Flare (13 page)

“All right, settle down y’all,” said the big one. “Let our Niece tell the story. We got ’nuff whiskey to last the year, so settle down.”

The wiry one, the
Niece
, took a shot from a shared bottle and spoke in a soft, sing-songy voice that showed she was much younger than her weathered skin indicated. Ash crept in close with Heather, who hadn’t a clue what the group was either. The women were all drunk and apparently hadn’t noticed the RV’s arrival, but Heather was still on guard.

Something’s eerie about this group,
thought Ash.
It’s as if we’re two runaway children eavesdropping on a camp of forest goblins.

“My second husband was a prick, never had a job, always on meth, real prick, you know,” said the Niece.

“Why’d you marry him?” asked the big one.

“I dunno, Father,” said the Niece. “He was a prick, but he
had
one too, if you know what I mean.”

Everyone laughed the drunken laughs that came after a punch line, even an unfunny one. The big one spat out her drink and belched, and made a few comments under her breath about how she could use a real prick herself, and everyone laughed more. Heather mouthed the words
why do they call her Father?
to Ash, and he shrugged in response.

“You had your chance after the sunrise hit us,” said another young woman, jovial and appeasing. “We had a lot of dudes to serve you.”

“We
still
do and she
still
has her chance … if she willin’ to lower her standards,” said another girl, younger with dark features and good skin.

“I ain’t gon’ do that, but I’m close,” said the Father. “Sheeey-it, pull up that burnt guard we got. He’s nasty, but as long as his dong is clean, y’all best believe he gon’ know my name. Believe that shit, bitches. Now, continue your story, Niece.”

Ash and Heather both knew it was time to leave. This was just too weird. They signaled each other to go, but Ash stepped on a branch, one of the girls told the group to
shhh
, and Ash knew that they were caught. The Father made a few hand motions, and two of the girls ran around and surrounded both Ash and Heather. Ash tried to make a move, but the two girls were quick and tough, and pushed him back down. The Father stepped up and spat, but then put her meaty hands up to show that she wasn’t a threat.

“Settle down, y’all, settle down,” said the Father to her group in an even, calm voice. “Settle the fuck down.”

/***/

Ash and Heather sat down around the fire, with two girls behind them. Ash tried not to show any fear, but he couldn’t help quivering a bit. The tone of the party had died down, and Ash heard a girl singing in the far distance. At first he thought it was coming from one of the girls around the campfire, but it wasn’t. It was coming from deep in the darkness.

“Now all that shit I said previously about bangin’ a burnt man, that’s talk you know,” said the Father. “That jus’ us girls talkin’, makin’ merry and whatnot.”

“He cute though,” said a girl across the campfire, looking at Ash.

There was a moment of silence and then another girl spoke under her breath.

“Put a bag on his face and I’ll ride the mo’fucker all night.”

The girls exploded into laughter at the joke, but the Father wasn’t laughing. She waited a moment and then put her hand up, and the laughter stopped.

“He is cute, I agree,” said the Father. “But we got bigger matters to discuss wit’ these folks, namely, how the fuck they survive out here. So tell me, how you survive?”

Ash looked at Heather, who spoke.

“We’re from that town five miles away,” said Heather.

The Father looked at them and spat.

“Makes sense,” said the Father. “What’s the town’s name?”

Heather took in the question, cool and calm.

“We don’t know,” said Heather. “We’re not from there originally, just camped out there the past two days.”

“Is that right,” said the Father, who picked up a piece of dried meat from a bag at her feet and bit off a chaw.

“Yeah,” said Heather. “We were wondering if you had any water.”

“Whoah, whoah, whoah!” said the Father in a patronizing tone. “Before you start making demands, we gotta know about you. All about you, ’cause they’s a lotta crazy folks around right now, crazy folks that’ll kill you like
that
.”

The Father snapped her fingers, and there was another moment of silence. Ash heard the girl singing from the darkness again, and listened closer. It sounded more like a whimper, and Heather didn’t seem to notice it. She was too focused on dealing with the big woman in front of her.

“How’d you get to
Pigville
?” asked the Father.

“Excuse me?” asked Heather.

“That’s the town’s name, or at least what we call it,” said the Father. “Now, how’d you get to that town over there, you burrow underground?”

“We walked.”

“That’s a lie,” said the Father. “We in the middle of nowhere, and Pigville a hundred miles from nowhere too. That’s a lie.”

“We have tents,” said Heather. “Sunproof tents.”

“Sunproof tents,” said the Father, incredulous.

The women around her weren’t laughing anymore, as drunk as they were. Their eyes narrowed, and the Niece sneered, revealing a missing front tooth. Ash heard the cry again in the distance, and this time he heard it distinctly yelling
help.

“Listen,” said Heather. “That’s the truth, but not the whole truth. We can’t reveal everything, not that we don’t trust you, but we don’t know enough about you to trust you, at least not yet. You know how times are, and I’m sure you’d do the same.”

After a moment of thought, the Father nodded her head.

“I ’spose I would.”

The other women gradually took the cue of their leader and smiled in accordance. The Niece laughed and winked at Ash.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” said Ash.

The Father let out a laugh, and the others joined in.

“Sheee-yit, the boy talks, I never thought—”

“I’ll be back,” said Ash, getting up.

“All you gotta do is piss out yonder, son, about forty feet. Hell, our Auntie gets drunk and pisses right here and—”

“The other one,” said Ash. “I need to go number two.”

“You gotta take a shit?” said the Father. “All right, go down back a few hundred feet.”

“All right,” said Ash.

“And don’t go running off now, boy,” said the Father. “You ain’t my type, but our Niece likes you.”

The group burst into nervous guffaws, and Heather shot Ash a look that implored him to be careful.

/***/

Ash had to walk around the building. He was hoping to be hidden by darkness a hundred feet out, but the partial moon was so bright that they’d be able to see him at a thousand feet. So he curled around the building and listened for the whimpering.

He heard it again, and it sounded like a young woman begging for help. Was it coming from inside the building? Ash reasoned it wasn’t and told himself to be cautious, just in case it was something dangerous.
Anyone who’s survived this long can be dangerous,
even a whimpering young woman.

Ash followed the sound to a demolished section of the structure, a passageway that was meant to connect two sections of the building. The hallway was made of thick concrete, but the roof had been blown off, and the upper windows had been shattered. Ash found a door on the side, a thick, heavy door that was fortunately unlocked. He opened it up and saw bodies, perhaps fifty.

“Hello?” he whispered.

There was a breath, and he saw a small, dark feminine face turn around and stare at him from behind a pile of corpses.

“Over here,” said the woman, excited.

Ash approached and saw a young woman, beautiful, dark and pixie-thin, like a child. She had one arm handcuffed to a post that had once supported the now-missing roof, and she was surrounded by three other bodies, dead, also handcuffed, one by the arm and two by the ankles. Ash held up his hand to show that he wasn’t a threat, and she put a finger from her free hand to her lips to tell him to be quiet. He nodded and she beckoned him close. He approached, still cautious but quickly. He had to be careful, but he knew that this girl wasn’t a threat and that she was in grave danger.

She reached into her pocket and picked out a pencil and some paper and wrote on it. Ash picked up the paper and read it, and the words were clear in the moonlight:

My name is Courtney. They have me hostage. Don’t talk because they might hear us. I’ll explain later. You’re in danger too. One of the dead guards has keys on his belt, but he’s over there. I think one of them will open these handcuffs. Hurry, before they come looking.

Ash looked at her and noticed that she had the clean, soft look that was missing from the women at the party, and he had no reason to doubt her. He nodded and then searched through the corpses for keys. He went through body after body, most of them dried-up like burnt prunes, but some of them showed physical trauma as well. He saw heads caved in, gunshot wounds to the chests, and stomachs gashed.
All these injuries have now been tidied up by the sun,
thought Ash,
but these people were killed long before the flare touched their skin.

Ash searched through these bodies one by one, already acclimatized to carnage, and dug into the pockets and waistbands without hesitation. He was more worried about one of the big women coming after him than touching something grotesque.

He frisked corpse after corpse, body after body, each one thoroughly, and eventually found the keys. They were on a man shot through the head, and they laid in a big snarl on his waist, attached to a device that was locked to his belt and wouldn’t detach easily. Ash tugged, but he realized the keys wouldn’t come off at all, because the device wasn’t meant to be removed. He had left the tools in the RV and realized that he’d have to take the man’s pants off. He did so quickly, unbuttoning and then tugging at the clothes, first gently, and then in short, firm pulls with his left and right hand alternating to shimmy the pants off. They came, but not easily, and in coming off they had taken the man’s skin with them, fused to the cloth and coated with a waxy, dark oil. 

Ash rushed over to Courtney, shaking the keys louder than he would have preferred, and gave them to her in a pile. She sifted through, trying each one and as clumsy with them as Ash would have been. She eventually found a key that worked, and opened the handcuffs quickly. She breathed a sigh of relief and hugged Ash, whispering
thank you
into his ear, just soft enough so that no one but them would be able to hear it.

/***/

Ash returned to the campfire five minutes later, alone. The Father took a swig of whiskey and glared at Ash before laughing.

“Took you long enough,” said the Father.

“I’m sorry,” said Ash, unsure how to respond.

“Nothing to be sorry about, dude,” said the Father. “We was just asking your friend how she got here, and was wondering if you could provide some details.”

Ash looked around and saw that three of the women had weapons at their side, two pistols and a shotgun. The Father herself was whetting a knife against a rock.

“Now your friend here has a name,” said the Father. “What is it?”

Ash paused, unsure of the tact that the Father was taking, until Heather nodded at him to go ahead.

“No messages, man,” said the Father. “What’s your friend’s name?”

“Heather,” said Ash.

“One for one, one more to go,” said the Father. “Now, she said you don’t have a vehicle.”

“She’d be right,” said Ash.

“That ain’t the question,” said the Father. “The question is, if you don’t have a vehicle, how’d you get here? She answered, and if she’s telling the truth, you’ll answer the same.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” said Ash.

“Answer the fuckin’ question, boy,” said the Father.

Ash nervously took out the piece of paper that he had prepared for Heather. He was hoping to discreetly slip it to her somehow, but he also knew that he was running out of time. So he took it out and rubbed it with his thumb, signaling Heather what he wanted her to see. She knew Ash’s mannerisms and instinctively looked down, absorbing the words and taking a breath before looking forward:

This is a women’s prison. The inmates killed the guards and are going to kill us. I freed one of the hostages, and she’s looking for a gun. She’s gonna start shooting. When she does, run to the RV.

Heather understood his signal, but so did the Father.

“What the fuck is this?” asked the Father, approaching them and grabbing at the note.

Heather withdrew, and the Father hit her with the palm of her hand, pushing her backwards into the dirt. The Father took the note in her hand and then laughed.

“What kind of bullshit is—”

Boom!
A gunshot rang out, and all the women crouched out of reflex. Heather flinched at the sound, and there was another gunshot, hitting the Niece squarely in the shin. She howled, and Heather got up, dragging Ash with her towards the RV. Two more rounds, and they saw a muzzle flash come with another shot, and saw Courtney to their left.