Ghost Town: A Novella Read online

  “What we need to do,” Tony said, “is get all of this water that we can carry and walk out of this place.”

  “And go where?” Carla asked him. “There’s a desert in every direction. Who knows how far it goes.”

  “There are traps in here,” Tony said. “Someone’s fucking with us. I’d rather take my chances out there than in here.”

  Carla looked at the others, and then her eyes rested on Beth.

  Beth nodded. “Maybe he’s right. We take the water and just pick a direction and walk.” She glanced at the others and she was a little surprised that they were listening to her, taking her seriously. Her husband never would’ve taken anything she had to say seriously. Their attention helped build her confidence. “And I think we need to hurry.”

  “You really think they’re going to let us walk out of this town?” Eugene said.

  Tony sniffed and stared at Eugene. “What the hell are you talking about?” He looked at Carla. “I told you he’s in on this.”

  Eugene sighed like he was frustrated, like he was trying to explain something to a child. “It just seems like whoever these people are went to a lot of trouble to bring us here. I don’t think they’re going to let us walk out of here.”

  Tony stared at Eugene. “You seem to know a lot about what’s going on here. Who’s out there? Frank’s people? Is that who it is? Did Frank bring us here?”

  Eugene gave Tony a tight smile that didn’t touch his eyes behind the glasses. “If Frank brought us here, we’d all be dead right now.” He took a quick sip of his water. “Of course, he probably would’ve made us dig our own graves first.”

  Tony jumped up from his chair, knocking it down to the floor in the process.

  Carla jumped to her feet just as quickly, a fierce look in her eyes. “You two cut it out right now. We’re not going to fight.”

  “I don’t trust that guy,” Tony said. “He doesn’t look very concerned to me given the situation we’re in here.” Tony sniffed again.

  “I think we should sit here for a few minutes at this table,” Carla said to Tony, but then she looked at each of them as she continued. “I think we should think things over. Try to figure out as much as we know before we go running off into the desert. There has to be a reason the six of us were chosen and brought here.”

  “I agree with her,” Eugene said. “We need a break from the sun. We need to rest. Build up our strength a little if we’re going to go running off into the desert.”

  “My feet hurt,” Ray said to no one in particular.

  “I think the first thing we should discuss is this Frank guy,” Tony said, still standing at the head of the table, his chair still overturned on the floor.

  Eugene showed the first signs of anger and frustration. “Frank’s not involved in this! I just told you that!”

  Tony sniffed. “I don’t believe you.”

  Eugene winced and shook his head. “What’s wrong with you? Why do you keep sniffing? Do you need to blow your nose or something?”

  “No,” Tony said a little too quickly. “I just need a damn cigarette and I don’t have any on me.”

  Tony patted at his clothes like he was trying to find his cigarettes, but he got a strange look on his face as he touched the back pockets of his pants.

  “Everything okay back there?” Eugene asked Tony.

  “My wallet,” Tony said. “It’s gone.”

  “Yeah, my wallet’s gone, too,” Eugene said. “Kidnapping I can deal with, but a pickpocket?”

  “Why don’t you cut the smartass mouth?” Tony growled at Eugene, but he was still digging his hand into one of his pants pockets.

  Carla looked at Eugene. “Really, Eugene. It’s getting old.”

  Eugene just shrugged at Carla and sipped his water.

  “I don’t have my wallet,” Tony said, “but there’s something else in my back pocket.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Tony pulled his hand out of his back pocket and held a small plastic horse. It looked like a child’s cheap toy. He stared at it in shock. “What the hell’s this? This isn’t mine.”

  Carla stared at Tony as he set the toy horse on the table in front of him. She looked at the others. “Everyone check your pockets.”

  They all stood up.

  Carla reached down into her front pockets and searched. She dug out three small seashells and laid them on the table. “This is all I have on me.”

  Eugene searched his pants pockets but didn’t find anything. He rummaged through the inside pockets of his suit coat and brought out a small plastic figurine. He set it on the table in front of him. It was a cartoonish rat eating a hunk of Swiss cheese.

  Ray dug through his layers of clothing, searching and searching until he found a piece of candy in his pocket, it was a bright red ball wrapped in cellophane. He broke into a big smile. “Hey, I found a Fireball candy in my pocket.”

  “Good, Ray,” Carla said. “Just set it on the table.”

  Ray looked disappointed, but he set it on the table. “But I like Fireball candies.”

  Beth didn’t need to search through her pockets. She knew where her object was; she’d felt it earlier when they were walking through the desert. She slipped her hand down into her left front pocket and pulled out a small toy car. It was a Hot Wheels car, a small replica of a yellow Chevrolet Camaro. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw the car in her hand—she recognized that car.

  And Tony noticed.

  “What’s wrong?” Tony asked her. “Is that yours?”

  Beth shook her head no and stammered out an answer. “No. No, it’s not mine.” She nearly dropped the toy car onto the table in front of her, relieved to get rid of it.

  “So none of this stuff is ours?” Carla asked everyone.

  Eugene glanced down at the cartoon rat eating the cheese. “Well, this was handed down to me from my grandmother.”

  Carla ignored Eugene’s joke and sighed. “This is weird. Why do we have these things in our pockets?”

  Beth glanced at the toy car on the table in front of her, and then she glanced at the part of Adam’s body that she could see—his legs poking out from behind the stacks of crates on the other side of the room.

  “I think Tony’s right,” Beth said. “We need to get out of here.”

  Everyone looked at Carla who threw her hands up in surrender. “Okay. You guys win. I don’t know what time it is, but it feels late in the day. Maybe it would be better to walk at night anyway.”

  Tony’s face lit up. “Now you’re talking, sister.” He was off and running, searching around the room, but still being careful of any traps.

  “What are you looking for?” Carla asked Tony.

  “I don’t know, some kind of weapon to take with us. Might be some wolves or some shit out there.”

  Ray got up and followed Tony around. “I’ll help you, Tony.”

  “I don’t want your help, Ray.”

  Eugene watched Tony as he searched gingerly through the piles of old furniture. “You’d better be careful what you touch over there.” And then he made the sound of electricity sizzling.

  Beth gave Eugene a disgusted look, and then she got up and picked up her two bottles of water. She was ready to go.

  Tony came back with a wooden chair leg that was broken off into a sharp point. He was ready to go.

  Carla and Eugene stood up and grabbed their bottles of water—after what they’d drank so far, there were still two bottles left for each of them.

  “Everyone ready for this?” Carla asked them.

  They all looked at each other and then nodded.

  They walked to the double doors of the hotel, Tony leading the group. He pushed the doors open all the way and stepped out onto the wooden walkway.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Moments later, the five of them stood in the middle of the dirt street in front of the hotel. Beth and Carla carried their two bottles of water in their hands. Tony shoved one of the bottles of water into his front pants
pocket so he had a free hand to carry his sharp stick. Eugene had managed to stuff his two bottles of water inside his suit coat pockets, and Ray hid his bottles of water somewhere in his layers of clothing.

  They hesitated for a moment before walking, all of them glancing around, searching for any movement among the buildings or from down the street. They listened for any sounds, but all they could hear was the whistling of the hot wind tunneling down through the street and kicking up dust.

  Beth couldn’t stop thinking about Adam’s charred body lying on the wood floor inside the hotel lobby. There was somebody here in this town, probably more than one of them, and they had set traps.

  Eugene’s words stayed with her: They wanted us to find this place, and they aren’t going to just let us walk out of here.

  But they had to try, Beth thought. Didn’t they?

  She felt a shiver run through her body even though it was still boiling hot out here. The sun was low on the horizon in front of them, washing the white church in a reddish-orange glow.

  “Which way do you guys want to go?” Carla asked, and Beth thought she could hear the sound of passing-the-buck in her voice, like if this was a bad decision she didn’t want to share any of the responsibility for it.

  “I don’t know,” Tony answered. He stared at the church a few hundred yards in front of them beyond the last of the buildings.

  The church was large with a steeple on top of it that seemed like a long finger pointing up to God. The white church stood alone and there was some kind of dirt yard in front of it bordered by small rocks with a path through the middle of it that led up to the red double doors.

  Tony glanced behind him. “We came from that way, so we know there’s nothing in that direction for miles.” He pointed at the church. “Let’s head that way, towards the church. And then to the mountains beyond it.”

  Tony didn’t wait for an affirmation from the rest of them; he started walking with the pointed stick gripped in his hand like a small sword.

  The others fell in behind him.

  They walked past the line of buildings in the silence of the desert. All of them were tense and jumpy.

  But nothing happened.

  They got to the end of the buildings and stood for a moment in an open area beyond the last building, with the church only forty yards in front of them.

  Now that they were closer to the church, Beth could see that it had been painted recently. Somebody had to be fixing this town up, and it seemed like the church was their first priority. To Beth, it didn’t even look like the church belonged in this town with these old buildings, like it was from a different time, a more modern time.

  Tony hesitated and the others waited behind him. Something about the last building on the left had caught his attention. It wasn’t a business like the other buildings were. They knew the building they had been in was a hotel. Another one of the buildings seemed like a general store; another one looked like it could’ve been a saloon, but the sign above the doors was so faded they couldn’t read it. A few of the buildings looked like they could be homes or apartments; another looked like an old-fashioned bank from an Old West movie. But this building that had caught Tony’s interest looked more like a barn.

  Maybe it had been a blacksmith’s shop, Beth thought, or a place where people could put their horses up when they stayed in town for the night. A livery, she thought it was called.

  The image of horses in the barn came to her mind and she immediately thought of the object that Tony had in his back pocket—a toy horse. Did the object mean something? Did it have something to do with this barn?

  Tony stared at the large wood doors of the barn; they were closed and there was what looked like a brand new chain and padlock locking them shut.

  “Those doors are chained shut,” Tony muttered, almost to himself.

  Carla looked around. “This doesn’t feel right.”

  “Somebody’s watching us,” Beth said as her eyes went back to the church. There was someone in that church, she was sure of it. She could feel it. She could feel sets of eyes on her right now.

  Tony broke away from the group and walked towards the double doors of the barn like he was transfixed by them.

  Beth watched Tony as he stood in front of the wood doors which could’ve been slid apart on rusty rollers if the chain hadn’t been holding them together. But the doors weren’t pulled together quite all the way; there was a gap between them. Beth watched as Tony peeked inside through the gap, and from her angle she saw his eyes widen in surprise and shock.

  Eugene noticed Tony’s reaction. “What do you see in there?”

  Tony didn’t answer. He didn’t even turn around.

  Eugene was about to say something else, but a gunshot from the church stopped his words. A bullet pelted the wooden door inches away from Tony’s head.

  Tony backed away from the barn doors so fast that he nearly tumbled backwards over his feet. He caught his balance and raced back to the group.

  They were about to run towards the church, but two more gunshots sounded and two more bullets pelted the dirt a few feet in front of them.

  Tony crouched down, trying to decide where to run. He pointed past the church to the rocky hills in the distance underneath the gory splash of the setting sun. “Come on! That way!”

  He started to run, Carla and Ray following him, but two more bullets pelted the sand in front of them, and drove them back towards Eugene and Beth who were waiting.

  “They won’t let us go this way!” Eugene shouted at them.

  Ray was beginning to panic. “We gotta run! We gotta run!”

  “No, Ray!” Carla screamed at him; she looked like she was ready to grab him if he started to take off for the desert again. “They’ll kill you if you run that way!”

  Ray’s eyes were wild. He looked back the way they had come. It seemed to be the only safe place to go.

  “Let’s run to the church!” Tony yelled. He was hunched over like a man walking underneath the spinning blades of a helicopter, like he was preparing himself for the impact of a gunshot.

  “That’s where the shots are coming from!” Eugene told him.

  “We gotta charge them,” Tony said. “Rush them while we have a chance.”

  Three more gunshots sounded, and three more bullets pelted the dirt in front of them, driving them back a few more steps, back down the dusty main street of the ghost town.

  They huddled together, wanting to run, but afraid to move.

  “They’re fucking with us,” Eugene said in a low voice, like whoever was inside the church might hear him. “They could’ve hit us anytime they wanted to. They’re backing us up, herding us back to the hotel.”

  Tony was about to argue with Eugene, but Beth’s words cut him off.

  “Do you guys hear something?”

  Beth heard a sound coming from the church. It was a familiar sound, something she’d heard before—a low growling sound.

  The double doors of the church flew open and two gigantic Rottweilers bolted outside, running straight for them.

  “Holy shit!” Eugene screamed.

  “Back to the hotel!” Carla yelled. “Now!”

  They all raced back down the dusty street.

  Tony was the fastest of them all; he sprinted down the sandy street, his heels kicking up little puffs of dust. The bottle of water squirted out of Tony’s front pants pocket as he ran, falling down to the dirt, and he left it there. He still had the sharp stick clenched in his hand.

  Beth was right behind Carla, both of them clutching their bottles of water in their hands like batons at a relay race. Beth didn’t glance behind her, but she was pretty sure Eugene was a step or two behind her, and Ray was bringing up the rear.

  The dogs barked and growled, and they seemed so close. Beth heard their paws pounding the dirt as they ran.

  Tony hopped up onto the wooden deck and ran the last few steps to the double doors of the hotel which were still wide open. He bolted inside and Car
la was right behind him. Beth was the next one in. She turned around just in time to see Eugene reach the door. She looked beyond Eugene and saw that Ray, who was heavier than the rest of them, had fallen five or six steps behind.

  And the dogs were right on his heels.

  “Hurry, Ray!!” Carla shouted.

  Eugene bulldozed inside the doorway and shot past Beth. He turned and braced himself like he was ready if the dogs followed them inside the hotel lobby.

  Ray was on the wooden walkway now, his worn-out sneakers pounding along the wood planks, his untied shoe laces flying, slowing him down. He was only a few steps away from the double doors when one of the dogs latched onto his calf. The dog’s teeth sank down through his pants and into his flesh. Ray let out a wail, but he didn’t stop running. He tried to lunge the last few steps towards the door, dragging the large dog behind him.

  Tony tried to force the door closed.

  “What the hell are you doing?!” Carla screamed at him.

  Tony tried to push Carla out of the way and force the doors shut at the same time. But she was stronger than he had expected, and he couldn’t put all of his strength into both actions.

  Beth heard Ray screaming outside the double doors, pounding on them as Tony had them nearly closed now. But Carla caught Tony off-guard with one last push, using all of her strength. Tony slipped back and nearly fell down, and he dropped his stick in the process.

  Carla swooped down and picked up the stick from the floor.

  The double doors crashed open as Ray forced his way inside, screaming and crying the whole time.

  Carla swung the stick down at the dog’s head like a baseball bat and the dog loosened its grip on Ray’s calf. She turned the stick around and jabbed at the dog’s neck with the point. The stick wasn’t sharp enough to penetrate the dog’s flesh, but it was painful enough to make the dog let go. The Rottweiler skittered back, but its eyes were on Carla like it was considering another attack. The other dog was circling back around, speeding towards them from the other side, running full-steam, slobber flying out of its open mouth of sharp teeth.