“What the hell’s going on out there?” cried Whit, who she saw crouched down by the window alongside Judy, watching the fight unfold from what they hoped was a safe distance.
“I don’t know,” Cindy replied, joining them. “I heard screams and when I looked, they’d all gone crazy, fighting, bashing each other with rocks. I think they’ve already killed a couple! It’s like they’ve just gone insane!”
“Or like they’re possessed,” Whit said, simply.
Huh, Cindy thought. Why didn’t I think of that?
David, besieged by what
he
saw as demons, fought against them with all his might, but had help. To his right was Jeffrey Moffat, one of Hardin High’s offensive lineman and to his left, Scott Doha, a running back, but a good, physical blocker in the pocket. Additionally, two other guys – Troy Lopez and Peter Broderick, both tall, lanky fellows from the basketball team — had joined David’s side, recognizing through their own mental haze the danger that David had first identified as otherworldly and supernatural.
If anybody could put down a demonic assault, he supposed it was these guys.
“If we don’t stop them now, they’ll tear through the other campers like they were nothing,” David shouted, as if calling a play in the huddle. “This is it. This is the test.”
Jeffrey nodded, the red eyes of his enemies glowing so hot that he felt sweat dripping from his every pore. He looked over and saw that Scott’s eyes were drooping, almost closed, as he’d taken serious damage at the hands of a possessed kid named Lee Cooke, who was actually good friends with Jeffrey’s younger brother. Jeffrey played out how he’d have to explain to Owen about the Devil inhabiting his friend and trying to kill him, which forced him to bash Lee’s brains all over a rock.
He was confident that Owen would understand.
“You guys are all possessed!” screamed one of the demons, a girl who had once been a person named Penny Mendenhall, one Jeffrey had always felt had nice tits. “You have to fight against it!”
Beside him, David laughed, raised a stone and hurled it straight at the girl’s right eye. The rock connected and she screamed, dropping to the ground as blood poured out of her eye socket.
“You’re think
we’re
the possessed ones?” David yelled. “
You’re
the possessed ones!”
In the screened-in classroom, Douglas Perry and the other members of the prayer circle were witnessing the carnage up close, watching as the campers tore each other to pieces, bashing each other with rocks, clawing at eyes, tearing hair, strangling throats, biting. It looked ridiculous, not like a fight in a movie at all, but when the bodies of their fellow campers stopped moaning and fell silent, a lot of the younger prayer circle members began to cry. They’d never seen anyone killed in front of them before and it disturbed them to no end.
Douglas, however, watched the deaths with smug satisfaction. There wasn’t a person among the fighters he didn’t despise and he felt, even more than before, that the prayer circle had been the right idea. After letting his small flock soak it in for a moment longer, he raised a hand and cleared his throat.
“Everyone? Turn away from that and look to me.”
The campers did what they were told; those who had gotten up to get a better look now slowly returning to their seats.
“We did not ask God for proof of the Devil’s plan, but He gave it to us anyway,” Douglas said, indicating the windows. “
This
is what becomes of the faithless – they tear each other apart. But we...
we
are here together, the faith-
ful
. We have been chosen as witnesses. We
will
bear witness and we will continue to pray so that God can continue to communicate with us. Thank you, God.”
Variations of “thank you, God,” murmured through the group. Douglas smiled.
One of the twelve year-old boys, Ben Bermejo, raised his hand.
“Yes, David?” nodded Douglas.
“I’m hungry,” the boy replied.
“That’s because we’re fasting, Ben, as a sign of our faith,” Douglas explained, as if to a five year-old. “When we are to eat, God will let us know as surely as he just let us know of the demons that exist beyond that doorway. Until then, let your body and spirit be sustained by prayer.”
When Penny was struck by the rock and went down, screaming in agony, Faith began screaming as well. Penny had been another long-ago friend, someone Faith had been in band class with throughout junior high and a girl Faith really looked up to. She and Maia had been on their way to the kitchen, just missing Cindy, when they saw it happen.
But it was when David made his way past his other would-be attackers (“demons” to use his parlance) and leaned down to Penny, placing his hands around her throat to finish her off, that Faith began running towards her.
“No!! Stop it!!” she shouted. “You’re killing her!!”
“Faith!!” cried Maia. “Don’t!”
But Faith kept going. She was almost to Penny’s side when Maia caught up with her, half-tackling her away towards the woods.
“Don’t!” screamed Faith, hauling off and punching Maia square in the face to get her off of her.
The punch barely connected with the side of Maia’s nose, but it caught her off-balance and she tumbled to the ground, letting go of Faith. Faith turned back around, but just in time to see David snap Penny’s neck, killing her.
And then look over towards Faith.
Quickly, Faith dropped down out of sight, her eyes filling with tears at the thought of the dead girl, but then she heard Maia groan from behind her. Turning around, she saw a thin trickle of blood coming out of Maia’s left nostril, Maia looking at Faith with surprise and some fear.
“Oh, my God,” Faith whispered, immediately contrite. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Faith,” Maia said, with deadly seriousness. “We help each other and no one else. That’s the deal we made. That’s how we survive. It sucks, but if we get involved, we’re going to get killed. We can’t let our emotions get the better of us. It’d be easy to get caught up in all of this, but if we do, we die – simple as that. Those are the stakes.”
“I know,” said Faith quietly as David, losing interest or having not seen them in the first place, moved away. “I’m sorry.”
Maia nodded, but then carefully got to her feet, staying low.
“Let’s get to the mess hall,” Maia said. “We’ll be safe there.”
Faith nodded and they slowly made their way to the kitchen. Faith still had one of the keys out from Cindy, but they were still worried they’d find people inside.
As soon as they determined they were the only ones inside, they locked the doors up tight and Faith began cleaning up Maia’s nose. She took her time as it was something to focus on as the screams of the fighters out on the beach continued, seemingly getting worse with time. The sun was beginning to set and Faith could only imagine what it would be like in the camp once the killers were able to work under the cover of darkness. She tried to block this out, however, and focus on washing the dried blood off Maia’s face.
“There,” said Faith, once the last of it was washed off. “I’m sorry.”
“You mentioned,” Maia said, but then softened. “It’s okay.”
A blood-curdling scream echoed in from just outside the walls and both girls jumped as the fight was obviously moving closer. Maia looked Faith in the eye, then turned and clicked on the nearby iPod dock, turning the volume way down. A Frankie Valli song began playing softly and Maia nodded.
“The sun’s almost down,” Maia said evenly. “Let’s stick to the plan, finish what we’re doing here and head out to the diving platform as soon as it’s dark. If we go far enough into the woods, they won’t see us go in. Then, we’ll just start swimming as fast as we can.”
Faith’s face was only a few inches from Maia’s, which was cast in shadow. They hadn’t turned on any lights to avoid being found out and the yellow glow of sunset was all that was illuminating the room. Faith nodded in response to Maia’s words, but she realized that what she actually wanted to do was lean forward and kiss Maia on the lips. She had no idea where this impulse was coming from. She’d never kissed a girl before, but she’d never really done much kissing with boys, either, and hadn’t wanted to. Not like the way she wanted to kiss Maia at this moment, anyway.
Maia seemed to notice, but did nothing to encourage Faith forward, just holding herself in place as if daring Faith to do it and wondering if she might like it, too.
Finally, Faith inhaled sharply and turned away, puncturing the tension.
“We’d better finish up,” she managed to say, breaking away and heading for the walk-in refrigerator.
Outside in the camp, David and his cohorts had managed to kill over a dozen campers, mostly people they’d so recently called “friend,” Leilani among them. That said, a couple of their would-be victims — two girls, in fact — had managed to stab a heavy branch into Scott Doha’s throat and bleed him out before David and Jeffrey managed to kill them in revenge. There were a number of wounded teens still on the ground, too, bleeding and moaning, but most of their wounds looked mortal and David knew the cries wouldn’t continue for much longer.
“We did it!” exclaimed David, proudly, though he was bleeding heavily from gashes all across his own body. “We beat back the demons, maybe even the Devil. How bad-ass is that?”
He was trying to catch a breath when he turned and looked over to the administrator’s cabin, seeing a light on inside. A thought entered his brain that he immediately knew as truth.
“More there,” he said, half-pointing. “There are more demons in there.”
Jeffrey, Troy and Peter, the three remaining would-be demon extinguishers, followed David’s gaze towards the administrator’s cabin. Despite their injuries, all three quickly fell into step behind David and marched on the administrator’s cabin.
Troy, for his trouble, had a broken arm and a broken foot, but didn’t even realize it, so high on the PCP Father Billy had laced the so-called “hidden” booze with was he. Peter had a punctured lung and could barely stand, but he, too, moved forward behind David, hungry to kill more demons.
Inside the administrator’s cabin, Whit, Judy and Cindy saw the boys coming and knew it meant trouble.
“What weapons do we have?” Cindy asked, looking around.
“You want to fight them?” asked Judy, shocked. “We can just lock the door!”
“They’ll come through the windows – look at them!” Cindy cried. “They’re clearly out of their minds. We’re going to have to kill them. There’s no other way.”
Cindy went to the kitchen sink, shoving aside the curtains and finding only a fire extinguisher under it. She picked it up anyway, figuring it might be useful. Though Judy appeared to be paralyzed, Whit followed Cindy over and selected a knife from a kitchen drawer, holding it out for Cindy’s approval.
“There are four of them,” she said. “Use your head.”
Whit looked around, saw a frying pan and picked that up instead. Cindy thought it was a slight improvement, but didn’t have time to say as such before a voice came calling through the front door as the brass bell out on the porch began ringing maniacally –
clang... clang... clang...
“Cindy! Get your sweet tits out here, bitch!” yelled David, sounding like he was half-kidding. “Come on, baby! We’ve been out here doing your job for you! Time to pay the piper.”
Cindy hesitated for only a second before walking straight over to the door and swinging it wide. She surprised David, who was standing in the doorway and soon found himself staring down the barrel of the fire extinguisher hose she held in her hand. Before he could move, she raised the hose and blasted him and the three other boys directly in the face with retardant.
“
Fuuuuck!!”
screamed David, staggering backwards. He grabbed onto Peter, but he was flailing around, too, so they tumbled to the ground together.
Troy was the first to sweep the stinging retardant out of his eyes and looked up at Cindy, seeing the glowing red eyes of a demon staring right back at him.
“They got you, too, huh?”
“What are you talking about?” Cindy barked, but Troy could see other words being formed by her mouth. He smiled a nasty little grin, then charged up the steps towards her.
Cindy wheeled back with the extinguisher, ready to bash him in the face, but Troy’s broken foot buckled at the last minute and his tackle went low, right under the arc of the swinging metal canister.
“
Oof!
” cried Cindy as Troy caught her at knee-level, driving her through the doorway and onto the wood floor. He immediately he pounced on top of her, pinning her limbs.
“Fuck you, bitch!” Troy said, giving her scrunched face a lick. “Gonna burn now!”
Cindy, now in full panic mode, twisted around looking for Whit, seeing him standing nearby, frozen in place.
“Hit him!
Now!”
she cried.
But Whit couldn’t move. He just stared at Troy as the boy opened his mouth and moved it towards Cindy’s face, as if planning to bite it off.
“Help me!!” Cindy screamed, still trying to lift the extinguisher, but Troy’s legs were just too heavy against her arms.
“
Raaaaaaah!!”
Everyone turned as Judy suddenly appeared from out of nowhere, carrying the kitchen knife and running straight for Troy. Before he could raise an arm, she’d stabbed the blade directly into his throat.
Blood erupting from the wound and splashing down onto Cindy’s face, Troy clawed at his neck. Judy ripped the knife out of his throat and drove it back down into Troy’s upturned face, entering just under his eye. Howling in pain, the knife still protruding from his head, Troy fell off of Cindy and flopped onto his side.
Judy stared at this in horror, shocked at her own actions. She was just turning a look of triumph towards Cindy when her face went ashen and she grunted.
“
Guuuh...
”
Judy looked down and saw a sharp, broken wooden post from the cabin’s porch being jammed through her stomach, having been stabbed in from behind by David. As the post wriggled around inside the wound, it wound squirted even more blood onto the already blood-soaked Cindy, who scrambled to her feet and tried to free the other counselor from the jutting spear.