Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
WELCOME TO THE PATCH
SHAUN
“I’ve got this one,” Val says as Sandie’s body peels itself off the tractor, vines dragging, the pink sneakers scraping. Val steps into it and swings. The pitchfork cracks against the side of its head. Rind splits. Seeds spray. It hisses and keeps coming.
I turn and shoulder the shotgun at Drew’s pumpkin head.
BOOM.
The kickback knives through my bad shoulder and my arm goes hot and weak. The blast skids off metal—screech, sparks—and the pumpkin turns anyway, patient, like it has all day to learn how I die.
“Shit.”
I rack the gun. My hands sweat, grip slick, but my body remembers. Aim. Breathe. Don’t think about Drew. Don’t think about Fred. Don’t think about how messed up this is.
Val roars behind me.
Sandie’s body lunges. Vines burst through her arms and throat, pulsing like veins under glass. The pumpkin fused to her shoulders leaks pulp that splats onto the dirt with every step.
“Back off!” Val shouts.
She drives the pitchfork in again. The tines punch into the vine-covered chest with a wet crunch. Orange slime spills around the metal. The thing swats at her with a vine. It wraps her wrist and yanks.
Val stumbles. Plants her feet. Grins like she’s daring it.
She twists the pitchfork, rips it free, and swings low. The fork hooks behind its knee. The body buckles. Val slams the butt of the handle into the pumpkin’s face. Crack. A chunk of rind flies.
“Stay down,” she growls, and stomps its chest.
I spin back just in time to see Drew’s pumpkin head slam against the driver’s side door.
“Cole!” I yell. “Get out of there!”
Cole spills from the passenger side and hits the dirt hard. His face is chalk white, sweat pouring off him. His right arm hangs wrong, useless, and when he tries to push up a scream rips out of him. He doesn’t stop. He crawls. Staggers. Drags himself forward anyway, gasping, eyes locked on me.
Behind him, Drew drops from the tractor. The impact shakes the ground. Vines snap and curl beneath its boots, digging in, finding balance. Its first step stutters. The next doesn’t.
Faster. Cleaner.
Smarter.
It’s learning how to hunt.
“Cole! Run!” I shout, shoving a shell into the shotgun. Click. Locked.
Drew’s pumpkin snaps its head toward Cole and charges.
Vines piston under its body, tearing clods of mud loose as it surges forward. The distance closes fast. Too fast. Cole slips, cries out, claws at the ground with his good hand. The thing is almost on him. Close enough that I can see seeds wobbling inside its carved mouth.
Behind me, Val grunts.
I risk a glance.
Sandie’s body surges again, vines stretching from its arms toward Val’s throat. The pitchfork goes through the chest again, Val digs in, shoes sliding, muscles screaming as she pushes it inch by inch. Her knuckles are white around the pitchfork handle.
“Shoot it in the head!” she yells, jerking her chin toward Sandie’s pumpkin head.
My heart slams. “What about Cole?”
“Trust me!”
I see her then—wild, certain, all grit and freckles and heat. The same look she had when she straddled me on the back of the truck, when the world made sense for five reckless minutes.
I pivot, boots sliding in mud and pulp, and bring the barrel up, my shoulder screaming.
Breathe in. Don’t fucking miss.
I squeeze the trigger.
The blast erases the pumpkin’s head.
Orange pulp and seeds explode in every direction, hot and soggy against Val’s shirt, jeans, and hands. The body spasms once, then collapses, still pinned to the pitchfork like a butchered scarecrow.
Drew’s body lunges.
Cole screams.
Val plants her boot, yanks the pitchfork free with a sound like tearing meat, and throws.
The pitchfork whistles and hits Drew’s pumpkin head dead center. Metal punches through rind and sinks deep.
Drew’s body flies back and hits the mud one foot from Cole.
Still.
Its axe skids away and lands at my feet, slick with blood and pumpkin slime.
Drew’s pumpkin head doesn’t move.
Cole stumbles to a stop a few yards away, bent double and gasping, clutching his shattered arm to his chest like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.
I stand there, chest heaving, staring at the field. At the bodies. At Val—breathing hard, dirt and gore streaked across her arms, hair plastered to her cheeks with sweat and dirt. At the pitchfork still vibrating where it’s lodged in Drew’s pumpkin skull on the ground.
“Holy shit,” I breathe. “How did you do that?”
Val catches my look and flashes a crooked grin, like we didn’t just survive a slasher flick sponsored by produce.
“I threw javelin in high school,” she says. “Don’t you remember?”
I do now.
Val on the field, feet planted, body coiled with purpose.
Her arm cutting clean through the air. The crowd fading until there was only her and the throw.
Me pretending not to stare at the muscles in her arms. The freckles down her thighs.
The tight short shorts. I shove the image aside before it can do something dangerous to my focus.
I grab Cole and haul him upright by his good arm. He groans but stays on his feet, shoulders shaking as he shoves his glasses back up his nose. A thin crack splinters the top corner of the right lens.
“You okay?” I ask, brushing dirt and pumpkin slime off his shirt.
“Am I okay?” He lets out a wild, hysterical laugh and gestures at the wrecked patch. Crushed pumpkins. Bodies. Vines twitching like dying nerves. “Do I look fucking okay? I just got chased by three pumpkin-headed monsters wearing Drew, Fred, and Sandie like Halloween costumes.”
Fair.
Behind us, Val jerks the pitchfork free from the cracked pumpkin skull. It comes out with a wet rip that turns my stomach. Seeds spill down the metal tines and stick to her hands like glue. She doesn’t even flinch. She just wipes her palms on her jeans and looks at Cole, eyes bright.
“Fun fact,” she says. “Fear and excitement trigger the same chemicals in your brain. Adrenaline doesn’t care if you’re about to die or ride a roller coaster. Your body just goes, ‘Cool, we’re alive. For now.’ ”
Cole stares at her like she’s grown a second head. Then he looks at me, blinking behind the cracked lens of his glasses.
I shrug. “She copes with terror by reciting facts.”
Val gives a sloppy salute. “Yep.”
Cole turns fully to me, still breathing hard. “And you?”
“I avoid the problem. Let it rot until it turns into paranoia and ruins everything I touch.”
For a second, nobody laughs. The truth sits there between us, slick and uncomfortable. Our breaths rasp in the quiet. Flies drift back in, bold now, landing on smashed pumpkins and dark smears in the dirt like they’ve claimed the place.
Cole squints at us. “Who are you two?”
I open my mouth.
And then we hear it. A dragging squelch.
My shoulders stiffen.
The pumpkins scattered across the ground start to twitch.
Vines peel the ruined rinds from Fred’s and Sandie’s shoulders and roll fresh pumpkins into place—one, two—fast and hungry. They spear into torn flesh. Slide under skin. Cinch tight.
Bones reset with soft pops that make my teeth ache.
For a moment my brain supplies the real Drew—laughing, breathing, alive—then the jack-o’-lantern eyehole flares sick yellow and the lie burns away.
Val groans. “Oh, you have got to be shitting me.”
I look down at the shotgun in my grip. “I don’t think the gun’s gonna help us anymore.”
Cole doesn’t argue. His voice cracks. “Then run!”
We do just that.
Corn lashes my face and arms as we tear into the maze. Stalks snap. Dirt sprays under our tracks. Behind us, the sounds stack and swell. Uneven footfalls. Vines scraping through soil. Bodies relearning how to move.
The rows twist and fold in on themselves. Every turn looks the same. My lungs burn. My bad shoulder screams. Cole stumbles, clutching his broken arm, jaw locked, but he keeps moving because stopping means dying.
“Left!” Val shouts.
We burst into a wider path and there it is. The craft barn. Faded red siding. Splintered wood. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Behind us, the pumpkins pound the ground like a furious chorus. Like the ground itself is pissed that we’re still breathing.
I don’t look back as I follow Val to the barn.
None of us do.