The Walker Family Vacation (Episode 2) Read online

  “Craig, Craig,” JoJo laughed, trying to get his attention.

  Craig spread his legs far out on either side of Wooly, his head reefed up to watch.

  JoJo said, “You know who that is?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Craig said.

  Hunt said, “Who?”

  The two men followed the path the guys’ took on their bikes, coming down the steep hill sideways on a shallower angle. But still they looked wobbly and like they’d been up all night drinking. Craig slowly released Wooly’s neck and his breath came raspy. Craig hissed, “Don’t you fucking hit me, get it?”

  Wooly nodded, his face pinched closed, not caring at all about the two redcoats coming to get them. “I’m letting you up,” Craig said, issuing it like a warning.

  Craig raised off Wooly warily, then stepped away and joined his two friends.

  Hunt repeated, “Who?”

  “Mr. Ambrose. High school teacher. Was. Interfered with my big sister when she was in school. Now he’s a loser. A drunk.”

  “Which one?” Hunt asked.

  As if in answer, the soldier in the lead pitched forward in a belly flop and his hat leaped from his head as his chin bounced off the grass. The hat bounded in the air then somersaulted ahead of him all the way to the foot of the gully.

  Steve, Craig, and JoJo burst into uproarious laughter. Their bent-over regaling became so infectious Hunt laughed as well. Now the soldier struggled to stand and his compatriot did nothing to help him, instead stumbling right past him as though he wasn’t even there.

  Hunt said, “Holy shit, how drunk are these guys?”

  Wooly appeared at his side, red-faced and watery-eyed and they exchanged sheepish glances. Hunt hugged an arm around behind him. The fallen one rose to stand, weaved and staggered, then resumed his path down the hill.

  Hunt’s phone chimed with an incoming text and he was reluctant to bring it out where these guys would see it (then steal it). But they’d heard the ding, Steve turning briefly to regard Hunt.

  The message on the screen from his brother made no sense, and he had to re-read it a few times.

  Troy: People gone crazy in town—virus—do not come to town, watch out, don’t let anyone get close to you THEY BITE go straight back to hotel every body meet there stay safe I love you

  11

  Amanda

  She paused, the two of them standing frozen at the open door of the bathroom not knowing what to do. How drunk was this guy?

  “Come up here with me,” she said softly and hoisted Bethany to her chest yet again, her back beginning to strain.

  Bethany whispered in her ear, “What’s that man doing?”

  “I think he came in to use the bathroom, honey,” she said softly to her daughter.

  Now the man’s head slowly rotated, hanging down, his whole posture seeming to sag, his head hooking up to look at them. He was young but his movements were slow and sluggish and elderly. While his eyes were opened, they seemed unseeing.

  What she’d intended to do when their eyes met was to nod, smile politely, move her and Beth to their right side of the narrow hall in the protocol of the Western world when two travelers meet in tight spaces. The man’s gaze unnerved her; sightless grey eyes, dead eyes, somehow seeing her, tracking her. Her shoulder bumped the wall as she took two timid steps toward the office. The man took a step into the hall as well, sealing them off and instead of assuming a reciprocal respect for personal space, his body heaved toward her, favoring the same side of the hall she walked.

  Her shoulder knocked a photo frame on the wall and it swung pendulously next to her as she paused now, squeezing Bethany tighter to her.

  “The, um, the bathroom is … is the door straight a-ahead …”

  The man said nothing in response, his mouth fell open as though he would speak but no words emerged, only a long dribbling strand of saliva. His eyes locked on her and he stumbled directly toward her, no intention of going around. He closed the gap steadily, his boots dragging and clunking loudly in the tight space.

  “W-what are you doing?” she stammered, reversing, taking a step backward now.

  “Mommy?” Bethany said worriedly, her head turning to see but Amanda clutching the back of her sweet blonde head and preventing her.

  As he got closer his size became apparent. Tall, maybe six-four, intimidating, big gnarly hands raising as though he sought to grab her. Light played down on his face as he lurched below the single bare low watt bulb burning above.

  “Don’t, don’t …” Amanda pleaded, her brain scorched with the sudden reality that this was actually happening; he was coming to get her.

  Face pale, bloodless, eyes sunken and milky, he opened and closed his jaw clumsily, more drool spilling over his teeth and down his work shirt. The closer he got the quicker his footsteps came until it seemed his torso fell forward and his legs propelled to keep from toppling.

  She yelled something unintelligible, her voice high and sharp with panic, kicking her heels, thrusting back to the bathroom …

  … finding the door jamb with the back of her head; the centre of her skull striking the corner like she’d been struck with an axe. Her vision exploded in twinkling stars and something clicked in her neck and as she exhaled it all went dim. The force of her collision sent her spinning, her body turning and lurching into the bathroom where she thumped to her knees and dropped screaming Bethany.

  “Mommy! Mommy!” she wailed and the moment she fell free from her mother’s clutch, spun around reaching out with grabbing hands, looking to be held again.

  Then he was on her, coming right into the bathroom—this was more than real now, this was life-and-death—falling on her, his weight crushing on her back; above her, his forehead made a porcelain clunk on the lip of the sink hard enough his teeth clacked together near her ear. She screamed. She screamed high and piercing and let it all out, a calliopean wail drowning her own daughter’s screams and while their horrified faces stared into one another for what could be the last time, her daughter’s mouth seemed pitched open silently.

  When Amanda was twelve, two men attacked her. Tried to abduct her. Luring her with a box of kittens—literally a box of kittens, how fucking cliché, guys. And that was how she’d reacted, she and her best friend Ashley rejected them, taunted the two men. The two men were undeterred, and they gave chase and she and Ashley were alone running across the empty snowy parking lot of the Redwood Community Centre on a winter Sunday. Ashley went left and Amanda stupidly went right, one man after her on foot and the other chasing in the van. She scrambled up a mountain of plowed snow, the van rammed its nose just below her feet sending up a spray of chipped ice. At the peak, the man on foot caught up and latched a hand on her ankle. He climbed her body, his hands seeking to clutch her, take her to the van, and simultaneously grope her, those clutching hands gripping her flesh and enjoying the excitement of predation. Big hand squeezing her tummy, the other one at her chest, tugging on her training bra and hurting her sensitive growing barely-there bosom. Only Amanda wasn’t prey. Though April would have only been seven then you could ask her older brother Adam if he were still alive, and he’d tell you she couldn’t be bullied. He’d had a permanently crooked little finger because he tried.

  While the man’s hands tugged and squeezed, she lay on her back and fed that motherfucker’s face the heels of the Burton boots she begged her Daddy to buy her for the grade seven ski trip. Fed them through tear-streaked vision, screaming like a siren, heart pounding, mind wild and wolf-like, feeding them and feeding them to him. Right in his mouth. She toppled down the other side of the mountain, her wild kicking propelling her until she somersaulted all the way to the parking lot with a frightening but satisfying image still in her mind’s eye of the man’s nose pushed to the side, his face exploded with his own blood, his beard caked with it, dripping from his chin … She ran home, still screaming, looking back only once and never seeing, ever, ever again the two men or their van.

  So now though she s
creamed like a desperate animal surrendering, turning its throat to a predator and hoping for a quick death, she shoved her daughter farther under the sink, not letting her poor Beth get a hold of her arms. The man’s hands circled her, just like that day on the snowy peak, hands clutching at her breasts; she swore he was chomping on her hair. One foot planted under her, she lifted his weight enough she could kick her other foot out, getting it high and planting the centre of her Ked’s sole on the lip of the sink—she launched backward with all her might.

  12

  Bethany

  Mommy was screaming and Bethany had never heard that before. One time Daddy had tickled her on the couch when she didn’t want it and she had shrieked and kicked her legs, but that night she also laughed. And punched Daddy’s arm making a frowny-face when he finally let her up.

  The sound her mommy made right now made like a big fist squeezing on her insides so hard her eyes bulged out of her head. Like her mommy, Bethany screamed, too, crawling on her hands and knees, that imaginary hand squishing so tight her own sound came out a thin, high whistle.

  “No, Mommy, no!”

  The man in the hall had her, his very real hands squeezing and grabbing. The man lay on his back, Mommy’s back on his chest, and Mommy thrashed and kicked. The man chomped on her hair.

  “Close the door, Bethy!” Mommy shouted between screams. “Close it and lock it!”

  “No, mommy!” Bethany screamed back—while she wouldn’t close the door, something stopped her from passing the room’s threshold and going to help her mother. Like there was an invisible barrier right where the hard plastic floor met the beaten wood. Passing that line put you in the world of danger—where a man would grab you and make you scream and he’d eat your hair … “No, no, Mommy, oh, Mommy …” she chanted in a quiet tense whisper, on her knees at the very limit her fear would let her travel, hands clutching her own thighs so hard her nails cut into her skin.

  “Close the door, Beth—”

  Now Mommy screamed even louder, higher, and Bethany pulled her shoulders up to protect her ears, and the sound of primal animal fear from her mommy brought a cascade of tears that warbled her vision. The man was really hurting her. Really hurting her now.

  Those big hands had become claws on Mommy’s tummy and he dug them into her so hard the tips couldn’t be seen. Mommy’s hands grabbed at them but he couldn’t be moved. Mommy kicked and thrashed harder, her head snapping forward and back.

  That seemed to work for her and now Mommy planted her sneakers on the floor between the man’s outstretched knees and she whipped her head back and forth while she scratched the man’s hands with her nails. The two heads banging together made hollow coconut sounds that made her tummy flip over. There was crunching and growling and the man’s head made hard bangs against the wood floor …

  … But Mommy was getting free and Bethany jumped to her feet and stretched out her hands, looking to pull her mother to the safety of the plastic floor. Her mom twisted in the man’s clutch, her two hands prying his off her belly, her beautiful hair hanging in bloodied clumps behind her head, her face red and frightened, the cables standing out in her neck. Mommy gritted her teeth when she tried to sit, one of the man’s hands making a big fist with a bunch of Mommy’s shirt in it, Mommy’s pink bra showing as the neck hole got stretched so low it would tear.

  Shadows danced in the sunlight across the floor of the office at the end of the hall. As Mommy cried and struggled, now whipping her arm back, over and over, hitting the man’s face with her elbow, a woman appeared at the end of the hall and when she saw the man with Mommy, she screamed too, but she wasn’t afraid, she was mad, and she ran down the hall with her arm over her head. In her hand she held a big metal thing Daddy called his vice grips, but the woman’s was way, way bigger, and when she got to the bathroom, she wailed it down on the man’s elbow and it made an awful sound—but now Mommy really was free and she scrambled, grabbing her by the arms and her fingers digging in and pinching and hurting and Mommy shouted in her ear, “I told you to close the door, Bethany!”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she told her and told her, and she cried into her Mommy’s neck but it felt so good to be in her arms. Over Mommy’s shoulder the man reached to grab the other woman’s leg, and she brought the vice grips down again, holding it over her head and swinging like crazy. She bashed the man’s hand, and it crunched and cracked. But the man tried to grab her still, and the woman yelled and jumped back, covering up her mouth when she saw his hand. Two fingers poked away at wrong angles, one sideways, the other one folded right over the back of his hand, his pinky finger dangled and swung, held on only by a strip of skin.

  Breakfast hadn’t been big, but Bethany sent it up all over her Mommy’s neck, completely surprised that it still tasted like Cheerios.

  13

  Amanda

  “Bethany, Bethany, close the door when mommy tells you, close the door, baby,” she whispered soothingly into her daughter’s ear, Bethany nodding and whimpering against her, tears and Cheerios slipping in warm trails down her chest and neck and under her shirt.

  “You hurted me,” Bethany whimpered.

  “I’m sorry I was rough, baby, you forgive me?”

  “Yes-ss,” she wailed and hooked her arms around her mother’s neck tighter.

  Behind her, the woman who helped yelled in a rasping hiss, “You stay right there, you fucker, you get it?”

  Amanda rolled her back against the door frame—pivoting and getting to her knees with her daughter clinging to her for dear life—to face the carnage in the hall.

  The man who attacked her sat up, but slumped with his back against the wall, legs spread and askew. The features of his face disappeared in a bloody mush. Amanda had broken yet another nose of the perverted scourge walking the earth.

  This man’s blood showed scarlet but mostly looked thick and black, smearing his smashed nose, up his cheeks, and the cups of his eyes, all down his mouth and dripping onto his stained shirt. The hall smelled like piss and shit and blood. While he’d been subdued, he still weakly looked to grab at the woman hissing the warning, one hand showing badly broken fingers, his pinky dangling and spurting off droplets of blood.

  The woman who’d come to her aid was the young pretty farrier, those feminine features pinched to a harrowing scowl, and she wielded something heavy and metal over her head. It was her who must have smashed his hand like that.

  “Stay back—don’t touch me,” she said to him, keeping her legs out of the man’s reach though he still pursued her, almost toppling over in his quest to grab her. Now to Amanda she shouted, “You okay? You all right?”

  “Yeah,” Amanda said with weakness that surprised her. While adrenaline raced her heart and mind, her muscles felt leaden.

  At the end of the hall, the counter’s half-door kicked open and Sheila thundered in, cowboy hat and gloves gone, gripping a crowbar. “What’s going on?” she shouted as she sprinted down the hall to join them. Her eyes darted from the man to Amanda to the farrier, and around again. “Oh my God, what happened?”

  The farrier said, “This guy was attacking her, had her on the ground …”

  “God dammit!” Sheila cursed with great woe, pressing her forearm to her brow. “I knew I should’ve rousted him. I knew it!”

  “Call the cops. Call the ambulance. Go on, I got him,” the farrier said, holding that weapon over her head and looking like she could bring it down at any second.

  Sheila said to Amanda, “Please, tell me you are all right.”

  “Yeah,” Amanda said weakly again. But was she? Her back got wrenched in the struggle, her neck ached, the man bit and pulled her hair; her scalp screamed in pain like he’d torn her a bald patch. Worst?—her stomach. It felt like the points of his fingers still pressed into her. It felt like her fucking organs ached. His fingers penetrated her, pushed into her body without breaking the skin. She felt violated. When they fought, she swore he’d wanted to rip her guts ope
n; the leftover pain was strange and hurt in a way she’d never felt before.

  Now Sheila dropped to one knee, this sinking in and coming to her in small chunks. “Your baby, oh no, your baby. He didn’t …?”

  Amanda said, “No, she’s okay. He didn’t touch her. Scared the daylights out of … out of—”

  The tears came out and her body racked with trembling and shuddering, and in response she clutched Bethany tighter until she grunted. Bethy made no complaint, hugged tighter too, and hitched her legs higher up her mother. She pleaded to the farrier, “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming,” embarrassed by how her face must be twisted and red, and streaming with tears, but wanting so bad to express her profound gratitude.

  “I know, no problem, I know—what is wrong with him?” the farrier said, kicking at his hand as he continued to reach for her.

  “I don’t know,” Sheila said with concern as she squatted lower to get a look at his face.

  “Is he drunk?” Amanda asked.

  “Maybe,” Sheila said, looking down and seeing he had wet himself. There was also no denying the stench that suggested he shit himself as well. She tugged at the collar of her shirt and pulled it up to rest over her nose and mouth. “Amanda, right?”

  “Yes, I’m Amanda.”

  The farrier smiled to her, eyes wide with adrenalin, laughing at the introductions at such a bad time, but joined in: “I’m Alyssa.”

  “Amanda, come on across past him, okay?” Sheila said, standing back up and waiting for Amanda and Bethany to come to her.

  Amanda rose, still with her cute little monkey clung to her chest. “You okay, Bethany?”

  “No,” she gulped.