Man in a Hurry

The store stank of gunpowder and cat litter. Four bodies lay on the ground, each torn apart and soaking into a growing pile of Tidy Cat. The 45mm bullets hit bodies and just kept going. Whispers filtered in from outside. Someone pounded on the door. A window shattered, and a large brick slid across the floor followed by a river of glass. And the worst part was, nothing made sense anymore! Nothing. Guy was in a hodunk town in Iowa called Frankfurt—population 4,000 on the dot—holding a SCAR L military rifle and wondering how the absolute fuck he was going to get out of here alive.

He had 196 rounds. That left 3,996 people.

The pounding intensified, angry fists competing with Guy’s makeshift barricade of charcoal bags heaped onto a small shopping cart. It would hold for another ten minutes if Guy was lucky. He did not feel lucky.

“Essentials,” he said. “Pretend it’s a ruck march.” The rifle had a strap, and he let it dangle as he ran deeper into the store, looking for a backpack. He could fill it with water and energy bars. After that, well … he wasn’t sure what came next. Des Moines was 140 miles away, and that was a hellova trip on foot. It didn’t help that his phone had stopped working as soon as he entered the town.

His CO had joked when he said he would take the scenic route. “Scenic? Ain’t nothin’ to see in Iowa, rockchewer. Just corn and rednecks.”

“Fucking bullshit,” Guy muttered.

Jake’s Convenience Locker lived up to its name. Guy grabbed a hiking backpack on his way to the grocery section, where he found a wall of glass-door fridges stocked with energy drinks. He popped the local brand called Sprintfurt. It tasted like cherries boiled in piss, but it had a 100mg of caffeine. He dumped another dozen of the things into his bag. Guy didn’t plan on sleeping anytime soon.

Backpack fit to burst, Guy ran for the exit. He wasn’t good, but he was in control. That mattered more. It was how he lived through Iraq, and it was how he’d live through this.

He put two bullets through the door.

He stepped over two bodies.

*

It all started with red and blue lights, a siren, and a short deputy officer with a uniform so primed and pressed it looked like a costume. “Documentation,” the cop asked. He chewed on the word like it was gum. He rested his hand on the butt of his pistol, either a sign of insecurity or paranoia. Or racism. Guy didn’t think there were many black folk around here.

“Sorry,” Guy said. “Got my wallet in my pocket, and the paperwork in the glove. Gonna reach for ‘em.”

“Come on, come on. Let me see your documentation.”

To be fair to the cop, Guy had been going 20 over. However, the roads were empty. No trucks or cars or people walking along the side. He hadn’t even seen a bird fly overhead in the last hour. It was like he had entered some ghost road, one so peaceful it made his skin jittery. It wasn’t right. Guy shoved his hand into his pocket, and the cop shuffled on his feet. Maybe he was high. Not like there was anything else to do around here.

“Here,” Guy said, handing over the license.

“This is expired,” the cop said.

“Bullshit.”

“See, it says right here. Expired February 20^th, 2018. What day is it? Well? Do you know what day it is, because I know what day it is.”

“April 20^th.” Guy took his license back. There was no way it was bad. But when he looked again, it was. “This doesn’t—”

“Come on, come on. Out of the car and hands were I can see ‘em.”

“Fuck.”

*

Guy kept his shots short and sweet. The gun responded to the slightest press of his finger, almost eager to go off, and the residents of Frankfurt crumpled around him. Many were carrying knives or bats, though a few had their own weapons, mostly hunting rifles. They were strangely bad shots. Guy had met his fair share of rednecks, both in the army and out, and most could hit a bulls eye from a hundred feet once they had a few beers in them. These ones though, they couldn’t hit dirt if they were aiming at the ground.

“Just one more thing that don’t make sense,” Guy said. He reached down to loot a corpse of her pistol. It was a cheap 9mm, and it fit comfortably in the waistband of his jeans.

The woman was pretty, or had been. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Pale skin. She was wearing a yellow sundress with two big red stains on it. Guy sucked in a breath. He had only shot her once. He was sure of that, because he had to be careful with his ammo. Yet she had two wounds, and big ones too: One in her chest, where the SCAR had done its work, and one in her gut. Guy didn’t do gut shots. He had a scar from one, and even these batshit rednecks didn’t deserve that kind of misery.

“What is goin’ on!?”

Well. Shoot first, questions later. It wasn’t ideal, but it was either that or die. Guy was not going to die in Iowa.

“Well Golly!” the town’s only mechanic shouted from somewhere behind. “I found him! I found him over here!”

Guy ran. That mechanic had come to visit him in the jail with bad news about his car. He had been wearing someone else’s face.

The worst part about Frankfurt was that it looked like a perfect little town. Idyllic. The houses were modest with big yards, and half the trees had tire swings hanging from them. On his trip in, Guy swore he smelled pies cooling on windowsills. The place was clean, the church big, and everyone smiled. But the smiles were wrong, too wide, too distended, like everyone was secretly a snake. Everyone’s breath smelt like stale meat.

Guy cut through a yard, stopping just long enough to watch an old man light a cigarette. When he smiled, his grin went all the way to his ears.

“Good luck, son.” The man said. “No one ever makes it to tha road, but youa almos’ there. ‘Bout two miles lef’.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“Shouldn’ cuss,” The man shook his head and reached for a bucket hanging by his side. Guy leveled his gun. He didn’t want to waste the ammo, but he didn’t want to leave this one alive, either. “Frankfurt’s a ni’ place. No one cusses here. Not ‘till you shauw’d up.”

The man dumped the bucket over himself. It was brown and red, and it stank like a sewer.

“Two mile,” he shouted. “Watch fer deer!”

“Golly!” the mechanic called again.

Guy ran.

*

Guy hadn’t been surprised that the jail stank. All jails stink. This one though, it smelled like ten-week old death. And like all bad things, it reminded him of being in Iraq. Guy shivered. He knew it was funny in its own way, because he had come to Iowa to escape this shit, not get dragged back in. His CO would laugh at the irony.

“Just corn and rednecks,” he said to himself.

“Yeah, yeah,” the cop said. He opened the jail door and shoved Guy in. The door closed with a heavy clank and the rumble of rusted tumblers.

“You didn’t even read me any rights,” Guy said. “This whole thing is bullshit. Just charge me a fine or—”

“Rights?” The cop demanded. “I know your rights. Got ‘em memorized from the book. You want ‘em? Well, go ahead and sit down. Just go ahead. I’ll recite ‘em to you word for word. Right from the book down to the punctuation mark.”

Guy looked at the cot. It looked clean enough, yet it was where most of the bad smell was coming from. He decided to remain standing.

“You’re supposed to read them while you arrest me, not after.”

“Don’t you tell me how to do my job!”

The cop moved further into the jail, towards a desk. He twirled his keys on his hands. Guy told himself he was being paranoid, that this would work itself out—it was PTSD and concussions and every other bad thing that had happened to him overseas. The smell wasn’t real.

Except it was. It burned, and his eyes watered. The cop sat behind his desk, propped himself up, and began to read the paper. The major headline read, “Headless Deer Found Outside Cuddle Family Property.”

*

The SCAR burned; the barrel smoked. It was eager to shoot. Guy ejected another clip and loaded his last one. 50 rounds left, and then he’d have to switch to the 9mm. Nothing still made sense, but he had passed that two mile road and was now deep in an Iowa forest and heading east. If he kept going, he was sure to find a road or a farm or something. At the very least, that mechanic was now dead. He had dogged Guy for three full miles, screaming “Golly!” at the top of his lungs until Guy put a bullet in his throat.

“Okay,” Guy said. He stared into the dark woods. “Ruck march.”

In a way, it wasn’t much different than the swamps of Louisiana. Big trees, big dirt, and paths worn down by animals. Guy could march for hours in this. No alligators, muck, or mosquitoes the size of his fist, either. A cool breeze filtered through the trees, rustling leaves and the beads of sweat running down his face.

He felt safe.

“Ain’t safe though,” he reminded himself.  He opened his bag and grabbed an energy drink. “Not by a long shot.”

Guy marched deeper into the forest. If he got out of this alive, no one would believe him. Pleasantville meets Cannibal Holocaust in the middle of fucking nowhere, and then the only cop was so stupid he left the keys hanging on a hook outside the cell door. It was the town drunk who had let him out, a fat man reeking of gasoline and slurring the word, “goat” as he fought with the buttons on his jacket. Guy had slipped passed him and found the SCAR in the jail’s weapons locker.

It was all too good to be true, yet Guy was still alive, still whole. He was in control.

He marched for what felt like another mile before the quiet forest gurgled with noise. At first it sounded like the whoops of a coyote, but knew coyotes from his time in Louisiana. These weren’t right. They were too slow, almost giggly. He leveled his gun. The sounds were out front and getting closer, heading in a straight line. Whatever they were, they wouldn’t be happy once they got here.

The trees rustled again, not with breeze but with people. The family stepped out of the leaves as a single unit, each naked from the waist down and wearing a shredded flannel shirt, except the lone woman who wore a faded crop top. She cradled a baby and wiggled her fingers at it. Then she wiggled them at Guy. Mud covered them in thick patches, like they had been sleeping in it, and each wore a severed deer head as a kind of helmet. It hid the tops of their faces but left their hanging jaws visible. Their tongues were long and swollen purple. They whooped and jumped, and one strummed a chord on his guitar.

Guy shot him through the right lung.

The rest charged. They didn’t carry weapons, yet they scared Guy more than anyone else. These people passed batshit long ago. They laughed as bullets blew pop-can sized holes in their chests, their blood bouncing through the air, their legs carrying them forward. They moved like people on PCP. Or zombies. A man with a thick beard stretched his grimy arms out wide in a bad imitation of a hug.

“Get the fuck back!” Guy shouted as the man tried to bury him. Guy scrambled back and swung the SCAR like a baseball bat. It hit the man in the jaw and took it clean off, spraying blood and yellow teeth onto the ground.

“Oh tha’s good,” the man slurred as he fell to the ground. “He’s a real—” Guy stomped his face into pulp.

The man’s family clapped. Guy returned to shooting, terror overtaking fineness. They kept coming, and the bullets kept flying. Lead tore apart the forest, turning dirt and bark into little brown fireworks that fizzled out into pools of blood. The gunshots rang loud, only now they sounded like church bells. Everyone died with a too-big smile on his face.

When the SCAR clicked empty, the forest was stained crimson and smelled like gunpowder and vomit.

Guy dropped the rifle and reached for the 9mm. Only the woman still stood, clutching her baby close and surveying her dead family. She shook her head, and the dead deer covering her face twisted about until it faced backwards. Guy took aim.

“Reminds me of a song,” she said. “Sad song. Always makes my daddy cry.”

“Turn around,” Guy said. “Turn around, and go home.”

“You want to hear it?”

“Turn the fuck around or I’ll kill you!”

“It’s called ‘No One Dies Here.’”

The woman began to hum, and Guy ran passed, torn between shooting her in the back or simply putting a round into his own skull and calling it quits. The forest became a blur of stinging branches and large tree roots that threatened to trip him every other step. Sweat ran down his face and into his eyes. When his sides burned and his breathing labored, he forced himself to stop and drink another energy drink. His eyes felt like sandpaper, and his nerves twitched in ways he didn’t like. He was one bad cough away from falling to the ground or losing his mind. For all he knew, both had already happened.

It took most of the night, but Guy eventually found the edge of the forest. He stepped out, the ground going from dirt to gravel to concrete, and stopped. He screamed.

*

Frankfurt waited for him. The entire town clapped while church bells rang and the faint smell of an apple pie carried on the breeze, cooling in some windowsill in the middle of the night. A coyote that wasn’t a coyote whooped from deep in the forest. The entire town had come to see, their jaws hanging wide and clothing stained with blood. Chunks of flesh dangled where the SCAR had done its work, but no one acted hurt. Their too-large mouths cheered like Guy had just won some kind of prize.

Guy took aim with the 9mm. His hand shook. Sweat smeared his vision.

The crowd parted. A man Guy did not recognize parted the crowd, followed by the deputy from before. This new man also wore a police uniform, though his came with a shiny, golden badge. An empty holster dangled from his right hip. Guy took a step back. The man took another step forward.

“I told ya, Atii, I told ya he’d make it. Well, didn’t I tell you? Well didn’t I?” the deputy said. He grinned like this was all his idea.

“Boy howdy, you sure did, Barry!” Atti said through a wide smile. “Mhmm, mhmm!”

Atti was tall, well over six feet and too skinny to be real. The closer he got, the more he looked like a walking skeleton. The skin on his face clung so tightly to his skull that he had no wrinkles, and his eyes and mouth looked like they were made of plastic. He held out his hand for a shake.

“Stay back,” Guy whispered. “Get the fuck away from me, or I’ll—”

“Now calm down, sir. Calm down. I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” Atti made an awkward gesture with his hands. “See, this here’s Frankfurt Iowa. Why, we’re the most pleasant town around!”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

Barry laughed. “You hear that, Atti? He thinks he can kill you! Do you believe it? Funniest thing I ever heard.”

Guy continued to fall back, and the sheriff continued to march at him. He smiled. Guy waved his pistol.

“Sir, if you’d just put that down and listen, we could be on our way home.”

“Go away!”

The sheriff shook his head. “Afraid I can’t do that, either.”

Soon they were back in the forest, with thick trees blocking the sky and fake coyotes shuffling in the bushes. Leaves crunched beneath Guy’s feet. He tried not to trip over tree roots or loose stones, and he tried to keep in control, but everything was spiraling away. He waved his gun, going from the sheriff to the deputy. Would it even work? He had six bullets. He took aim at the deputy. The sheriff was the bigger threat, but he hated the stupid cop. This was his fault.

A hand gripped Guy’s shoulder. He stopped. His blood turned to ice. He could smell the dead deer on her head and the filth on her body, and he could feel her infant squirming against his back.

“Thankya, Clara,” Atti said. His hand fell towards his holster. Up close it wasn’t empty; it carried some kind of thin stick or twig. “My name is Atticus. Atticus God, and we got a place here in Frankfurt just for you.”

Guy’s voice caught in his throat. A shot rang out, thin and weak. He twitched. His finger was on the trigger, and a small hole smoked in the tree trunk to the right of Barry’s neck. The sheriff smiled, and his stupid deputy laughed. Guy took aim, but the woman grabbed his wrist and forced the gun to the ground. Her hands were cold. Her baby squalled into his back.

“Did you like my song?” she whispered.

“I’ll forgive that,” Atticus said. “Because we’re a forgiving lot here in Frankfurt. But first you gotta do something for me. See,” he pulled the stick from his holster. It was made of wood and looked gnarled and old. Someone had spent a long time sharpening it into a knife. “I need you to smile.”

“No,” Guy whispered, or maybe he mouthed. He stared at the knife that couldn’t be a knife, because it looked like a wand. All around him, the people of Frankfurt clapped. He was back in the town again. Blood leaked down the right half of his face.

“You want to hear another song?” Clara asked.

She let his hand go, and Guy put the gun to his chin. The barrel was cold. He closed his eyes.

“This one’s called, ‘Now You Live Here Too’.”

Guy pulled the trigger.

He did not die.