Chapter 16 Jen #2
She’d never thought of herself as a scream queen. She’d believed that she walked in Death’s shadow and would shake his hand when they finally met. But her body had known what to do in the face of danger. Just as it knew it had to get as far away as possible from the threat.
She swung her arms wildly, trying to propel herself forward, the light from the flashlight jerking back and forth.
Her Docs felt like lead weights on her feet.
They were meant for shit-kicking, not a life-or-death chase.
Twigs snagged her fishnet tights. Cedar needles scratched her hair and cheeks like curious fingers, cool from the rain.
Splintered branches attempted to slide under the skin of her bare arms. God, she was starting to hate trees.
If she made it to Europe she was going to move to a former Communist stronghold with lots of Brutalist concrete and no wildlife.
All the while the heavy trudge-trudge-trudge of the Slasher followed.
Lungs aching and a stitch in her side, Jen regretted spending her Sunday mornings hungover in someone else’s bed instead of hitting the gym on campus.
Yet the fear compelled her legs to move while she clutched the knife like it was a security blanket.
Though the knife was little comfort now, compared to the axe.
She nearly dropped it as she dodged a growing maze of whiplike saplings.
Just her luck. She’d stumbled on a section of new growth, where the young trees were too slender to hide behind.
Half of them were broken, too, probably from that ice storm in February.
Daddy had told her all about it on the phone while she’d been away at college.
At the time she hadn’t given a fuck about downed power lines and fallen trees.
But when she nearly gouged her eye out on the ragged tip of a broken branch, she did.
She most definitely gave a fuck about what the storm had done to her escape route.
She realized now how stupid it was for the Jumpscare Society to have split up.
Fuck Jason, he should’ve known better. Why had they watched so many slashers after school, only to make this newbie mistake?
Amateurs. Okay, it had made sense at the time, but that was before they were sure someone was out to get them.
Jen dared to glance over her shoulder. Shit.
The Slasher seemed to be getting closer, even though she was running and he was following with long strides.
She thought that happened only in movies.
Was she just that out of shape? Moonlight glinted off the axe’s blade.
A scream burst from her mouth again. This time her lips formed the word Help.
Who was she? She’d never asked for help in her life.
She’d observed before that fear stripped you down to your core self, and it seemed too late to acknowledge that Jennifer de la Fuente was a mask as artificial as the Slasher’s.
Underneath she was nothing but an animal.
Helpless prey whose only thought was of survival in the face of a ruthless predator.
Her arms swung harder as if they could increase the length of her stride.
The flashlight flew out of her sweating fist, catapulting away and rolling into the underbrush.
“Shit!” Jen yelled in frustration as its fuzzy beam began to dim.
She still had her phone, but maybe it was for the best she’d lost her light. She could hide better in the dark.
She zigzagged away from the flashlight beam, hoping to secrete herself in the shadows.
Thank God she was wearing black, and her fishnetted legs were splattered with mud.
Carrie might have been wearing the Final Girl uniform, but that white tank top was impractical for hiding from killers in the dark.
There! She spotted the stump of an older tree that had survived the natural disaster or prescribed burn that had created this young, spiky gauntlet of a forest. It was about the height of a child, and Jen was thankfully petite.
She slipped behind it, panting silently, hardly feeling the sting of rough bark against her bare elbows or the tug on her scalp as her hair snagged on the shoots sprouting from the old wood.
The Slasher’s footsteps stopped.
Jen clasped the knife tighter. It was no better than a toothpick compared to the axe.
She wouldn’t be able to get close enough to use it, not without getting within the Slasher’s range.
Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she searched for anything else she could fight with.
A long, dark shape lay at her feet. She nudged it with her toes and felt a glint of hope as it shifted.
She tucked the knife into her belt and carefully crouched down to grab what was either a branch or the top half of a young tree.
She couldn’t tell if the Slasher was still out there.
She hoped he’d given up the chase, but she’d seen the movies.
She knew how it went. Just when you thought the killer had given up—bam.
He was right in your face. The same thing had happened to Heather in the movie.
You could never get cocky in horror films. No one cocky ever survived, from the smug nerd to the defiant rebel.
Attitude was rewarded with death. You had to be a timid weenie like Carrie from the start. You had to respect your killer.
Would-be killer, Jen told herself. Slowly, very slowly, she picked up the branch.
It was about the size of a baseball bat, but not too heavy to hold with both hands.
She winced as it dragged a little, sending a murmur out to the universe, and she prayed the Slasher would chalk it up to normal forest noise.
He probably couldn’t hear very well with his hood up, anyway.
Jen leaned back against the stump, splinters from her find digging into her palms. She still couldn’t hear the Slasher. She inched to her right, rolling her upper back along the stump’s surface, and lifted her eyes over her shoulder.
Nothing. There was no one there. Either he’d gone or—
Dead leaves crunched to her left. There was no time to think. Jen swung the branch with all her might in that direction, yelling like an . The branch connected with something firm, and the Slasher crumpled with a grunt.
She should’ve dropped the branch and run, but logic cut in for this dance. So many times she’d yelled at the stupid kids on TV to make sure the killer was actually down. So many times she’d thrown her hands up in exasperation when a victim dropped their weapon because they thought they were safe.
The Slasher wasn’t moving. The axe lay by his side, fingers still curled around the haft.
Jen hoped she’d hit him in the head. But she wasn’t taking any chances.
She hefted the branch again, ready to smash him in the face, remembering too late that she should’ve unmasked him first. Exposed his identity and taken his photo so he couldn’t terrorize anyone ever again.
She swung—and the Slasher spasmed to life, raising the axe and lopping the branch in half. Jen stood dumbfounded for a heartbeat, holding her now-useless club. It could have easily been her arm, or a leg. Or her torso. Or her head, like poor Cindy in the movie.
And then Jen was off again, running and screaming like her hair was on fire, without any thought as to where she was going.
She only knew she had to get away, wherever that magical place might be.
The trees, the fucking trees all looked the same, again making her feel like she’d hardly moved.
It was like she was back onstage at the Rialto, jogging on the spot while the audience brayed for her blood.
While an unknown guest in a cheap craft store mask lurked in the wings.
She kept running, trying to outpace her regrets. Weaving between saplings, hopping over bowed trees thick with moss and fungi. She couldn’t stop. Stopping meant death.
Her boot, however, did not get the memo. It caught on an exposed tree root, wrenching her ankle inside the leather as she lurched forward, unable to slow her momentum. She cried out, falling to the forest floor. A blossom of pain exploded above her right breast. Motherfucker—
It took her a few precious seconds to realize what had happened.
The good news was that she hadn’t been felled by the Slasher’s axe.
The bad news was that the jagged edge of a broken sapling had stabbed below her collarbone.
If the Slasher didn’t kill her, the fucking woods would.
She was pinned like a butterfly under glass, laid out for the Slasher’s scrutiny.
“Not…today…Satan,” Jen growled, pushing herself up with her left arm and wrenching upward. Her vision briefly went black from the agony, or maybe the clouds had passed in front of the moon.
Tears sprung to her eyes as a scream scorched her throat.
Screaming was good, actually. She didn’t know why she’d been ashamed of it before.
It meant she didn’t have to hear the gravelly squelch of serrated wood shredding her flesh like deli meat.
The hot gush of blood wetly dripping onto dead leaves and moist earth.
It wasn’t enough. All that pain and she wasn’t free yet.
Just another inch, she told herself. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.
She could do it. She tried not to think about the ragged splinters engraving her muscle tissue, and the dirt and moss and bugs and T-shirt fibers left behind in the wound.
She thought of all the movies in which characters get stabbed or shot and yet keep fighting.
Adrenaline was supposed to make you superhuman. Where was her hit?
Ah—there it was. There was the adrenaline, coursing through her veins like hot espresso. She dragged herself off that final inch of the sapling, screaming herself raw the whole way.