PRIME EVIL FOREST
Chapters Thirty-five, Thirty-six, Thirty-seven & Thirty-eight
35.
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 01.15AM
Vulture felt numb. There was only one thing now, and that was to kill this fucking kid. Ghost had been hit in the shoulder, his left one, and Vulture had a hand on his right arm and was dragging him through the trees. The wound wasn’t bad, he didn’t think. There wasn’t time to worry about that.
Ghost kept saying ‘wait,’ but they couldn’t. He’d caught one glimpse of the kid, but that was a long while back and there was no choice but to move. There were helicopters in the air behind them. The place back there was all lit up by their beams, as though they were back in the fucking city. They were running uphill, further into the forest. Away from the road, he thought. Away from the car and their way back down.
He pushed the black hole of a thought out of his head, the one that told him he might never get back down to the city. He pushed Juanita away, too. The thought of her was powerful enough to break him, to make him fail.
Suddenly Ghost pulled his arm free and slumped down. Vulture shouted in despair, stopping beside him. He peered into the trees, but there was no sign of the kid. Panic spread in him, sapping what little energy he had left. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He made a mess of all of this. Sneak’s body was sticking out of that hole. The cops would be in the forest by now. They might have dogs.
‘We gotta keep moving man,’ he told Ghost. ‘Get up.’
‘Shit,’ Ghost said, sounding like he’d run out of breath. His face had gone very white, and he was sweating a lot. His eyes were wide and popping out of their sockets. He looked like a different person, Vulture thought. His smooth, round face was like somebody else’s, now it’d lost the shit eating grin.
‘Can you move?’ Vulture asked him.
‘Soon. Gimme a minute, man,’ Ghost said.
‘We don’t have a minute. We got to go now.’
Ghost pulled his hoodie off his shoulder, twisting his head and looking down at it. There was a bloody groove in the skin above his collar bone. The flesh around it was as white as a white person’s.
Ghost laughed his crazy, sudden laugh, looking back up. The grin was back, hollower now. ‘Ain’t so bad,’ he said.
‘Good, so let’s go.’
‘You got any coke left, homes?’
Vulture felt in his pocket, and pulled out a baggie.
‘Be quick,’ he pleaded.
Ghost let his hoodie cover the wound up again, and took the baggie. He scooped a big bump out on his finger, and sniffed it up, some of the powder sticking in the blood on his hands, and some around his nose. He looked up at Vulture, and smiled.
‘We should have had him back there. Shit,’ Vulture said.
‘I almost did. My fucking gun was empty.’ Ghost fussed in his pocket, spilling shells onto the forest floor and reloading his Colt, painfully slow.
‘Ghost. We need to go now,’ Vulture said.
‘I love you, bro,’ Ghost replied, smiling again. He made no move to get up. ‘But I think we need to get the fuck out of here.’
‘Not me.’ Vulture said. ‘No fucking way.’
‘We should go back down. Deal with this later. Shit is getting too crazy.’
A sudden, welcome rage flared in Vulture. It glowed warmly in his limbs, like relief.
‘Then go back down,’ he told Ghost. ‘But when you do, you need to run anyways.’
‘What you mean?’
‘Butcher wants you dead,’ Vulture told him.
Ghost looked up at him, the stupid grin sliding off his face.
‘What the fuck?’
‘He made me promise to kill you. Leave you up here. For something to eat maybe.’
‘Why the fuck would he do that?’ Ghost’s voice had hardened.
‘Because you stole from him,’ Vulture said. ‘I fucking told you not to do it and you fucking did it anyway.’
Ghost put his head back against his tree, and stared up at the sky. ‘Shit,’ he said.
‘You fucking dead now anyway,’ Vulture said, looking away.
‘No man, I’m not dead.’ Ghost said. ‘I’m shot, but I been shot before. I come back from the fucking dead, man. Remember?’
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
‘S’how I got my name,’ Ghost said quietly.
‘Butcher gave you that name,’ Vulture told him.
Ghost stared into the trees, his eyes looking someplace far away.
‘We need to keep moving,’ Vulture said.
‘I known you my whole life,’ Ghost replied.
‘I didn’t say I would’ve done it,’ Vulture said.
‘If we killed that kid, back there? If we got finished up? Then maybe you might’ve?’
Ghost’s gun was still in his hand, flat against the forest floor. Vulture looked at it.
‘Would you have done it, bro?’ Ghost said, quietly.
‘I don’t think so,’ Vulture said. He looked down at his friend for a moment.
‘I need to go. I need to finish this up.’
Ghost’s hand had whitened around the pistol grip. He didn’t look at Vulture.
‘Good luck,’ Vulture told him. He turned and set off into the trees.
When he was out of Ghost’s sight, he felt suddenly real strongly that he’d never see him again. He stopped again, and leaned against a tree, a sudden wave of dread and loneliness washing over him. He shivered, realizing there were tears in his eyes. What the fuck? He hadn’t expected that.
He did another bump of coke, and shook his head as if to clear it. Then he moved off in the direction he thought the boy had gone.
36.
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 1.30AM
Javier ran until his legs gave out, then slumped to the floor behind an outcrop of rock. He’d reached the higher ground, where the trees were thinner and the ground stonier. He’d been able to hear the men behind him, for a while, but now he thought he’d opened up some distance between them.
He rolled onto his stomach and pointed the rifle back down the way he’d come. There was no sign of anyone. A long way back, a chopper was circling over where the farm had been, shining a cone of light down onto it. Javier shivered as he watched.
He shoved his left hand into his pocket and pulled a few shells out. He thought he had a little over ten left. He kept the rifle aimed down the slope as he filled the magazine.
As he lay watching, the fear in his stomach cooled and numbed. In its place, a hot ball of anger was burning like acid. His mind was suddenly very clear, like everything had been scoured out of it.
The man who’d tried to kill him, the one who hadn’t laughed, it had been personal for him. He’d wanted to kill Javier. He’d known that as soon as he saw the guy’s face. It had to have been his brother, who’d brought this down on him. It was what that stupid fucking asshole had done back in the city. He felt that as a truth.
His brother had brought these enemies down on him and his uncle and his friend. Killed them, destroyed everything he’d worked on. Cost him everything, because now there was nothing to take home. Now he couldn’t fix things for his mom.
He brought these fucking germs into the forest. That was almost the worst thing. Another truth hit him: he loved this place. He didn’t want it to be tainted with what was down there, in the city. It made him sick. He knew this place now, he realized. He’d lived in it. He was at home. These other men weren’t.
He relaxed his grip on the rifle and watched the tree line. It was cold, and he pulled his hood up over his head and nestled into the ground. The moonlight was bright, gleaming off the loose chips of rock that covered the mountainside, like scales on a giant snake.
He lay in the shadow and waited, letting the thoughts become cool and clear in his head.
Spider had been his friend. He’d saved his life. His uncle wasn’t much better than his father. He didn’t know shit about the forest. He’d arrived looking like a lost, overgrown boy scout. He’d used Javier to make money. But he was still family. He’d stuck around when his father hadn’t.
Both him and his uncle had stupid, evil brothers, he thought then. His dad, and Knight. Fuck them both. It was good that Knight was gone now too. They were a cancer that needed cutting away. Maybe without them, the family could survive.
Fuck these men that had come to the forest, too.
A final realization struck him, and with it, some of the warmth ran back into his blood. He wasn’t trapped in the forest with them. Fuck that. They were trapped in here with him.
He watched the tree line. He was almost disappointed when only one of them walked out of it.
37.
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 1.45AM
Lock knew by instinct when they’d found one of the men. That special, pregnant type of silence. He could feel it even behind the noise of the choppers, and the cars that could be heard on the highway. A little patch of the forest that was dead still. Someone was nearby.
He raised a hand to gesture Foley to stop, and they both crouched down on one knee, rifles raised, scanning the forest.
There. Someone was sitting behind a tree, twenty feet or so ahead. His shoulder was jutting out a little way, and he had his back to them. Lock scanned the forest some more, looking for anything else unusual that might grab at his eye. There was nothing. As far as he could tell, the man was alone.
He turned to Foley, and they nodded at each other.
‘You there. Put your hands where I can see ’em,’ Lock called to the guy.
The man turned, poking his head past the trunk and looking at Lock and Foley. A Hispanic kid in a black sweatshirt. Shaved head above a round, pale face. He smiled, then lifted a pistol across his knee and fired it.
Lock hit the forest floor, and rolled until he had a tree in front of him. He heard Foley moving behind him.
‘Well shit,’ he said to himself.
Foley scrambled up beside him. ‘He’s the one been shot,’ he whispered. ‘Fucker’s white as a sheet.’
‘Shot and fucking crazy,’ Lock said. ‘You see him smile at me?’
Foley chuckled. ‘There’s gonna be another one out here. Somebody left him behind.’
‘You gonna come out of there, maybe go home alive?’ Lock called.
‘Fuck you,’ the guy behind the tree said.
‘I guess he ain’t,’ Foley whispered.
‘You on your own, up there?’ Lock shouted.
‘Sure,’ the guy replied.
‘Shot, and all alone. Don’t sound good.’
There was no reply.
‘You ain’t gonna get many chances, you keep shooting at us,’ Lock yelled. ‘Put the gun down. Step out where we can see you.’
Silence.
‘You gonna make us come and get you?’ Lock asked.
A crazy laugh rang out. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ the guy shouted.
‘Forest Service, law enforcement,’ Lock said.
‘Cops?’
‘That’s right,’ Lock replied.
‘You look like some sort of a fucking soldier, bro. Face paint and shit. But you just a pussy ass cop?’
Lock didn’t reply. Beside him, Foley pointed two fingers to his right, and rolled in their direction, flanking the tree.
Lock started talking again, to cover the sound. ‘You got two options. One: Come out, drop the gun, give it up. Get some medical attention. Get out of here in one piece.’
The guy cackled again. ‘And two?’ he yelled.
‘We shoot you dead and you go home like your friends back there.’
For a moment there was silence. Lock glanced to his right. Foley had only made a few feet of ground.
He looked back at the tree. The guy leaned out, bold as brass. ‘Fuck you,’ he said, and fired two more rounds.
Lock dipped his head. When he raised it again, the guy had set off into the trees at a run.
38.
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2.15AM
Vulture had a terrible feeling that he was walking far away from the road, and the car. From everything. He had no idea where he was. He followed his instinct, and tried not to think too hard. He went in the direction that the boy had been running. At least, that was what he hoped he was doing.
The ground beneath him was getting steeper, the air colder. He was going up, up, up. It was good to be getting away from the farm, and the choppers and the cops he knew would be down there. But he was a long way from anywhere, it felt like now.
That kid is up here, somewhere, he told himself. It seemed like he could feel it. Either that, or he was going nuts.
He had three rounds left in his pistol. He carried it in his right hand now, because its barrel was so cold that it hurt the skin of his back when he tucked it into his pants. At least its grip was plated with wood.
He shivered as he walked, going as fast as he could, hunching his chin down into his neck, his hood pulled low over his brow. All the while, he scanned the hillside ahead, looking for movement, listening out for a sound, anything to tell him he wasn’t going crazy.
So far, there was nothing.
After a little while he turned up a steep, bare slope, heading for some more pines above it. He could see that there was snow, a little further up. Shit. Westmont had been baking its ass off, earlier in the day. Up here it was like Christmas in a kid’s book.
Without the trees he felt exposed. The fucking kid had a rifle. He crouched and scanned the hillside, suddenly feeling like he was being watched. He hunched even more, like he could make himself smaller. He shivered and looked, and didn’t see anything. Shit, shit, shit.
Just a little rest. What difference could that make? He could feel it. The hope wasn’t dead. The kid was here somewhere. He could feel him. He was sure of it.
He turned, shivering harder, slumping down onto the brittle pine needles so a big rock was behind him. When he was sat down, he saw with surprise that the city had come into view below him.
It was like a blanket of twinkling fucking lights that spread over to the ocean, the towers of downtown and Hollywood jutting out of it like broken bones. Planes drew angles above it, choppers drifting like fat insects beneath them. It was like he could reach out and touch the place.
A glow curved out into the sky above the city, dirty white, fading into deep blue higher up. Closer in, the road they’d taken into the forest wound down the side of the mountain like a black river. There were lights on it, stopped in its middle. A lot of lights and a lot of cars, because they’d have found the Civic by now.
Shit. Even if he got back down…
He scanned his eyes across the city again, tamping down the panic. Big ass place, he thought. I could take Juanita and we could lose ourselves in it. Big ass world outside the city too.
Juanita. Somewhere down there, amidst those million pinpricks of light, that’s where she was. He hoped she was asleep. Tucked up in bed where he liked to see her. She always slept with her mouth closed, just a little bit of a smile on her lips. Her hair was long and black and shiny and it got in his face sometimes, and he wondered why he let that make him mad. She smelled good. He felt like he could smell her now.
His mother was down there too, he thought with a shiver of dread. She wouldn’t be sleeping. He pictured her as he’d last seen her, staring dead-eyed at the window, her rosary in her hand. And his sister. He hadn’t visited. He hadn’t wanted to see her in a hospital bed with wires and shit coming out of her, sticking in that soft warm skin that he felt against him when she rode on his shoulders.
His brother in the morgue. Freezing cold. You and me both bro, he thought.
And Butcher was down there, somewhere. You gonna do what you promised, Butch? I held my side of the bargain. I got a feeling Ghost ain’t coming back this time, and I burned the farm. Are you gonna do what you promised you would?
He took his phone out of his pocket and looked at it. There was a bar of signal on it, and a message had got through. His heart beat faster when he saw it was Juanita. He clicked through and read it.
When he had, he screamed. The rage ignited in his head again, and this time there was nothing he could do to control it. The thoughts burned in his head, nausea surging up from his gut.
He wanted to smash the phone into the rock beside him. He almost did so before he could stop himself. He beat a fist into the side of his head and then bit the knuckles until he tasted blood. He read the message again. He typed out a reply, tears of rage blurring his vision.
Im coming. Wait for me. Ill come back down and we leave together. With our kid. Well do it. Words formed in his mind that surprised him. He typed them. I love you
He hit send. The message failed. The signal had gone. He shoved the phone back into his pocket before he could smash it.
A kid. Juanita. That black hole thought. He had to get back down, after. He had to do it because now he had a kid.
Butcher. He should kill him. The fucking evil bastard. No. He should escape. With the family he made.
A kid. A fucking family.
Butcher.
His sister.
He came all this way. One more night. He had to finish. He had to do what he came to do and then he had to get back to Juanita. A kid. His kid. Why didn’t she fucking tell him?
He stood up again and roared in anger, turning back to the hillside. He raised his hands in the air, the cold, heavy pistol in his right.
‘Where are you, you little fuck?’ he screamed. ‘Fucking show yourself!’