The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP’S NEW NIGHTMARE
I make a left and run past one cracked-open apartment door after another, each one featuring a stacked totem pole of faces too scared to help but too curious to stay inside. I crash through the door at the end of the hall and bang down the stairwell, praying the police are coming up the elevator, securing my go bag straps over my shoulders, running too fast to feel guilty about Fine, too fast to think about Julia, taking the concrete stairs five at a time, pulling my plastic paint scraper out of the side pocket of my backpack.
I will come back for Fine.
I promise.
I didn’t have a choice.
Julia will understand.
At the bottom of the stairs is the emergency door leading out back with a Detex pushbar and a red sign that says Push to Open, Alarm Will Sound. The bolt is exposed and, just like I’ve practiced a hundred times, I slide the paint scraper between the pushbar and the doorframe and pop the bolt without activating the alarm. The door casually clicks open like it’s no big deal and I slip outside.
The air is gray, the sky filled with orange clouds as the sun sets over the hills. The back of the building faces a chain-link fence and beyond that is the back of an identical set of shitbox apartments. I toss the paint scraper and sprint across cigarette butts and crushed beer cans to the low hole in the fence that I snipped a long time ago and check once a month.
I slither on my belly into the next parking lot. As I trot across the old asphalt I strap on the fanny pack that was duct-taped to my go bag, comforted by the weight of the M&P Shield inside. It doesn’t have a lot of stopping power, but beggars can’t be choosers.
I don’t think. I let the program take over. I trot onto the street, slowing to a fast walk, heading away from my apartment, not looking back. Behind me, I can hear Fine’s cries fading away inside my head. I left him. I’m sorry.
I left Julia.
I stay with the program.
Turning away from my building, I make my way to the parking garage. A siren rips through the twilight as my house turns into a cop magnet sucking all available emergency vehicles to itself. Another one dopplers past. This city is a trap. I can’t breathe.
It takes exactly fifteen minutes to reach the parking garage. I go up stairwell A with my car key in my hand, heading for my escape vehicle on the third level.
I decided long ago that I couldn’t risk having my home address in the DMV system, but I have a couple of fake IDs that’re good enough to use in an emergency, and for the past five years I’ve rented a space in this garage for a Chevy Lumina I bought for eight hundred dollars. Once a month I make sure she still runs. I keep camping gear in her trunk, and the plan is to drive toward El Paso, then disappear off the grid along the way. It’s a big country and I can move fast.
The first thing I see when I come off the stairs is my car sitting too low at the other end of the deck. Hand on my Smith & Wesson inside the fanny pack, it takes until I’m halfway there to see the problem: someone slashed all four tires. My mind goes white but I trust the program and without hesitating I turn and trot down stairwell B. I feel eyes crawling all over me.
I don’t believe in coincidence. Somehow someone knew about my vehicle and they compromised its integrity. Closed this escape route.
I don’t scream because they might still be watching. I don’t have a panic attack because I force my lungs to fill with air, even as they try to cramp closed. I don’t run down the center of the street shooting anyone who looks suspicious because I planned for this. I have a backup plan for my backup plan because one is none, and two is one. Dani taught me that.
I find L.A. City Cab in my contacts and press call. I meet the black-and-yellow by the doughnut place on the corner and take a picture of his hack license. The driver monologues about his T-shirt business while I sit against the door, go bag in my lap, barrel of my Smith & Wesson pointed at the back of his seat. How did someone find my car? They must have followed me one night. They must have planned this far in advance and now I’m playing catch-up, which means everything’s on their terms. But Van Nuys Self-Storage is my ace card.
I get out on the corner and pay cash, then duck around the block, walking against traffic to the massive beige storage bunker. The lockers are on the first floor and I enter my door code to get into the facility and head for A132. It holds a duffel bag containing three thousand dollars in cash, three changes of clothes, another gun and ammunition, a credit card, and more fake IDs. The plan is to head for Union Station and go anywhere domestic, chosen at random. I’ve got enough money to lay low for a while, and when things settle I can consider my next move.
My only excuse is that the inside of my skull is a swarm of bees. That’s my only excuse for why it takes until I’m halfway to my locker to realize the lock isn’t mine. I put on a gold Yale combination lock. This is a silver weatherproofed Master Lock. I freeze. I am so scared my knees won’t bend. My feet root themselves to the concrete. I feel the CCTV camera boring into the back of my neck. I feel someone watching me from the dark halls.
They knew. They knew about both my escape routes. I can’t trust anything that’s inside my locker now. My IDs are compromised, the emergency credit card, they maybe marked my paper money and tampered with my ammo. They could be watching me right now.
I tear my feet away from the floor and force my heavy legs to turn around now because if they knew about this route they might still be here, waiting for me to show up. I walk as fast as I can on numb feet because I can feel someone in a hoodie coming up behind me, pressing me to the lockers, butcher knife moving like a sewing machine needle in and out of my kidneys, but the room is empty.
I am a turtle without its shell, no protection, just raw flesh exposed to the world. I am roadkill. That’s what Heather called me once. Not even a real final girl, just someone who stumbled into a monster’s path.
No plan survives contact with the enemy, but I didn’t expect all my plans to fail so quickly, so completely. Both my escape routes out of town have failed. I trusted Julia with my address, and she failed. I thought I could use Russell, and that failed. I thought my cage would work, and it failed. I thought I would protect my friends but I ran away and left Julia to die, and I failed, I failed, I failed.
I’m sorry, Fine.
The next thing I know I’m on a Burbank bus. Time has been spliced out of my life and I drop back into my surroundings with a jerk. I examine everyone’s shoes but realize that I have no idea where I am. Just when I needed it the most, my focus, my concentration, my own brain has betrayed me.
I hit the emergency stop and get off and trot down the street against traffic, trying not to run, dissolving into the crowd, slipping onto an Orange Line bus just as it’s about to pull out.
I sit behind a transit cop, windows on my left, hand resting on my fanny pack, and I force my brain to slow down and think about facts.
Someone was shooting at me.
They knew both my exit routes.
Julia is dead.
Scratch that last one. Never count a final girl out until you see the body. We’ve all taken damage before and kept on ticking. She’s alive. I didn’t leave her behind to die. She’s alive. She has to be. Then I add another one to the list:
People are in my home.
Right now, tactical boots and duty shoes are stomping across my floors, kicking Fine, shattering his pot, crushing his roots, looking through my rooms. Getting on my computer. Searching for me. Four gun safes and Russell’s corpse are enough to get them interested in who I am. I need help.
I hit the request stop button, get off, and immediately see the empty streets and realize I made a mistake. I’m too exposed out here. I dump my phone in a garbage can, find an open Starbucks, and go inside. I take a table in back by the bathrooms.
Inside my go bag is a disposable cell phone, fully charged, loaded with my contacts. I crack it open and make my call.
“Hello.” She answers on the second ring.
“Dr. Carol,” I say. “It’s Lynnette. Someone just attacked me. I need help.”
She takes it cooler than I thought she would.
“Where are you?” she asks. “I’ll come pick you up.”
“Tell me your address,” I say. “I’d rather come to you.”
“I’d rather not have you in my home right this minute,” she says. “Not if you’re in danger. Please understand.”
“Someone tried to shoot me,” I say. “They shot all of us. Me, Julia, a reporter.”
“Lynnette,” she says. “Where are the police in all this?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I ran. It was . . . they were shooting at me. Through my window.”
“And you’re sure it wasn’t just kids? Or fireworks?”
“Julia got hit,” I say.
“Oh, God,” Dr. Carol says, and it’s the first time she sounds less like a professional and more like a person. “Is she hurt?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I ran.”
“You ran?” There’s judgment in her voice.
“After I called 911,” I lie, then lie more. “I made sure Julia was okay first. I wouldn’t just leave her bleeding on my floor.”
Except I did leave her bleeding on my floor.
“What hospital did they take her to?” Dr. Carol asks.
“They were shooting at me,” I say. “I didn’t stick around to make small talk with the paramedics. I did the right thing.”
“You did the right thing,” she agrees. “Meet me at my office. Give me half an hour to get there.”
“No way,” I say, looking at my bus map. “Nowhere that’s part of your pattern.”
I give her an address and tell her to meet me there in fifty minutes. We hang up and I take a minute to check my bag. I’m so caught up in making sure there’s a round in the chamber of my M&P, checking the box cutter in my pocket, taking out my TAP card for the bus, that I don’t notice the shape loom up beside my table.
“We’re closing in five minutes,” the manager says. I almost cut him.
Instead, I duck my head and nod and apologize, acting in a way that is totally forgettable, and I head out the door and begin my system, switching buses, doubling back, knowing that now, without a doubt, someone is trying to follow me. That makes it easier.
—
I’m at the Starbucks on the corner of Montana and 7th in Santa Monica, drinking my second bottle of water (panic is dehydrating), and it’s full dark when I see Dr. Carol’s black Audi S5 roll past. She’s taking the corner slow, looking for me on the other side of the street, when I pull open the front door and drop into the passenger seat.
“Drive,” I say.
“Jesus, you scared me,” she says.
Thankfully, she picks up speed and we cruise into a maze of suburban houses.
“Are you all right?” she asks. I don’t answer. “Lynnette?”
I’m checking to make sure there are no nasty surprises in the back seat.
“Lock the doors,” I say.
The power locks clunk shut, and I click on my seat belt.
“The freeway is better,” I say. “Stick to big streets without traffic lights. Don’t slow down at stop signs if you can avoid it.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I want to go home,” I say, and it sticks in my throat, so I swallow it again. “But I can’t, so just keep moving.”
“What happened?” she asks.
While we get on the 10, I tell her everything. When I finish she’s quiet for a minute.
“I’ll call the hospitals, see if I can find out what happened to Julia,” she says. “Could it be Billy Walker? Do you know where he is?”
Hearing his name is like licking an ashtray.
“Uintas, solitary confinement,” I say. “I check every week.”
“What about a fan?”
I shake my head.
“It’s not just one of mine,” I say. “Adrienne this morning, then me and Julia this afternoon. Someone’s coming for final girls.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Dr. Carol says.
“I told you all earlier,” I say. “We don’t need meetings anymore because it’s over? Someone always wants to kill us. It’s never over.”
“We need to go to the police,” Dr. Carol says.
“No way,” I say. “Garrett P. Cannon didn’t do squat for me before, and his buddies won’t do squat for me now except lock me in a cell and make me a sitting target.”
“I know trusting law enforcement is a scary step for you,” Dr. Carol says. “But they are the right people to deal with this. Someone tried to kill you, Lynnette. Someone shot Julia. This is serious.”
“I own a lot of guns,” I say through clenched teeth. “I have a dead person in my home. Someone sprayed automatic gunfire all over my building. A cop’s going to think three things: terrorist, terrorist, and terrorist.”
“I’ll talk to them,” Dr. Carol says.
“By the time they stop overreacting and start listening it will be too late,” I say. “Don’t you get it? I only get to make one mistake and then I’m dead. They’ve been watching me for months. They knew where I was going to go. The only reason I’m not dead is because I was too fast.”
I pull my legs up onto the seat and hug my knees. I grip the hair at my temples so hard it feels like I’m going to tear it out.
“Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead,” I say.
Dr. Carol puts a hand on my arm. I flinch and she takes it away.
“They’re in my house,” I say, and I hate how my voice rises to a whine. I press my forehead to the window and start to slowly bounce it off the glass.
“Do you have someplace to go, Lynnette?” Dr. Carol asks.
I think about a hotel, or a motel, or a bar, or a church shelter. I can’t go to Marilyn or Dani. Not now. Someone’s out there waiting for us to bunch up again and make their job easier.
“Can’t we just drive around for a while?” I ask.
I’ve always thought better in cars.
“Lynnette,” Dr. Carol says. “Let’s go home, okay? You can come to my house and rest for the night. We’ll call the other girls and make sure they’re informed if you feel that’s important, and in the morning we’ll sit down and talk this through.”
“Who’s in your house?”
“It’s just Skye and Pax,” she says.
“Men,” I say.
“Pax is eight years old,” she says. “And we’re lucky if Skye comes out of his room once a day. He’s always on his computer. I’ve got an alarm system, a gate, and a guest room. Come home.”
The only people I trust are the other final girls. We’ll always have each other’s backs.
Except for Julia. Who had Julia’s back?
But Dr. Carol understands us. She’s been there for us for sixteen years. If I’m going to trust someone who’s not one of us, it’s her.
“Is there a room with no windows?” I ask.
“I have a gym in the basement,” Dr. Carol says.
It’s not like I have a lot of choices.
—
Dr. Carol lives in a white two-story hacienda in Sherman Oaks that’s designed to soothe and comfort your spirit, but it’s still got the full complement of rich-person security accessories: motion-activated floodlights, an automatic gate, an indoor two-car garage, ADT stickers tucked discreetly in the corners of its windows, tastefully concealed cameras. Even so, I’m glad I’ll be sleeping in the basement.
Inside, a blond kid missing a tooth hops from foot to foot in the kitchen while sucking on a Go-Gurt.
“Mom!” he says. “Mom! Mom! Mom!”
“Pax,” she says. “This is Lynnette. She’s a patient and she’ll be sleeping here tonight.”
He stops hopping and narrows his eyes at me.
“Are you crazy?” he asks.
“Pax!”
“Fuck off,” I say.
“Lynnette!”
“Mom! She said a bad word!”
“Pax, hush!” Dr. Carol says. “Lynnette, this is my home and my family. You need to be respectful while you’re here.”
The windows over the sink look out into the backyard and I see a wall around it, which is good. Still, I put myself out of the window’s direct line of sight.
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to make peace with the kid. After all, I need his house at least for the night. “But I’m not crazy and I don’t appreciate being called that.”
The kid ignores me and hands Dr. Carol a Post-it note.
“Mom!” he says. “The police called! You’re supposed to call this guy back!”
Dr. Carol does her best not to look at me, but kids have ESP.
“Are they looking for her?” he shouts. “Is she a criminal? Is she a terrorist?”
“Pax, go to the activity room,” Dr. Carol says.
“No!” he says. “I’m not leaving you alone with a suicide bomber!”
He’s giving me a headache.
“Why don’t you show Lynnette your comic book while I call these people back?” Dr. Carol says.
Not taking his eyes off his mom as she dials the number on the Post-it note, Pax grubs in his backpack and pulls out a sheaf of paper that’s been stapled together.
“Here,” he says, shoving them at me. “It’s War Ghost. Pay me five dollars.”
I ignore him and listen to Dr. Carol.
“Hello, this is Dr. Carol Elliott,” she says on the phone. The comic hangs limp in my hand. “I got a call from this number, from Officer Fuller. Mm-hmm . . . mm-hmm . . . that’s awful. No, I don’t know. Have you found her?” She listens for a while, then: “Please, if you hear anything at all, please call me back at this number at any hour. I go to bed late and get up early. Actually, let me give you my mobile phone number. You can call there twenty-four hours a day. That’s right.”
She gets off the phone.
“Pax, go in the other room,” she says.
“Mom,” he whines.
“Now!” she snaps.
He yanks War Ghost out of my hand. I’m staring at Dr. Carol, waiting for the bad news, but she’s waiting for Pax to be totally gone. When she’s convinced he can’t hear, she turns to me.
“Heather’s halfway house burned down,” she says.
“I told you!” I say, but she’s shaking her head.
“They found drug paraphernalia in the basement where the fire started,” she said. “No one died, but a few people are hurt. Heather’s missing. They think she started it.”
I would think that, too, if I wasn’t a final girl.
“They’re coming for us,” I say. “One by one, they’re coming for us. We need to call Uintas and double-check that Billy is still there. We need to find out where all of them are, all the monsters. This is the sequel or a crossover, or I don’t know what.”
“Lynnette, you need to calm down,” Dr. Carol says. “We don’t know anything right now.”
“I know everything!” I shout. “I know what’s happening! Why won’t anyone listen to me?”
“Don’t yell at my mom!” Something sharp hits my leg.
I look down and Pax is baring his teeth at me, gripping a sharpened pencil in one hand. It didn’t break the denim but I’ll have a bruise.
“Leave her alone!” he snarls.
I shove him hard, and he goes down on his butt, his mouth forming a comical O. I look at Dr. Carol and her mouth is making an identical shape.
“I need to be alone,” I say, and leave the room.
—
Dr. Carol gives me some bedding and an air mattress, and the gym locks from the inside. There are no windows, and once I drag the elliptical over to block the door I make a nest in the corner and plug in my phone, turn the ringer up loud, and slide my Smith & Wesson under my pillow. Then I try to figure this out.
Who’s coming for us? A fan? That has to be it. The monsters in our lives are as particular about their final girls as people are about their Starbucks order. Black nonfat camp counselor with high threshold for pain and an extra shot. A double soy lesbian babysitter who’s not afraid to stab someone in the eye, hold the foam.
But how are they this organized? Final girl fans are lonely and loony. The kind of people who relocate to be near a serial killer and who dream of having a maniac’s baby. The kind of people who dressed up as Ricky Walker and marched around outside my house, who followed my foster mom to malls and tried to steal her used Kleenex for voodoo rituals. These are not logical thinkers.
Right before I fall asleep I realize I know who it is: all of them. In the darkness of the house around me I can feel all the monsters creeping through the shadows. Ricky and Billy Walker, sneaking down the stairs and shushing each other. Nick Shipman standing at the front door with an absent grin on his big round moon face. The Hansens fumbling around in the garbage by the back of the house. The Ghost coming in through the garage door. Teddy Volker standing in the light of the refrigerator. The pale Dream King lurking in the shadows of the mirror on the other side of the room.
There’s a sound in the hall, and my heart rate spikes. I take eight deep breaths and tell myself it’s probably that creepy little kid. I’ll have to remember to look at his comic book in the morning, check it for signs of aggression, see if one day I’ll have to worry about him, too. Even an eight-year-old can be dangerous if he gets the drop on you.
I feel naked. They knew my plans. They knew my exits. They were inside my computer. They’re inside my house. I feel so violated I don’t think I’ll ever feel clean again.
I left Julia behind. It was the right thing to do. She’d have done the same thing. I didn’t have time to worry about her. I only had time to save myself.
I put two five-pound barbells next to my bed, just in case. I don’t want to have to shoot Dr. Carol’s kid. I’d rather just stun him.
When I first came to L.A., I thought I was going to die. Men followed me wherever I went. I stopped leaving the house. I stopped going to group. Then they started ringing my doorbell and I realized staying home wasn’t safe either.
Dani told me I should learn how to shoot, it’d make me feel safer, but I’d never held a gun before and how could I go to a range? I couldn’t bear to have my back to all those people, facing an empty field, my total concentration focused on a tiny paper target seventy-five feet away. Adrienne told me Red Lake was renovating and it still had its rifle range. She drove me there.
We were the only two people on the property and we stayed for three days, and every day I unloaded rounds until my wrists went numb while Adrienne sat beside me in her white sweater and jeans, wearing red ear protectors, watching my back. She didn’t believe in guns but she believed in me.
Adrienne is dead. Julia might be dead. Heather might be dead. In the blink of an eye, half my life is gone.
The hard thing about sleeping on an air mattress is that when you cry, the water pools. It’s got nowhere else to go.