Our War with Molly Nayfack

by Chris Capps

  "Let's get moving," Felix said, "Mike's right. If we're going to die out here, we may as well find out why."

  "No!" Chance called out, his voice echoing into the distance as he fell to his knees, "We have supplies!" He sank to his knees, rifling through the canvas sack and pulling out cans of food, holding them up at the two, "We can live out here for a long time on this. We'll find a way to make it work. We might even find an apple tree! An oak tree with acorns! Wouldn't that be fantastic? We'll live a long time here."

  "We could find it without you," Mike said in the silence that followed, "But you're going to take us."

  "I can't," Chance said finally, throwing a can of peas into the sack and getting up on his feet and pointing a long index finger at Molly's face, "There's nothing that would make me fly a helicopter into town to help her kill you all. There's nothing she could say, nothing she could do that would make me betray everyone. I'm not a goddamn traitor!"

  "We don't think you're a traitor, Chance," Mike said pulling the pilot up off his feet, "We just want to know what's going on."

  "She's doing something to me," Chance said through gritted teeth, "Something awful. I think about it and that's the only thing that would do it. If it was awful enough any man would break eventually. And she can do it over and over again. As long as she wants until she comes across the right torture, the right fear. She's sick." Chance turned to Molly, his face a mix between terror and rage, "You're sick!"

  Visibly hurt, Molly reached up and wiped a fleck of spittle from her cheek as Chance dropped to his knees and started smashing his fist against the ground. For a moment he sobbed, before finally standing and wiping the long stream of tears from his eyes. He shuddered again and sighed, and then said,

  "Alright, man. Dammit, let's find out what it is. I'll take you to the edge. But that's it."

  As they prepared to cross the tracks, Chance hesitated before Felix and Mike both put hands on his shoulders and they crossed together. Holding Felix's hand Molly stood on the other side, looking back toward the lumber mill before shuddering. They stepped over the steel bars and disappeared into the fog. And behind them, a shape rose from the leaves. It stood erect, hands balled into fists at its sides, a silhouette warily watched by crows. It took two long strides across the tracks itself, and followed them.

  Chapter 18

  Rind sat in his cell staring at the wall across from him as Frankie leaned back in his chair with his head slumped forward.

  "You asleep?" Rind quietly said into the room, "Hey Frank."

  Frankie sighed, stretching his arms and legs and looking up tiredly,

  "Frankie, Clayton."

  "You call me Sherriff," Clayton Rind said, "Until the day you die you call me Sherriff."

  Frankie yawned and nodded, letting his head slump down back onto his chest,

  "Okay, Sherriff."

  With Frankie's head now slumped back down, Clayton Rind quietly rose from the bunk and looked down onto the floor. Something shiny was glinting next to his boot. He reached down, a smile slowly spreading across his face as he picked it up. An old length of wire, possibly from one of the bedsprings. Someone had been trying to escape. That damned pilot, Cooper.

  He waved his hand in front of the bars at Frankie, whose eyes were shut and cast down at the floor. He'd need a tension wrench. Something flat and pointed to slip into the bottom side of the lock. He looked around the room. Of course that had been considered when the room was constructed. The idea of a prison cell like this one was to keep people in. And so leaving lock picking tools around was against the police department's policy. He felt around on himself. He had been relieved of his gun, but they hadn't taken everything. He closed his hand around the Sherriff's star pinned to his chest.

  Jessica Myers hadn't had the foresight to take away his star. Of course not. It wasn't the one she considered valuable. Of course she had every reason to leave it behind. He stared at Frankie, his head bowed down against his chest as he started to drift away. In complete silence Rind worked. He pictured Chance Cooper standing at the door with his arms through the bars in much the same way, fumbling inefficiently at the lock, struggling as he thought he might just be able to count how many pins were keeping him from freedom.

  Six pins. Rind pushed the pointed edge of his star into the lock and twisted, raking the bent bedspring across the pins twice to get a feel for them before finally moving in and working on them. Six pins. That was all he needed to get out of this rat infested police station forever. And then he'd find Jessica and Sugarhill, and make them pay for locking him up.

  Frankie stirred in his sleep, and Rind paused. If that rookie came over and tried to stop him it would make things far simpler. He'd pull him through. He'd bang the kid's head against the bars repeatedly until a key came out. That's what Rind had learned to fear in those early days. Frankie didn't seem to have much fear in him. Not yet, anyway.

  Rind had picked many locks in his day, working on locks when locksmiths were nowhere to be found. He had honed his talent in a gentler time, when the higher stakes were generally housewives worried about spoiling groceries. And those days would be back too, as soon as he got out and took care of things. His wrist twisted expertly and the star worked to turn the lock. Click.

  He stopped himself from swinging the door open immediately. He paused, waited for his muscles to gauge the moment. And then he gently pushed outward, willing the hinges on the rusted door not to creak. It was a swinging cell door, like in the old west. Not one of those screeching sliding monsters they used in the city. He had always liked the aesthetic of the old west. And as the door opened, he let go of it, letting it coast to a halt in front of him. He stood with no bars to obstruct his view of Frankie, who still sat with his head slumped in an uneasy nap.

  Rind stepped out of the cell and took care not to let his shadow pass over Frankie. The Sherriff's shadow was heavy. It always had been. Even when he was a child he had known that. He walked down the hallway and quietly opened the door, chancing a look behind him back on the desk.

  That's where he saw the shotgun.

  It was just sitting there, resting against the cool leather desk mat with its shoulder harness spilling over the side of the desk. On the table, arranged in a single file line next to the shotgun were four shells. It was too good to be true.

  He took it, picking one of the shells off the desk and pressing it into the weapon. Click-click. He walked back to Frankie, still sleeping in the chair across from the cage that couldn't contain him. And he raised the shotgun, wrapping the shoulder harness around his wrist and tracing his eye down the sight right at Frankie's head.

  "Hey, Frankie!" Rind called out as the deputy jumped, spilling from his chair onto the floor.

  "Sherriff?" the young deputy gasped as he crawled backward against the wall, "What the hell!?"

  He had dropped his book, letting it fall to the floor at his feet and pressed his body heavily against the wall with his hand shadowing his eyes.

  "Sleeping on the job," Rind said as he took a step forward over the book and pressed the barrel of the shotgun toward Frankie's face, "You're fired."

  Frankie shut his eyes, clenching his teeth and braced himself. But Rind lowered the barrel and took a step back. He had a grin on his face. When Frankie looked up again, all he could see was the Sherriff's back walking away.

  "Go clean out your desk," the Sherriff said as he picked up two more shotgun shells and put them in his pocket. And then he walked out of the police station and into the night.

  Outside he breathed deeply, feeling the cool moist air with his nostrils as it poured into his lungs. There was a smell in the air that night. A smell like fire.

  ***

  There was a smell like fire that night. It was everywhere. Even at the small modest campfire that Chance Cooper had built in the cold rest the group had found themselves taking against their will. Mike and Felix sat against a great oak tree scattered around with acorns seeding the wet dirt beneath them. They crou
ched on heels and sat, or stood uneasily, picking mud from the treads of their shoes. Chance Cooper poured twigs onto the fire with both hands, letting the tiny light glow into the surrounding shapeless chaos of trees.

  Was this what the whole world looked like? No. There was one other place in the world where intelligent hands had worked, where words were spoken and warm bodies drew breath. And now in the dead of night that too smelled like burned wood and smoke.

  Chance held his fingertips close to the fire, though he wasn't cold. He breathed the smell of wood burning deeply, and remembered the half empty pack of cigarettes in his hip pocket. Now was as good a time as any to begin thinking about quitting.

  Felix couldn't help but notice the warmth emanating from Molly as she sat with the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. He leaned in toward her, and was surprised when she pushed back against him, reciprocating the simplest embrace he had ever had. She reached beside her and took his hand, squeezing it. But they didn't look at each other. They just sat and stared at the tiny dancing fire at their feet.

  They had been walking most of the night. And now in the late hours, night was beginning to die all around them. Soon the sickly pale yellow fog would be back, heralding the beginning of a new day - a day they were not prepared for. The safety of today would soon flee and become the terror, the uncertainty of tomorrow. Felix leaned closer to Molly, his arm pressed against her shoulder. And he leaned his head down and fell asleep.

  "It's going to be light soon," Chance said as he pulled the pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He fished one of the twigs from the campfire and pulled it under his face, lighting a cigarette that he pulled from the soft pack with his lips.

  "Yeah," Mike said quietly, "Soon enough."

  "We'll get there tomorrow during the day time. It's not gonna be pretty there. You know that."

  "I know," Mike said. A strange tranquility had fallen over him. For the first time in years, he felt distant from himself. He knew he was already dead.

  The paranoia, the fear that followed him everywhere he went was gone now. It had been covered in cemetery dust and chucked under Tanhauser's backhoe. Of course there was the possibility that he might survive, might be dragged to the island.

  This might be the last night of peace he ever had in an eternity of torment at the hands of whoever won this war. And yet as he stared into the light Chance Cooper had fashioned out of twigs at their feet, he didn't feel afraid. He said so. He said it.

  "I'm not afraid."

  "That's good," Chance Cooper said as he blew smoke from his nostrils. His voice fell silent, nearing a whisper as he pointed his cigarette hand at the girl, "Look at her. She looks so ordinary, doesn't she? What childlike dreams do you think she's having?"

  Mike didn't respond. Molly hadn't fallen asleep completely. She managed to hear that last sentence from Chance before slipping away. She had heard once that at the beginning of sleep your dreams are more chaotic, more nonsensical. Of course she didn't understand how it was supposed to work, but it made sense in those terms. Her dream was chaotic, drawn as much from memory as the abstract monsters that are fed deep in the mind.

  She dreamed of a massive white horse with a saddle and a pair of long white horns curling around its head. The horse, with a mane as pure white as falling snow turned to her, looking past the curled horns at either side of its head and watched her from afar with eyes as distant and as benevolent as an ancient god.

  Excited, she could see herself run toward the horse from a television screen. She was in her grandmother's house crouched on the floor with her chin resting on her hands as a little girl watching herself walk up to the creature. The scene cut and she was riding it, being led by a man with white gloves and a top hat. They rode the same landscape for what felt like hours, or rather what had been interpreted by her mind as hours, before suddenly arriving at a county fair with an ancient and holy Ferris wheel dominating the horizon.

  And as she rode through the crowd, people looked up at her - people she recognized from the town of Cairo. Younger versions, or living versions of the people she had once known. Willard was there as a younger man, running toward the merry-go-round. It twisted, seven stories tall, its corkscrew tiers like paintings she had once seen of the tower of Babel. She reached out toward it, smiling and dismounting. And she ran up to it and looked all around.

  Everyone there loved her. They all turned and smiled at her, reaching out with hands that wanted only to caress. Smiles that wanted only to praise. Eyes that wanted only to love. She passed between them, a warm gratitude filling her heart so full that her eyes overflowed with joy. Years passed with this joy. Ecstasy growing until it evolved into a manic love and terror. She dreamed this for the two hours until she awoke.

  It was forgotten immediately. She reached a dirty hand down and wiped moisture from her cheek. The haze around them was yellow. Felix was resting his head between them, his arm pressed firmly against her shoulder. There was a shadow in the fog, shaped like a man, staring at their camp. It wasn't hunched over like the monster man, or shaped like her. It was a man with broad shoulders and head held unapologetically high. He was standing at the edge of the fog just staring in at them. Everyone else around her was asleep. Chance Cooper, Mike, and Felix. She looked over at the rifle Chance was holding in the crook of his shoulder as he snored uneasily. The fire at their feet had gone cold. It had been doused moments prior, as far as she could tell, as smoke was billowing up. The shadow in the fog turned and walked away, vanishing.

  "Felix," she whispered. He didn't move, so she said it again, "Felix."

  "Yeah," he said, eyes still closed, now perfectly awake.

  "Someone's out there in the fog. We're being followed."

  His eyes shot open.

  "Wake up," he said aloud, nudging Mike with his elbow, "Everyone wake up."

  "Time is it?" Mike asked, before realizing the problem with his question. He hadn't brought a watch, and he didn't suspect anyone else there had one. Chance rose, drawing a large uneasy breath and looking over his shoulder into the dense fog filled with skeletal trees,

  "Morning?"

  "Someone's out in the fog," Molly said, "A man was just staring at us."

  Chance stood and turned around, staring into the fog behind him with the rifle held aloft,

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah," she said, "I saw him for only a second, but he's out there. He walked off just after I woke up."

  "I believe her," Mike said as he rummaged through the bag, "I imagine there are a lot of people out in the woods right now with Cairo slowly being invaded. We might run into a few people if we're lucky."

  "This close to the island," Felix said, "I don't know if I like that thought."

  Beyond their conversation, standing still like a statue of a man fashioned from sticks and rags Mark stood, staring into the fog and listening. He could hear the voices, but the undercurrent he discerned from it all was as strange and as altered as the faces that stared out at him from a thousand tree trunks. They were unaware of it. But the angels were talking to Mark now. His eyes rolled into the back of his head as the bizarre monstrous dreams flowed invisibly in his mind's eye and one whispered its alien tongue into his ear canal and spoke gentle treason.

  Those human people. They didn't know what they were doing. Soon they would reach the island, and Mark was promised he would finally meet Mr. Hades.

  ***

  It had been nearly a full day since Steven Ritzer had last seen Andrea, so when they ran across each other in the fog she stood and became very still. They had both spent a terrified night staring out at black windows, daring not to turn on the lights. Andrea had returned to the butcher's shop after encountering Molly Nayfack in her basement. She had fled the house, running after Mark and finally realizing that she would not be alone in the streets. The Mollys were walking into houses, observing people as they tried to live their lives, occasionally killing them or dragging them off into the night for -

  Maybe the wo
rst part was she didn't know. She had slipped her head over the lip of her shop's big glass windows and stared out to see people screaming and dragging behind chattering choruses twice that night. She had recognized one of the voices as Scratchy, the man who owned the diner in town. Another had passed by further into the fog, but she hadn't been able to identify her. Two people who were almost certainly now dead.

  She had thought about Mark as paranoia had jabbed away any chance at sleep on a hundred occasions. Ritzer had been safe in his home, but had emerged to scan the block around the rectory twice, each time being driven back inside by unnatural screams or the booming of gunfire. As soon as dawn arose, however, he had noticed the screaming drop off, leaving the streets silent save for the crackling of distant fire and the enigmatic howling of what certainly wasn't a wolf.

  She had been the first person he had seen during the hour he spent kicking through the littered streets with a heavy axe dragging behind him. What had started as a weapon ultimately had become a burden as he slogged down streets and tried to look away from the wreckage. He watched her now, standing uncertainly beside a wrecked police patrol car next to the theater and she held out her hands in a gesture that could mean only one thing.

  What do we do?

  He had let the axe handle drop from his shaking hand and rushed toward her, unable to contain the hefty sob that expanded in his throat. They had run toward one another, clasping tightly, locking into one another's arms warmly. Their embrace was long.

  "I thought you might have died," Andrea said, "What's happening here?"

  "She's killing everyone," Mark said, a tear tickling the bridge of his nose, "We've got to get out off the street."

  A rise of howls started erupting all around them from the roof tops. The monsters were on top of the buildings, calling to one another in their bizarre language. The word they now spoke could have been interpreted by anyone. It was the sky's word for fear. They were invoking it, calling one another and embracing the madness they had caused. It was a wild ecstasy of hate and mastery rolled together on the tongues of a simple girl. The other girl.