by Mark Tufo
“You from the camp?” Jose asked. “Look, it’s not what you think…”
He stood, adjusted his grip on the shovel. The edge of the hole fell off behind his heels.
The breeze shifted the canopy and a shaft of sudden sunlight flickered across the kid’s face and Jose froze.Some kind of disease, he thought.
The kid’s skin bubbled and drooped in patches. Greenish-purple muck seeped from an oozing boil beneath his right eye and mixed with blood sliding from his mouth, bottom lip engorged, hanging low, like some deformity. One of those Ebola babies in third-world countries with the split lips and sores.
Amanda squealed again, it sounded better, like she was finally able to get some air into her lungs. She glanced behind her, however, and squealed again, this time in terror. Her piercing cry echoed through the woods.
Birds took flight with heavy flapping.
The kid made a noise that might have been close to “Hello,” but which rumbled out as a groan.
A zombie, Jose thought.It’s a real fucking zombie.
It stumbled toward them and Jose angled the shovel at him over Amanda, and the boy hesitated. Bloody spittle slid down his face and trailed off his chin. His shirt hung in bloody tatters. His skin was lacerated, weeping blood and odd-colored pus.
An animal had done it. Some rabid thing had attacked this kid and now he was nuts, wandering through the woods, hopelessly lost, and bound to die out here alone.
But maybe not before he could infect some other people, too. And spread the disease.
Amanda squealed again, still awful but sounding more natural. The boy’s eyes, something strange about them too—were they red?—fell upon Amanda as if the kid hadn’t noticed her there before.
Slowly, gruesomely, the boy grinned. He might’ve been crazy with rabies, but he understood one thing perfectly well: easy meat.
And meat didn’t come much easier than Amanda.
The kid went for her and she screeched and tried to shuffle out of the way, but she slammed into Jose’s legs and he topped backwards into the hole, and then the boy was on Amanda and her next scream was ungodly awful as the kid’s hands tore at her neck and he bit into the side of her face.
The fall was not much but luckily it was what Jose needed. The hard smack brought back his sense, which he hadn’t realized he’d lost. He’d been staring, shocked, thinking the kid was rabid, thinking he was a zombie, when he should have been running.
In the movies, people wasted too much time trying to figure things out. The smartest people died the fastest, because they lived in a world of sanity and order. Jose, at peace with being a psycho, adjusted quickly.
He scrambled out of the hole.
Amanda bucked against the boy, trying to throw him off like a bull rider, screeching in pain, blood gushing down her neck, but the boy held on and clenched on her cheek and pulled back until the skin could no longer stretch and Amanda’s skin split as her flesh snapped back against her skull.
The boy glared up at Jose, Amanda’s torn cheek flapping from his mouth, a dog with a piece of bologna.
Amanda cried out again. He should kill her, hit her once more and let that be the merciful end of it, but he didn’t want to get close. He could swing at the kid, but what if it got around the shovel? What if it managed to get its bloody fingers on him?
The boy slurped up the flap of cheek. Its slug-like tongue licked its awful lips, and it grinned at Jose. Like it knew he wasn’t going to do anything. Like it knew part of Jose was enjoying this.
She was getting what she deserved.
But he didn’t actually believe that, did he?
He had no time to think about how he should be revolted before the kid launched himself at Amanda again, this time closing his mouth around her throat and piercing it in a rubbery squish of bursting blood, like a popped balloon filled with red dye.
Just before that nasty squish in a crazed boy’s jaws, Amanda’s throat managed to produce one more scream, this one close enough to an actual word for Jose to hear it very clearly.
“PLEEEEASE!”
Jose ran.
He dropped the shovel at some point and twice tripped, and when he made it to the edge of the hill up which he had climbed, he freely toppled over the edge and rolled down to Kyle’s car.
His heart was trying to erupt through his mouth, and he kept glancing behind him but he did not see the boy.Because he’s eating Amanda, he thought.Chewing up her skin and gobbling her organs.
CHAPTER TEN
Mark had gotten her sweater off finally—she’s cold-blooded, but I’m about to set this sweet stuff on FIRE—but every time his hands slipped along her back to those bra straps, she pushed against the wall or grabbed his arm and whispered, “No.”
But she was digging the kisses. She moaned and clutched at his hair and caressed his arms, which he flexed as she touched them. Talk about potential.
But some old football coach had once said, “‘Potential’ means you ain’t done it yet.” And he was planning on doing it, and doing it good. And she looked mighty cute in the glow of the lamplight. He was digging on her innocence. Not that he respected it.
He grabbed her hips and squeezed and slid one thigh between her legs. She whimpered a little when he pressed against her, but when he fumbled with the top button of her jeans, her legs snapped shut and her hands grabbed both of his.
“No, Mark. Please. We were having fun, fooling around. Don’t ruin it.”
“Ruin?” He could shove away, call her a tease, make fun of her. That would be satisfying. But not as satisfying as the conquest.
Instead, he nodded and went back to her neck. She moaned again. It echoed in the cabin. She wanted it. She was just a little cautious, that’s all. He’d be gentle. She’d like it. Sure.
Hell, once she gave in, she was going to be a freak for it. He could tell. That’s how girls were: all prudish and stuck-up until they finally figured out sex was awesome. Especially sex with him.
She suddenly seized his wrist and sat up so fast she almost knocked him off the bed. Her breasts heaved with her rapid breathing. She looked toward the door. “Did you hear that?”
She was like a scared little girl, too afraid to get wild so she’d try every excuse and distraction. In a weird way, that turned him on even more. He kissed her forehead in fake tenderness. “I don’t hear anything but your sweet heartbeat, baby.”
If he had to, he’d look her in the eyes and say without blinking, “I love you.”
Only if he had to. It was a guaranteed play, but it opened up a whole Pandora’s box that could never be closed. “Love” was going to get the job done, no question, but then he’d have to deal with the fallout. Few things were worse than a clingy girl, even one who put out.
She pushed him off. “Serious. Can you just listen?”
He paused, lips just touching her skin. “Probably just one of the kids again. The door’s locked.” He crept his hand toward her jeans again.
She stopped him. “What if somebody needs us? We’re the adults here. We’re supposed to be here for them.”
Anger swelled inside him and he almost slapped her. Instead, he punched the mattress and pushed off the bed. He adjusted his jeans, doing it right in front of her face. She looked away.
“Adults get fringe benefits,” Mark said. “You’ll dream up anything to keep from putting out.”
“Don’t be mad, honey—”
“Don’t ‘honey’ me. I’m tired of your tease.” He tried to take a breath but his chest was tight, as if wrapped in constricting metal wire. Or like maybe his brain was stuffed inside a condom, all the air cut off. “Get out.”
“You’re responsible for all these kids and all you think about is yourself,” she said.
He grabbed her sweater off the floor and hurled it at her. She blocked it like it was something dangerous and then clutched it over her chest. Her eyes watered but did not leak.
“Thanks for dinner,” she said and rose from the bed. “Thanks
for nothing.”
After what she’d done to him, gotten him all worked up, she didn’t deserve to be sarcastic. “You can eat Booger’s biscuits for the rest of the week for all I care.”
She opened the door and paused. He fought an urge to shove her and watch her tumble out into the dirt, but one of the brats might be watching. He couldn’t risk getting a black mark because of some little snitch. This job was a sweet line on his resume, a step on the way up into coaching and recreation management. If she caused him to blow this, he’d probably be trapped in insurance sales. Decent money, but no chicks.
“Mark,” Jenny said without any of her sarcasm or bitchiness, as if she’d forgotten she’d just shot him down. “Come look.”
A flashlight was on the ground. Its beam angled off toward the forest. Chaotic sneaker marks scuffed the ground and leaves lay strewn about as if recently disturbed.
“Bunch of brats,” he said. “Spying on us so they can have something to whack off over.”
Jenny pointed at the ground. “What’s that?”
He picked up the flashlight and played it over where she was pointing. A slim joint lay in a tuft of grass, the tip bent. He picked it up and smelled the familiar sweetness. He lost himself in that smell for a moment; it held the promise of escape, of better times, of being anywhere but at this backwoods camp with a stuck-up Miss Prissy Pants. If he couldn’t get down, at least he could get high.
“Good thing Mrs. Fraley didn’t see this,” he said. “She’d shut down the camp.”
“Are you going to tell her? A lot of these kids are court referrals,” Jenny said.
He smiled, slipped the joint into his shirt pocket. “Nah, I’ll just hold it for ransom.” He stared at her, liked how she was shaking, like she was cold or scared. “Have a nice hike.”
She looked around at the deepening sundown. “It’s kind of spooky out here.”
“And I suppose you want the flashlight?” He swung it lazily back and forth.
She reached for it, left her open hand dangling. “It would be nice.” She smiled, flicked her hair. Same move that first made him want to get her to his cabin.
Fool me once.
He flicked off the light and held it behind his back. “Only naughty girls get treated nice,” he said.
“Please, Mark.”
He slammed the lodge door in her face.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Max checked his cell phone for the hundredth time without luck. “No bars,” he said to Robert. “Put ‘cell tower’ on the list.”
They were walking along the logging road, their ties hanging loosely, jackets slung over their shoulders. Sweat stuck Max’s shirt to his back and he was starting to stink. There was a change of clothes in the Beemer, freshly pressed and ready in case the need presented itself, but that wasn’t much good to him now. And if he couldn’t get a damn signal, what were they going to do, walk the whole way? Walking was for working stiffs, not moneymakers.
Robert stopped. His face was pale and dotted with sweat, although Max had trouble seeing much more than his outline.
Sure gets dark fast out here in the sticks. This place needs some streetlights.
“You hear that?” Robert said.
“Hear what?”
He’d been dimly aware of the noises arising around them, mostly little whirs and clicks like insects. But now he did hear something, a creepy sound almost like chuckling. It unnerved him for a moment, but it was just the stupid sounds of nature. This wasn’t a world for him. He needed boardrooms and thousand-dollar lunches. People said that was extravagant but people who derided his life were people who’d never known the pleasure of it. The real question was what kind of people lived here in such primitive surroundings? Who the hell would want to?
“You heard that, right?”
Christ, Robert sounded like a scared Cub Scout on a hike.
“Just the woods,” Max said. “My bulldozers will tame it.”
Robert looked around as if the trees might come alive and attack. “We should reach the road before dark.”
“No,” Max said. “We’re going to see the Fraleys.” He started walking.
“Wait a sec. What?”
“Equity never sleeps,” Max called back. “Keep up.”
- - -
Another one of his stupidMaxims, Robert thought.
He looked around again. The main road had to be close. They could get to it, flag a car, and get somewhere with cell service. He admired Max’s go-getter lifestyle, but this was over the top. Still, he had to keep his act together, tell Mr. Jenkins whatever he needed to, and move up and away from Cloudland Development and stupid excursions like this.
Although there was a potential upside to this trip, and not in the monetary sense, either. He was proving he had a future, after all. Proving he was a man who could be dependable, a veritable breadwinner. Girls liked that. One particular girl did, anyway, and, boy, would she be impressed if Robert was part of this action.
“You coming?” Max called, thirty feet ahead already.
When Robert caught up, he decided to grill the boss, see how thin his cool veneer was. “How old is your son?”
“Thirteen, I think. Wait…” Max kept walking. “Yeah. Thirteen. He won’t be fourteen until spring.”
“What kind of trouble did he get into, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Why don’t you ask your friend? The one who likes to gossip?” Max moved on ahead again, and Robert wondered if he’d misplayed it.
Mr. Jenkins had sent his kid to Meat Camp. The kid probably thought he’d have it better than jail. Didn’t the rich just buy their way out of trouble? Why even bother to send your kid here? Jenkins could just pay to have his son’s record expunged.
Maybe there was some latent fatherly instinct trying to kick in. Robert started noticing it during the ride out here. Max had offered advice, more like an endless lecture that Jenkins would probably title, “How to Succeed at Everything,” but which could really be called, “The Most Boring Bullshit I’ve Ever Heard.” Jenkins probably longed for a son he could groom to take his place. A legacy. Jenkins might start calling Robert “son.”
“You taking a piss back there or what?” Jenkins called.
Robert started after him and paused. He’d heard something again.Just the woods. Yeah, right. It sounded just like a laugh, but a liquid laugh, like the person laughing was doing it through a phlegm-choked throat.
Branches heavy with leaves swayed near the ground in an absent breeze. Something was watching him. Some creature. Peering at him from behind those leaves. It made that frothy gurgling noise again and Robert’s head filled with grand, horrific images of animals attacking, clawing at flesh, biting into necks, blood saturating the dirt.
He hurried after Mr. Jenkins.
- - -
A face pushed through the leaves. At first, it was the face of a boy, dirt strewn and bloody, but this was no boy, not in the conventional, rational understanding of a boy, anyway. His eyes danced rapidly. They swam in their sockets. They jolted from side to side. They rolled up to the sky. They jittered even when they were still. They burned red. They were the eyes of a brain with its synapses malfunctioning.
When the boy-thing chuckled, it was the sound of a fractured mind, a scarred throat, a mutant.
Of a hungry beast.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jose dropped into the driver’s seat and the memory of the carnage consumed him. Excited him. The survival buzz was better than the perv buzz or the stoner buzz or the money buzz.
The boy-thing had been smiling at him as if he’d known.
You like what I’m doing to her, don’t you?
No, he didn’t, it was just the adrenaline pulsing through him. He might’ve liked watching her with other guys, but he’d never wanted to see her hurt.
But she hadn’t been the only one to notice, on their scouting mission, that the hole had been big enough for two. Even though he needed her to set up the ransom deal.
>
“Play for keeps,” he said.
The keys were not in the ignition.
They were in Kyle’s pocket, buried beneath several feet of dirt. And right next to Kyle’s final resting place, some deranged kid was feasting on Jose’s true love.
Jose checked the visor, under the floor mat, and the glove compartment.
In there, he found a wad of twenties bound with a blue broccoli rubber band. He undid the band and counted the money. He hurriedly assembled the bills in piles of a hundred on the passenger seat.
Almost fifty bills, just short of a thousand bucks. Cash.
That was more than enough to hit the road, get away from this nightmare, and find a new place to make a go at it. Didn’t matter where, just so long as it wasn’t a dumpy city or a backwoods town. Momma would be fine. The government just loved people like her.
He’d head west. California always held a kind of promise for him. That was the place of perpetual sunshine and endless opportunities.
Okay, sure, he could maybe get to California on a thousand bucks, if he ate off dollar menus all the way there, but he still couldn’t get anywhere without the damn car keys.
He checked all around the car again and even caught a whiff of Amanda’s sex on the driver’s seat, but no luck. No keys anywhere.
That left only one option.
He couldn’t open the trunk either without the keys, so he started down the dirt road toward the paved one still wearing his bloody clothes. Luckily, he’d been wearing two shirts and with the top one off, and after using it to smear the blood from his face and arms to a pale pinkish hue, he didn’t look so awful. It could almost pass for dirt, like a day laborer who’d been transplanting fruit trees. One of the advantages of being Hispanic in Hillbilly Heaven—people sort of expected you to be filthy at work, when they bothered to look at you at all.
The spreading shadows fueled him to move faster. The dusk seemed to crawl out of the forest like a live thing, seeping, suffocating, and determined. Halfway down the hill, he heard something behind him.