Loomis was dead, that much was obvious long before Crystal finally made it up the stairs to his body. She closed his eyes and found a sheet from the nearest room to cover him. It was soaked with his blood when she stopped for a last look a few steps down the stairs.
Tiffany was starting to go into shock. Terri knew she was going to go the same way if she didn't act. She found Tiffany's bag and started pulling out clothes. "Tiff. Here." she held out a hooded top, sneakers and a pair of jeans. Tiffany stared at the clothes for a moment before remembering she was all but naked. She took the jeans and hoodie into the library and started fighting her way out of her boots.
Whilst all this went on around him, Todd stood in the middle of the foyer, swaying slightly as the booze tugged him left and right. When it got too much he doubled over and vomited on the floor.
Terri turned away from Todd as he continued heaving. She walked over and selected a new gun from the table. Mechanically, she did a quick strip of the pistol to check the actions, tapped the magazine against the edge of the table to free any sticking bullets, reloaded and pushed the weapon into her waistband. Then she decided she should choose a back up gun, just in case.
Crystal was sat at the bottom of the stairs, the little revolver resting on her knees. Todd had staggered over to sit in one of the chairs on the edge of the foyer. The front door was still open. For several minutes, whilst they had all been in shock, it had offered entry to anyone who wanted to sneak up on them. They could have been wiped out if the slashers had decided to finish their work. Terri took a quick look around, but didn't spot movement on the wide open space between the house and the lower woodland. She closed the door.
"What the fuck just happened?" Crystal asked nobody in particular.
"I was attacked by a slasher on the way to the boathouse. They got Prescott."
Tiffany entered the foyer, decent and more composed. "There were two in the graveyard. One of them killed Sam. I stuck them on the fence and put a knife in the other."
"We saw Loomis being attacked by the guy I shot in the bedroom. At least, same outfit and mask anyway." Crystal waved her gun toward the top of the stairs. "If Freddy hasn't come running after that commotion I guess he's...."
"He's dead." Todd opined, "Freddy's dead, Loomis is dead, Prescott is dead, Sam is dead. We're supposed to be the best slasher hunters in the whole fucking country, and we just got taken apart in minutes!"
"Can we go into another room?" Crystal asked. "That smell's gonna make me hurl."
Nobody was going to argue with that, so they moved into the library. "Okay," Terri began, "we just got decimated. But it was by a pack of slashers. They've never hunted in packs before. We're up against something unprecedented."
"You're sure they don't hunt in packs?" Todd wasn't convinced.
"Well Prescott is.... Prescott was the expert on slasher history and lore. I don't know chapter and verse on every recorded one like he did, but, well, we've all studied them. None of us has heard of anything like that happening before, have we?" There was a chorus of negatives from the other three. "So this is something outside our training. That's not going to be very reassuring if it gets us killed, but it's something to bear in mind. We need to work out why they're here, how they're organised, all of that stuff."
"We should make a run for it." Todd volunteered, "It's the safest thing to do. Put miles between us and this place. Then call in an air strike."
"We can call in air strikes?" Tiffany was wide eyed at the idea.
"I.... don't know."
"I'm sure we know somebody who knows somebody who could arrange one." Crystal offered.
"That's actually a good idea." Terri conceded. "But I say we torch this place before we leave. Maybe we can get the rat that's still in the walls." the last sentence was delivered loudly to the walls and ceiling. They all imagined they heard a scrabbling behind the lath in the silence which followed.
* * *
His world had been turned over and over in the space of just a few hours.
It had started when these children had invaded his home. He had been angry about that at first, but that had settled into a warm, righteous blood lust and he had vowed to rid the old building of them one by one.
Then it had turned out to be a trap. He wasn't sure what had saved him from the big titted blonde's shots, but it was more luck than he could rely on again.
He had stayed in his hidden hiding place until they had convinced themselves that he was outside, then he had sneaked out to set booby traps. He had seen the blonde pick up a silver gun and stare at it with something that might have been love, before leaving it and picking one of the larger, uglier machine guns. That gun had received special attention, but he hadn't been able to put it back before they had all returned.
The one in the attic had been a bonus. He had been too busy tapping at some tiny device to notice anything. He had probably died unaware of anything. Which was a shame, he had invaded Prisoner 1392's space and 1392 wanted him to know fear before he died.
Whatever had happened at the boathouse, whatever they had encountered, the children were convinced they had killed 1392. Another strange thing he didn't understand. But at least it made them feel safe, which should have made his next kill easier.
Except the one in the jacket had turned around a moment too soon and put up more of a fight than 1392 had expected. And someone else had attacked the others.
Invading his home was bad enough. But doing so to kill people was even worse. His home, his land, his murders. Anyone who broke those rules would suffer.
Which was why he was standing in the shadows in the cellar. He had seen the shape sneaking through the long grass toward the house and made a fair guess of what it was. The ground floor windows were all jammed in their frames and the rear doors were too likely to be guarded, so the cellar seemed the logical place for this sneak to enter.
There was a rattle as hands tried the door from the outside. Then a scratching as the lock was picked. 1392 unhitched a rope from the pillar beside him and held it ready.
The shape that came through the door moved strangely, walking across the dusty floor on all fours like some sort of creature. For a moment 1392 was rapt with way the skin it wore seemed to move like fluid. Then he adjusted his grip on the rope.
There was a rattle of movement in the rafters. The strange, body suited figure stared up. Hanging from the beams were several heavy old chairs. Over time each of the legs had been whittled down to a spike. Now they moved as the complicated apparatus which held them up was released.
The dark figure almost made it to the base of the stairs in a single cat-like leap before being snatched out of the air and impaled on the ground. Something clattered out of its hand and skidded across the floor, but 1392 didn't hang around long enough to see what it was.
* * *
The whole house moved, flexing as there was a crash from beneath the floor. All four of them had their guns out immediately, though Todd staggered and fell flat on his behind. He sat there looking sorry for himself whilst the girls stared down at him.
"We'll load the Fort." Tiffany told Crystal and Terri, "You investigate. But be careful."
Crystal and Terri skirted the pool of vomit and headed to the door for the kitchen. "Is that the only way down to the basement?" Crystal asked.
"Only one I found. I bet there's a route down through the walls though."
They covered each other through each of the doors, through the kitchen to the top of the stairs down into the basement. "There a light down here?" Crystal asked, three steps down and covering the dark.
Terri reached across and found the switch. She readied her gun, in case anything jumped at the light, then flipped the switch. "Nope."
They both had torches off the clips on their belts in a moment and the beams danced around the carpet of shattered wood. Crystal's light settled on the head and arm sticking out from under broken chairs. Blood was pooled around the body but had halted a short way from it, brought to a standstill in a line across the floor where separate pourings of concrete had created a lip.
Crystal kept her torch on the impaled body as they walked down the stairs. Terri played her beam around the far corners of the room. "That looks like the one that attacked me on the path." she said when they stood on the bottom step. She looked down and saw the half open cut throat razor on the floor in front of them and picked it up, clumsily clasping it to the torch with two fingers.
"This is totally a place to set more traps." Crystal decided.
"Yeah. I'm not exploring it. Let's get out of here and see if we can lock the door at the top of the stairs."
They couldn't lock the door, but it opened outwards so they could wedge a chair against it. "The house slasher has ways through the walls, but at least this might hold up the others."
Terri scanned the kitchen, trying to tell if anything had moved. Her memory wasn't up to spotting any tell tale differences. "There was gas coming through to the cooker wasn't there?"
"We made hot dogs."
Terri flipped the cut throat open, "I've got an idea."
Wary of dropping their guard too much, they moved the old cooker away from the wall. Crystal stood with gun at the ready whilst Terri found the rubbery gas hose. She sliced a wedge out of the pipe and worked it until it started hissing.
"What's the client going to say about burning down the house?" Crystal asked.
"Fuck the client. We'll refund the bastard if we get out of here. Close the doors and let the gas collect in here."
Tiffany was in the foyer with the last of the bags, a sack full of guns slung over her shoulder. "Todd's siphoning gas. Into cut glass. They'll be the most expensive molotovs ever."
"We'll torch the new SUV with the house. We don't want to give anyone a getaway car. Let's get the fuck out of here."
Todd stood in the doorway holding two decanters. He looked like he'd drunk the contents before filling them with gasoline. "Where do you want these?"
"Pour one over the floor and we'll toss the other in as we leave." Terri instructed.
"Oh shit." Crystal had been staring over Todd's shoulder as he and Terri talked. Now she pointed.
In the moonlight they could just see figures on the grass near the lower tree line. One of them crouched and raised something to their shoulder.
Todd turned to look at the new danger, bemused. There was a pop and a whoosh and something trailed white smoke from the crouched figure across the meadow toward the Fort. Terri and Crystal started reaching for Todd, then decided they'd be better off dropping to the floor. Tiffany had already dived into the library.
The Fort exploded. The blast blew through its armour and bounced it off the veranda. It dropped back to the ground on fire. Todd was thrown through the door and propelled all the way across the foyer to crash into the wall at the far end. Neither of the decanters, still in his hands, had shattered, but there was a long jagged piece of armour plate from the Fort embedded in his chest.
Todd stared dumbly at the ceramic which extended from his chest. He gently put the decanters down so he could touch it. "That's just not fair." he managed as last words.
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