by Bruce Jones
Praise for the novels of Bruce Jones
“WILL SET PLENTY OF READERS HEARTS RACING. BRILLIANTLY ESTABLISHES A TERRIFYING HITCHCOCKIAN SCENARIO. GRIPPING…
VIOLENT.” --Booklist
“A SURE BET FOR SUSPENSE. JONES WRITES WITH A CLEAR EYE FOR CHARACTER…AND HAS A GIFT FOR PACING THE ACTION SO TIME SEEMS REAL AND PRESSES THE READER TO WHIP URGENTLY THROUGH THE PAGES.” --Library Journal
“BREAKNECK PACING. A COMPLEX AND ABSORBING PLOT. ANOTHER POWERFUL WINNER FROM A STRONG, TALENTED WRITER.” --Harold Sunday (Portsmouth, NH)
“RIVETING. A FINE TALE TAUT WITH SUSPENSE. A POWERFUL AND GRIPPING CLIMAX.” –Sunday Life
“A WILD THRILLER.” --Chicago Tribune
THE DEADENDERS
Bruce Jones
Copyright Bruce Jones 2010
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the writer’s imagination or are fused fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art Copyright Bruce Jones
A Web Press Book
for April
every step of the way
and for Chuck Austen
for being a pal
BEFORE THE BEGINNING
August 9, 1962
“This is the fruggin pits!” Scroogie announced.
The four boys—all twelve but Scroogie, who was turning twelve that day--came through suburban backyards, sandlot baseball fields, pastel meadows and the step-carefully cow yard of Bill Janson’s north pasture to the thicket at the edge of the woods. No one answered Scroogie’s lament. No one even gave Scroogie a thought. Even though each boy’s thoughts were identical.
They were being followed. Almost certainly.
No, not followed.
Hunted.
* * *
It was summer in Kansas.
A nice day, as late summer days in the not-yet turbulent sixties often were, getting on toward mid-afternoon.
Getting along a little too quickly for Scroogie. Red-headed and always freckled, heavier set than the others and quicker to tire, he wanted to be out of this meadow and back in his parents’ suburban tract home for ice cream and cake before the falling sun began lengthening the shadows of tall trees and staining the western sky red, finally winking out all at once in that approaching autumn way to make way for stars and maybe a slice of moon but certainly the dark.
Home was for Scroogie. Home and in bed with a warm pile of Uncle Scrooge (his hero and namesake) comics at his elbow and maybe a cold Dr. Pepper to go with, and definitely the TV Guide open before him there on his parent’s shag carpet before the big Sylvania console TV with halo light, his index searching the guide’s eleven o’clock bracket for what Gregory Graves—his other hero--was hosting on Shock Theater tonight. Hopefully something with Lugosi or Karloff. Or maybe even both horror kings together, in something like The Raven, one of the few Universal 30’s classics Scroogie hadn’t yet lucked onto in local station WIBW’s Shock’s library of scratchy and occasionally splice-jumping films. Lugosi and Karloff, a bowl of Pop Rite popcorn, a square cardboard quart of Sealtest ice cream and your second or third Dr. Pepper--that was heaven; that was appropriate after-sundown activity. Not walking around out here in the chickweed and dew gnats with your idiot buddies and that stupid pasteboard Pyx.
With someone or something following you. Close behind you.
Scroogie wasn’t sure how long he’d known it; that someone or something was dogging them. Cautiously. Barely discernable really, but oh so deliberately. Matching the crunch of his and the other boys’ footfalls with its own.
What Scroogie did know, for dead certain now, was that being hunted was far different than being followed; far different and not especially nice anywhere, probably, even in a crowded city, but sure as hell not out here in the middle of east bunny-fuck Kansas. And though no one else in their little group had said anything for the last five minutes or so, not a single word actually, Scroogie was pretty sure from the silence alone that the other guys felt it too. That all four of them knew something was back there pacing them or tracking them, somewhere just beyond their vision, not something you could see or even yet hear, which is why none of them, Scroogie included, had bothered to turn around and look behind him, because all you’d see was grass and dirt and pasture shrub and more trees. Yet it was there; something was there for sure, even if no one—not even Shivers, who always talked a blue streak--had said anything about it out loud.
Scroogie knew it, though. Knew it like you know it when you’ve failed last week’s math test. Like when a coming summer storm changes the molecules around you under a still-blue sky or when you’re waiting for the smiling lady in the white dress and hat to poke through the door and announce the dentist is ready for you now.
They were being stalked.
And though Scroogie surely knew it first, it was Shivers, finally, who broke the spell.
He stopped, just yards before they all entered the deep woods—The Pyx clutched tightly in slightly trembling hands—stopped dead still and unmoving before the dense blackness of woods and, in what to Rich Denning seemed an almost theatrical gesture—finally turned completely around (hugging The Pyx protectively to his chest now) and looked behind them with a silent, level expression. Now the other three boys all turned in tandem with him, as if answering a long awaited signal.
No one spoke for a moment.
“What?” Bobby Maser finally asked, maybe Scroogie or maybe all of them or maybe just the dead still air.
Maze was always the first Ender to ask questions, any question, seeking any answer, reducing any and all particulates of any problem to their most infinitely basic denominator until only the tiniest kernel of truth remained. Had done this, at any given instance, since the third grade.
He’d been walking ahead of the group, determined still to do the thing right, taking a potshot at birds or even a squirrel with the rifle one of his many ‘stepdads’ had left behind five years ago when he took off in the middle of the night; but The Maze was a very poor shot and all he succeeded in doing was stirring up whirlwinds of dust motes.
Shivers, still clutching the cardboard lightness of The Pyx tightly, said nothing. And that was not like Pete Shivers. Of the four of them, Shivers was normally given to anything but silence. Skinny and sallow but hardly laconic, he would break any silence anyway he could, with idle chatter, another in a series of bad jokes, an ongoing banal anecdote or just endless rambling. Shivers liked to talk, to vocalize. “You should have been the writer of the group,” Rich Denning would tell him, and Shivers would grin his solemn crooked grin and answer, “I am, A-Hole, I just do it with my mouth. How do you think writing began, even existed before Gutenberg invented the press? It was passed along orally, generation to generation like a—“ and he was off again on another oration.
Not now though. Not here in Bill Janson’s north pasture just a few heartbeats from the dark camouflage of woods that would hide all four boys from all prying eyes, but most of all hide The Pyx and the dark secrets locked within its pasteboard, Muriel Cigars (“why don’t you pick one up and smoke it some time”?) sides. Now he just stood there and stared silently at the air.
Because, of course, that was all that was behind them; that and a lot of soft summer dirt and a little Johnson grass and a few scattered cow pies (black with flies if fresh, grayish and hard if not) and a whole lot of broadleaf weed and
about a billion chiggers warring for space with an equal number of ticks. Bobby Maser had one climbing up his jeans leg now, just past his knee; with luck it would succumb to the afore sprayed repellent before it got to and dug under his belt line to burrow and suck and bloat there on his pre-adolescent flesh in parasitic bliss. They had found one gorged to the size of a fifty cent piece once on the ragged, floppy ear of Old Dick, the yellow dog that was a constant companion to Shivers’ six-year-old brother Andy. Greeting them on the sidewalk back from school one day, Old Dick had loped up, tongue lolling from rubbery pink smiling lips, unwittingly sporting a fat, deep-dug passenger. The boys had let the big tick hang there for a week—with daily, closely scrutinized check-ups from future physician Maze every time they encountered the floppy red and ochre mongrel in town or around the suburbs—let it hang there and feast just to see how big it would swell. These were in the days before deer-bearing Lyme’s Disease. You got a tick, you put a burning match head to its greedy brown butt until it backed out. “Backed out farting,” Scroogie used to laugh, snorting.
Not laughing now, though, not snorting now. Not at all.
Staring quietly, freckles in bas relief against his sunburn. Staring at the empty north forty behind them. Finally he said, “’Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by—“
Maser interrupted him. “That Frost again?” Scroogie was always quoting Robert Frost, which seemed absurd since he barely got through his English homework by himself, but Robert Frost was one of Scroogie’s obsessions, and the Enders were sick of hearing about him.
“He’s the voice of reason—“
“Yer full of shit,” offered Shivers. “Shut up with that stuff, Scroog, for once.”
“You shut up!” Scroogie said weakly.
There was another rustling of leaves behind them. They froze. No one said anything for several minutes.
“The fuck gives?” Rich Denning finally demanded with some irritation. Unusual for Richard, the tallest, best looking of the group, always tanned, big brown eyes and chocolate hair, who rarely became irritated at anything; Rich was probably, of the four of them, the one with the longest fuse, and rarely used the ‘f’ word, at least not that ‘f’ word. Not even in the heat of an argument as important as who was the better player, Stan Musiel or Pee Wee Reese. Richard rarely became irritated and almost always slipped the word ‘frug’ in there instead. All of the Enders did. Better than suffering a trip down to the principal’s office or marching up to bed without dinner.
Denning gave the naggingly silent Shivers a punch on the arm for emphasis. “The fuck’s eating you, Chevalier?” Another rarity; no one called Pete Chevalier anything but ‘Shivers’ unless they were pissed or goofing on him.
Pete Shivers stood his ground. Blinked. Then, after a seeming eternity, gave a slow, soulless shake of his head and an actual auditory mumble. “Nothing. Thought I….” shaking his head again… “nothing.” After which he graced the group with a long, basso but building-in-volume musical fart.
That eased the tension like a knife through warm butter. The whole group broke up, Rich Denning the loudest. Damn Shivers, damn crazy ole Shivers, he was screwing with them, goofing on his buddies as usual, that was all, that was all there was to it. Pretty good one there, Shiv, had us all going for a while! Pretty fruggin’ brilliant, kiddo!
And they all enjoyed the tension-releasing respite of chuckling and back slapping and arm punching and Scroogie even added a squeaky little stuttering fart of his own—one of his “petite boo-twahs”--just to keep the others laughing on a bit longer, even after it wasn’t truly funny anymore. They needed to laugh, and they all did.
All but Shivers. He still wasn’t laughing or even smiling as he turned around again, lowered The Pyx to a more respectful belt level height, muttered “Screw it,” and continued on, leading the march forward from the bright safety of old man Janson’s pasture into the dark canopy of woods, shaking his head absently under the expectant eyes of the others, but still not smiling. “Frug it, guys,” he shrugged. “Frug it, it’s nothin’.”
Only it wasn’t nothin’ and everyone knew it.
And the deeper they went, the more densely the tall sycamores and maples seemed to close in behind them, and the more they were sure it wasn’t nothin’. And the more irritable Rich Denning became. And fearful.
It was darker now, the skein of overhead leaves masking the late afternoon sun. Louder too, with all the fallen leaves and twigs and other woodland debris crunching under their Keds. Noticeably louder. Inordinately louder, in a way none of them had noticed before despite countless trips here. Through these woods. To this place.
But then, the previous trips hadn’t included The Pyx.
And it grew. The crunch crunch crunch of their sneakers, so loud and unnatural and unnerving that Scroogie’s next attempted stutter-fart hardly raised a ripple of half hearted snickers from the group. Everyone hoping without saying so aloud that Shivers would start talking again. Maybe tell another of his stupid jokes. Any fruggin’ joke. Or one of his asinine anecdotes. Or just start in ceaselessly babbling, just something to break the mounting tension which was back in full force now, only worse. Anything was better than just trudging silently along that way, holding the stupid goddamn freakin’ Pyx out in front of him like a choir boy with a cross, or some priceless antiquity from the Nelson Gallery in KC instead of a cheap, empty cigar box heisted from Rich’s old man’s basement—well, not an empty cigar box exactly, not now, not empty now at all, as a mater of fact. Full. That’s really what it was, in its own way. Full of stuff that rattled and bounced with every one of Shivers’ crunchy, rubber soled steps. Personal stuff. Important stuff. Or so they’d told themselves and each other at the time. Not the junk it appeared to be, that’s for sure. Not just stuff you’d find lying around the house or stuff you could pick up casually and toss away just as casually at Marcie’s Market on the way home from Clark School. No way. This was highly personal and prized stuff that you—
Shivers was stopping again.
And everyone stopped with him.
He was craning to look behind them at the scrim of trees now blocking any view of Janson’s pasture…a pasture and field that now seemed a million miles away.
“Fuck me,” he said softly.
And that was not a good sign. Especially the way Shivers said it, all soft and breathy like that. Using the real F word. That was serious stuff.
What--? Rich Denning started to ask, but kept quiet instead.
Something about the surrounding woods, the feel of them, demanded quiet. Full attention. Maybe even respect. So much so, that soon enough the entire group was standing there in unmoving, unified silence. Listening. Quietly listening…every mouth open…every ear pricked…staring at the same place Shivers was staring. Which was just a bunch of trees, really, just a bunch of brush and brownish colored fallen leaves and some skeletal deadfall over there and that one knotty rotted log over there that looked like a decaying human arm, mossy tendrils trailing its under side like armpit hair, like the underneath of that log the big ape shook the sailors off of in King Kong.
They listened. Listened like never before, every tiny hair within every ear on every tousled preadolescent head straining at the woodland gloom, just as their keen, clear young eyes strained for something to see. Not one of them making a sound, not even the sound of shuddered breathing. Listening and staring. And waiting.
Until Rich Denning could stand it no more. Until normally slow-to-boil Rich Denning just had to break the vice of tension somehow.
“What is it?” he whispered sharply to Shivers.
Something about his own shuddery breath made him wish he’d just spoken softly aloud instead of hissing sibilantly-creepy like that, like a cheap horror flick, or a puff adder about to strike your unsuspecting leg.
Pete Shivers stood there, holding The Pyx protectively to his chest again, not saying a word. And Johnny Scruge (‘Scroogie’ most of the time) thought: i
s he holding it to his chest that way to protect The Pyx or to protect his chest from something out there—something slamming toward him out there with an impact that would proceed the sound of its coming by half a second?
There was a low soughing through high up boughs. A deep internal creaking that Richard swore for a good three seconds was the wail of descending banshees, their red eyes fixed on him, razor talons curved to rend. Then the wind stopped, abrupt and complete, and stillness closed fast again.
Now it was Shivers who whispered. “S-Something’s fucking following us…”
Oh why?
Just why in Christ’s name did he have to articulate it? Rich Denning thought.
All four boys thinking exactly the same thing, as they often did, all four knowing a bone deep chill beyond visceral.
The little hairs on the back of Bobby Maser’s very practical and methodical neck stood up straight at attention, starting a carpet of gooseflesh down his slender young back clear to the bony knob of his tail bone. “Yer fulla crap,” he whispered. Bravado. Wishful rebuttal to Shivers’ whisper. But no one believed it, least of all him.
Silence.
Long and torturous.
Then a sound for real.
A sound like something not of this earth.
“Oh, shit!” Scroogie yelped, strident enough to start a pack of starlings in skyward panic.
And that tore it. Two of the boys screamed (they would never knew exactly who, because nobody ever owned up to it later), running in all directions at once, knocking heads and bouncing off each other and screaming, screaming, screaming louder still in a grim euphoria of release, whirling and dancing and tripping over each other across the crackly leaves and soft loam, but finding finally, each one of them, a big tree or a bigger rock to dive behind, to cringe there trembling, breathing very loud now, oh very loud indeed, very labored, collective hearts at trip hammer speed, faces bereft of all pretense of bravado, of being anything less that mortally terrified.