked.
Bo drove through the dark.
He leaned forward and squinted so he could see. The interior of the car was bright from the dome light.
“I can’t,” Danielle said. She handed her paper to Chloe. “I can’t copy while we’re moving. It makes me sick.”
“So be sick then,” Chloe said, pushing the paper back towards Danielle. Chloe had her own copy to finish.
James wasn’t affected. He sat in back, hunched over his lap and wrote. His hand flew across the page and he handed the next sheet to Danielle. She pressed a hand to her mouth and resumed writing.
“At the first sign of trouble, you stop,” Chloe said. “Don’t get us killed just to get closer to the city.”
“Got it,” Bo said.
Their discussion at the cabin had been quick. Everyone seemed to have the idea at the same time. They needed to get the story closer to the population so that its smoke would reach the greatest number of people. They needed to have as many copies as they could make so they could light more than one fire. Nobody was sure how well it would work if they waited. As James explained it, the stories were only full strength on one particular day. They couldn’t afford to wait a year and see if the world was still around.
“Left or right here?” Bo asked.
Chloe was in the passenger’s seat. She looked up from her writing for just a second.
“Take a right.”
When he got to the next turn, he knew which way to go. The sign told him.
Bo picked up speed on the highway.
“One more done,” Danielle said. “How many is that?”
“Four done. Two in progress,” Chloe said.
The eastern horizon was orange, but it was too early to be the sunrise. Bo puzzled over that for a second before he realized what was happening. Something was on fire. Perhaps the whole town was on fire. He wasn’t sure if that made their job easier or harder.
“Which way is the wind going?” Chloe asked.
“I have no idea,” Bo said.
“Don’t worry about that,” Danielle said. “Just keep writing.”
“It’s important,” Chloe said. “We should position ourselves upwind of the city.”
Bo lowered himself in his seat and tried to see the tops of the trees. It was impossible. Everything up there was dark. He spotted the moon out his side window and watched until a cloud passed in front of it. The cloud moved in the same direction they were headed. With a little pondering, he decided that was a good thing. He wasn’t entirely sure that had any bearing on the surface wind though.
“Five done,” Chloe said, adding her paper to the stack.
Bo increased their speed a little more. Even with the high beams on, it seemed like he couldn’t see far enough. He relented and eased up on the gas. It was lucky he did. Just as the car slowed a little he spotted something by the road that made him jam both feet on the brake pedal.
The car screeched to a stop.
“Bo! Jesus,” Chloe said. She had her mouth open to say more, but she closed it when she saw what he was looking at. A pair of crosses flanked the road. It wasn’t a completely uncommon sight. Lots of Christian symbols lined the highway in their part of the world, but never that close to the road. And these crosses weren’t empty symbols, they were in use. The hea
dlights cast just enough light on them for Bo to see that naked men hung from the two crosses.
James spoke from the back seat. “That doesn’t have anything to do with Jesus. Those are Stick Men.”
“What?” Bo asked.
James whipped around and looked through the rear window. “Back up, Bo. Back up.”
Bo pushed the transmission lever into reverse and spun in his seat to look while he began to accelerate backwards.
Chloe screamed.
Bo snatched a glance out the windshield and saw the men. The one near the center divider was still climbing down from his cross, the other was already running towards them. His naked sprint seemed impossibly fast. The engine wound up like a top as Bo poured on the gas. His steering jerked them from side to side as he tried to keep the car on the road.
“Turn us around, Bo, the engine is going to blow up,” Danielle said.
Chloe, in the front seat, had a better view of the man chasing them. He was spotlighted by the headlights. “Don’t you slow down, Bo,” she said. “He’s right there.”
“They’ll have a blockade,” James said.
Bo heard the beeping before he saw the garbage truck. The alarm beeped, telling them that the garbage truck was reversing too. The men must have broken the truck’s lights. Bo didn’t see it until his own lights picked its shape out of the darkness. The garbage truck was accelerating out of the bushes and was moving into position to block their escape.
Bo swerved towards the center of the road and coaxed a tiny bit more speed from the engine.
Chloe screamed again as the man chasing them got close enough to slap the hood.
The garbage truck was rapidly closing into their escape path. Bo had a terrible vision of the car getting crushed between the giant truck and the highway’s center divider. He stole one more glance through the windshield. The notion crossed his mind to put the car back into drive and take his chances with the men on foot. Those thoughts evaporated. Another big truck was pulling into the road near the crosses. They were trying to trap the car on a short section of deadly road.
“We’re not going to make it, Bo,” Danielle said.
James was on the side where the garbage truck would impact. He wasn’t even looking out his window at the approaching threat.
Danielle realized what was in her hands. “The story! We can burn a copy of the story. They’ll stop, right?”
“There’s no time,” James said. “Not with Stick Men.”
Chloe put her hands on her window, like she could hold back the truck. “She’s right, Bo,” she said as they headed towards impact. “We’re not going to…”
Bo swerved too close to the divider. The car’s metal screeched as it ground into the concrete. Bo’s side mirror was ripped off. They lost a little speed from the friction. The dark garbage truck filled Chloe’s window.
Bo had a glimmer of hope—he thought they would actually make it through the gap before the garbage truck hit the car.
He was wrong.
The garbage truck hit the front bumper of the car before they could slip by. Bo’s corner of the car was pressed into the concrete and then the car whipped around into a skid. Bo dragged the steering wheel to the side, but their orientation was being dictated by larger forces. Momentum kept them spinning. The tires spun uselessly on the pavement, creating smoke but no speed.
James reached between the seats and pulled the shifter. The engine raced as the transmission popped into neutral. It only lasted a fraction of second before James pulled the lever into drive. Bo stomped on the gas and spun the wheel the opposite direction. The tires caught and the mangled car straightened out, facing the wrong way down the highway.
Chloe and Danielle turned in their seats to look out the rear window. Lit by the red taillights, they saw the naked man squeeze through the space between the garbage truck and the barrier. As Bo picked up speed, they left the man behind and he disappeared out of the glow of the lights.
Chloe fell back into her seat and put her hand to her chest while she caught her breath. “Should I even ask? What are Stick Men?”
“Very bad people,” James said. After a second of Danielle and Chloe glancing at him, he got the message that they were looking for more of an explanation. “It’s a cult from one of the stories. They willingly hang themselves up on those crosses for two reasons. They’re fasting until they have a transcendent psychological experience, and they’re trying to lure people close enough to eat.”
“Eat what?”
“For them to eat,” James said. “Stick Men are cannibals.”
“Oh my God,” Chloe said.
“It’s not religious at all,” James said. “But they’ll eat religious people. I think they understand that religious people will be drawn to their displays.”
“How did you write about such horrible things for all those years?” Danielle asked. “My stories are frightening, but your father’s stories were just…”
“I wrote them so I wouldn’t have to live them. It wasn’t my father’s fault,” James said.
“I know,” Danielle said.
The engine wound down and the brakes rang as Bo stopped the car.
“What the hell are you doing?” Chloe asked. “Keep moving.”
Bo rolled down his window. He put his finger in his mouth and then stuck it in the air, outside the window. “Those leaves,” he said, “they’re blowing towards us. That means the wind would carry smoke towards the Stick Men. I think this would be a good time to test one of those second-generation stories.”
“You’re crazy,” Chloe said. “He just said that they’re cannibals.”
Danielle shook her head. “No, he’s right. We have to try them at some point.”
“But not with cannibals,” she muttered as Bo opened his door. “No, Bo. If we’re going back, then drive us back there. That way we can still get away if it doesn’t work.”
“Okay,” Bo said. He closed his door again and put the car back into reverse. “I don’t know how much longer we can trust your car though. It got pretty beat up back there.”
# # # # #
Bo couldn’t see the truck, but he trusted Danielle, who said it was back there. Somewhere, at the limit of her vision, the garbage truck was still across the road.
Chloe took the front lookout. She scanned the windshield and side windows for any sign that the Stick Men were trying to cut off their escape route again.
James stepped out of the car. He held a copy of the story in one hand and a lighter in the other. He fanned the papers and held them up at shoulder-height.
“If they get to me, don’t stay,” James said through the open window. “They’re too dangerous.”
“Just light it,” Danielle said.
James didn’t respond. He began walking towards the garbage truck.
Danielle was the first to spot the man. He popped up from behind the center divider and ran towards James. He was only a dozen paces away when James saw him and tried to ignite the lighter. The wind blew out the flame. Danielle saw the spark as James tried several times to get the lighter going. The naked man slowed when he had covered about half the distance to James. Like magic, another man materialized from the side of the road. He approached James at another angle until he turned and spotted Danielle looking at him. Then he veered, and came at the car.
“We’re going to have to leave him,” Danielle said. Her voice was flat and emotionless. “Why didn’t he light it when he got out?”
She glanced back to James. He had successfully lit the papers and the light from the flames cast a small yellow glow around him. The naked man approaching James came to a stop.
Bo began to drive away.
“What are you doing?” Danielle asked. James and the two naked men grew smaller in the car’s rear window.
“You said we had to leave him,” Bo said. “You’re the rear lookout, remember? When you say go, I go.”
“Just slow down for a second,” Danielle said. “It might be work
ing.”
She strained to see what was happening. When they’d pulled away, the second naked man had turned towards James. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the others. Three or four other naked people had emerged from behind the concrete barrier. They encircled James.
Danielle stole a glance over her shoulder. The sight of all those people coming out of the darkness gave her the creeps. She wondered how many more were lurking in the area. She saw that Chloe was also watching the people surround James.
“Eyes forward, Chloe,” Danielle said. “They might be anywhere.”
“Yeah, okay,” Chloe whispered. She turned around to resume her watch.
Danielle could barely see James now. The people formed a circle around him and only the light from the flames escaped.
“What are they doing?” Danielle whispered.
Bo backed up slowly. The closer they got, the less light came from the circle. He stopped again when they were just close enough to see what was happening. Danielle imagined that the papers had nearly burned away. Her suspicion proved correct. In the glow of the reverse lights, she saw charred corners of paper, smoldering edges glowing red, fall to the ground amidst the naked feet. A breeze picked up the scraps and took them away.
“Oh, no,” Danielle whispered. The circle of people collapsed on James’s position. Danielle reached down to the seat, where she had the half-finished copy. She picked it up and brought it to her chest.
“What happened to him?” Bo asked. His voice was just above a whisper.
“I don’t know,” Danielle said.
All at once, the circle began to disband. Half moved towards the bushes at the side of the road. Most of the others walked towards the garbage truck. Only one headed for the center divider. When he reached it, the naked man put his hand on the concrete and vaulted the barrier to disappear into the darkness.
Danielle looked back to James. He was slumped on the road, facing away from the car. He wasn’t moving.
“Should we…” Danielle didn’t finish her question.
Chloe was still scanning the extent of the headlights, looking to see if anyone was going to try to block them in again.