by Aric Davis
“Looks like Bucky might be getting packed up,” Free said in the moment before his head exploded.
Matt dove to the ground, grabbing Flo as he fell. A second shot cracked over them, hitting a tree and sending bark shavings into the air in a small cloud. Matt was sure when he heard the second shot that the bullets were coming from the cabin, or at least somewhere near it.
Matt rolled over, slowly, as he was unsure of his cover and didn’t want to draw more fire from the house.
Flo was lying on the earth, shaking. She was covered in blood, brain, and skull fragments from Free, enough of it that Matt considered it possible that she’d been hit as well.
“Are you okay?” Matt asked her, his voice coming out in a yell.
“I’m fine,” she said. “All things considered.” Her knuckles were white on the shotgun, and that gave Matt an idea.
“Stay here,” he said, then began crawling toward Free. He took the shotgun from Free’s body and moved slowly back to Flo. “How many rounds do these hold?”
“Mine holds five plus one. I think that one is six plus one.”
“All right,” Matt said, “here’s what we’re going to do.”
***
Matt and Flo stood six feet or so apart. The crawl to trees near enough to the tree line and close enough together had been horrible, every second feeling like hours of fear, but now they could try.
Matt figured that Bucky was shooting at them with a high-powered rifle with some sort of magnified optic on the receiver, either that or the shot on Free had been lucky. A gun like that was great at distance but nearly useless at close range, and Matt knew he was going to have to see if he’d guessed right. Now, holding what he couldn’t help but think of as Free’s shotgun and with his ax tucked into his belt, Matt was ready, no matter what might happen.
Matt nodded to Flow, who took a deep breath and then nodded back. Matt spun out from the tree, still standing, and then rolled back the other way, so that he was on the opposite side of it, and then began firing the shotgun. The rifle was sticking out of the shuttered window, and that was where Matt began putting rounds while Flo ran to the house. Matt walked, so as not to ruin his aim, and when the last shell casing flew from the gun, he dropped the gauge and ran toward the house.
The rifle had been pulled back into the window by the time Matt met Flo at the porch, and he yanked the ax free from his belt. Kicking the front door open, Matt was assaulted by the smell inside the cabin. If it had been bad outside, this was death distilled. Ignoring the filthy floor, stench, and ruined furniture, Matt was looking for only one thing, and he found it by the shutters turned to splinters: a pool of blood. The blood trailed into the next room, and Flo had already made the connection, turning toward the doorway when an explosion roared from the next room.
Matt hit the deck at the same time as Flo. The shot either had been aimed poorly or hadn’t been aimed at all. There was no reason for someone to miss at such a short distance. Matt hesitated for only a second before standing, the ax in his hand, and he sprinted toward the doorway.
The room was a kitchen turned laboratory, and Bunsen burners, beakers, and various other chemistry tools were in a madman’s disarray. The sink was full of the black maggots Free had given Matt, what everyone else saw as just a black crystal. Ignoring all the drug-making equipment, Matt followed the only thing that mattered, a blood trail that went out a rear door, the door still open and smeared with red.
Matt raced outside, oblivious to the fear of Bucky and his rifle. Flo was at his heels and almost fell as Matt stopped abruptly once he was outside. Bucky’s eyes were coal black, and his skin looked as if it were rotting off his body. There was a hole punched out of his side that was leaking blood so thick it looked like jelly, a mess of tiny abrasions in his face that must have been made when the shutters exploded around him, and a scoped bolt-action rifle in his left hand. The gun was pointed at a massive propane tank, a hardbound book lay at his feet, and Bucky was smiling.
“Why are you fucking with me?” Bucky asked in a growl. “I don’t care who you are or where you come from, but before I blow us all to shit, I want to know, why me?”
“You were just here,” said Matt. “That’s about the only way I can figure it. You were here, and you were making that bad crystal, and it’s been making people go crazy. If none of that had happened, I wouldn’t be.” Matt shrugged. “Just bad luck all around, I guess.”
“Was that Free with you?” Matt nodded in response, and Bucky barked with laughter. “I knew I’d kill him eventually, but I never guessed it would have been so soon.” Bucky pointed at Flo with his free hand. When he pulled it away from his side, the blood made it look as if he were wearing a glove. “And you. You and that idiot sheriff know better than to fuck with me. There’s too much money tied up in what I do for me to be worth your time. Like they say, ‘Don’t trust a cop that won’t take a bribe.’ Well, bitch, here’s your last chance. You get my friends in the state police out here, get me an ambulance, I’ll put you on the payroll. It doesn’t have to end like this.”
None of them were moving. It was all Matt could do to take his eyes from the quivering finger on the trigger of Bucky’s rifle. Matt figured he was at most twenty feet from the tank, with Flo not much farther behind him. If Bucky pulled that trigger, they were all going to look as if they’d gotten dropped into a wood chipper. There had to be something he could do. Matt just couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally, the decision of what to do was made for him.
“I ain’t got all day for you to figure out how you can convince me not to kill us and keep your white hat on. Fuck it,” said Bucky, and he pulled the trigger.
Time didn’t stand still in the moments after Bucky pulled the trigger, but Matt saw what was happening as though he were looking through a photo album. Bucky pulled the trigger. A gout of flame shooting from the tank, engulfing Bucky. Matt grabbing Flo, turning her from the explosion. The propane tank leaping off its moorings like a jet, exploding into the house. A hissing sound filling the air around them, as though a cluster of bees were storming above them. Matt felt his feet leave the ground as Flo and he were buffeted by a blast of wind hot and impossibly powerful, and then, nothing.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Matt woke up to pain. He was awake, alive, and lying under a tree. The ax—somehow—was still in his right hand, his fingers wrapped around it so tightly that he was initially unable to move them. Flexing his extremities one after the other, Matt was happy to see that as beaten up as he was—and bone tired, to boot—he hadn’t been crippled in the explosion. Using first the ax and then the tree as support, Matt slowly stood on sea legs that seemed as though they weren’t sure they wanted to work. A thought flashed in his mind like a laser: Flo.
Black smoke was everywhere, as was the smell of the house. It permeated everything, making the already-ruined forest somehow worse. Trees were splintered and bent, stripped of leaves and moved as though a massive child had been using the woods as a play area. Matt took a deep breath, his lungs burning from the hot wind, and still sore from being thrown. The house had been shredded, looking crushed, almost torn in half. The meth-making equipment, the meth itself, and the propane tank had combined to make a deadly mix of fire and accelerants. Of Bucky and his book there was no sign, but finally, lying in a group of pine trees was Flo. Matt ran to her.
Flo was breathing. Matt could see her chest rising and falling as she slumbered the rest of the concussed. He walked closer to her, then knelt in the pine needles and shook her gently. She began to stir, and he patted Flo lightly on both cheeks, stopping when her eyes fluttered open at him. The memory of where they were and what they were doing came back to her instantly, and he watched as the realization that they had survived came over her. Matt gave her space to get her head together, and she shuddered as she saw the destruction in the forest and of the house.
“It was pretty close,” said Matt, “closer than it should have been.”
“Where�
�s my shotgun?” Flo asked.
“No clue.” Matt gave another look around the woods. He offered her a hand, and she stood.
“Let’s walk back and see what’s left of the house, just to be sure,” Flo suggested, and Matt answered in a nod. The sun was breaking through the sky at the same time that they broke from the forest, and the sight of it made Matt smile.
There was no sign of Free. It was as if his body had been spirited away in the maelstrom, and the house itself was a total loss. Bits of it were everywhere, and the crater at its center was a charred mess. Matt figured if somebody did the right work with dental records, they might find Bucky and what remained of his ill-fated drug operation. He also figured the chances of that happening were zero to none. Matt and Flo walked around the perimeter of the house. Bucky’s being dead wouldn’t matter a bit if they’d left some of the black flake behind for some other redneck speed cook to start copying.
“Should we go back to the van?” Matt asked, and Flo smiled back at him, the kind of smile that someone who really wanted to wake up and have all of this turn out to be a nightmare would make. He smiled back at her. “You got the keys?”
“Shit.”
***
The sun was high in the sky by the time they got back to town. Matt had been quiet but hopeful that they might see a passing car and be able to catch a ride, but he hadn’t said as much to Flo. There was no point in adding to the stress of what they’d endured and were still enduring. When they walked into town, it was exactly as it had looked the night before, only worse. A battle had taken place, and the winners and losers were unidentifiable. Bodies were strewn in the street, and the broken traffic light was still lying sad and ruined in the middle of the intersection. Ignoring the mess, Flo opened the door to the police station, and Matt followed her in.
They went to the cells immediately, Matt hoping that Frank would still be okay. When she opened the door and Frank was standing and smiling at them, still locked in the cell, a wave of relief crashed over Matt.
That relief fell away and died as Frank, still grinning, produced his pistol from his belt holster and held it to his head.
Flo screamed, and then her voice was abruptly cut off, as if someone had changed the channel.
Matt looked at her. She was frozen in time, Frank just as frozen across from her, grinning with the gun to his head, when from behind him, Mr. Dark appeared, wearing denim overalls and a straw hat and chewing on a bit of straw.
“Don’t you just love these country folk?” said Mr. Dark, affecting a Southern drawl. “They’re so down-to-earth, though most of them are going to be buried in it.”
“Thanks to you,” Matt said.
“Seems to me you did all the killing,” Mr. Dark said. “And liked it, too.”
Mr. Dark adjusted Frank’s grin with his fingers, as though his face were putty. He was making it more pronounced, more insane.
“What you started here is over,” Matt said, feeling a deep, dark dread as he looked at Frank’s hideous grin.
“It’s never over, Opie,” Mr. Dark said. “When are you going to learn that?”
And then Mr. Dark was gone, Flo was screaming again, and Frank pulled the trigger.
***
Matt paid Kenny the thousand dollars Flo had given him. She had taken the money out of a locked box from Frank’s office and handed it over as though it were the easiest thing in the world. They’d spent the day that it took Kenny to install the parts sitting and sleeping in the house behind the gas station. Neither had much to say. Things for Flo were different now, and Matt felt as if it were his fault. She stood beside him now, a rucksack over her own shoulder.
Kenny gave them both a crooked grin, assuming they were lovers or conspirators of some kind, when all they really shared was a nightmare. The mechanic was practically the only one left in town. Matt wondered if he or anybody else would bother to bury all the dead or if they would just leave them to be picked apart by the creatures, natural or otherwise, that now roamed in the blackened wilderness.
Matt climbed on the bike, kick-started the ignition, and revved the engine. He nodded at Flo, and she hopped on behind him, wrapping her arms around his body, but there was no warmth there. He was just a handle.
“Are you sure you want to leave?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, her voice hollow. “This town’s dead.”
But Matt knew, perhaps better than anybody, that the dead had a way of coming back to life.
There was hope for this place.
And someday she’d discover there was hope for her, too.
They sped off down the road to find it.
About the Author
Aric Davis is married with one daughter and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he has worked for the past fourteen years as a body piercer.