It wasn't the rain that woke him, deafening though it was, and nor was it the restless shuffling of Tweek, tucked in on the stretcher in the middle of the caravan floor. Rather, he was roused at three am, by fist falls on the door of the caravan, blurring into the metallic thumping of rain on the roof of the trailer. For a moment, Craig was fifteen again and it was a Saturday morning. His mother was knocking on his door, intending to drag him out of bed and eject him forcibly into the world. Then suddenly it was right now. He was twenty-seven , and he was in a darkened trailer in the middle of a stormy desert, and literally the only thing he could think when he pushed himself up feebly and reached for his bedside lamp was Kenny. Fucking Kenny. He had better be here to apologise! How dare he have the audacity to wake him at such an unholy hour of the night?
Sleepy, disorientated, and pissed off, Craig heaved himself out of bed and hobbled over toward the door. His legs were still sore from the hike up the ridge, and the few hours sleep he had had were unsatisfactory. The rain had interfered with his dreams, and left his mind foggy with memories he had thought forgotten. He was confused, when his shin collided with the end of the stretcher, and for a moment he didn't recognise the blonde hair or hunched shape of the figure curled up foetally under the blankets.
"Hey," he kicked the end of the stretcher, and the figure bolted upright as though he had just had a car battery attached to one or more his extremities.
"Huh?!"
And just like that, Craig remembered Tweek. The worrisome apostate who was going to give him a ride back to civilization. Possibly his only real friend in the world.
Civilization. Craig remembered that he planned to go back there. That soon enough he would be leaving this cramped caravan and this dusty desert for good. That must not forget to take his NASA posters with him when he goes.
"Can you hear that?" Craig asked. Tweek's face took on an expression of concern, and he turned to glance over his shoulder into the dark at the other end of the van.
"What?" His voice sounded bad - like he had just smoked a whole cigar before crawling into bed. "The rain?"
"No..." Craig paused, trying to listen for the knocking again over the rain. Sure enough, it came, and Tweek's shoulders hunched rigidly in horror.
"That?" He asked. Craig nodded.
"Who would be here at this time of night?" Craig asked him, not really expecting him to know the answer. "In the rain?"
Tweek looked stricken. Craig sighed and gestured for him to move so he could crawl over the stretcher and get past to the door.
"Stand back, then. I'll handle it."
His companion scrambled to do as he was told, knocking a few empty soda cans off the edge of the sink in the process.
Craig made it to the door, and inched aside the small curtain covering the window to see who it was standing outside.
It was no one he recognised - without the light from the moon and the stars it was almost black as pitch out, and Craig could only make out the vague silhouettes of three people standing closely huddled together on his step. For some reason, Kenny hadn't turned the back hotel light on. This struck Craig as strange, but his mind was too tired and pre-occupied to consider it further. He gestured for Tweek to stand well back into the shadowy area of the trailer, just in case it was townsfolk come to cast him to the Foundation scouts like a Christian to the lions, and cracked open the door just enough for him to poke his head through.
"What kind of a time do you call this?" He peered into the darkness, coiling an arm out to feel for the pull string which would turn on his outside light. The knocking figures didn't respond, which he found more than a little unsettling. Or maybe they did respond and he just didn't hear them over the thunderous sound of water hitting the compacted earth. Outside, it was incredibly and unnaturally cold. Craig's arm was riled with gooseflesh when he finally found the lamp switch and gave it a tug.
The late-night knockers were not Kenny, as he had first suspected, or even townsfolk as had been his second guess. In fact, two of the knockers were complete strangers. Only the third visitor (although significantly more bald than he had been two years previous) was familiar, and even then Craig couldn't recognise any of the thoughts that might have been evident on his face.
'Clyde?!"
"Hello Craig." Clyde gave him a polite smile, the kind of smile reserved for strangers who meet each other on a long country road. "I trust we haven't disturbed you this evening?"
Craig was speechless, completely at a loss for where he was even supposed to start with that.
"What the fuck do you want!?"
It was a good place to start. Craig had dedicated a lot of time to thinking about some choice things he wanted to say to Clyde, if he was ever inconvenienced by seeing him again, but unfortunately at that moment they all eluded his recollection. He tried not to look at his face too long, at his familiar boyish features and muddy hazel eyes. Instead, he yanked the door open a little wider and regarded the dripping guests on his doorstep as a whole, rendered in frosted seventy five watt yellow light. The plain white robes they were wearing looked almost transparent with wetness, their faces were almost uniform in expression and composure. Craig, trembling a little with the effort, forced himself not to acknowledge the memory of Clyde's expressions rising to the surface of his mind. For some unknowable and cruel reason, he still retained a catalogue of smiles and pouts and silly conversations under Eric, and all of this information was flooding forth now in a way that made him feel sort of sick.
He distracted himself by thinking that the one who had knocked, standing front and centre, may have been a woman. But he had never had the misfortune to behold a woman like her before in his life. The light reflected in her eyes seemed manic and ungrounded - her thoughts completely detached from her physical body which was very much a picture of self-control. Craig got the most irrational sense that these people, having woken him, were bordering on demented. Their urgent fanaticism, the frisson of their excitement, came off them in overpowering waves. A deeply primitive place in his chest told him that they were probably a threat. He should close the door on them right now, remove himself as quickly as possible from the completely incomprehensible drama that was more than likely about to unfold.
"We want the Defector." The woman told him in a clear, ringing voice. "The one you call 'Tweek'. We have reason to believe he is here, with you."
Deep in the dark shadows of his caravan, Craig heard Tweek inhale sharply and edge further away. Soon he would be jammed into the far corner, where Craig had shoved the mop and buckets and broom Kenny had gotten him a few days earlier. Craig would probably have to coax him out with a bag of Brazilian roast.
Somewhere, deep under the layers of confusion and nausea and fear, Craig was nigh furious that the fool had gotten himself into such a disaster of a situation with this, a cult of lunatics. Didn't they teach kids about the dangers of apocalyptic religious movements in school? Or why it was hella fucking stupid to volunteer as a human sacrifice to a questionable God? Craig couldn't remember if anyone had ever gone out of their way to mention these things, or taught him this himself, but he felt as though that was probably something that Tweek should have learned.
Despite all of this annoyance, and despite being hyper-aware of the sounds Tweek was making in his scramble to be as small and invisible as possible, Craig maintained a calm facade, and leaned into the door frame to block their line of sight into the trailer.
"What? Why would you think that?"
"Well, he's certainly not in the hotel." Clyde was the one who spoke this time, his voice sounded well measured and clear, but unfamiliar. Despite his efforts to the contrary, Craig remembered the evenings they had spent drinking beers together, listening to Warrant and discussing whether or not they could just stay in Clyde's trailer out the back of the hotel forever or if it would be wiser to buy a house. He would bet his soul that back then, he didn't sound anything like he did now. Even his pronunciation was different. "People have been saying the two of you have been spending a lot of time together."
"Have we?"
It was hard to feign ignorance. Particularly when Craig heard the tell-tale sound of a mop falling, and Tweek yelping a swear behind his back. He hoped the rain would drown out the sound of him fucking around and jeopardising his own ass.
Clyde nodded.
"Word is the two of you headed out into the desert yesterday to go camping. Some folks were thinking you might not have come back."
"Why would I not come back?" Craig had never been a great actor. "I like it here. Nice job. Nice trailer. Usually the weather is pretty nice too."
Without allowing the polite expression on his face to shift, Clyde retorted.
"Not for long."
At that moment, Tweek kicked a bucket full of rags and nails and other caravan maintenance bits and bobs, and the whole pathetic lie came tumbling down around them both.
Craig cursed in frustration, and flung the door open to reveal Tweek standing there, swaddled in shadows, staring down in numb terror at the spilled screws and bits-and-pieces he had scattered over the floor.
"Jesus Christ Tweek! For someone whose number one priority is guarding his ass, you sure are shit at guarding your ass!"
The transformation on the part of the night knockers was instantaneous.
"Grab him!"
The woman's shriek was loud and horrible, and in response Tweek hollered and seized one of the brooms jumbled around his legs like it was a weapon.
"No!" He was panicked, almost frenzied. "Oh no you don't! Fuck off!"
He swung the broom haphazardly, clobbering Craig in the side of the head and nearly taking his eye out. Craig had to grab onto the door to stop himself collapsing. Without pausing to apologise, Tweek was flinging himself out the door and striking at the Disciples, a flurry of unwashed hair and broomstick knocking them backward into the mud and rain.
Clyde fell first, his formerly-chubby body making a heavy thumping smack into a shallow puddle below. The woman followed, taking a hearty broom hit right to her belly. She doubled over in pain and without pausing even for a second, Tweek kicked her backward too into the mud. Craig watched all of this from his spot hunched against the doorframe. His head felt as though it had been cracked open, and when he got his hands on Tweek the Disciples were going to have to wait in line because Craig was going to fucking kill him.
"Are you mad?!" He gasped, watching through the sleet as Tweek drive the third Foundation member against the pub wall with the bristle end of the broom. He stumbled out of the trailer and over Clyde, who was writhing on the ground in pain (good), and let the cold water cut through his shock. The chill helped to ease his throbbing temple.
“Tweek!”
Could he even hear him yelling, over the cataclysm of sound from the rain?
“Tweek! Holy fuck get off him.”
He grabbed Tweek's shoulder and jerked him backwards, very nearly becoming subject to a second encounter with the broom.
“What in the hell do you think you are doing?!”
Tweek stared at him with wide, unblinking eyes. His whole body was quivering, and though the outburst of violence he had just experienced had startled him and exhausted him, both at the same time. Against the wall of the pub, Craig could see the Foundation member breathing heavily, his arms up and his eyes fixed closely on the business end of Tweek's weapon.
“I won't let them take me away with them.” He insisted, and Craig wondered what dark, unknown cavern of his balls he was salvaging all this from. Until about four minutes ago, Craig would have categorised Tweek as the kind who wouldn't fight his way out of a paper bag. Or at least, he wouldn't be the kind to beat the shit out of someone with a broom.
“They aren't going to!” Craig told him, doing his best not to sound angry, or stressed, or concerned at the way Tweek seemed to be fraying at the edges. Maybe he didn't want to go driving cross-country with someone like him after all? It probably wasn't sensible to drive hundreds of miles to god knows where with someone who had proven themselves disposed towards sudden mental fractures.
“But they will!” Tweek's grip on the broomstick handle was slipping, his shaking becoming so bad that Craig might have described it as vibration. He looked colder than even Craig felt out here in the dark and wet, his hair sticking to his face in tendrils and his lips and cheeks bleached white by the caravan lamp. “They need me. Without me it's over. It's all over.”
“What's over?” Craig asked, wiping water and a small amount of blood out of his eyes with impatience. “The worlds going to end? Is that it?”
And Tweek's response, or lack of thereof, made his stomach drop to his ankles even though he knew it was a stupid thing to believe. The whites of his eyes seemed greater than his irises, his whole person shuddering in fear and yet standing in defiance, and Craig thought it was as though something new and chaotic had been unleashed within him. The fear of being taken, of being subject to the fancy of these people and their God had not meshed well with his new life direction, and Craig understood that in a way, this was his fault. He wasn't the one who had directly knocked Clyde into the dirt without a moments consideration for his safety, and he wasn't the one who had directly winded a woman using the stick end of a cleaning device, but Craig had been the one who had lead him away from their church with his assurance of the silent, thoughtless release of death, and his talk of an infinite, indifference space spanning unthinkable time and distance in every direction.
He felt slightly culpable, but didn't want to extend any sympathy to these people or their cause.
He didn't have all that much time though, to figure out what to do.
The other members came around the side of the building, carrying kerosene lanterns and decked in the same plain clothing. Catching sight of his new attackers, Tweek gritted his teeth and inhaled violently. The broom slipped from his grip and landed with a splat on the ground. The rain was letting up a little, and by the trailer door the ex-mechanic formally known as Clyde was starting to drag himself up, gesturing and gasping something to the new arrivals urgently.
“There's more of them.” Tweek breathed numbly. The expression of mild fear which had covered the face of the member against the wall gave way to one of unguarded, hideous joy.
“There's hundreds of us.” He hissed. “All over this town. We will burn it to the ground unless you come with us right now.”
And that was pretty much the second Craig decided that he had had enough of this.
He was going to get out of here if it was the last thing he did.
Craig had been in a few fights in his day, and he had probably won at least half of them. A child with a penchant for expressing dissatisfaction with his fists instead of his words, he had learned a lot about beating the shit out of someone on the playground, and he figured that now was as good a time as any to put those skills to use. In fact, it was probably even the best time - fighting with an actual valid reason was something twelve-year-old Craig Tucker had thought he would never have the opportunity to do.
And just to re-familiarise himself with the intricacies of a hearty scuffle, he figured he may as well give this asshole a decent uppercut to the face.
The man's head snapped back and clapped hard against the Hotel wall. Tweek gasped and sprung backwards, almost stumbling into the group of people encroaching but managing to right himself and duck out of reach again.
"What the fuck Craig?!"
"Coming from the guy who smacked me with a fucking broom!" Craig spun around, confident that the guy he had punched would be nursing too big a concussion to grab them from behind, and brought his fists up to guard his face while he assessed the situation unfolding. Maybe twelve new Disciples, all closing in, some of whom were making to seize Tweek by the clothes and hair. Clyde was heaving himself upright a few feet away, but the woman was still prone in the mud by Craig's trailer stairs.
"There's too many to fight Craig! We're just two people!"
"I know that, you fuckin' dickheaded shit!"
Tweek was being thoroughly unhelpful, although Craig knew he had a point. There were too many people for the pair of them to clobber them all. Their best bet would be to run for the back door to the hotel and lock it behind them.
"Just punch anyone who gets too close and follow me."
He ducked behind the other man, slowly backing against the side of the building, and aimed straight for the ten foot gap between the hotel and the Foundation member on the far wing of the group approaching. Detecting his movement, the group moved in sync to cut him off. Just behind them, the hotel door stood and hopefully unlocked, a sanctuary from the violence and the wet and the cold of the rain.
Craig regretted not sending Tweek in before him, as the other boy was significantly bulkier and probably much more proficient at breaking crowds. All the same, Craig was ready to hold his own, throwing his first punch the moment he was within distance of the closest aggressor.
The figure was frail and possibly elderly, and they dropped like a fly in a bug zapper. Behind him, Craig could hear Tweek fighting off a man a little closer to their own age, and by the sounds of things he was doing pretty well. Another faceless stranger came upon him, and Craig jerked his knee up into this one's balls, not stopping to check if they even had balls to connect with.
They didn't, but he managed to get them down anyway, delivering the most poorly executed left-handed punch of all time directly into their throat. It sent them sideways into one of their companions, but also sent pain radiating through his injured knuckles. The bandage he had gotten a few days earlier from Kyle began to come loose as he shook the ache off and ploughed his shoulder against the oncoming crowd. Tweek hollered something behind him, and Craig heard the gut-churning sound of a bone breaking. For a horrifying moment, he thought it may have been an injury for his team, but the murderous howl of agony didn't sound like Tweek's voice. Feeling a jolt of second-hand triumph, Craig managed to cover the final three feet of space and press himself up against the Hotel door.
"Tweek!" He yelled so hard it hurt his throat. "Come through!"
The flailing, groping bodies around him, their hands clutching at his pyjama pants and arms, were bordering on repulsive. Tweek flung himself out from between the crushing grip of the group just as Craig twisted the knob and swung in the door. The two boys slumped inside, and without needing to communicate the urgency of the situation, the pair of them rounded and applied their full bodyweight against the madmen outside.
With all the resistance, Disciple's bodies pushing and trying to force their way through the gap, it was miraculous that they managed to get the door shut behind them. Tweek slammed the deadbolt into position, and as soon as their weight was removed, the pair of them standing soaking wet and facing the door, the old painted wood seemed to bulge inwards, creaking and groaning against the sound of massing people, fracturing the silence of the duo trying to catch their breath.
Fleetingly, Craig caught himself wondering if he was dreaming.
“Can you see anything?”
Craig shook his head, straining his eyes to peer through the window and make out any movement around the caravan.
“No. Nothing. Fuck.”
His knuckles still ached from punching his way through the throng of people. He heaved a sigh and turned away from the window, searching for Tweek in the dim light from the gas lamp on the table. He didn't have to look very far. Perched on the end of the bench, cross egged and gnawing at his fingernails with a ferocity that may have left him fingerless if Craig allowed it to continue, Tweek couldn't keep his gaze fixed in one place. His constant jiggling and shuffling made it seem as though there was something inside him, struggling to be released, and whether or not that something was his skeleton or some kind of explanation for the events unfolding it was impossible to say. Maybe it was an apology, for thumping Craig in the face with that broom handle back there. A word of remorse would probably not have gone awry.
Craig huffed, letting his eyes roam the shadowy landscape of the deserted kitchen. The rain was still falling outside, a little lighter than it had been before, and under the sink pipes creaked and gurgled. As far as either Tweek or Craig knew, however, this was the only sound in the entire place. After those few punches and a swift escape into the safety of the pub kitchen, Craig had watched, paralyzed with blood boiling fury, as the Foundation had ransacked his caravan and dragged what looked like most of his property into the rain. Tweek's efforts to find help in the upstairs and dining room had been unsuccessful – most likely everyone in town had gone back to their homes when darkness fell, and the power cut in the bar had more than likely extended to the suburb beyond the hotel and kept everybody tethered to their properties. It was slightly uncomfortable, to squat in the place when neither Kenny nor Butters were around, but inside the pair of them seemed to be safe from their pursuers who had not yet thought to break the windows in.
Not that Craig was complaining.
“I hope you know this is literally the worst night of my life.”
He cast a glance outside, to the yard illuminated by his trailer lights, and the telescope parts and posters scattered in the mud outside.
“And it's your fault.”
“My fault?!” Tweek's voice rose in pitch, and in the lamplight his eyes looked like full moons, shining and reflective and extra-terrestrial. “If it hadn't been for you, I would have gone to the compound when I was supposed to and none of this would have happened!”
He sounded pretty sour for someone who had successfully seduced Craig into agreeing to take a cross-country road trip to God knows where.
“Yeah? So why don't you go out there now then? Make it stop so I can go back to my life.”
Scowling, Craig leant against the bench opposite Tweek, and crossed his arms over his chest for maximum glaring effect. He didn't really mean it. The shocking situation in which they found themselves made him think a whole slew of horrible things he didn't really believe, and frankly it was lucky that amongst all the comments that could have potentially come out of his mouth right now, this was relatively inoffensive. Nevertheless, Tweek seemed aghast at such a suggestion.
“No!” He was trying exceptionally hard to keep his voice down – no small challenge when he was shivering with wetness and fear. “They will kill me! You know they will literally kill me, right?!”
Craig scoffed, even though it was becoming harder and harder to believe that this frazzled disaster of a man could never be of significant enough purpose to warrant being murdered.
“Oh come on. It doesn't work like that! Do you really think you're so important that if the congregation of cult idiots get their hands on your cold dead body, will it postpone the end of the world?”
Unlikely.
Tweek's cheeks darkened, his mouth opening and closing as though he couldn't pull satisfactory words from the air.
“Maybe I am!” he finally managed. “Maybe, for a little while, I really believed I was! What's wrong with that, anyway? Doesn't everyone want to think that their life and the choices they make matter?”
“No! Fuck no! Who would want the fate of the entire universe on their back? Don't get me wrong, I like you a lot, but you seem like the kind of person who couldn't even handle the responsibility of his own laundry.”
Tweek's nostrils flared. All movement of his body stilled, and his lips pressed thin and bloodless against one another.
“Craig, when I agreed to this whole thing I literally wanted to die.”
The coolness of his tone made Craig's skin crawl. Partway in envy, partway in shame. He had never been able to say such a thing before out loud himself, but now he had heard it he wasn't sure he liked it. Now the idea was right there in front of him, he was realising that the feeling was raw and throbbing and sickening like an open wound. An ugly reflection of himself in an unfamiliar, shadowy face.
Craig felt no affinity for this feeling, in those moments. He felt no sympathy, and no weakness to the idea. Instead, he felt a deep aversion, and he realised that he didn't want to die right now. He didn't want to die ever. He had simply longed and longed for years that someday, he would only cease to be alive. Or at least, that someday he would be delivered into a deep and dreamless sleep.
A bone-deep exhaustion stole over him, reaching the very tips of all his fingers and toes. The rain kept falling, a steady pattering sound on the rooftop, and the pipes under the sink groaned as if they couldn't handle the shift in temperature much longer. Craig had to close his eyes a moment, the smell of the storm filling his nose and lungs like he was drowning, and even though it was cold the tingle of a breaking sweat sprung up on his shoulders and upper lip. The walls seemed to move in closer, blocking out everything except the throb of his pulse, but simultaneously the four of them seemed to blow apart, propelled to different corners of an infinite universe never to converge again.
The sensation was painful and somewhere vague ideas of medications and breathing and a thousand other stupid sounding things eluded him. His arms unfolded, and instinctively he took a white knuckled grip on the countertop behind him. Far away, he thought he could hear a noise. A soft chatter and the sound of something metal banging on wood. It didn't seem real, though, until Tweek gasped and the moment was broken. Numb and vacant, Craig was being grabbed by the wrist and pulled downwards, out of the line of sight of the window. His head was spinning.
What the hell was happening?
He dragged himself back to the present, and the cold terracotta tiles under his knees. Tweek was saying something in a frenzied whisper, but his words were garbled and nonsensical. Or maybe they weren't and Craig was just trying to make sense of them, without the visual guidance of watching them come from his mouth.
"What?!"
"I said, there's someone outside! Jesus Christ..."
Down in the shadows, all of his features began to blur together and morph silently, eddying like ink dropped in water and dissolving in the dark.
"What? What are they doing?"
"I don't know!"
Tweek raised himself up a little, face moving into a weak pool of light cast by the oil lamp, and made his best effort to peer outside.
"Oh God, I think they are trying the door again," he reported. "Listen..."
Craig listened, and the faint sound of a doorknob rattling became audible under the sound of the rain.
"Why can't they just leave us alone?!" Craig whined, feeling some important strut of his composure cracking under the stress of the situation he found himself in. He remembered that if all this shit hadn't happened, he could totally be in bed right now sleeping, his body prone under the fading glowing stars painted on his ceiling. Having had this privilege snatched away, what else did he have left?
A sleepless night on a cold kitchen floor, his body aching and his heart hammering in his throat at the threat of the unknown. Was this strange passer-by worth that? Was anything?
"Why won't you assholes just leave us alone?!"
He stood up, and Tweek hissed, trying to grab his leg and pull him backwards. Craig kicked him off, and started toward the door.
"Did you hear that?!" He was screaming now, left fist coming down on the wood and shooting an arrow of pain through his knuckles. "We didn't do shit to you! Fuck off! Leave me alone!"
He was jerked backwards just in time.
The arm which seized him around the waist pulled him out of the trajectory of a large spray of splinters from the doorframe, the loud bang of something colliding with the wooden door from the outside deafened him for a moment and the following shout from right next to his ear sounded ringing and violent. Tweek threw him against the table, his hip cracking against the wood and making him double over in pain. The kitchen door quaked in its frame as again, something impacted the back of it, sending a huge crack shooting across the inside like fork lightening. Before Craig could even straighten himself he was being manhandled again, Tweek heaving him off the table and pushing him around the other side, toward the access to the rear of the bar.
"Run!"
Craig ran. He ran faster than anyone would ever have thought possible with a feverish, agonising throb coursing through his upper thigh. The pain made him see bluish bruises blooming before his eyes, and if it wasn't for the hand at his back pushing him he might not have been able to make it around the side of the bar. Far away, as though he was hearing it through snowfall on a radio transmission, Craig heard the sound of the door giving way, and the clang of something like a metal petrol can being thrown onto the kitchen floor. Craig rocketed around tables and chairs, guided only by the muscle memory of the space. Where to put his feet was the last thing on his mind. In fact, his mind had suddenly became a very still, very quiet place. As though he had just been dropped in a large vat of something, thicker than water and very, very cold. Even in the dim everything seemed too real to be real, the details of the door he was approaching leapt out at him as though he had never noticed them before. Maybe he hadn't. The worn rug under his bare feet felt gritty with sand, like it needed a vacuum, and over the whoosh of gasoline igniting (Craig had always thought that sound was a myth from the movies) he could hear Tweek's laboured breathing, the shallow tense way he sucked in air like he was going to pass out at any second.
The door was locked. He threw his bodyweight against it and it didn't yield, even a little. Tweek choked back a furious scream, and pushed in front of him.
"You're fucking KIDDING me!"
He rattled the knob frantically, got on his toes and tried groping for a spare key on the top of the fame. Craig watched numbly from behind while Tweek panicked, his legs like soft noodles and his whole right side throbbing like a tide moving up the beach shore. He was feeling a little light headed.
Tweek pulled at his hair in frustration, his whole body quivering like he was a high tension wire. The knowledge that Kenny kept a spare door key in the vase beside the staircase was lost to them both, as was the faculty of logic. The conservatory, with all its windows of easily breakable glass, was just on the other side of the door to the left, but behind them were hurried footsteps and the sloshing of more petrol spilling on carpet.
Tweek screamed, and with strength Craig would never have expected from someone with such a conservative posture, he aimed a kick at the spot below the door handle, shattering the jamb and sending the door mechanism outwards onto the deck.
The door gave way to them, Tweek dragging Craig through the arch and into the mercy of the night beyond.
The rain was still falling, and there was mud underfoot, and behind them the pub was going up in flames like a star that had fallen; impossible to comprehend, and burning.
It was hard to make out anything in the backlight of the fire, and the smoke which spilled heavy and thick from the door. Across the road, the endless dessert was swallowed by the night, and on the edges of Craig's vision he could see shadows moving, like human shapes closing in and blocking off escape. Tweek didn't hesitate, pulling Craig straight forward into the dark and toward the high fence which separated the side of the hotel from the petrol station and workshop. They passed a car on the way, a small vehicle that might have been Wendy Testaburger's Corolla. The vehicle looked like it had been attacked and broken into, the windows shattered and winking in the flickering orange of the flames they were leaving in their wake. Where was the driver? Had they been dragged through the mud and sent running into the desert? Had they been murdered or beaten or punished for trying to escape? Over the rain, Craig could hear voices. Non-distinct voices calling to each other, co-ordinating their movements, and pursuing the pair of them as they passed the deserted vehicle, and Craig tried to accept that he knew that car - it was Wendy's car - would never be parked outside the peaceful and pretty town museum again.
It seemed like a dream. The whole situation had that abject, hollow terror of a bad dream about it. But Craig's sense of awareness was too acute for it to be anything but reality.
'Tweek," He tried to call to the man in front of him, pulling him through the chaos towards god knew what. His voice came out a lot feebler than he would have liked. "Tweek, that's Wendy's car."
He wasn't sure why this was important. Or why he even remembered such a stupid detail at a time like this. All he knew was that it was important, and he needed this person, the only other person he could tell, to acknowledge it. It was vital that he understand that Wendy's car was empty, the body beaten and crumpled and unable to be repaired, and that for some reason this made Craig feel sick. He couldn't rationalise the shock of it. Where was Wendy? Where was Kyle? Where was anybody?
Were they alone here now? The last people in the entire town?
Tweek sniffed and pulled him closer, run slowing to a swift walk as they rounded the fence separating the hotel from the garage next door. Without warning, Craig found himself being hitched up onto Tweek's shoulder. Craig yelped as his world was inverted, all the blood rushing to his head.
"What are you doing?!" Craig hissed. His throat was sore from raising his voice, and suddenly upside down the world seemed even more nausea-inducing. He hoped he wouldn't puke down the back of Tweek's sodden shirt.
"You're limping." Tweek panted, "You are not about to collapse on me. I won't wait for you to get back up again if you do."
"I'm not limping!"
A lie. Craig was starting to become really aware of the pain in his upper leg now. He tried to push himself up, and felt a wave of vertigo pass through him. Rain ran down the back of his neck and into his hair. Tweek's movement was hurting him - every step made him gag on the pain.
"I'm going to puke," Craig heard himself saying, his fingers clawing on the back waistband of Tweek's pants. He wasn't sure if Tweek was listening.
The sudden jolt that came from being dumped into the passenger seat of a tall vehicle made him retch, and before he could help himself the remains of his microwave meal was being brought up, dribbling onto the floor of the Isuzu he had been dropped into. His eyes were watering, the back of his nose burning with acid, and he could feel himself flushing hot with embarrassment and misery. Tweek didn't bat an eyelid. He leaned over, dripping hair and clothes and still shaking, and belted Craig firmly into the spare seat.
"Don't move," he said, stepping back and going to shut the door. For some reason, this made Craig's chest clench. He grabbed the passenger handle and stopped him, forgetting to scrub his mouth with the back of his hand and not stopping to think about the pain this motion would cause him.
"Where are you going?"
His voice sounded raspy, not like his own. Tweek hit his hand away and forced the door closed.
"Don't move!" He insisted, and Craig watched him through blurring, shifting eyes as he ran around the front of the car and to the driver's side. The light from the burning pub was throwing long shadows into the garage yard. The vehicles still parked by the shed, the store with its darkened windows shining. The gas pumps seemed abandoned, ghostly and sinister, and when Craig closed his eyes he remembered standing next to them a few days ago, jamming the fuel pump into the hatch of a tall blonde stranger's car.
He didn't even jump when the driver's side door opened, and Tweek spluttered a handful of expletives, attempting to heave something heavy and misshapen from its current position occupying the driver's side into the back.
"Craig! Don't just sit there! Help me!"
And far away, Craig heard someone yelling something. Something that sounded like
"Right here! Here they are! I found them!"
Who were they running from again?
He turned his head, trying to make out whatever it was that was giving Tweek so much trouble. It looked vaguely familiar in shape, slumped over the steering wheel like it was resting there, and it wasn't until he leaned closer and tried to help push it upright that Craig realised what it was. Or who it was.
"Kenny?"
He looked to Tweek, trying to find an answer and not succeeding. The window on the driver's side had been smashed like the windows on Wendy's corolla, and the steering wheel was sticky and covered in strands of light hair. The keys jangled in the ignition when Tweek knocked them, and the keyring that said KISS glinted, reflecting the hazy orange light that was starting to flicker over the edges of the wooden fence.
"What the fuck Kenny! This isn't fucking funny!"
Craig snapped his seatbelt off as Tweek finally succeeded in showing the other man over the back seat of the car, and made to lunge over the headrest to catch him as he fell to the ground with a thud. He heard Tweek screaming something at him, something upset and furious that matched the way he grabbed at Craig's pyjama pants and tried to pull him back down into sitting position. His hands found little purchase, but Craig couldn't fit over the back seat - instead he hung there like he had hung over Tweek's shoulder only a minute ago, trying to pull Kenny upwards by his t-shirt. He hardly noticed Tweek cursing, the vehicle shuddering as something heavy collided with the back.
This couldn't be real. No way could this be real. Of all the people in the world, of everyone Craig had ever met he couldn't imagine Kenny being the one lying rigid and unseeing on the Isuzu floor. Across the space between himself and Tweek, he heard a horrible wrenching sob, and underneath him the car shuddered to life.
Above his head, the back window shattered, and shards of glass rained down on him in a cascade of points and water.
"You can't get away from us!"
The voice belonged to a woman, a hysteric fever overflowing and making Craig's ears hurt. Again, the vehicle shuddered, people slamming against it and trying to grope inside.
"Don't you DARE try and escape from us!"
"You try and fucking stop me!"
Tweek was crying, or maybe he was laughing, as he smashed the gears on the car into reverse and slammed his foot down. For an awful moment, the clutch dropped and there was no traction, but then he must have done something unbelievably improper and dangerous because the gearbox started howling like a demon, sending the vehicle shooting backwards and thumping over the heavy meaty body of the woman trying to climb in the rear. Craig was winded, flung back over the seat against the dashboard, and the edges of his vision started blurring and guttering like a candle flame starting to drown in its own wax. He was struggling to breathe from the pain, the hot agony in his leg and the crushing punctured feeling in his chest. He was going to die tonight, he knew it. He was only twenty-seven, and he was going to die. The finale was coming, and soon he would be as dead as everyone else in the town probably was. He would soon be as dead as Kenny was. Kenny, who used to drink beer at ten am, and wash glasses with cold water, and wink at pretty tourist girls even if they had boyfriends or husbands hanging onto them. If Kenny could die, at the hands of madmen, then anyone could die at any time and so what? Did it matter if they did?
Craig couldn't know. He couldn't know and he couldn't make sense of anything.
He slumped over the dashboard, relinquishing his consciousness to darkness and to rest, sinking into the blissful, silent emptiness of the end.
-Natteregn-
And there was evening and there was morning--the fifth day.