Night of the Slasher

by Flint Maxwell

  “Hop in!” he invited with a slight grin on his face. How he could smile at a time like this, I’d never know.

  We all piled into the Cruiser. Zack stuck the keys into the ignition, and the radio blared the Nickelback song I recognized from Zack’s exorcism CD mix.

  “Turn that off!” I shouted. “I’m not gonna die with the last thing I heard being Nickelback!”

  “I’m with Abe on this one,” Maddie said from the front seat.

  The car started on the first turn of the key. Zack twisted around, put his hand on the back of the passenger’s seat, glanced at me, and then glanced behind our heads, out the back window.

  “Well, my friends, you’re in luck. Because we’re not going to die. Not yet!” he enthused, stomping on the gas pedal.

  The car lurched backward. My hand was gripping the seat between my legs painfully hard; I was thinking the car would die on us right there. Going by the countless horror movies I’d seen, that was pretty sound logic. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Tiffany had fiddled with the engine, or cut a cord here, yanked out an important piece there.

  None of that happened.

  The Cruiser rolled back as smoothly as it could over the gravel and then onto the dirt road that led out of this terrible camp.

  When we hit the dirt, Zack slammed on the brakes. I risked a glance over my shoulder. There, I saw the red brake lights painting Cageface in bloody glory. He stood mere feet from the back bumper and rear windshield, his expression never changing: the look of pain on what was left of his features after the stray bear trap had clamped over his face. It was the same expression he’d worn when I first saw him on the metal table below the cabin.

  Zack switched gears. “Hang on!” he shouted as he punched the gas.

  Dirt sprayed from the tires, kicking up a cloud that momentarily obscured Cageface. Then we were gone, and the distance between us and him was growing more and more.

  We drove too fast over the bumpy roads until we came out on the stretch of country highway that headed west into the town of Moonfall.

  Zack was whooping. So was Freddy. He’d finally gotten the joint lit, and was puffing like his life depended on it.

  Jason, Maddie, and I were quiet; we knew it wasn’t over. As much as I wished it was, we were not in the clear yet.

  Sure enough, as soon as we got into the downtown area—the gas station and the bar we’d stopped at now in our line of sight—the PT’s engine started coughing.

  “Zack, you’re not hitting the brakes, are you?” Maddie asked.

  His grip on the steering wheel tightened. The car lurched forward, kicked back, lurched forward again. A pretty gnarly rattling came from under the hood.

  “No! No!” he yelled, and he took his hand off the steering wheel, and hit it hard with his palm.

  The car slowed to a near stop outside of an antique store. We were in the downtown area, where slanted parking spots lined the sides of the roads, and old, rusted pay meters stood on the edge of the sidewalks. Two traffic lights blinked steadily, one red, the other yellow.

  “No, not here. Please, God,” Zack begged. “Anywhere but here.”

  It looked like God wasn’t listening today.

  Before the Cruiser fully died on us, Zack swung into a parking space. He parked crookedly, as if he was drunk.

  “What’s going on?” Freddy said. “You’re joking, right? You’ve gotta be joking.”

  I looked at him. “I wish,” I said.

  Jason shoved me out of the car. “Pop the hood,” he said. “I’ll see what the problem is.”

  He seemed calm enough. I mean, we were a few miles from the camp, and Cageface was on foot. It would take him at least half an hour to get here, and that’s if he ran. Slashers never ran; especially ones that had just been resurrected from the dead.

  Zack, Jason, and I got out of the car. Jason lifted the hood all the way, and heavy, gray smoke wafted out from the engine block.

  I didn’t know much about cars, but I knew that couldn’t be good.

  “Why did you have to get a PT Cruiser?” I grumbled to Zack. “Why couldn’t you have bought foreign, like a Honda or something? Those never break.”

  Zack gripped my dirty shirt at the shoulder. “Hey! Leave her out of this! It’s not the car’s fault. It’s not!”

  Jason, still calm as ever, cleared his throat. “He’s right,” he said.

  In his hand, he held a clump of cut hoses; they looked important and greasy. What they did, I couldn’t tell you. Jason didn’t tell us, either.

  “See?” Zack said. “See?”

  “I’m sorry,” I replied. “It’s just—”

  Maddie got out of the car with the bag full of weapons over her shoulder. “Calm down. Everyone just calm down. We’re a good distance from the camp, so it’ll take a while before he comes—if he comes. Part of me thinks he won’t be able to leave the camp at all.”

  I shook my head.

  “No negativity, Abe!” Maddie shouted. “We’re the motherfucking Fright Squad, okay? It’s our job to remain calm in situations like this. Take a deep breath, all of you. We’ll go get help. We’ll fucking steal a car if we have to.”

  I’d never heard Maddie swear so much; it was an odd thing, coming from her mouth.

  Zack smiled proudly.

  Swearing or not, she was right: We’re the motherfucking Fright Squad. The problem was that I didn’t think anyone in this town would help us. Not to mention that it was late at night, and even though it was a Friday, the town was sleepy by nature. There were no places with their lights on. None except…Patty’s Pub.

  Maddie must’ve seen me looking out that way. She squinted to look down the empty road.

  “You can’t be serious,” Zack said.

  “What?” Freddy asked.

  He seemed to be coming down off his high already and, though I had only known him for a little while, I thought he was returning to his normal self. Without the pot, Freddy was just a skinny, nervous looking fellow. The sight of a normal Freddy made me anxious.

  “The bar?” Jason said.

  “Yes, the bar,” I answered.

  “You can’t seriously think they’re going to help us,” Zack said, shaking his head. “They looked at us like we were from another planet.”

  They did, I knew that, but what other option did we have?

  “They were pretty nice to us,” Jason said.

  Freddy said, “Yeah, because they probably knew we were going to die. Why the hell did we ever go out to that place? Why the hell did we have to bring Tiffany?”

  Jason folded his arms across his chest. A vein about the size of my own arm snaked up to his wrist. “Tiffany was coming no matter what,” he said. “You heard her. This was all planned; she roped us in because she was going to kill us.”

  “I knew she was crazy the minute I saw her,” Freddy said.

  “Guys!” I shouted. “Now’s not the time to argue about this. How about we wait until we’re far away from this town? Sound good? Yeah, I thought so.”

  “Abe’s right,” Zack said. “For once.” He grabbed the bag of weapons, and set it down on the sidewalk. It made a heavy clunk.

  It was then we heard the soft rumble of a car engine. We all turned around and looked up the street the way we’d come. Headlights painted a shoe store’s front window a little ways away.

  “Oh, God, it’s him!” Freddy said. “I need another smoke. Oh, man—I can’t die sober.”

  “Slashers don’t drive,” I said.

  Of course, I was wrong. Michael Myers did in the original Halloween, but I had to help Freddy calm down. Mainly because I recognized the car. It was the same one we’d seen at the bar earlier that day. The sheriff’s. If Freddy busted out another joint right now, I figured it wouldn’t go down well.

  “It’s the cops!” Freddy shouted as the car got closer. He dropped his hands to his side and ran out into the road.

  The sheriff didn’t stomp on the brake; he wasn’t going fast enough
for that. But the car slowed to a stop, which was better than I’d expected in a town like Moonfall. I thought maybe the sheriff would hit the gas instead. This place wasn’t very kind to outsiders, it seemed, especially outsiders that wanted to meddle in the town’s bloody history.

  The sheriff flipped on the high beams. Freddy brought his hands up in front of his face. All his hippie bracelets, the ones made out of Native American hair and leather and all that stuff, dangled from his bony wrists.

  My stomach twisted as Maddie and Zack looked over at me. I imagined hearing the engine rev, the squeal of the tires, pictured Freddy mown down by whoever was behind the wheel. Maybe it was Cageface. Maybe not.

  But none of that happened.

  The lights clicked off, replaced by the single red siren light on the roof of the car. When Freddy didn’t move, just stood there like an animal wanting to get hit, the sheriff cut the wheel and pulled into a space beside us.

  The light twirled around and around, painting the sleepy town blood-red. The loud rumble of the engine cut off suddenly, and the sheriff’s voice drifted out from the cracked window. It was scratchy, tired. I didn’t think the old Ford had air conditioning; it looked as ancient and out of date as everything else in this place.

  A clack sounded from the radio transmitter as he hung it back up on the dashboard, and then the door creaked open, and out stepped the sheriff. He was a big man.

  I didn’t realize this when I had seen him in the bar. There, he’d seemed small and scared, though I figured that had something to do with the bus of prisoners that had escaped near the town limits—prisoners that were now dead and on display below Camp Moonfall.

  The sheriff was chewing on a toothpick. The pale wood had turned a deep mahogany from the soaked up saliva. He must’ve been chewing on that toothpick for a long time—maybe since the last time we’d seen him at the bar.

  In the red glow of the siren light, I saw his name tag.

  ‘SHERIFF DALE HILL’.

  The polished bronze of the name tag, and the star over his heart were the best things about his shabby outfit. He wore a brown button-up shirt and a pair of brown pants to match, with a navy blue stripe down the side of the legs. The shirt was a little too tight—I imagined he got it when he first started the job many years ago—and there were sweat stains on his upper rib cage that darkened the fabric.

  Despite it being late and there being no sun, it was still hot in Moonfall, Pennsylvania. Part of my mind told me that it was because the Devil himself had made a visit, brought back to life by Tiffany.

  “Howdy,” the sheriff said. He tipped an invisible hat atop his thinning salt and pepper hair. The toothpick worked around the grim line of his mouth. “Awful late to be out and about, don’t you think?”

  Footsteps from the road. The light pitter-patter of a too-skinny stoner.

  It happened fast.

  Freddy rushed up to the sheriff on the sidewalk, and I saw the sheriff’s body tense, his hand absentmindedly going for the gun on his belt, stopping before he could unbutton the holster. The confusion on his face passed as he realized that the man running at him probably weighed as much as the sheriff’s right leg.

  “You gotta help us!” Freddy shouted. “Please!”

  The sheriff took a step back.

  Jason reached out and grabbed Freddy before he could put his hands on the sheriff. We all knew how that went in these times. Never good. Jason might’ve saved Freddy from a hearty beating, or even a bullet.

  “You feeling all right?” the sheriff asked. He sniffed deeply, his nostrils ballooning wide.

  I cringed at this. I’d gotten used to the smell that clung to Freddy in my little time knowing him, but I knew that, to a newcomer like the sheriff, Freddy would reek.

  “That pot I smell? Some funny rope? You people been having a good time, huh?” he wanted to know.

  Freddy didn’t say anything. None of us did for a long while as the sheriff studied us. His eyes drifted toward the bag at Zack’s feet, the bag full of odd weapons and unregistered guns (unregistered in the grand sense; they were accounted for at BEAST, but seeing as how BEAST was supposed to be an under-the-radar organization, that registration wouldn’t help us much).

  Zack smiled weakly. He tried shifting the bag between his legs nonchalantly, but the metal inside jangled and scraped the sidewalk.

  “What’s in the bag, son?”

  “Nothing?” Zack said.

  Maddie pinched the bridge of her nose. She stepped forward. “Listen, sir, we really don’t have time for this. Our car broke down, and we need to get out of here.”

  “Shut it,” the sheriff said.

  Both Zack and I shouted, “Hey!” at his ungentlemanly behavior.

  “I said, what’s in the bag?” the sheriff continued, ignoring our outburst.

  “Listen to them!” Freddy said. “Listen to them!” He turned to us. “Tell him! Tell him what happened!”

  The sheriff’s hand hovered near the gun again. I couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t have seemed like that much of a threat.

  I raised a hand up to Freddy, trying to tell him to be quiet. Jason caught onto this and tugged at his friend’s sleeve again, but Freddy wasn’t having any of it. He pulled away.

  I knew the sheriff would never believe us if we told him Cageface was real and that he’d been resurrected. A man like this, a man steeped in reality, wanting to forget about his town’s violent history, would be more apt to believe in Santa Claus.

  “I’ll tell him!” Freddy shouted. “It’s Cageface! He’s back! I saw him with my own two eyes, I swear to God I did!”

  The sheriff sniffed deeply again. He smiled. It was a predatory smile, like he smelled blood instead of marijuana, and he was now going for the kill.

  I knew we were screwed when I saw that smile.

  “What’s in the bag? More drugs, or did you smoke ‘em all?” the sheriff asked, ignoring Freddy’s outburst. “Hand it over.”

  “No,” Zack said with finality.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Freddy shouted. “Cageface is coming. He’s coming right now!”

  The sheriff just shook his head.

  “Freddy,” I said. “He’s not going to believe you.”

  “Especially with how you smell,” Jason added quietly.

  The fact that I was covered in blood and dirt didn’t help. The sheriff didn’t seem to notice this, though. Maybe because of how dark it was, or because the only light source around here was currently red.

  The sheriff made a give-it-here gesture with his left hand.

  Zack shook his head, but the sheriff made a move for the bag anyway, much too quickly for a man of his size. The bag was heavy, but he didn’t struggle with its weight at all.

  Perhaps I wasn’t giving the sheriff enough credit.

  He set the bag on the hood of the Cruiser.

  “You know what we have to do,” I said, out of the corner of my mouth.

  “I don’t know why you’re always thinking about food at a time like this,” Zack whispered back sharply.

  Maddie and I quirked our heads at him while Freddy and Jason looked on curiously—they didn’t know what was in the bag, either.

  “What?” Zack asked, oblivious. “You were gonna suggest we go get some food, right?”

  Maddie sighed.

  “No?” Zack clarified.

  Maddie nodded at me. She knew.

  We had to attack the sheriff.

  It was the only way we’d be able to get out of this town before Cageface caught up with us. As soon as the sheriff saw what we had in our bag, he was going to pull out his gun, he was going to arrest us, he was going to—

  “Well, well, well,” he said.

  “Geez,” Freddy said, despite his fear. “You guys were packing. Either you were going to kill us, or you weren’t lying when you said you were some kind of fright team.”

  “Fright Squad,” Zack corrected.

  “I’m sorry, friends,” the sheriff said. “I
’ll have to bring you in for the night, unless you can produce permits for all these weapons. Trust me,” he looked at Freddy. “You’ll be safe from any boogeymen in the holding cells.”

  “No!” he shouted.

  “Please, sir,” Jason said. “He’s telling the truth.”

  The sheriff snorted with laughter. “I’d expect that kind of thing from Cheech here, but not from you, Quarterback.”

  “Jason didn’t even play football— Hey! Don’t call me ‘Cheech’!”

  “I did play football,” Jason corrected his friend, “just not quarterback.”

  Freddy looked very confused. I figured all the pot smoking was catching up to his brain. In twenty years, he wouldn’t even know his name.

  “Oh. You learn something new every day,” he said casually.

  The sheriff watched their exchange with bored interest; this was our chance.

  I made my move. So did Maddie. Zack, still not entirely sure what we were doing, moved last. I knew we may not be able to take the sheriff individually, but together, we had a pretty good chance.

  Just as we lunged, the sounds of squealing tires hit my ears. I stopped abruptly, trying to play it off like I hadn’t just been about to punch the sheriff in the nose.

  He didn’t notice. He was looking toward the two squad cars, as old and rickety as his Ford, that were coming down the road in the opposite direction that he’d come from.

  Dammit, I thought. I’d seen him radio something in, but I didn’t think it meant he was calling for backup. In a town like this, it was hard to believe there was anyone around to back him up.

  The squad cars halted, and out came an older woman with brittle, blonde hair, and deep wrinkles lining her face, followed by a younger man, probably in his forties. They wore the shabby uniforms of regular cops. No polished stars on their chests.

  The sheriff turned back to us. He pointed at the weapons he’d laid on the hood of the Cruiser, the long blades, the stakes, the guns, and the extra ammunition (along with a Bible containing many highlighted passages, a crucifix, and the same robes we’d worn for Xaluney’s exorcism). From his belt, he unhooked a pair of handcuffs. The other officers, approaching us now, did the same.