Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
SMASH THIS
VAL
With both hands, I twirl the pitchfork above my head, flinging off vines. Drew’s pumpkin is relentless and I’m not sure how long I can keep it at bay with these wide swings until Shaun gets here. It’s going to take both of us to take this one down.
It’s getting too close so I swing again, but this time when I hit it, the handle breaks in half against the rind. The tine end bounces off the pumpkin and flies into the field. I’m left standing there with the useless bottom half.
Well, that’s not good.
Drew’s pumpkin vines burst forward and snap tight around my throat.
Squeezing. Claiming. Promising.
My feet leave the ground and suddenly I’m dangling, legs kicking at empty air. Firelight smears into streaks of orange and red. Smoke claws down my lungs as the vine tightens, pulsing like it’s counting heartbeats.
My hands fly up. Nails dig into the vine. I pull. Fibers peel back under my fingers, gooey and sticky.
The vine lifts me higher, calculated, like it wants me to understand how small I am before it finishes the job. My shoulders burn. My neck screams. I sway four feet off the ground, then higher, my spine stretching as the vines extend.
My vision narrows.
Of course my brain chooses now to contribute.
Loss of oxygen can cause euphoria before unconsciousness.
Fantastic.
I claw harder. The vine answers by tightening. Pressure blooms behind my eyes. My tongue tingles, numb and buzzing. The sound that comes out of me barely qualifies as a noise. A thin, ugly wheeze.
I hear Shaun.
He’s yelling my name, raw and cracked, somewhere through the roar of fire. I force my eyes open and find him fighting toward me, axe hacking through smaller pumpkins that swarm his legs. Vines snap around his calves. He tears them free. Blood streaks his arm. His face is feral with panic and fury.
He’s still moving.
He’s trying to get to me.
I refuse to let him watch me die.
I bare my teeth and jam both thumbs under the vine, trying desperately to push it away. Sap bursts under my nails. The vine spasms and tightens in response, punishing me for trying.
Stars explode across my vision. Firelight flickers. My ears ring.
My grip weakens.
My hands slip.
They fall to my sides, useless and numb, fingers twitching like they belong to someone else. My chest burns. My lungs scream. The world dims at the edges, sound stretching and warping.
Not yet.
Not like this.
I suck in a desperate breath. Being this high up gives me the opportunity to drag in untouched smokey air. I try to think, wildly, furiously—
I didn’t survive killer pumpkins just to get strangled by salad.
The pressure vanishes.
For a moment I’m weightless.
Oh shit.
I drop.
The ground smacks me full force. My ankle twists and pain spreads bright and sharp, but I barely register it.
I hit on hands and knees, sucking air like I’ve never used lungs before.
Breath rips back into me, brutal and burning.
I cough until my throat feels skinned raw.
Each inhale scrapes. Each exhale shakes.
I drag in another breath and look up, expecting green cotton and fury and Shaun.
Instead, it’s a one-lensed, black-haired, snot-infested, skinny teenager.
Hell. Yes. Cole.
He’s all elbows and desperation, shoulder driving into Drew again and again. His good arm strains, muscles shaking. His hair’s singed. His shirt smokes at the edges. He looks semi dead and pale as a ghost, but he is completely done being scared.
Drew’s pumpkin digs its feet into the soil. Vines erupt behind it and shove it upright, lifting it like a grotesque marionette. Cole falls to the ground. Before he can scramble away, vines snap out and coil around his broken arm.
The scream he makes slices straight through me.
No.
I stagger up to find the good half of the pitchfork. I hobble as fast as I can. Searching. Searching. Bingo.
I slam the tines into Drew’s back with the last ounces of my energy.
Metal punches through rind and vine. Wet resistance gives way with a sick crunch. Hot plant juice splashes my arms, sticky and foul. Drew’s body stiffens. The vine around Cole loosens. I stumble back as far as I can, avoiding any trip hazards.
Its head turns a full 180 toward me while its body still faces Shaun and Cole, like it can’t decide who to kill first.
Cole scrambles backward, clutching his arm, gasping. Shaun barrels in, grabs him under the shoulders, and hauls him away toward the edge of the patch even as Cole empties the contents of his stomach all over the ground.
Drew’s pumpkin reaches back with its vines, grips the pitchfork buried in its spine, and yanks.
The fork rips free and Drew flings it away. It clangs off the tractor, skidding across the dirt in a spray of sparks and pulp.
We’re split now. Shaun and Cole on one side of the patch. Me on the other. The leader plants itself between us, smoke curling around its carved grin. Vines flex and stretch.
Shaun shouts, breath shredded, “This fucker won’t go down!”
I bark a laugh that turns into a cough. My throat feels sandpapered. “No shit.”
Cole squints at me through smoke. “What do you got, fact girl?”
“Why am I the one who has to come up with the ideas?” I rasp, hysterical and furious.
Drew’s pumpkin pivots toward them, attention snapping away from me, giving me a precious moment to think. Our resources are low. Our weapons broken, lost, or useless. Panic starts to weave in until I spot the tractor and the gas cans bleeding into the dirt.
My pulse spikes. “Does anyone still have a flare?”
They both check pockets at the same time. Cole lifts his good hand, knuckles white. A red flare clenched tight.
Light bulb.
“Keep it busy!” I yell, and I’m already moving.
Cole shouts something that sounds like “How the hell—” but I tune him out. They’ll improvise.
I sprint for the tractor, wincing with each step of my twisted ankle, slipping in gasoline-soaked dirt. I slide the last few feet, palms burning, and haul myself up onto the step. Broken glass crunches under my knee. I don’t care. I drag myself into the cab, heart slamming against my ribs.
It has to be here. I haven’t heard Shaun fire it.
Please. Please. Please.
Glass chews up my palms as I dig through the cab. Sharp bites. Hot stings. I hiss through my teeth and keep going because pain is background noise now. I find the shotgun by feel, cold and solid under my fingers, and almost laugh from relief.
Shells.
Shaun’s shells.
I fumble them out of my pocket, slick with sweat and blood, and load fast, remembering how Shaun loaded it earlier. One. Two. Click. The sound lands heavy in my chest.
I crawl back out and drop onto my knees.
Ahead of me, Shaun charges like a man possessed, axe flashing, shouting pure fury to keep Drew’s pumpkin focused on him. Cole hurls rocks and scrap and teenage rage. He would look terrifying if his nose wasn’t running like a busted faucet.
I plant my feet near the tractor. Vines twitch around my boots. The air hums. Gasoline vapor burns sweet and sharp in my sinuses.
I lift the shotgun and rack it. The click snaps through the chaos like a dare.
Drew’s pumpkin monster turns.
Every vine freezes mid-whip. We lock eyes across the patch. Its grin glistens with pulp and blood. I bare my teeth and smile right back.
It charges.
“Shaun!” I shout. My voice cracks but it carries. “Light the flare and throw it in the gas. Make it count!”
Drew’s body barrels toward me, limbs jerking, vines punching into the soil and hurling it forward in violent bursts. It closes the distance fast.
My hands are unshakeable.
Just a little closer.
“Fun fact, orange demon,” I call out, voice wrecked but bright with madness. “Gasoline doesn’t actually explode. The vapor does. All it needs is heat and a spark.”
In my periphery, Shaun winds up and throws. He winces with his bad shoulder, but still nails the target. The flare lands dead center in the pooled gas.
Fire blooms.
A little closer.
Flames race across the dirt, crawling toward the tractor, licking the vines. Heat slams into my face.
Just as Drew’s body passes the end of the trailer, I settle my finger on the trigger and whisper, “Smash this.”
The blast hits the tractor dead on.
Metal shrieks. Sparks spray outward and slam straight into the gas-soaked earth.
The world ignites.
The shockwave punches the air from my lungs.
Heat slams into my chest and throws me off my feet.
I hit the dirt, but keep rolling as fire surges outward, greedy and fast, racing along roots and vines like it’s been waiting for permission.
Corn catches in rolling waves. Stalks curl and shriek as they burn, popping and collapsing into glowing ribs.
Drew’s body is blasted back into the wall of fire surrounding us. Vines snap and writhe, turning black, blistering, curling inward as if trying to escape their own bodies.
The pumpkin head tears free and rolls through the pooling gas, bouncing once, twice, carving a smoking trail behind it.
It cracks.
The shell splits wide and bursts. Hot pulp and seeds spray into the fire, popping and sizzling as they vanish. The carved grin sloughs and melts, sliding off in sagging pieces. The eyes cave in. The stem collapses. What’s left hisses and steams, then caves under its own weight.
The vines give one last violent twitch.
Then they go still.
Fire keeps chewing through the patch, but the thing at its center is done. No movement. No pulling. No thinking.
Just ash, smoke, and the stench of roasted ruin.
I cough, drag in a burning breath, and watch the flames erase what tried to kill us.
When the ringing in my ears fades enough for me to breathe again, I push myself up.
I don’t have time to feel victorious before Shaun is there. He barrels into me, hands shaking, and kisses me like the world might still end if he doesn’t. It’s desperate. Messy. All teeth and breath and relief.
I kiss him back just as hard. Maybe harder.
The taste of smoke and blood and adrenaline coats my tongue. His hands slide into my hair, anchoring me. My fingers curl into his shirt, fists full of proof that he’s here. Alive. Real.
We break apart only because we need air.
Foreheads pressed together, we laugh and cough at the same time, bodies trembling from shock and heat and the aftermath of terror. Fire crackles around us. Embers drift past like stars falling out of the sky.
“Told you,” I rasp, throat shredded, grin splitting my face anyway. “Final girl.”
He pulls back just enough to look at me.
His face is smeared with soot and blood, but his grin shines through.
“Damn right,” he says, voice wrecked and full of promise.
Cole clears his throat and delivers it like a eulogy. “This smoke isn’t good for my sinuses.”
I blink at him, adrenaline still buzzing in my veins, ears ringing from the explosion, skin humming with heat. Of all the things to say after surviving a pumpkin-fueled massacre, that somehow tracks.
Then he sneezes.
His glasses launch off his face like they’ve had enough of tonight and skitter across the dirt. They land near a charred vine that twitches once and finally goes still.
I snort, but it quickly turns into a wheeze that sets my throat on fire. Shaun’s hand slides to my back without thinking, rubbing sweet circles like my lungs might listen if he asks them nicely.
“Bless you,” he says, dead serious.
Cole squints at the ground. “If anyone steps on those, I’m haunting you.”
Once my lungs stop burning, I pick up Cole’s glasses and hand them to him.
We start moving, away from the patch, away from the flames still chewing through what’s left of the farm.
The night crackles behind us. Corn collapses.
Vines hiss and snap as they die. Smoke rolls low across the ground, thick and bitter.
I have a feeling we will forever smell like a bonfire.
Every step sends a fresh ache through my body. My hands sting. My ankle throbs. My throat feels like I gargled gravel. I don’t care. I’m upright. I’m breathing. I’m holding Shaun’s hand. His shoulder is brushing mine like a quiet roll call.
Still here.
Still here.
We’re almost to the entrance when headlights sweep across the dirt road.
A familiar engine growls.
Then screeches.
My mom’s car fishtails slightly as it slams to a stop, gravel spraying. The driver’s door flies open before the engine even cuts.
“Valerie Renee Andrews!”
Her voice slices straight through the haze. Sharp. Terrified.
She’s out of the car in seconds, eyes huge as she takes in the burning fields behind us, the glow of the farmhouse, the drifting ash. Her hand flies to her mouth once she sees the state of me.
“Oh my god,” she breathes. “What the hell happened?”
Sirens wail somewhere in the distance. Faint, but getting closer. Red and blue lights flicker against the smoke.
My mom rushes toward me, hands hovering, afraid to touch, like I might fall apart if she presses wrong. Her eyes dart over my face, my soot-streaked clothes, the blood.
I inhale.
The air burns all the way down.
I lift a hand and stop her mid-step.
“Mom,” I say, voice weak but stable. “You’re not going to believe this.”