Excerpt: THE SUMMER FUN MASSACRE by Craig DiLouie

One

The lawman senses a shift in the night. A subtle psychic tremor pings his instincts. The world is out of balance, only he doesn’t know what’s wrong.

Deputy Tom Bailey parked his cruiser at a lonely crossroads outside town, the usual spot for his coffee break. The middle of nowhere. A red full August moon lights the prairie. He takes a sip from his thermos cup and rolls down the window.

The night is warm. The August day’s heat still radiates from the nearby asphalt. He expects the constant breeze to blow the familiar odors of buffalo grass and baked cattle manure his way, but the air has gone still.

And quiet. The only sound the distant mechanical murmur of the beef-processing plant north of town. Then the ring of the crickets in the grass builds in volume until it’s almost deafening.

He can’t get rid of this nagging sense that something’s wrong.

Earlier in the night, Tom drove out to the Whispering Woods to shine his flashlight around the cabins and neighboring trees at Summer Fun. The camp recently reopened after being shuttered nine years before. The counselors heard noises in the trees and imagined the worst.

He wasn’t a bit surprised. No doubt they told some bloodcurdling campfire tales about what happened there back in ’83 and gave themselves a good scare.

Otherwise, the county has been quiet all night.

The dispatcher’s silky voice purrs from his dashboard VHF radio.

“I beseech you,

Wrest once the law to your authority:

To do a great right, do a little wrong.”

Tom chuckles into his handset.

“Copy that, Darlene,” he says. “Food for thought.”

“That one’s from The Merchant of Venice. It does make you think, don’t it?”

Kyle Morris chimes in from his own cruiser. “It’s a good one.”

“Just making sure y’all are awake out there,” she says. “Dispatch, out.”

The radio falls silent. Tom remains restless. A deep hooting call reaches his ears. A horned owl is perched on a nearby telephone pole, taking its own break from hunting voles. He wonders if it’s an omen.

Police are one of the few types of people who are supposed to run straight at danger, and Tom takes this responsibility seriously. He’s always on the lookout. The problem with constant vigilance is the brain grows annoyed when nothing happens and starts inventing things. He can’t always trust his instincts.

Like this bad feeling.

He might as well go back to Summer Fun and take another quick look around. Put his mind at ease. He may have missed something.

Tom reaches again for the dashboard radio.

“Adam-2 to Dispatch. Location is County Road 6 at the junction with Road 13. I’m heading out to do a welfare check at Summer Fun.”

Making it sound like dull routine instead of an odd hunch.

This time, the radio responds with dead air.

“Darlene, Darlene. This is Adam-2.”

Again, nothing.

The dispatcher has to take bathroom breaks like anyone else. Morris likely heard the message. Tom will run his check and report to Darlene again once he finishes up and returns to his patrol.

He starts the Dodge Ramcharger with its light bar, searchlight, and brush guard mounted over the grille. Surrounded by steel and gear, Tom feels formidable. In his cruiser, he’s a mobile one-man police force.

Shifting into gear, he gets the vehicle rolling toward the Whispering Woods park and the lake and summer camp it conceals.

The high beams reveal faded yellow lines slashing the cracked asphalt. Dry warm air rushes into the cab. After a while, a sign appears amid mesquite scrub, its big black letters arcing like a rainbow over smiling children frolicking among trees framing a bright blue lake:

THIS WAY TO SUMMER FUN!

A bug thumps against his windshield, leaving a tiny smear of guts.

The open prairie yields to scattered cottonwoods thickening to patchy woodland growing around the lake. Tom turns onto an access road formed by packed sandy soil. The cruiser shudders over the rough ground. A cloud of dust obscures the rear view, boiling black and red in his taillights.

The darkness closes in. After a brief drive through the trees, he parks a generous distance from the cabins. No need to scare the counselors even more. He’ll walk up and have a quick gander around.

Earlier in the night, he put on a good show for them. His uniform of cowboy hat, short-sleeved tan shirt, brown pants, and badge radiates a sense of order that banishes boogeymen and monsters. As a bonus, Tom looks the way a sheriff’s deputy ought—tall, broad shouldered, and hard, the kind of man who might play one on TV if he didn’t already do the real thing.

He expects to find everyone snug and snoring in their bunks.

Exiting the patrol truck, he resettles his thick leather belt and its twenty pounds of gear on his hips. Baton, radio, handcuffs, ammunition, and holstered revolver. He scoops the Stetson Cattleman from the seat and sets it on his head. The air here is cool, and he slips on his windbreaker.

Then he sighs. This place. Tom hates it to his core.

After what happened nine years ago—back when it was called the Summer Seekers Youth Camp—he was plenty skeptical about Mike Martin reopening it. Giving it a refurb and a new name didn’t erase what happened that night, and it sure as hell didn’t purge his own awful memory of coming here the morning after.

It is gorgeous, though. Plenty of cottonwoods and willows offering precious shade from the Texas Panhandle’s merciless sun. The picturesque crystal lake fed by a natural spring ideal for swimming and canoeing. An oasis of greenery on a vast and inhospitable plain.

All of it wanting to be used. Mike posted some advertisements and bragged around town how he had kids coming all summer from as far as Amarillo. And sure enough, they came, packing the cabins, and aside from a sprained ankle during a game of hide-and-seek, nothing bad happened.

Maybe he was right, Tom thought at the time. Maybe it really was time to move on.

He spots a soft warm glow in a cabin window, which guides him like a beacon down the dirt road. Otherwise, the camp is dark. After a long day preparing the grounds for the next batch of children, frolicking in their free hours, and then getting themselves good and spooked, the counselors appear to be asleep.

His boots thud along the path. The air is alive and loud with the ring of crickets, the singsong of katydids. At night, the Whispering Woods howl.

A pale and spindly apparition rears directly in front of him.

On reflex, Tom stiffens into a bullish fighting stance with his hand on his holstered revolver. Then he chuckles.

The spindly thing is one of a pair of poles straddling the last stretch of drive. Earlier in the night, a banner stretched between them, proclaiming, WELCOME TO SUMMER FUN! Now it hangs limp from the one on the right.

I may be a bit spooked myself, he thinks.

Beyond is the little clearing where he spots a van parked next to a pickup and a motorcycle. He’s close enough to the cabins to identify Mike’s as the one where the light is coming from. The owner appears to be awake in his office.

Tom will drop in to say hello and let him know the banner needs to be restrung. Then he can go chase his weird hunch somewhere else. Quickening his pace, he stomps on something soft and yielding.

A dead animal. He takes a reflexive step back.

As if waiting for this cue, the insects stop their song.

Tom walks around the thing and freezes. His instincts nag again. The woods are still except for the creaking of the trees.

He switches his flashlight on. Gazes down.

And stares long and hard at a human hand.

A hand without a body, still attached to an ulna stripped to gristle. The dry soil surrounding it is wet and dark.

A fat black beetle scurries across the palm and disappears into the grass.

A horrible Halloween prop. Someone went too far scaring the other counselors. No wonder they got so worked up and radioed the sheriff’s department.

The realism is uncanny, though. Someone put real effort into it. A gross work of art.

Tom crouches for a closer look and instantly recoils.

It’s real.

Time appears to stretch as the reality of this sinks in. He finally wrenches his eyes free and swings the light beam to scan the path and neighboring trees. He turns off the flashlight and lets his eyes readjust to night vision.

Still absorbing, processing.

The only thing around here that could do this kind of violence to a human being is a bobcat, but they usually don’t attack humans unless they’re cornered.

There’s another possibility, of course. One Tom knows all too well.

It can’t be that.

His mind flashes to tree branches draped in bloody rags—

Stop. There’s no need to go there yet.

Either way, something is terribly wrong at Summer Fun.

The Ramcharger with its mobile radio and Remington shotgun seems very far away right now. His handheld doesn’t have enough power to reach the station. He curses himself and Darlene. A police officer should never be this isolated. Backup is essential. He’s utterly alone here.

The question is whether to push ahead or retreat and call for help.

A shadow flickers in the lighted window. Someone in distress, or perhaps a deranged killer. Maybe both.

The shadow drives him forward.

His body is growing slick with fear sweat, but he still has his wits. He can still think, plan, and act. Some of this is just Tom. A lot of it is his training. A part of it is his staunch belief that his badge carries a certain power.

His hand again wraps around the familiar walnut grip of his .1 Special with its four-inch barrel. He draws the gun and moves on at a careful pace.

In the window, the shadow shifts again.

Tom again notices the dead quiet and realizes the camp’s power generator isn’t running. The lights aren’t off; they’re dead. Someone lit a lantern in there.

All he hears is the blood rushing through his ears in crashing waves.

Stop, look, listen. Then creep forward again.

He reaches the short steps leading up to the cabin’s door and braces to shoot. Calls out, “Deputy sheriff!”

The light shifts inside. A whining growl.

“Come out with your hands held high.”

The growl stops. The door stays closed. The cabin appears to harden around a stubborn refusal to comply. The world darkens even further as a patch of cloud veils the moon.

The choice remains the same—advance or retreat.

Less than a half hour ago, he sat bored at a crossroads and wound up wrestling with an odd hunch. Now this. A surreal nightmare that is actually happening.

“Don’t move,” Tom says. “I’m armed, and I’m coming in.”

He enters gun first and gapes at the pale lunatic face confronting him.

Then at the flash of the hatchet.

Two

Teenage girl with twigs in her blond hair—

Leering grimace, bulging eyes—

Hatchet weaving a figure eight toward his face—

Tom doesn’t shoot.

Again, the training. But this time, most of it is just him. His finger tightens against the trigger but stops in time.

The girl gasps gibberish as she waves the hatchet not as an attack but as a warning. The side of her face glows red with swelling. Dark bruises in the shape of fingers form zebra stripes along her throat. Cuts and scratches lace her arms. Blood spots her ripped tee. Her eyes burn with rage and defiance.

She has been in a fight tonight.

Laura, he remembers. One of the counselors.

A prim worrywart. She made him search all over with his flashlight even after her friends started to laugh off whatever spooked them. A pretty girl-next-door type you find all over Texas, though she wore Coke-bottle glasses that gave her an owlish look.

She isn’t wearing them now, and he wonders how well she can see him.

“Laura, I’m not going to hurt you.” Tom angles the gun a little to the side. “I’m Deputy Sheriff Tom Bailey. I was here earlier. I came back to check on you.”

Her eyes flicker with something like recognition. She’s still in there, beneath the madness of survival.

“He’s everywhere,” she blurts.

“I need you to put that hatchet down so we can talk, okay?”

She slowly wags her head. Half her face appears to balloon before his eyes.

“They’re dead.”

“The counselors?”

“He killed them all.”

“Who? Who did this?”

“He sees you all the time,” Laura says. “You can’t run. You can’t even hide.”

When he first entered the cabin, his instincts told him the girl was a victim and not the perpetrator, and his rational mind now catches up. She fought tonight and is still standing, but there doesn’t seem to be much left of her except a stubborn will to survive.

Laura came to this cabin to light the lantern and make her last stand.

Still, he needs her to drop the weapon. Awareness that his backside faces an open door gnaws at him. A killer may be on the grounds, and he’s vulnerable.

Tom wrenches his eyes away from her for a snap scan of the room. Cedar walls, desk, and a few folksy decorations, including a cross-stitch wall hanging depicting a s’more treat and a corny exhortation to CAMP S’MORE, WORRY LESS.

Base radio, though someone smashed it good. Single window next to the door. Another door leading to where Mike sleeps.

He wants to check that room, but he can’t. Not yet.

“I’ll protect you, but you have to trust me. Put the hatchet down.”

The girl bursts into a peal of manic laughter.

“Laura—”

“You can’t protect me.”

“You said he killed everyone. Is it just one assailant?”

“Hungry,” she blurts.

Tom flinches at the word, which triggers a distant dark memory.

Shrieking fills the air outside like her laughter’s mocking echo.

The staccato shrieks leap in volume until they seem to come from inside the cabin. An animal sound of anger and anguish. Unnatural, like short human screams played in reverse.

Tom wheels to check the door. Big mistake.

When he returns his attention to Laura, however, the girl retreats from him, hugging the hatchet against her chest. She is visibly shaking with fear.

The shrieks scrape like sandpaper along Tom’s ears and nerves. The cabin’s very walls appear to vibrate at the blasts.

“I’m going to check it out,” he yells over the noise. “I’ll be right back.”

Tom turns toward the door again, and this time she jumps him.

“No,” she says.

Digging her nails into his body, she wraps her legs around his hips and fastens herself like a human anchor. Her body burns with fever heat. In her blind terror, she gnaws at his shoulder.

As the shrieking grinds on, she is practically climbing him.

“Don’t leave me alone.”

The horrible sound stops. The girl stiffens like wood as he tries to pry her off him while keeping hold of the revolver.

Laura’s face goes blank. Her eyes flare wide.

“He’s here.” Her voice a terrified whisper.

Tom pushes her away and wheels with his .1 ready to shoot.

Then he freezes too.

A dark shape fills the glass. A grotesque head with impossibly long ears and black ovals where its eyes should be in its bloated, deformed face.

A monstrous hare straight out of a nightmare.

An odd moist stink in the air, earth and minerals and decay.

The right words appear in his mind, like he can read them typewritten on a sheet of paper: DEPUTY SHERIFF. FREEZE OR I WILL SHOOT.

At last, he finds speech. “Freeze—”

The thing moves. The hand cannon roars in his grip. Lightning and a deafening bang. Hot metal punches out half the window in a burst of glass.

The grotesque head is gone.

Tom stands with the revolver aimed at the window until his arm begins to ache. Slowly, he lowers it and allows himself to breathe again. His ears are ringing. The air smells like gun smoke.

Something thuds against the wall behind him. Whoever is out there has circled around the back of the cabin and is throwing things at it.

Another thud. This time, a wet, meaty splat.

Jesus, his mind blurts. This fight has entered the realm of psychological warfare, a contest for which he is neither well equipped nor trained.

Laura crawls under the table with the broken radio and hugs her knees, the hatchet in easy reach. He understands he won’t be compelling her to relinquish the weapon. If Tom goes down, the hatchet is her Alamo.

A new sound arrives now, a strangely loud and grisly chewing.

Jesus, God.

The girl sings quietly, “The hunter was hungry, the town told him no.”

Tom knows the rest. Every kid in Ledger grows up knowing it.

He ate the wrong thing where they made him go.

In the Whispering Woods, all must beware

The man who now hunts as the Hungry Hare.

A rural legend in the Texas Panhandle region.

This killer is a man in a hare mask, just like the old story.

Just like nine years ago—

Tom yanks the handheld from his belt. He mashes the talk button.

“Bailey to Morris. Morris, come in.”

The radio responds with white noise.

“Dispatch, Dispatch. Signal 13. Officer in distress.”

Nothing.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Deputy Tom Bailey of the Cross County Sheriff’s Department. Anyone on this frequency, please respond.”

Dead air. The summer camp is remote, and the ancient handheld radios the department uses lack the range to reach the town.

With a frustrated sigh, Tom returns the radio to his belt.

“Deputy sheriff!” he shouts into the night. “You’re under arrest. Come here and surrender, or I’ll use lethal force.”

No thuds. No nauseating chewing. Quiet now.

He feels useless.

If Tom ventures out there, he’ll be hunting a maniac killer in the dark among cabins and trees. Plenty of places to hide. The killer could easily ambush him or sneak past to finish what he started with Laura.

His only viable option is to stay here. Under siege.

He jumps as the shrieking starts up again. This time shrill and frustrated. The killer is on the move. Heavy, stomping footsteps that tremble up through the planks and then the soles of Tom’s boots.

Behind him, Laura lets out a pitiful moan.

The man’s pace quickens until it accelerates to a sprint more animal than human. Moving to the door, Tom readies his revolver but sees nothing in the dark. The killer is circling the cabin.

Working himself up to attack.

This is it—

Tonight, Tom went from boredom to terror. Now he’s angry. When the killer comes, he’ll be ready with his six-gun cocked and aimed to shoot.

Only, each circuit appears to take the man farther away.

Tom takes another step forward. He’s outside now.

Come on, you bastard. Already second-guessing every decision he made since coming here. Thinking he failed somehow.

The scales must be righted. He wants to get this man.

“I’m right here,” Tom roars.

The air hums with manic drumming that seems to come from all directions, and then it stops. The night fills with the ring of insects again.

The killer appears to be gone.

As if reading his thoughts, Laura says, “He’s still here. He’s always here.”

He shakes his head.

“If he is, he doesn’t want to test us.”

“He knows how to wait.”

Now’s the time to make a run for his cruiser and call home. Marshal every able-bodied man with a badge and get him out here. Lock the area down and beat the bushes.

Tom doesn’t move. He suspects Laura isn’t going anywhere, and he can’t leave her alone while he makes the fifty-yard dash to his shotgun and radio.

He tries anyway. “Let’s go. My vehicle isn’t far.”

Laura answers by slowly scooping up the hatchet and holding it in a tight grip. Her fierce expression saying, Try and make me.

Tom sighs. “We’ll wait for sunrise.”

She nods. “Safe in daylight.”

Demons and killers fear and flee the sun. This strikes him as more horror-movie rule than a fact on which he should bet his life, but he accepts it. The killer’s unnatural shrieks keep playing in his head, grating and terrifying.

He asks her if she thinks anyone else might be alive.

Laura stares at him. “I saw everyone here die.”

All right.

Tom sits on the floor next to the desk and settles in with the .1 resting on his lap. Laura curls into a fetal ball. He takes off his windbreaker and drapes it over the trembling girl.

Then he waits.

Daylight can’t come fast enough. It’s going to be a very long night.

Three

The park slowly brightens outside the cabin. The woodlands awaken. In the trees, the birds chirp their morning song.

Tom has never felt so grateful to see sunlight.

He holsters the .1 and flexes his sweaty empty hand.

Then heaves himself to his feet.

All night, Laura refused to leave her nest under the desk. Aside from her fitful moans and the flutter of moths that found their way into Mike’s cabin through the broken window, the hours passed in a quiet blur.

Tom frowns at the girl’s sleeping form. She stopped him from arresting the perpetrator. A killer who taunted him from right outside, mere yards away.

She might have saved your life, he tells himself.

Still, he had to try. That was his duty.

By the end, it felt personal.

He gives a gentle shake until her eyes flash open.

The girl gapes at Tom in a daze. Wipes spittle from her cheek. Then winces as it all comes back to her.

“Daybreak,” he says. “We need to go.”

Laura rises to her knees, moving slow and grimacing with the effort. Every inch of her appears to hurt, from her many injuries to her broken heart.

Tom helps her to her feet. Otherwise, he can’t do anything for her except get her someplace safe.

“It’s about fifty yards to my vehicle,” he says.

The radio and shotgun. The way out.

As they pass through the door, he tells her to close her eyes tight.

The hot, bright light burned away the nightmares but now exposes the very real horrors left by the night.

The killer quietly returned at some point for his performance’s final act. The bodies of Mike Martin and the counselors have been arranged like morbid offerings on the drive. Like mangled mice dropped on a stoop by a territorial cat.

His arm firm around the girl’s shaking body, Tom guides her through this disgusting tableau. Her eyes remain clamped, but she lets out an anguished groan anyway. Open or closed, she can’t avoid what happened. He guesses she is watching them die in a private movie that will forever demand replaying.

She grips his side so hard it hurts. He allows it.

“Don’t look,” he tells her.

Poor Mike lies on his back with his arms and legs twisted in impossible contortions, his chest cavity hollowed out and left an empty pit. The pure fear etched on the man’s face reveals the horror of his final moments.

As a kid, Mike used to come out to this park to fish for bass and crappies. He fell in love with the trees and water, this natural miracle on the sun-drenched plain. He had a dream to share his appreciation of the outdoors with the next generation.

A dream that became a nightmare. Last night, the man kept apologizing to Tom for wasting his time coming out here on a fool’s errand. The counselors wouldn’t let him alone until he did something. They went on insisting someone was in the woods watching them and making the bizarre shriek they all heard.

Mike’s final words to Tom: Thanks for coming out. I hope this will settle them down.

If it did, it was a placebo for a heart attack.

The law can’t be everywhere. Nearly three-quarters the size of Delaware, Cross County is a lot of land occupied by thirteen thousand people, around half of them scattered outside the county seat of Ledger. One lawman for every thousand citizens. Often, law enforcement arrives in crime’s aftermath. They protect and they serve, and when they can’t do either they bear witness, as Tom is doing now.

A few yards beyond Mike’s sprawling corpse, a girl lies on her stomach. She is missing part of her scalp, exposing a bald spot of bloody skull amid her long auburn hair. Jagged wounds cover her body.

The girl took charge while Tom searched the grounds. She told him where to look and made comments when he wasn’t thorough enough.

He can’t remember her name.

Next is a boy lacking a shirt and both arms below the elbow, his back spotted with the same savage wounds. Tom can’t recall his name either, which angers him. These people should be honored. He should know their names.

Last night, the big, handsome kid acted annoyed that Tom was there at all. Everywhere the deputy shined his light, the boy said he’d already checked there. He shot nasty glances at a dark-haired beauty named Angela, who batted her eyelashes at Tom the entire time. He remembers her name because she told him several times. George Garrett’s little girl, all grown up and looking for trouble.

She now lies with her guts ripped out, a link of intestine stuffed in her mouth.

Next is Billy. Rob Evans’s oldest. Tom recognized him right away from his church. Star quarterback on the high school football team. He kept asking Tom if he could do anything to help or otherwise ensure their safety. A future deputy in the making, Tom thought. Now the star quarterback sits on the rocky road with his toes missing and his head facing the wrong way.

Last is the mean girl who made cutting remarks the entire time. She wore all black. Heavy eyeliner. Going hard for a punk look. Her severed head, arms, and legs lie arranged on the ground like primitive art. Even her tongue was torn from her throat. Some of her red-dyed hair has been burned off, forming a half-finished mohawk.

Six lives snuffed out in a single night of mass murder.

Amid his revulsion, Tom marvels at the physical strength this butchery required. The capability needed to hunt down six people who were fit, strong, and determined to stay alive. The amount of dedication and will.

What bewilders him most is what would compel anyone to do this at all. The obsession with no apparent objective other than chaos, terror, and death. Why the man selected certain body parts to remove.

Facing the horror of it, he feels strangely reduced.

“You’re doing great, Laura,” he says.

Trying to sound confident. A voice she can trust. But again he wonders why the killer took Mike’s organs. What did he do with the man’s heart? As much as it sickens him, he can’t stop thinking about it.

Then it hits him. The jagged wounds. What caused them.

At last, his stomach revolts. He growls at himself. Keep it together. This girl is traumatized, and she needs you.

The bodies were partially eaten—

Whatever you’re feeling, feel it later. When she’s safe.

They finally pass the last of the bodies and leave the open space of the campground. A few shuffling steps later, they reach the trees. The light grows dimmer in their shade. More than halfway there. He spots his rig still parked on the side of the road.

The short walk is slow and tense. If the killer charges out now, Tom will be slow to react, as the girl isn’t about to let go of him. He scans the greenery anyway. Every branch and leaf seems to hate him and want him dead. The fluty chirp of robins strikes him as malevolent laughter. The sun brought comfort and better odds of survival, but the world has changed because this killer exists in it. Until they reach real safety, Tom sees potential threats everywhere he looks.

He almost wishes the killer would show up to finish what he started. He’s actually praying for it. This time, he will not miss his shot.

Only a few yards to go. He grits his teeth against a sudden flaring desire to bolt the final stretch. Drag Laura kicking and screaming if necessary.

At last, they stand at his cruiser with its noble five-pointed star of the county sheriff’s department on the door. Tom gives it a once-over to confirm the killer didn’t damage it. The shotgun is still mounted on the rack.

“You can look now.” Trying to sound confident and reassuring, though the strain in his voice betrays him.

Laura slowly opens her eyes.

“We can go now?” Her own voice like a small child’s, but raspier than last night, her throat hoarse and husky from screaming and near strangulation.

Tom gently extricates himself from her strong grip. It’s like threading a needle. She immediately starts shaking.

“I’m right here,” he says. “I’m not leaving you.”

He unlocks the door and reaches in to snatch the Remington. Alice, the late-night dispatcher who took over after Darlene finished her evening shift, is on the radio urgently requesting his status. He has been missing for hours and was due back at the station thirty minutes ago.

He pumps a shell into the firing chamber and props the weapon within easy reach. Then he guides Laura onto the bench seat.

“I need you to keep being strong for me just a bit longer. Can you do that?”

Her eyes widen with fear and suspicion. “Why?”

Tom wants to roar straight out of here to the clinic in town, but she doesn’t require immediate medical attention, and he needs to stick around, if possible, to ensure the integrity of the crime scene until backup arrives.

“I’m going to radio for help and an ambulance for you. The sheriff will call your parents and let them know you’re safe. You just need to wait a little more. Can you do that?”

Her face wilts into a pained wince, but she understands. Tough kid.

“What’s your status, Adam-2?” the radio says. “Come in, Adam-2.”

Tom walks around to the other side of the truck and slides behind the wheel. He picks up the handset and calls, “Dispatch, this is Adam-2.”

“Tom! What’s your location and status?”

“I’m at the scene of a multiple homicide at the Summer Fun camp. Requesting backup and EMS.”

After a stunned silence, Alice responds, “Copy that, Tom. I…”

Another long stretch of dead air. Tom scans the trees again but spies nothing amiss in the gloom. He keys the handset.

“Negative contact, Dispatch. Ten-nine, ten-nine.”

The next voice on the radio belongs to Sheriff Buddy Jackson.

“Message received, Tom. Alice meant to tell you backup and EMS are on the way at all possible speed. Are you all right, boy?”

“Yeah. I’m all right.” All things considered. “There’s a survivor who needs help, though. One of the counselors.”

“Any sign of the suspect? Are you in danger?”

“Negative.”

“Copy, Tom. Secure the scene until we get there. Protect the counselor. Alice is about to sign off, and Lucille will be taking over for the day shift. Keep her informed about anything new. We’re coming.”

“Ten-four,” says Tom, and finally allows himself to relax a little.

A sharp ache suddenly flares in his neck and jaw. He ground his teeth all night while he kept watch. His body coiled like a steel spring.

On the passenger side, Laura sits quietly, staring at nothing. Despite the day’s rising heat, she shivers in the sheriff’s department windbreaker.

“Adam-3 to Adam-2,” Morris calls on the radio, and Tom feels a rush of gratitude that the deputy remained on duty out of concern. “I’ve got Jim Scully with me. We’re on our way at full speed.”

“Copy,” Tom answers, and signs off. “The cavalry’s coming.”

The girl doesn’t respond. She has utterly checked out. In her mind, she watches her friends die again and again. Once more, she stares into the hare mask’s blank, soulless eyes as the killer chokes her.

At last, she speaks in a quiet voice, almost a whisper.

“Why did you take so long?”

“I arrived within fifteen minutes and searched the grounds, remember?”

“I mean the second time. I called you on the radio.”

Tom can’t explain that. “I only know about the first call.”

“What made you come back, then?”

He shrugs. “I had a bad feeling and wanted to check on you.”

The air fills with the distant blare of sirens.

Laura says, “They’re here?”

“They’re here. You’re safe now.”

She nods dumbly and finally asks, “Why? Why me?”

Wondering why this happened to her. Why she alone survived the night.

Speaking these words triggers permission to do what she put off during her ordeal. Like a slow avalanche crossing her features, the girl’s face contorts into a pitiful expression of utter despair, and she lets out a loud sob.

Tom turns away while Laura weeps. He scans the woods once more, still ominous but empty. The siren wail grows louder.

“They’re dead,” she yells, her voice cracking.

Quietly, he says, “I know.”

“They’re all dead.”

“Laura, I want to tell you something. Something important.” Firm and commanding. “What happened to you and your friends, I can’t fix. But I’m going to find whoever did it and bring him to justice. I swear it to you.”

Fed by an incomprehensible obsession, the killer showed supreme will to accomplish his horrific goal. To catch him, Tom will have to match that dedication. Dig deep. Be willing to do anything required.

Again, he swears it.

Laura takes a few halting, ragged breaths and nods. Her gaze burns with a fierce anger. As the sheriff’s department arrives with swirling lights and blasting sirens, Tom sees the survivor she was last night in her eyes.

The girl who fought a powerful killer and lived.

As for why she alone survived, however, she may never know.