Red Scare (The Postmodern Adventures of Kill Team One Book 3)

by Mike Leon

  Adler shrugs as Gavin picks up his phone from the seat of a wicker chair “Just a few bowls.”

  “A few bowls?! Do you know what was in that stuff?”

  “I’m good, man. Feels good, man.”

  Gavin holds the phone high in the air and stares at the screen. “I have zero bars. Who has a phone?”

  “I left mine in the guest bedroom, I think,” Summer says. She walks around the pool table and down a short hallway. Gavin goes with her, and Adler turns his attention to the newcomer, a girl with gothic black hair and tattoos. Tattoos are hot. Tattoos always mean a chick is open for business.

  “Yeah,” the girl says. “I’m not.”

  “Not what?” Adler slyly responds, thinking this is some kind of opening line for a joke.

  “Open for business.”

  Adler takes a step back, aghast. This chick can read minds.

  “You’re saying all of that stuff out loud. What were you smoking again?”

  “Hey,” Carter says to the psychic hot chick. “Where are your pants?”

  “Gavin is like really into weed?” Lily says.

  “Yeah,” Adler nods enthusiastically. “He has the best shit ever.”

  “And Carter plays football?”

  “All-American runningback. But I got the rocket arm. You like rocket arms?”

  “So…I just walked into a secluded cabin, where the phones don’t work, with a pothead, a football player, a slutty girl, and a black guy, and there’s a killer outside?”

  “There’s a killer outside?” Adler says.

  Her answer is interrupted by Gavin shouting from the back of the den. “What the fuck!?!?”

  INT. BRUNSWICK RANCH - GUEST BEDROOM - NIGHT

  Gavin pushes open the thin door to the guest bedroom for Summer, and is immediately startled by the sight of vigorous sexual intercourse only ten feet in front of him. His first thought is that he walked in on Trevor and Jenny making the beast with two backs. Awkward and embarrassing. He starts to turn away as Trevor whips around to glare at him, spooked by this intrusion, but then Gavin sees who Trevor is lying on top of, and it is not Jenny.

  “What the fuck!?!?” Gavin shouts as he barges into the guest room, eyes wide over Karen’s unconscious form as Trevor leaps away to the corner of the room, struggling to pull his shorts up over his rapidly wilting erection.

  “Oh my God!” Summer says. “Trevor is cheating on Jenny with Karen!”

  “I’m gonna kill you, you son-of-a-bitch!” Gavin screams, leaping over the bed at Trevor. He winds up and launches a haymaker that crunches right into that pretentious little shit’s nose and knocks his head back against the wall behind him. Trevor slides slowly down the wall in a wobbling daze, all the way to the floor, where he tries to get back up, but Gavin kicks him in the guts.

  “I can’t believe this!” Summer says. “Karen is such a skank!”

  “She’s passed out, Summer!” Gavin shouts back at that airheaded mistake. “Look at her!”

  Summer inches closer to the bed with cautious curiosity, looking over Karen’s nude body. Karen groans faintly, but does not open her eyes. Lily Hoffman walks into the bedroom and seems to instantly put together everything Summer has been calculating since Gavin opened the door. Lily hurries over to the bed.

  “Seriously?” Lily says. “What an asshole.” She taps Karen on the chin and pulls her eyelids open to stare at her pupils. “Hey. Wake up.” Karen only moans again. “What did she take?” Lily says.

  “I don’t know. Probably just liquor,” Gavin says. “I can’t believe Karen got this drunk.”

  “She’s really messed up, you guys. I think she might have alcohol poisoning.”

  “Are you like a nurse or something?”

  “I’m a stripper.”

  “Gross,” Summer says.

  “Shut up, Summer,” Lily snarls back. “You blew the whole baseball team.”

  “Not for money.”

  “We need to get her to a hospital,” Lily says, picking up a sheepskin throw blanket and wrapping it around Karen. “You guys have a car, right?”

  “Yeah. We brought my Escalade,” Gavin says. “Adler! Get in here! I need your help!”

  Adler and Carter were already on their way through the door. Carter shakes his head contentiously at Trevor as he enters. “Not cool, man.”

  “Carter,” Gavin says. “Watch that asshole and if he tries to get up just kick him in the head. Adler, help me carry Karen out to the Escalade.”

  “Can we all fit?” Lily says. “It’s not safe to stay here. The Ghoul is out there somewhere.”

  “The what?” Gavin says.

  “The Ghoul. He’s an eight-foot-tall bulletproof cannibal with super strength and a bunch of weapons. He looks kind of like a roided up Freddy Krueger with the Cloverfield monster’s face.”

  “Did you smoke my mail-order bud too?” Gavin says.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but you have to believe me. None of us are safe here.”

  Gavin decides it best to let this slide. Lily seems nice enough, but she’s obviously delusional, or in some kind of trouble she doesn’t want to talk about. He’ll let the police deal with that later. Right now, she’s right about one thing, they need to get Karen to a hospital. Adler helps him pick Karen up from the bed. She is surprisingly difficult to carry because she is so pliable, but the two of them are able to haul her out of the bedroom with little difficulty.

  “Summer,” Gavin says. “How do we get to the closest hospital?”

  Summer shrugs.

  “I know where it is,” Lily says. “Come on.”

  EXT. BRUNSWICK RANCH - DEN - NIGHT

  Lily walks out of the bedroom ahead of the boys carrying Karen and finds an unwelcome surprise waiting near the front door.

  “Jenny Brunswick?” Lily says. “What are you doing here?”

  The look on Jenny Brunswick’s face is equal parts manic rage and nausea. “This is my house, bitch! What the fuck are you doing here?!”

  “You know each other?” Adler says.

  “This nasty slut broke my face!” Jenny shrieks.

  “Because you left a cow head on my porch, you stupid cunt!” Lily harps back.

  “Because you fucked my boyfriend, whore!”

  “You didn’t find out about that until later! And I did you a favor there. Chad was terrible. He lasted like five seconds.”

  “Get out! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!”

  “Gladly!” Lily says, marching out the front door ahead of the boys. She holds up a big middle finger for Jenny once she gets outside.

  “What happened to Karen?” Jenny asks Adler and Gavin on their way through the door.

  “Ask your boyfriend,” Gavin says. “We’re taking her to the hospital.”

  Summer, lagging behind the others, stops to give Jenny the news. “I think Trevor took advantage of Karen.”

  Lily watches all of Jenny Brunswick’s faculties grind to a halt as she absorbs what Summer just told her, and she almost feels bad for Jenny in those few seconds before she sets her reaction in stone, before it is official, before she opens her mind to all of them with words, and destroys any chance for sympathy. Jenny says “Trevor did it with another girl?”

  Gavin grunts out something that can only be described as audible disgust. He sneers back at Jenny. “Yeah, Jenny. That’s the worst part about what he did.”

  “Wow, Jenny,” Lily says. “Just wow. I can’t even, right now.”

  “Whatever, whore!” Jenny shouts back. “Just fucking leave!” Then she slams the front door on all of them with a thunderous boom that rattles the windows along the front of the house. Lily hears the deadbolt slide into place just after. Then she follows the others around the corner of the house to the Escalade.

  Only there isn’t much of an Escalade left.

  Adler is the first to notice the car and he alerts them all with a “Bro! Your car, bro!” The Escalade is a heap of steaming steel and shredded rubber. Thousands of beads of bro
ken glass surround the entire vehicle in a wide circle, appearing to be the sole remains of the windows. The tires are beyond flat. They look like they exploded. The hood is caved in to such a degree that anyone investigating the damage would first look to the skies for an explanation, as if some freight cargo fell on it from a passing airplane, or it was hit by a meteorite.

  “What the hell happened to my car?!” Gavin shouts. He shifts the whole of Karen’s weight over to Adler as he walks the perimeter of the SUV. “What the fuck? What?!”

  Lily already knows what did this. She looks around, to the outskirts of the ranch, the surrounding tree line, but she sees only unmoving shadows.

  “He’s here,” Lily says. “We need to get back in the house. We have to call nine-one-one and barricade all the doors.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gavin says.

  “The guy I was running from.”

  “Bro,” Adler says. “She’s really making me wig out.”

  “Me too,” Summer squeaks.

  “A person didn’t do that!” Gavin points at the destroyed SUV. “That looks like a tank ran it over!”

  “Maybe it was animals,” Summer says.

  “You think a raccoon did that?” Lily says.

  “No,” Gavin reasons. “But it could have been a bear. Jenny said there are bears out here, right?”

  “It wasn’t a bear!” Lily shouts. “Just bring Karen. We’re going back inside.” Lily walks back around the corner of the house to the front door and tries the knob, knowing Jenny locked them out, but just hoping anyway. It doesn’t move. She knocks on the door. “Jenny, let us back in!” She bangs on the door again with no response.

  Gavin and Adler haul Karen up behind her and Gavin knocks on the door as well. He also presses the doorbell just to the right of the knob. “Come on, Jenny!” Gavin shouts. “My car is trashed. There’s somebody out here!”

  “Seriously Jenny!” Adler shouts. “This is real scary out here!”

  “I don’t think she’s gonna open up,” Lily says. “Is there another way in?”

  “The back door was open,” Gavin says. “We didn’t try the garage door.”

  “Ooooh,” Summer chimes in. “I know the garage door code.”

  “Great. Let’s go.” Lily walks back around the corner to the demolished Cadillac in front of the huge double garage doors. Summer walks beside her and the boys again drag Karen along behind them. Summer flips up a plastic cover next to the door, a head above Lily’s eye level, and slowly keys the little rubber dome switch buttons underneath. It takes her two tries, but on the second go, the garage door cracks open with a loud mechanical grinding and begins to ascend toward the ceiling.

  “Yay! I helped!” Summer says.

  “Yeah. Good job,” Lily says. And then an enormous armored gauntlet lashes out from beneath the opening garage door and closes around Summer’s skinny little waist. Lily screams.

  “Meat! MEAT!” The Ghoul bellows as he steps from inside the garage, lifting Summer in his fist like she is nothing more than a Slim Jim snack stick. He roars loudly and strands of drool swing from his open maw.

  “Summer!” Gavin shouts. He dashes at the Ghoul, striking the monster in its fang-filled mouth, but the Ghoul cares little about this and simply backhands Gavin right off his feet, knocking him flying into Lily. The big frat boy smashes into her and she topples to the driveway underneath him.

  Summer screams as the monster snarls into her face. “Meat! Meat!” The Ghoul claws her loose-fitting plaid top away and digs his massive gauntleted talons into one of her bulbous flopping breasts, which he wrings like a wet towel. Summer screams in a frequency so high and strained that it seems her head might pop as her breast comes away from her body like a stringy brisket with a spray of red gore that explodes into the Ghoul’s face just before he shoves the severed mammary into his gaping maw. He turns and stares right at Lily as he chews on the fatty tissue, his lips smacking and slurping. “Fresh meat,” he mumbles through his full mouth.

  Lily is back on her feet before anyone else can react. She shoves Adler forward from a drug-assisted fear trance, and dashes for the front door. Gavin scrapes himself off the pavement and follows her back around the house. They quickly pass Adler as he drags Karen’s unconscious form alone and both of them bang frantically on the door.

  “Let us in, Jenny!” Lily screams. “Let us in!”

  “Why?” Jenny shouts from inside. “Did you run out of other people’s boyfriends to blow out there?”

  “Jenny!” Gavin shouts. “Open up the fucking door now or everybody out here is gonna die!” He pounds the door again, without any response. “What the fuck, Jenny!”

  The dead bolt slides open and the knob turns. The door pops open to reveal Carter on the other side. Gavin shoves the door wide and Lily helps Adler pull Karen inside. Then Gavin slams the door closed behind them.

  “What the fuck, bro?” Carter says. “What happened?”

  “I told you I don’t want that slut in my house!” Jenny yells, pointing angrily at Lily.

  “Gavin, help me push that couch in front of the door,” Lily says.

  “What about Summer?” Gavin says. “She’s still out there! We have to do something!”

  “She’s dead, Gavin!” Lily shouts back, just before she shoves at the end of the big leather sofa in the den in front of the TV. Lily is strong for a small woman, but she is still a small woman, and the sofa doesn’t budge at all. Gavin looks reluctantly once at the door, then comes over to Lily’s side to help her push.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Jenny shouts. “I’m calling the cops!”

  “Yes!” Gavin says. “Do that!”

  They manage to slide the couch across the hardwood while Carter looks on. Adler sets Karen down on the playing surface of the pool table and then helps them move the sofa the rest of the way up against the door.

  “You think that will hold?” Gavin says to her.

  Lily is doubtful. “I don’t know. I’m more worried about the windows.”

  “They have bars.”

  “All of them?” Lily goes to a front window near the door and pulls back the curtain to look at the wrought iron bars just on the other side of the glass. She sees something moving out in the yard, but her reflection in the glass obscures whatever is out there. She knows exactly what Sid would do about that. “Turn off the lights,” she says, looking for switches to flip. “Where’s the switch?”

  “This is so stupid,” Jenny says, staring uselessly at her cell phone. “You’re lucky I don’t get a signal.”

  Gavin gets to the light switches first and fumbles around flipping a few of them, turning most of the lights off, and some others on, then all of them off. Lily looks back through the window and gasps.

  The Ghoul stands only twenty paces out into the yard. In his hands is something utterly outlandish to all but the most heinous minds—a rusty bear trap dangling from a length of rope. Lily watches as the Ghoul lifts Summer’s motionless body from the ground at his feet and snaps the bear trap closed on her head.

  “What’s happening?” Gavin says as he joins Lily at the window just in time to see the giant monster suspend Summer off the ground at the end of the rope. “Oh no.” The monster makes a slow revolution, swinging Summer’s body in an accelerating carousel around him, in wider and wider arcs until he can keep her going round with only his huge flicking wrist above his head. “Oh God.”

  “She can’t feel anything. She’s already dead,” Lily says. But that is a comforting lie because Lily can hear the persistent Nascar race rise and fall of Summer’s uninterrupted scream as she goes around the hellish centrifuge.

  “EEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

  If Gavin hears it too, he must at least understand there is nothing they can do to stop it. He turns away from the window. Lily is still watching when the monster steps toward the house and swings Summer into the window bars with a THUD that rattles the walls inside. Her mangled body rem
ains there, broken and partially compacted between the four-inch bars by the force of the Ghoul’s titanic might. She looks like a high speed car crash fatality.

  “Tenderize meat!” the Ghoul bellows.

  Jenny drops her cell phone and screams like she forgot how to do anything else, and will never remember again. Carter throws up on the sofa barricade. Adler never looks. He makes an exaggerated effort to keep his back to the window as he holds his iPhone to his ear.

  Carter, still hunched over the sofa, says something Lily cannot make out over Jenny’s ear-bleeding screaming. Gavin hugs Jenny tightly and manages to quiet her screams to whimpers. “What is that thing?” Carter repeats.

  “I don’t actually know that much about it,” Lily says. “I know it used to work for the New World Order. I think they made it in a lab or something.”

  “That thing works for the government?” Gavin says.

  “Not anymore. It was living in an abandoned building where I used to work. I think it was just hiding in there. I don’t know. It was supposed to be dead. We shot it, stabbed it, blew it up. It came back somehow.”

  “Oh my God,” Jenny cries. “Summer is dead. He killed Summer.”

  “I can’t get a signal,” Adler says, lowering his phone from his ear.

  “Fuck!” Carter grunts.

  “Did Summer ever get her phone from the bedroom?” Gavin says.

  “It’s in her pocket,” Lily says, wincing at the destroyed iPhone crushed against the iron bars just outside.

  “Fuck. Fuck!” Gavin shouts. “What about a landline? Jenny, where’s the landline?”

  “What’s a landline?” Jenny says. “You mean like the old people phone that my dad still uses?”

  “Yes! Where is it?”

  “It’s in the kitchen,” Jenny sobs. “Please close the curtain. I—I don’t want to see it anymore.” Lily draws back the curtain to conceal Summer’s mutilated remains.

  INT. BRUNSWICK RANCH - KITCHEN

  As Lily enters the kitchen, Gavin is already at the back door, pushing the little eye-height brass bolt closed to lock it. This is a gesture so futile that Lily groans out loud when she sees.