Matthew Costello - Vacation

Faster—and then the group parted.

And Jack saw the trap.

A massive felled tree lay right across the road. The SUV slammed into it.

And backlit, the people waiting there. Guns sticking out like pins in black pincushions, the crowd all shadows.

They waited for him while the front of the car crumpled against the tree, tires exploding, windows shattering.

Jack’s head hit the steering wheel. He immediately tasted blood from the gash.

Then, as the shadows moved closer, Jack, blinking—blood in his eyes, too—he saw the struggling figure of Ed Lowe, laboring to walk, but walking.

His camp. His place.

Behind him, a bloodied Shana.

Someone had found them, freed them.

Lowe knew that there was an even worse danger to Paterville than the Can Heads outside.

Exposure.

Exposure would destroy the camp.

Jack looked at the seat next to him.

My gun.

He reached to the side but felt nothing.

The crowd only steps away. Some moving ahead of Lowe now, eager, perhaps forgetting that he ran the place. Maybe Lowe had had his day.

As they suddenly started racing toward the vehicle, Shana raised her ax. Other women were there too, rocks in their hands.

Everyone invited.

He heard Lowe’s voice as if coming from miles away.

“Jack! Jack, it’s over. We got you, got your family!”

As the crowd gathered close, Jack could only shoot one quick glance at the back.

Lowe stuck his head through a shattered opening in the driver’s-side window, his jowly neck catching some of the cracked glass.

“We’re going to rip you all into pieces!”

Jack turned. His hand again reached to the seat beside him.

The gun. Fallen to the floor?

He popped open the glove compartment.

A knife there. Used to be there.

His hand closed on it.

A jagged knife for fishing. Probably rusty.

Jack spoke as loud as he could.

“You’re right! It is over!”

He jabbed the blade into Lowe’s neck and twisted it left and right before leaving it buried in Lowe’s gullet.

But the action only seemed to embolden the others, now reaching in through the smashed windshield, the side windows, into the back.

No way forward, no way out.

More glass being smashed, pried away. Like opening a can. To get at what was inside.

Jack sat there.

He could see the clock on the dash. The digital clock. The time.

“Now,” he whispered.

Jesus, now…

A rock smashed into the front window, then another, until, on all sides, the windows took hits.

The car tilted forward, wheels flat, engine dead, the SUV now rendered completely immobile.

Until one crazed person kept banging at a rear passenger window with a big rock broke through.

Then, like a feeding frenzy, that small opening triggered the horde to clamber on top of the vehicle, banging, shooting, smashing. A few with flashlights, shooting light into the car to see what treasure waited for them.

Jack leaned down, flailed around, feeling the car floor. The gun had to have fallen down here.

Had to be there.

Then he had it.

He started shooting through the jagged openings in the glass as they tried to get at the door latches, some trying to crawl through impossibly small holes in the windows.

Just Can Heads, he thought. That’s all you are.

Shot after shot.

And then hands reaching in from the side to grab at the blanket, and what lay beneath it.

Jack ran out of bullets. He let the pistol fall. Ammo somewhere… but why bother?

The Explorer was covered with Can Heads.

All around the sides, on top, reaching into every hole. Ed Lowe, his throat gushing, still battered at Jack’s side window, the bloody spittle flying out.

The SUV like a bit of candy dropped in the summer dirt and soon coated with ants as though it was a living thing.

He reached down to the switch.

Not a slow movement. Perhaps he had waited too long already. He thought he heard something inside the car, on top of the blanket.

Jack threw the first safety switch.

The car had enough explosives to make a crater twice the size of the vehicle.

And blow the dozens of monsters on it to pieces.

He threw the second, now-active switch.

He heard a click.

Christie sat up in Tom Blair’s car.

She looked back at the kids.

“Okay. Just stay down.”

Nothing.

“You hear me?” she said.

Kate answered first, her body pressed down as close to the floor as she could. “Yes, Mom.”

Then Simon, following his sister’s model: “Yes.”

She turned the key, hands shaking with the thought that the car wouldn’t start, even though Jack had tested it.

He had been so clear in his instructions; so precise in his plans.

To watch the time. Because when it was the right time she had to pull out of the lot.

If they were expecting them to leave, it would be the front gate. They’d look for the Explorer.

But maybe, he had said, they’ll have their hands full.

She had tried pleading, the kids able to hear.

They had to stay together. They were a family.

She had to watch her words with the kids so close… her eyes were wet, trying to hide that from them. Until she didn’t care, as she wiped at them.

I’ll get through, he said. Somehow. Let them spot me first.

With the camp under siege, they could get on the roads and get out.

But if they were watching, he had to make them think that this was how they’d escape. Together.

He had put a hand up to her cheek.

I’ll get away.

He gave her a kiss. He hugged the kids.

Then another kiss.

And words meant for her ears alone.

If you hear something…

He held her tight.

You’ll know.

She couldn’t let him go. Couldn’t let him go.

But he pulled free.

And then he backed away, moving to the Explorer. She did as he instructed. Getting the kids down. Then she crouched down, even though she couldn’t see him anymore, couldn’t get a look at him inside the car, pulling away.

Only when their car was gone did she get the kids inside the station wagon, with its ordinary glass, its ordinary wheels.

If they were escaping, they’d expect them all to be in the Explorer.

She started the station wagon. Then pulled around to the back of the parking area, and onto the service road.

She remembered his last instructions.

As fast as you can…

Despite the rutted dirt road, she pressed the accelerator to the floor.

Christie didn’t bother looking at what was all around her. People ran around, their fear sending them in all directions.

At one point, someone ran madly across the road that weaved through this upper camp, and rolled right onto the front of the car, then back, over the windshield, onto the roof.

Random Can Heads roamed around. The sound of bullets closer as people tried to spot them running through the upper camp.

That meant—

Might mean that the fence was still open, the electricity still down.

She tried to see where the winding road led to—a way out? A road to the other gate?

She drove over a huge rock.

The jolt made Simon yell.

“Mommeee…”

“Sorry, baby.”

Then she kept repeating, saying it.

Sorry, baby, sorry, so sorry…

She saw the road curve right, out of this upper camp, the car swerving as she took it fast.

She heard a noise like a hammer hitting the side of the car.

A bullet. Someone shooting.