by Amy Cross
"No!" I shout, trying to turn and run before something slams into my feet and I drop to the ground.
Before I can even try to get up, there's a loud bang, echoing around the yard, and I hear the sound of something landing next to me. I scramble to get away, terrified that at any moment Patricia's going to drop the match onto me and I'll burn, but as I get back to my feet, it's almost as if she's enjoying watching me struggle. I blink a few times, trying to clear the gasoline from my eyes, but my vision is still way too blurry. Spinning around, I try to work out where she is, but all I can see is the nearby bonfire. Turning, I stumble toward the farmhouse, before suddenly realizing that there's a figure coming toward me.
"No!" I shout. "Someone help me!"
"It's me!" a familiar voice shouts back, hurrying over and putting his hands on my arms for a moment. Realizing that it's Toad, I stand still as he unties the rope. "It's me," he says again, "don't worry. It's okay, she's not going to hurt you. Follow me."
Still not able to see properly, I let him take me by the hand and lead me across the yard, until suddenly he forces me to stop. My heart is racing and I can't see properly, so I don't even know what's happening, but I guess all I can do is trust Toad.
"Take your clothes off," he says, as I hear him moving what sounds like some kind of barrel.
"What?" I ask breathlessly.
"You're covered in gasoline," he replies. "Take your clothes off so I can wash it off."
Figuring that I need to just do what he says, I pull my clothes off as fast as possible, until finally I'm standing naked in the yard, covering myself with my hands as much as possible. Reaching up to my face, I try to rub the gasoline from my eyes.
"Not like that," Toad says, taking my hand and leading me over to the barrel. "This is rain water. Dip your face in here and open your eyes."
"It hurts," I say, feeling the stinging sensation in my eyes getting worse and worse. "It -" Before I can finish, Toad grabs my head and dunks me face into the barrel. I struggle for a moment, before finally opening my eyes. The pain is still there, but I finally realize that he's only doing this to help me. When he lets go of my head, I keep it underwater for a moment longer before finally coming up for air.
"You're lucky you're not permanently blinded," he says, placing his hands on my face and pulling my eyelids wide open. "Can you see properly?"
I nod. Although my eyes still hurt, I can see much better now.
"I thought you were dying," I say, looking at his bare chest and seeing the bandages on his shoulder.
"I'll be okay," he replies, still examining my eyes carefully. "The worst of the fever has passed. Now crouch down so I can pour the water over you."
Shivering and cold, I nevertheless do exactly what he says, and moments later he pours a deluge of cold water over my naked body. I let out a gasp, but finally he wraps a towel over my shoulders.
"What did you do to her?" I ask, looking over at the bonfire and seeing Patricia's prone form on the ground. Turning back to Toad, I realize that there's a rifle slung over his shoulders.
"The same thing she did to the others," he replies. "She was right about one thing. There's no law anymore, not really. We get what we can take, and she was going to take everything eventually. She couldn't trust you, and I couldn't trust her." He pauses. "But I trust you, and I hope the feeling's mutual."
I nod.
"You need to go inside and get warm," he continues. "I'll fix up the fireplace in the front room for you. Go and find some blankets and wrap yourself up. I'll take care of everything out here."
Half an hour later, I'm sitting by a roaring fire in the farmhouse, with blankets covering my body. Toad made me wash several more times, to make sure that the last of the gasoline was off my skin, and my eyes are still stinging a little, but for the most part I feel as if I'm okay. The baby is sleeping on the floor nearby, but although I know I should be holding her, I feel somehow frozen in place. I can't help replaying the past few hours over and over in my mind, first the way Patricia killed the others so casually, then the way Bridger called for help from the bonfire, and finally the moment when she poured gasoline on my body and lit the match; these three memories are just spinning through my mind, and I can't think about anything else.
"How are you doing in here?" Toad asks suddenly.
Turning, I realize that I hadn't heard him entering the room. He walks over to the baby and crouches down to take a look at her.
"Did you choose a name for her yet?" he asks, turning to me.
I pause for a moment. "Rachel," I say eventually.
"Nice name." Reaching down, he runs a finger across Rachel's chin. "Hello Rachel," he says after a moment. "I'm sorry things have been a little crazy. I can't promise there'll be much of an improvement in the immediate future, but I'll do my best to keep you safe."
"It was..." I pause again, wondering whether I should open up to him. "It was my mother's name," I explain, feeling a rush of relief. I don't know why, but it feels good to have someone named Rachel around again, even if she's just a baby. I guess I'm still in mourning for my parents. "She... She was Rachel. I guess maybe it's stupid. If you want to change it -"
"Rachel's fine," he replies with a faint smile. "I have no idea what kind of world she's going to grow up into, but at least she's got a good name."
"Patricia's dead, isn't she?" I ask after a moment. "You killed her."
"I had to," he replies. "She was going to kill you, so..." He pauses. "I put her on the bonfire with the others. I suppose that's poetic justice in a way. She was always so sure of herself. She kept talking about how important it was to make rational decisions, but at the end of the day, she was just out for herself, like everyone else."
"I thought I was going to die," I tell him. "I mean, I really thought..." I take a deep breath. "That's twice in, like, two weeks that I've almost died. Is it always going to be like this?"
"I have no idea," he replies, coming over and sitting next to me. "I guess the world is a pretty strange place right now, and no-one knows what's coming."
"What are we... I mean, what are you going to do next?"
He stares at the fire for a moment. "We have to decide whether we're going to stick it out here or head off somewhere else. I'm starting to think it might be smart to load the van up and get the hell away." He pauses. "Right now, however, I've got three things I want to do. First, I want to put some more logs on the fire, to keep us warm. Second, I want to change the bandage on my shoulder to make sure it doesn't get infected again. And third, I want to kiss you."
As I turn to look at him, I feel a strange tightening sensation in my chest, almost as if someone just reached in, grabbed my heart and twisted it around several times.
Without saying anything more, Toad gets to his feet and grabs some logs to toss onto the fire. It takes a couple of minutes for him to get the flames really roaring, and then he walks out of the room. I sit in silence, listening as he goes upstairs. For almost ten minutes, I just stare at the flames, feeling their warmth on my body and hearing the occasional creak of the floorboards as Toad moves around up there. He's sure taking his time, but I guess he needs to make sure his wound is clean. Finally, I hear him coming back downstairs and entering the room. He kneels next to me, with a new bandage on his shoulder, and after a moment he puts a hand on the side of my neck, gently pulls me closer, and kisses me tenderly.
Epilogue
Five years ago
"Do you know what else he's gonna do?" I ask, as I roll onto my side and grab a cigarette from the bedside table. "He's gonna grow his own food. Like, from seeds. I mean, seriously. That's fine if all you wanna eat is tomatoes and potatoes, but it's like he wants to take the simplest things and make them difficult and complicated."
"At least he's trying something new," Shauna says, reaching over me and grabbing a cigarette for herself. In the process, she lets her bare breasts dangle against my shoulder. "Light it for me."
I light her cigarette, then my
own, and turn back to face her. "So you'd be happy if I did the same, would you? You'd be totally fine with me buying a fucking farm and moving out to the middle of fucking nowhere?"
"I'd be happy if you had the money to buy a farm," she replies.
"Bitch," I say with a smile.
"Dick," she replies, before leaning over and kissing me. "Seriously," she continues after a moment, "don't you think maybe guys like Toad have got the right idea? There's so much crap in the city. Pollution and all that shit. It's not healthy to be, like, breathing it in all day every day, is it?"
"Says the woman smoking a cigarette after sex," I point out.
"You know what I mean," she mutters.
"He'll regret it," I continue. "He might be too stubborn to admit it, but I fucking guarantee that eventually he'll be sat out there in his run-down fucking farmhouse, with the wind blowing in through holds in the wall, and with anemic fucking vegetables growing in the mud outside, and he'll realize he's fucking wasted his money and his life. There's nothing out there but fucking trees and shit."
"Maybe he likes trees and shit," he suggests.
"He's a loner," I reply. "Always has been, always will be. He's fucking weird, too. I know you haven't met him a lot, but trust me, there's always been something fucked up about him. Back when we were all at school, he carried this toad around in his pocket, like an actual toad. It'd got its legs squashed or something and he found it, and he was trying to nurse it back to health. It was all he did, all day, just trying to make sure his fucking toad was gonna be okay."
"That's cute," she says with a smile. "Did it work?"
"Of course it fucking didn't," I reply. "After about three weeks, the fucking thing died. Still, by that point, the nickname Toad had kinda stuck." I take a drag on my cigarette. "The point is, he had a grand idea that he was gonna be all natural and stuff and save this little toad, and it all went fucking wrong. And that's exactly what's gonna happen with this farm. He's got good intentions, sure, but he doesn't know how to run a fucking farm. He'll screw it up, just like he couldn't save that toad, and then he'll either have to rot out there, or abandon the whole place and admit he wasted his time and money."
"Or he might actually make a go of it," Shauna replies.
"No fucking chance," I tell her. "He's just read a load of books and websites. He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, not really. He thinks he can sprinkle a packet of seeds on the ground, and a bunch of fucking tomatoes'll come up. I hope he gets pigs. That'd be fucking hilarious. I'd pay money to go and watch that asshole try to herd a bunch of pigs."
"I don't think that's what you do with pigs," she replies.
"You're an expert now, are you?" I ask. "Maybe you should move out there with him and suck his cock while he's fucking his farm up."
"You think you're smarter than everyone else, don't you?" she says after a moment. "You pick holes in everything that everyone else does, but you never actually get off your ass, do you? It's so easy for you to lay into Toad for making a go of something, but God forbid you'd ever try something yourself. You'd never try to do something daring. You'd rather snipe from the comfort of someone else's bed, smoking someone else's cigarettes, after using someone else's condoms to fuck someone else's girlfriend."
"Speaking of which," I reply, reaching under the sheets and grabbing her waist, "when are you gonna dump that Toby asshole and let me be the only man in your life?"
"When you're capable of being a man," she says with a faint smile. "You might think Toad's an idiot, but at least he's trying to do something, Carl. He's got a goal and he's working toward it, whereas you..." She pauses, with a look of disappointment on her face. "Isn't there something you want to do with your life? Don't you have a goal or some kind of aim?"
"Maybe," I say, grinning as I squeeze her breasts.
"Something more than this," she replies, pushing my hands away.
"You want me to be like Toad, do you?" I ask. "It's not gonna happen, Shauna, and do you know why?" I pause. "The guy's insane. He's out of his mind, and he's gonna crash and burn out there at that fucking farm. Maybe I haven't worked out exactly what I want to do with myself yet, but I'm not gonna rush off and live out in the sticks in some kind of pathetic, paranoid attempt to prove a point." Leaning closer, I kiss her shoulder. "I'm not gonna be a damn fucking squib like him. I'm gonna be a meteor. I'm gonna burn, baby, and dazzle everyone. Trust me."
Bonus
Extract from
The Dead and the Dying: A Joanna Mason Novel
by Amy Cross
"How many women did he kill again?"
I open my mouth to answer, but for a moment I'm distracted as I watch the nurse slide a two-inch needle into my arm. After a muttered apology, he pulls it out and then tries again, and this time I can feel the tip going deep into the vein before the nurse lets a drop of blood out and then tapes the whole thing to my skin. Taking a deep breath, I look up at the small bag of white liquid hanging next to the chair, and I realize that it's time to get started again. I already feel nauseous, and the thought of that stuff coursing through my veins makes me want to run away from this place and never come back.
"Wasn't it four?" he asks as he starts adjusting the feeder that sits halfway along the pipe that connects me to the bag. "I'm pretty sure I remember seeing four faces on the news. The evening news kept showing them in a kind of grid, like Celebrity Squares."
"It was four," I reply, dreading the moment when he starts the infusion.
"That they know of," the nurse adds with a faint smile, before lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I mean, with guys like that, you can never be sure. Did they dig up his garden?"
"They did."
"Did they dig up, like, the woods near his home? 'Cause he lived out on Sycamore, didn't he? There's a forest near there. If I was going to hide a bunch of bodies, that's where I'd do it." He pauses as he checks some figures. "I'd bury them out there, deep, real deep, so wild animals can't dig them up, and I'd do it shortly before winter, so that when the snow comes, it completely covers everything up. Then, by the time everything thaws the following spring, the police would never be able to identify any areas that had been disturbed. If they wanted to find anything, they'd have to dig up the entire forest. Either that, or watch out for where the berries were looking particularly well-fed and juicy." He grins for a moment, before turning to me. "Too soon?"
Biting the side of my tongue, I shake my head. "Sounds like you've been thinking about this a lot."
"Sometimes I plan murders when I'm bored," he says, as if it's the most normal thing in the world. "I mean, I'd never do anything, but it's a challenge, isn't it? To think about how you'd commit the perfect murder... It's like a puzzle."
I smile politely.
"You want to know what I think?" he asks as he continues to fuss around with the equipment. "I think murder's easy. I think anyone who gets caught is just doing it wrong. I mean, I'd never do it myself, but I think if a person of average intelligence decided to kill someone, and planned it out properly, there's no reason why they'd ever get found out. Not ever. Think about it. A human body isn't that big, and it rots down pretty fast in the right condition. As long as you've got the stomach for that kind of thing, you could grind the bones down, or bury them in a way that no-one could ever find them. Every time I hear about someone who's got caught, I always just think they must've been an idiot."
"We ready to get going here?" I ask, looking up at the bag of drugs that's waiting to enter my system. I open and close my fists a couple of times, and although I feel a little out of breath, I try to focus on staying calm. I always get nervous at the start of a chemotherapy session; it's part of the ritual, and I know that my best bet is just to stay the course and wait for it to be over.
"Yeah, sure," he replies. "Sorry. It's just, you know, everyone's talking about it today. Sometimes I wish..." He pauses, as if he's caught himself before he says something he might regret. Instead of continuing, he reaches out
for the clipboard, which I know from experience means that he's only one step away from starting the flow of drugs. I've been through this procedure so many times, I could probably hook myself up.
"What?" I ask, hoping to distract him for a few more seconds. Anything to delay the inevitable moment when he starts the infusion. Damn it, I want him to hurry up, but I also want him to take his time. I just want to get this whole thing over with. Not just today, but the whole fucking cancer. "What do you wish?"
"Just..." He glances over his shoulder, to make sure that no-one can over hear us, and then he turns back to me. "Sometimes I just wish executions could be live-streamed. Like, in cases where the guy is a total monster. I think it'd be cathartic, not only for the families of the victims, but also for the community. I bet millions of people all over America, maybe even all over the world, would tune in to watch Sam Gazade being executed for what he did to those women. I mean, hell, how long has it been since he was caught? Twelve years? That's a long wait for justice. And after everything he did to those poor women and to the cops who caught him, I just think that enough is enough. People need to see justice being delivered." He pauses. "Does it make me a terrible person that I'd watch?"
I shake my head.
"I found this website," he continues, keeping his voice low, "where they had photos from the autopsy of one of the victims. Now, I'm not normally into shock stuff, but -"
"Sorry," I say, taking a deep breath, "but do you mind if we get started? I have a busy day."
"Yeah," he says, looking a little embarrassed, "sure. Sorry. Get me started on something like this, and I'll talk for hours. I just find the Sam Gazade murders so fascinating." With that, he grabs the feeder and slides it open, and the white liquid starts to flow through the tube and into my veins. "This isn't your first time, is it?" he asks. "You know the drill?"
"Two hours," I say, feeling my body start to tense up in anticipation of the inevitable nausea and drowsiness that's going to follow. "Two hours until that bag has finished going into me, and then I'm free to go. Until Monday, anyway, when I'll have to come back in and do the whole thing again. And then again next Friday, and then again the following Monday, and then..." I pause. "I know the drill."