Camp Cannibal

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  Mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy.

  —Stonewall Jackson

  DAY EIGHT: 0800 HOURS

  he plan had been to break into George’s office.

  “That’s it?” Yardstick had asked before he and Charles bid me happy infiltrating. “That’s your master plan?”

  “There’s a little more to it—but in a nutshell, yeah.”

  The two of them wished me luck at the mouth of the cave, though the tone of their voices, made it sound like they were figuring out what to wear to my funeral.

  “If I’m not back in a couple hours,” I said, “maybe it’d be wise for you guys to hitchhike up to Canada….”

  “If Peashooter doesn’t find us first,” Yardstick said.

  “Stop worrying so much, will you? It’s time to throw a little civil disobedience into the mix.”

  •••

  In less than an hour, a cavalcade of station wagons, sedans, and minivans would pull into the parking lot. Dozens of unsuspecting parents would spill from their cars into camp, where the Tribe would be waiting for them with open arms.

  And hedge clippers.

  The towering pines offered enough cover for me to sneak in to New Leaf without drawing any attention my way.

  I stopped at the tree line along the edge of the campground. I waited until I was positive the coast was clear. I took a deep breath, ready to set foot back into camp—when I heard a branch snap. Someone was behind me.

  Spinning around, I found Charles plopped in a wheelbarrow. Yardstick had pushed him all the way through the woods behind my back, and I hadn’t even noticed.

  The breath in my lungs sputtered out. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  “Sorry,” Charles said.

  “Thought you guys were sitting this one out.”

  “We couldn’t let you have all the glory, could we?” Yardstick asked.

  “Why the change of heart?”

  “Jaws was getting on my nerves.”

  “Caves make me claustrophobic,” Charles said. “Let me be a lookout.”

  “Fine by me,” I started. “But listen. This is important. If I die today…”

  Yardstick held up both hands. “Come on, man.”

  “Let me finish,” I said. “If I die today, would you…Would you tell my parents I tried. Tell them I know I’ve been a real pain in the ass, and I know I only made matters worse, and there’s no way they could trust me, but that I love them. And that’s all that matters.”

  Yardstick and Charles just stared.

  “I’d do the same for you! One of us is bound to get an arrow through the chest today. Or a spear in the neck.”

  Yardstick let out a laugh. “Or a weed whacker to the crotch.”

  “Or a rake to the face.”

  “Or a machete to the mouth,” Charles added.

  “Or a shovel to the shin,” I said.

  “Or a pair of hedge clippers to the…” Yardstick cut himself off and ducked. He gripped my collar and pulled me behind the tree just as three cannibals passed.

  “Looks like everybody’s heading to the amphitheater,” Charles whispered.

  The Piranhas had scampered into the parking lot carrying a bedsheet scrawled with words. They suspended their brand-new banner from the trees:

  WELCOME TO CAMP CANNIBAL, PARENTS!

  The ol’ stars and stripes was taken down. In its place, they raised a flag made out of a sleeping bag with the silhouette of the Tribe’s stick figure stitched against the circle of a full moon, cut from a cotton sheet.

  Scanning the grounds, I spotted a squad of cannibals standing guard on top of cabin two’s roof.

  “Guess that means breaking George and the rest out is a no-go,” I whispered. “Think we can sneak into his office without anybody noticing?”

  “And do what, exactly?” Yardstick whispered back. “Check your e-mail?”

  “I work better when I improvise. Besides, we’ve got the element of surprise on our side.”

  “The element of surprise only works when the people doing the surprising have an actual plan. I don’t want to be just as surprised as the people we’re supposed to be surprising….”

  “I think better on my feet. Just help me get to the admin cabin, okay?”

  “Fine.” Yardstick shook his head. “You first.”

  “Thanks.” I stepped out from the tree line. “Here goes nothing.”

  Run, run, run—the broken record kept repeating in my head.

  I reached the side of the main cabin just as Compass stepped out the front door.

  Hide, hide, hide—the broken record skipped a beat in my brain.

  I pressed my back against the cabin. Compass turned onto the path and headed for the amphitheater, while I did my best to blend in with the log cabin.

  Don’t breathe, don’t breathe, don’t breathe…

  Compass never looked back. I slid along the cabin wall, turned the corner, and rushed for the front door.

  Unlocked.

  George’s office had been left unattended. I tiptoed over to his desk and sat before the camp’s computer. As soon as I touched the mouse, the monitor lit up like a lightning bug.

  Keyword search: Jack Cumberland.

  Benjamin Greenwood.

  Jimmy Winters.

  Sully Tulliver.

  And the cherry on top…

  Jason Bowden.

  I found an online database for missing children. A quick cross-reference with a local telephone directory gave me the names of parents.

  Their e-mail addresses.

  I pounded the keys as quickly as I could. No time for spell-checking.

  A whistle cut through the silence. It sounded like it came from the amphitheater.

  I bit my lip as I pressed SEND.

  •••

  Yardstick peered out from behind the cabin’s side as soon as I slipped out the front door. “Did you pull off your master plan?”

  “Only time will tell.”

  “Sure hope it works,” he said. “You’re gonna want to see this.”

  We kept to the outskirts of camp, weaving through the surrounding trees. The perimeter of pines gave us enough cover to pass the cabins undetected and make our way to the rear of the amphitheater.

  I peered out from behind a pine, taking in the sight of an army assembling around the fire pit below.

  Peashooter stood atop the lifeguard’s chair. In his hand, he held a sawed-off broomstick with the bleached skull of a buck mounted on top. Its antlers branched out from the bone like a pair of wings. He had pilfered a quiver full of arrows from the archery range, which rattled at his back.

  Thin wisps of smoke escaped from the embers of the bonfire. That fire had chewed through our clothes, our electronics, our personal possessions.

  All were nothing but ash now.

  “Come and dip your hand into the ashes,” Peashooter called out. “It’s time we show our true faces.”

  Cannibals lined up before the bonfire. Klepto was first, his face bruised purple from his little run-in with the Tribe’s rock trap yesterday. He reached into the ashes and brought back a blackened hand. He ringed his eyes in soot. He drew a strip of ash down the length of his nose. His darkened eyes looked like two black holes that had swallowed up the boy who’d once gone by the name of Thomas.

  “This is a declaration of war,” Peashooter shouted as one cannibal after another painted his face. “Let it be known that on this day, brothers, we took a stand against the people who manacled our minds. Against those who abandoned us with love as their excuse.”

  More and more cannibals completed their ashen transformation. Their faces now looked like skulls.

  “Who is our enemy? Those who believe they know better—but know nothing about us at all.”

 
; Sporkboy distributed his artillery of weaponized gardening equipment amongst the cannibals. Hoes bound together and sharpened into double-headed battle axes. Hedge clippers that had been separated in half for dual-purpose machete action. Handmade flails made from handheld rototillers.

  The campers looked like gardeners of the apocalypse.

  “What is matriphagy?” Peashooter asked the assembly.

  Compass knew the answer, and he shouted it out. “The condition where organisms feed on their own mother.”

  “Exactly.” Peashooter beamed. “Spiders do it the second they hatch, and now you will too. Because you are reborn! You are now all cannibals! And it is time to sever the ties that bind. Break them with your own teeth!”

  I glanced back at Yardstick. He only shook his head in disbelief.

  Peashooter was out for blood.

  “Look around you,” Peashooter continued. “Your true colors are shining now, bright and blinding. I see them—and they are glorious! Your families should be afraid!”

  Sporkboy had taken a pair of hand cultivators, those three-tined hand forks used for breaking up soil, and strapped them to his wrists with duct tape.

  Instant claws. He raised his forked-fists into the air, shouting—­“To the Law of Claw and Fang!”

  “This is our home,” Peashooter cried as he raised his arms. “And today, the war comes to our front door!”

  Compass pierced the air above his head with his compass-pinkie—“Claw and Fang!”

  The campers joined in—“Claw and Fang!”

  “Claw and Fang!”

  “Claw and Fang!”

  “This is not Parents’ Day,” he roared. “This is your day! And by the time the sun sets, you will be emancipated from your families once and for all!”

  “Claw and Fang!”

  “Claw and Fang!”

  “Claw and Fang!”

  Peashooter scanned his chanting army like a proud father. There was an unbridled wildness in their eyes. Nothing could stop them now.

  The Piranhas rushed into the amphitheater, leaping up and down and shouting at the top of their lungs—

  “Theyarehereourparentsarecomingourparentsarecomingtheyarehere!”

  Right on schedule.

  Time for war.

  Our families didn’t stand a chance.

  DAY EIGHT: 1000 HOURS

  motioned toward the amphitheater for us to move in, but Yardstick vigorously shook his head. He mouthed out a silent no just in case I couldn’t comprehend his apprehension.

  I widened my eyes to express my own emphatic attitude, but Yardstick hooked his arm around my chest and started dragging me deeper into the woods, away from the action in the amphitheater.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “Too many of them.”

  “We can at least try and cut the cars off.” I couldn’t squirm free from Yardstick’s grip. “We can tell them to turn around and get help!”

  Yardstick froze. His arm slackened around me as he stared off into the distance. “Too late.”

  I followed his gaze to a minivan turning into the parking lot. A station wagon was close on its tail, followed by another car. Then another.

  I bolted for the parking lot.

  “Don’t,” Yardstick whisper-hissed, chasing after.

  Moms and dads climbed out from their cars, greeted by the serene sight of a calm campground. Everything was eerily quiet. Just the billowing of the Tribe’s flag in the breeze. The sun shone from overhead, its warm rays reaching through the trees, while a pair of birds lovingly chirped from somewhere off in the distance.

  What could possibly be wrong with this picture?

  One father called out, “Hello…?”

  No answer. No welcoming committee.

  “Anyone?” He tried again.

  I scanned the crowd of parents, looking for a familiar face.

  Nothing.

  Maybe my parents are stuck in traffic.

  Whatever it was, I was thankful they were running late.

  A bloodred arrow pointed the adults toward the amphitheater, funneling them onto the path that bottlenecked between the cabins. They chatted amicably as they walked in pairs. None of these parents knew each other, but they all knew what it’s like to raise a kid who constantly burned things and stole stuff and lied about everything.

  I stepped forward, my mouth opening. “Stay ba—”

  I felt a foot plant itself directly in the small of my back, drop-kicked from behind. My whole body was flung forward, until I face-planted into a patch of leaves.

  Before I could pick myself up, Yardstick was pinning me to the ground.

  I spat out a mouthful of dirt. “I have to stop them before—”

  “Look.” Yardstick pointed up ahead. “Cabin one.”

  Firefly and Klepto were on the roof. Klepto was armed with his bow and arrow while Firefly brandished a bag of…

  “Wait.” I squinted. “What is that?”

  Firefly reached into the bag and crammed something into his mouth. Before long, he looked like a chipmunk, his cheeks ballooning out. He spat out a slimy white cannonball into his palm and pierced the gooey ball onto the tip of Klepto’s arrow.

  “I could be wrong,” Yardstick said, “but that sure looks like marshmallow ammunition to me.”

  “That’s just disgusting.”

  Klepto slid the bulbous-tipped arrow into his bow—locked and loaded.

  “Ready,” I could see Klepto’s lips mouth out the command.

  Firefly pulled out a canister of—I do believe that’s lighter fluid—from his pocket and doused the marshmallow mush.

  “Aim…”

  Klepto pulled the bow’s string back and pinpointed his target. Firefly struck a match and the wad burst into brilliant flames.

  “Fire!”

  Klepto sent the arrow streaking through the air. It arced over the heads of every unsuspecting parent below and stuck itself to the front tire of the closest minivan.

  Bull’s-eye. Marshmallow napalm. Impressive.

  Firefly spat out another marshmallow projectile.

  Klepto reloaded his bow.

  Firefly lit the marshmallow tip, and off the arrow went—this time striking the tire of a station wagon. Their tires were now on fire, a toxic cloud of black smoke billowing upward. The noxious odor of burning rubber mixed with sugar permeated the atmosphere. Parents started to cough, choking on the sweet smoke.

  “Too late to help them now.” Yardstick rolled off and lay beside me. “Here comes phase two….”

  Parents had been too distracted by the blockade of burning automobiles to notice the swarm of campers rising up along the rooftops of each cabin. One father took a step toward the parking lot, only for a burning bottle to smash at his feet.

  CRASH!

  The glass shattered. A thin blanket of fire sprawled across the path. The father leapt back, kicking a bud of flames off from the tip of his left shoe.

  Another bottle burst over the footpath.

  CRASH!

  Looking up, parents discovered a line of half-naked campers, chests streaked in soot. Each pitched their own glass soda-bottle Molotov cocktail onto the ground.

  CRASH!

  CRASH!

  CRASH!

  One mother screamed. Like a herd of cattle, the throng of adults stampeded toward the amphitheater.

  “What time is it?” I asked Yardstick.

  “Does it look like I’m wearing a watch?” he shot back. “Who cares what time it is anyway?”

  “Where are they?”

  “Where’s who?”

  “The cavalry,” I said. “We’ve got to move.”

  This time, he didn’t stop me.

  The Tribe was so focused on corralling our families, n
one even thought to look over their own shoulders. That gave me the perfect opportunity to reach the perimeter of the amphitheater without drawing attention my way.

  I glanced back and realized Yardstick hadn’t followed me. I couldn’t find him anywhere.

  I was on my own.

  Nobody noticed my best guerrilla-gorilla routine as I scrambled up a nearby pine and shimmied onto an overhanging branch directly above the fire pit.

  Hope nobody looks up.

  Parents flooded into the amphitheater and skidded to a halt. There was nowhere for the frantic herd of husbands and wives to go.

  Perched upon the inner circle of logs were our counselors, wearing the tattered rags of their New Leaf T-shirts. Each wore a baseball cap with the rim low, hiding their eyes. They sat stock-still, some slumped over each other, focusing their attention on the ashen remains of the bonfire.

  “Thank God you’re here,” one particularly jittery mother blurted as she reached her hand out to grab the nearest counselor. “We thought you—”

  The moment she clutched the counselor’s shoulder, his head rolled off.

  That decapitated head landed on the ground and burst apart. Bits of straw scattered over this mother’s high-heeled feet as she screamed and screamed.

  Scarecrows.

  Another mother froze. “Look!”

  Cannibals now surrounded the entire border of the amphitheater, their wild faces smeared with ash. They pounded their bare soot-streaked chests and howled.

  “Thomas, is that…?” one father started.

  “Jonathan—what’s going on?” another asked.

  “Edward, please—”

  At the sound of their old names, each cannibal raised their weapon over his head and shrieked. These names were murder to their ears. A mother clasped her hands over her head as the Tribe’s battle cry echoed into the woods.

  Then—silence.

  Chests heaved as the circle of cannibals opened to allow Peashooter to pass. The crown of deer antlers perched upon his head made him look like the devil.

  “Welcome. We’ve been expecting you.”

  “Just what on God’s green earth is going on here?” a dad demanded with a bullheaded obliviousness. “What’s come over you kids? Where are the counselors?”