The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP XXII:
The Final Nightmare
Dani barely talks on the three-hour drive, but I manage to pry the story out of her. Julia called yesterday, told her that she and Heather were heading to Red Lake in one of Marilyn’s big armored SUVs. They could pick her up or meet her there. She told them not to wait.
“What about Skye?” I ask.
“They had a big fight with his mom,” Dani says, shifting lanes to pass a slow-moving Subaru. “Told her they had a safe location but couldn’t tell her where it was. Told her the kids could come but she couldn’t. Made up a story about keeping people spread out. She told them her kids weren’t going anywhere without her. She couldn’t stop the older one from leaving, though. Her little one stayed behind.”
“That’s something,” I say.
Other cars are passing us. If I were in the driver’s seat I’d have it floored, we’d be flying, we’d be screaming forth to rescue our people, but Dani drives like she’s on her way to pick up some hay. I wrote down Julia’s, Marilyn’s, and Heather’s numbers and gave them to Stephanie. She’s been calling since we left the ranch.
“Any luck?” I ask, looking in the back.
She’s hunched over her cell phone, texting away.
“Keeps going to voicemail,” she says. “I’ve tried texting but none of them show as being read. I requested a delivery report but it doesn’t look like they’re going through.”
“Is there a landline at the camp?” I ask.
“Googled it, called, got voicemail,” Steph says.
I really want Dani to step on it. He may have already started, although it’s still light out. Most monsters wait until dark.
“We need a plan,” I say. “So we don’t fall all over each other like the Three Stooges. You want to try to put something together?”
“Nope,” Dani says.
And that’s pretty much that. I want to press my foot down over hers on the gas pedal but I have to get on Dani’s wavelength if this is going to work. So I wait.
Twenty miles later she asks me the big question.
“What’re you proposing to do with Dr. Carol’s boy?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. I’m sick of people dying.”
“Before sunrise tomorrow, people are going to die,” Dani says. “Pretty sure of that.”
It’s so cowboy I almost laugh, but I don’t because in my gut I know she’s right. She always is.
We hit traffic outside Bakersfield, and by the time we’re headed up into the mountains it’s late afternoon. We’ve all been lulled into a stupor by the long drive, and as the truck starts to wind up the switchbacks I feel the adrenaline draining out of my veins. I’m feeling wrung out.
“There,” Steph says. “Is that it?”
Up ahead we see the sign for Camp Red Lake, and Dani slows. It’s small and discreet on the side of the road, the way Adrienne wanted, just yellow paint on dark red boards spelling out Camp Red Lake. Dani rotates the wheel and the truck splits off the road and glides onto the blacktop leading up the hill where Red Lake lies. The county isn’t responsible for this road, Red Lake is, and it’s paved with seamless black asphalt so new it sparkles.
Halfway up the mountain, shadows getting long, Red Lake up above us, Dani takes a turnoff.
“What are you doing?” Steph asks.
“Gotta piss,” Dani says. “Better get it over with before we get there. Gotta get the guns out of the back, too.”
She parks in a pull-over that looks out over the valley. There’s a picnic table with an empty Diet Coke can on it, a scenic view sign, a running path heading off into the brush. It’s paved with chalky white rocks.
“Wait here,” Dani says.
She gets out of the car, detours to take the Diet Coke can and throw it away, then walks into a row of scrub about thirty feet in front of us. I notice that Steph is rustling through her backpack in the seat behind me.
“We really do need to come up with a plan,” I say, starting to turn around.
A sledgehammer hits me in the back of my head and my eyeballs compress, then go black. When my vision returns, my head is halfway outside the car, sunlight stabbing my eyes, and it feels like my skull’s the size of a beach ball. I want to lift my head to look back into the truck and a sheet of shattered safety glass rains down on my neck, falling down into my shirt. Steph crawls over the seat and settles behind the wheel. There’s my little .22 in one of her hands. I can’t smell anything. My face won’t move. My body doesn’t work.
She looks at me and reaches over my shoulder. I try to lift my arms but they have pins and needles running up and down them. Steph yanks the door handle and it swings open, dumping me out on the rocks. I’m tangled in my seat belt and then it comes free and I sprawl on the ground.
In my peripheral vision I see Dani coming out of the bushes, buttoning up her jeans. I want to scream and warn her but I can’t even do that. The car door slams far above me, and an engine starts. The truck rolls over both my legs but it doesn’t feel like anything compared to my head. The tires roar over the gravel and there’s a metal crack and the sound of broken glass as it slams into Dani and then she’s sailing backward. I see her smash into a tree, midway up the trunk, and her body bends in a way it shouldn’t, and then she bounces forward and lands facedown on the edge of the parking lot.
Stephanie reverses back to where I lie and turns off the truck. She gets out. I want to see where she’s going but I can’t turn my head. I hear car doors opening and closing and then I space out for a little while and when I come to I’m hearing footsteps crunch through the gravel toward me.
“You stupid statistic,” she says, squatting down next to me.
Did she think Dani was going to hurt us? Or was too suicidal to be trusted? Was she confused? Did I do something to make her think I would hurt her? But I know what the real answer is. She’s not one of us. She’s never been a final girl. Chrissy was right. She’s a Monster.
“It’s a pussy pistol but it’s the thought that counts,” she says, holding up my dainty little pistol. “You idiots with your machetes and your martial arts. If you want to rack up an adult-sized body count you need some Smith & Wesson.”
I feel limp, squeezed out, empty. All I can do is lie on the ground and die. I look up along her long arm and see that her face is a black sun radiating waves of hatred and contempt.
“You think you’re such a badass,” Stephanie says. “Do you know how pathetic you are? I’ve watched one person after another take you down, and when it was my turn it was even easier than I thought. You’ve had other people holding your hand for your entire life. You’re not even a real final girl.”
She leans down and holds her finger under my nose.
“Fuck,” she says. “You’re still breathing. Okay, I guess I need something a little heavier. Don’t go anywhere.”
She crunches over to the truck, and I hear the door chime going bong, bong, bong, as the back opens. I hear the zippers of gun cases. There’s a shotgun being pumped. Then her sneakers crunch back over the rocks and reenter my field of vision.
I’ve been played. I’ve been a moron. I brought her right up here into the heart of Red Lake. I was wrong about Skye. I was wrong about everything. And now I’m going to die.
Death actually is a moment of clarity, and in this instant I know Steph’s right—I’ve needed other people’s help my entire life. I keep thinking I’ve cut myself off, but there’ve always been other people. The only thing I’m going to do on my own is die.
My head is enormous and numb and even blinking gives me a headache so I stop and stare up at Stephanie standing over me. She’s very, very tall and I see that she has one of Dani’s shotguns hovering over my face. She steadies the barrel. The big empty circle rests right over my forehead. My brain sends my body signals to run, to move, to get out of the way, but my muscles have all gone on strike.
“I really freaked when you showed up at my front door,” Steph says. “I thought you’d actually figured something out, but then you took me on a super-bonding soul sisters road trip? You’ve wanted someone to put you out of your misery for years, so relax, you Suicidal Tendency. I’m the final final girl, and you’re just last year’s—what’ve you got to smile about?”
She snarls that last bit because my eyes have shifted to the right and I can’t help it, I’ve twitched my mouth up just a little. Steph follows my gaze and her face falls.
“Shit.” She sighs.
Dani is gone.
I hope she’s running right now, I hope she’s on her way up to Red Lake to warn everyone, to get help, to get ready for this Monster. Let me be the sacrifice that buys them time, let Dani get to them and then they’ll come down on Stephanie like the wrath of God.
Steph walks to the bushes, holding the single-barreled shotgun to her shoulder, barrel down at a forty-five-degree angle, ready to bring it up and punch a hole through Dani the second she spots her. She pauses and looks back at me, debating which way to go.
I want to shout Run, Dani! Go! but my head is mush and I think I can make my right cheek twitch if I concentrate hard enough, but that’s about it. I wonder how I look with half my skull missing.
Maybe I moved, because Steph cocks her head at me, then gives up and turns back to the bushes, but she’s too late. She may have been ready for me, but she’s not ready for Dani. Six feet of ranch-hard muscle rises up out of the bushes and grabs the barrel of the shotgun and deftly turns it away from herself and then Dani punches Stephanie in the throat.
The blow snaps Stephanie’s chin to her chest, and the gun goes off. Dani stands crooked, hunched over, in pain, something broken inside her, but she controls the barrel of the shotgun and keeps it pointed away while punching the side of Stephanie’s head with her fist over and over again. Then she twists the gun, and it comes out of Stephanie’s grasp, and Dani brings the stock down on the small of Stephanie’s hunched back.
Stephanie hits the ground face-first, and Dani limps away from her, coming toward me. Her face looks pale, her lips move soundlessly, her teeth are caked with blood. She drops heavily to her knees, sets the shotgun down, and I realize she’s crying. I’m pretty sure it’s from the pain.
“Lynne,” she chokes, reaching a cut-up hand to the side of my face.
That’s when Steph rises up behind her.
Dani senses something is wrong and she turns, right into the butt of the shotgun smashing down onto her forehead. I want to shout something, I want to warn her, but my face isn’t working. I think my brains might have seeped out into the gravel. The butt of the shotgun takes her dead center in the face. Something thick crunches. Stephanie is grinning, and then Dani grabs Stephanie’s ankle and pulls, dumping her on the ground, and then she’s up and running, hobbling fast, limping away from me, leaving big fat droplets of blood in her wake, disappearing back into the bushes. Steph scrambles to her feet, aims the shotgun, pulls the trigger. It explodes fire.
Steph runs to where Dani disappeared, pumping shell after shell into the shotgun and firing again and again, then stopping and scanning to see if she can detect Dani, then firing again. I don’t think this thunder will ever stop. Finally, there’s silence. A bird starts to sing.
Stephanie stands over me again. I realize that I have to play the oldest trick in the book, the one I used before with Ricky Walker. I play possum. Stephanie bends over and feels for my breath, but I’ve stopped breathing. I dimly feel her tug on my right earlobe and I think she’s pinching it, but my head is made of wood. I don’t move. She spits on one of my wide, staring eyes. I lie still. Then she laughs.
“This one doesn’t even count,” she says. “She basically killed herself.”
She walks over to the truck and throws the shotgun in the passenger seat. Shotgun riding shotgun, I think stupidly to myself. She starts the engine. The truck idles for a minute and I think she’s changing her mind, but I can’t allow myself to turn my head to look because I know she’s watching me.
Relief floods my veins like a drug when she roars out of there, leaving a cloud of white dust hanging in the air. I lie still for a minute, brains spilling out in the dirt, and I wonder who’s going to go warn Red Lake. I wonder if Dani made it up there to tell everyone what’s happening. I wonder if Steph is going to get there first and cut through them like a bullet. I lie there, and I wonder who’s going to save the day, and blood pools around my head, and I die.