Final Destination 3, page 22
part #1 of Final Destination Series
"They're gone," Wendy said.
"Uh-huh," Kevin said, still making no move to put her down.
"We better…" she began, but he was kissing her again and whatever smart, sensible thing she had been planning to say was washed away by that dark, drowning passion.
"Ok, ok," Kevin said, pulling back and breaking the kiss. "If I don't stop this now, I'm not gonna be able to stop and that's a really, really bad idea."
He let her gently back down on her bare feet and turned away, covering his obvious arousal with both hands.
"Do me a favor, okay?" he asked, looking back at her and then away, placing one palm against the tile to steady himself.
"What?" she asked. She hated how cold she felt now that their skins were no longer touching.
"Please," he said with a pained expression. "Please go put those sweats on. If you just keep standing there so… so… like that." He closed his eyes. "We're both gonna get arrested."
As she turned away, he cranked the hot water tap to off, standing under the cold spray.
"Jesus FUCK," he spluttered, stomping from foot to foot in the icy deluge. "Goddamn."
Wendy couldn't help but smile as she turned and headed back to the open locker.
Luckily the other boys were nowhere to be seen. Wendy scooped up the sweats that Kevin had found and while he remained cursing under the cold shower, she quickly skinned off her wet underthings and slipped into the sweat pants and shirt. The shirt hung down like a dress, the pants enormous, with the crotch just above her knees like some gangsta rapper. They were funky with some strange boy's sweat and made her wrinkle her nose in distaste.
Kevin came out of the shower with a frown, skin pink and goose bumped. He had obviously been cured of his inconvenient desire. She turned away as he toweled off and pulled on the other pair of sweats. On him the same size sweats were comically short and tight. He found a trashcan at the end of the row of lockers and pulled the plastic bin liner out of it. As Kevin started shoving their blood soaked clothing into the plastic bag, there was a clamor from the weight room, a chorus of horrified young men's voices. Agitated footsteps ran off and Wendy and Kevin heard the weight room door bang open.
"Come on," said Kevin. "We gotta go. Now!"
They heard running feet coming back toward the weight room and then the cranky voice of Mr. Beeson rising above the babble of the teenagers' voices.
"Calm down. One at a time. One at a time." A pause, then: "Jesus H Christ!"
"I think there's another exit down at this end," Kevin said.
He led Wendy to the far locker room exit. As she stumbled along behind him, she wondered if it was possible to die from extremes of emotion. She had been rocketed from one extreme to the other, fear, hope, horror, revulsion, shame, desire and above all confusion, all in the last thirty minutes. Add in the weeks of grief and sadness and guilt, and her emotional core felt ready to snap like an overstretched rubber band. Plus there was no time to think, to get things under control, she just had to keep going, keep running. She followed Kevin through the far exit and found that it opened into the wrestling room. The sweat-slick grapplers looked up from their drills as Wendy and Kevin hurried across the mats to the hallway door. As they stepped out into the hallway and started for the stairs, they heard a voice call out behind them.
"You two. Stop."
Kevin glanced over his shoulder. It was Mr. Beeson, followed by the six jocks Wendy had seen in the locker room.
Mr. Beeson was pointing at them.
"You're the ones who were just looking for Romero."
"Dude," one of the other jocks said. "They were just screwing in the shower after they killed him."
"That's sick, dude."
"Run," said Kevin.
He shoved Wendy roughly up the stairs.
"Stop," cried Mr. Beeson. "Stop!"
Kevin and Wendy banged out the double doors and zigzagged around several other buildings, sprinting across the campus for the football stadium parking lot. They seemed to have lost their pursuers, and managed to reach Wendy's truck unmolested.
Wendy leaned against it, gasping and wiping her forehead. She lifted her keys to the lock, but her hands were shaking so violently she couldn't punch the right button and kept locking the door instead of unlocking it. After a moment she let her hand drop and looked up at Kevin.
"I'm sorry. Can you drive?" she asked. "I'm still a little… shook up, you know?"
Kevin nodded, catching his breath. "Sure," he said. "No problem."
She tossed him her keys, walked around to the passenger side and got in.
Kevin was about to fire up the truck when he paused and looked over at her.
"Uh, the picture of me?" he asked. "I'm not, like, impaled by a steering column, or halfway out a shattered windshield or anything? Anything to do with a gearshift?"
Wendy turned to him, face blank. "How can you joke like that, after…?" She paused, looking away. "After what we just saw?"
Kevin looked chagrined. He started up the truck. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know that was rough, but if I don't joke about it I'll end up curled up in a little ball sucking my thumb, and that isn't going to help anybody."
As they pulled out of the parking lot, Wendy looked blankly out the side window, her forehead resting on the glass.
"It wanted us to see him die," she said again. "It waited until we got there because it wanted us to watch. Just like it waited until we got to the Butchie Burger before it snapped that cable and set the truck rolling toward Frank's Mustang. It made sure we were there and it used your truck to kill Frank. How can we fight something like that? How can we win against something that controls the whole universe?"
Kevin sighed. "I don't know, Wendy," he said. "I don't know, but we still have to try."
They rode in silence for a while, Kevin driving as fast as he could without drawing too much attention to himself. Then Wendy spoke again, her voice thick and listless.
"Did I do something to bring this on us?" she asked. "Is it my fault, somehow?"
"Don't, Wendy," Kevin said. "You can't blame yourself for all this?"
"But then why me?" Wendy wailed. "All those people out there, all those people going to psychics and trying to know the future and what their destiny is going to be. I don't want to know. I didn't want to know! I just want it to stop. I want it never to have started." She punched the car door. "Why? Why is this happening?"
"I don't know why," Kevin said at last, "but you didn't do anything. This is just some kind of… I don't know, like a cosmic joke or something. I wish I could come up with a reason, even a good guess, to make you feel better, but I can't. I'm starting to think that there's no reason for it at all. It's just fate."
"So now you're saying there's nothing we can do?" Wendy asked.
"No," Kevin said. "That's not what I meant. I mean it's more like some sort of a weird natural phenomenon, like a tornado, and if we figure out some way to get down to the storm cellar and ride it out, maybe we can survive."
"A tornado?"
Kevin shrugged. "What do you want for spur of the moment?" he said. "You know what I mean."
"Yeah," Wendy said, watching the highway stretching out ahead of them. "I guess I do." She sighed and shook her head. "I better see if I can find out where Ian and Erin are." She pulled her cell phone out of her bag. "Don't they work at Home Depot or something?"
"Really?" Kevin said, incredulous. "The gloom and doom twins sell potted plants and drywall, and Ian being a McKinley with all that dough, too. Go figure. Well, those two never did like to be predictable."
19
Clark and Polanski II: The Return
Clark stepped into the funky, rank, sweat and unwashed jockstrap smell of the Stossen Building and wondered why in the hell this kid couldn't have gotten himself killed trying to steal panties in one of the sorority houses or peeping in the girls' locker room. There wasn't a skirt for miles. Just dumb, sweaty jocks and lots of them, all blubbering like a bunch of schoolgirls over the violent demise of their late teammate.
"This it?" Clark asked, nodding with his chin toward the closed door of the weight room.
An older, white haired guy, who had given his name as Mr. Beeson, nodded and swallowed.
"That's right," he said.
Polanski nodded and stepped forward to push open the door. Clark figured he would let Polanski handle the stiff. He was more curious about the kids Mr. Beeson said had been looking for the deceased just before the accident.
"All right then, Mr. Beeson," Clark said.
"Burt," the older man said, rubbing a stained hankie over his lips. "Jesus this is awful."
"Okay, Burt," Clark continued, whipping out his leather covered notepad. "Can you describe the two kids who were looking for the deceased?"
"Well sure," Mr. Beeson said. "The boy was decent looking, six one, maybe one seventy or one seventy five, blue eyes and dark hair. He said that he was a tight end on the McKinley High team." Mr. Beeson closed his eyes, remembering. "Oh yeah, and he had a cut right here." He touched his left cheek.
Clark narrowed his eyes. Beeson was describing Kevin Fischer, the kid that had been driving the truck whose engine fan had decapitated Frank Cheek. He got that cut on his face diving out of the way of the moving truck.
"And you said there was a girl with him?" Clark prompted.
"That's right," Mr. Beeson said. "Real nervous too. I'd put her at about five three, one or five tops. She had dark hair too, long with some bangs in the front, but I don't think her eyes were blue. Brown maybe?"
Clark nodded. Clearly this was Wendy Christensen. This was getting weirder and weirder. What were the chances of those two kids being at the scene of two fatal accidents in as many days?
"They were looking for Romero," Mr. Beeson said. "Then after… well… after it happened, I saw them again and they were wearing different clothes. I tried to talk to them, but they ran away."
This was not just weird, it was starting to sound like murder.
"Thank you very much for your help, Burt," Clark said, turning to enter the weight room.
"No problem," Mr. Beeson said. "Do you mind if I…?" The older man gestured towards the stairs. "Some of my boys are a little shook up."
"That's fine," Clark said.
"Well then," Mr. Beeson replied. "I'll be in the office if you need anything else." He paused. "You don't think… Well… some of the boys are saying those two murdered Lewis. You don't think that's true do you?"
"That's what we are trying to determine, sir," Polanski said, having just pushed the weight room door open. "Clark, can I see you in here for a moment?"
"Sure, you bet," Clark replied, following his younger partner into the weight room.
The smell was nearly overpowering, raw and fresh and coppery. Pretty soon that stink would start to ripen, become nastier and more complex, but for now it was just a harsh, butcher's shop smell with a sharp tang of fresh urine and bile. Clark wrinkled his nose and continued to follow Polanski through the maze of elderly gym equipment until they reached the stiff.
Big fucker, the dark skin of his shirtless, muscular back marred with virulent-looking 'roid acne. He lay face down, or more appropriately, belly down since there was pretty much nothing left of his face, or any other part of his head for that matter. The leg press machine was loaded with an ungodly number of forty-five pound plates and the platform had slammed down on his head, squashing it like a bug.
"Talk to me," Clark said.
"Well," Polanski said. "There is a puddle of some kind of protein shake here on the floor with a very large skidding footprint in the center. The sole of the right shoe of the deceased is covered with this same liquid. I think it's fairly safe to say he slipped holding those two dumbbells. One tripped him and one hit the lock on the leg press."
"Another accident," Clark said, but something was chewing at him, niggling, some connection.
He turned, surveying the room. About eight feet away from the body was a small puddle of clear, yellow vomit. Around the vomit were smears and streaks of blood. Bloody footprints led away to the far locker room door.
"So who was here when it happened?" Clark asked.
Polanski shook his head. "No idea," he said. "As of yet I have been unable to locate anyone who was here at the time of the accident."
It was those two kids, Clark was sure of it. And while there was no way to prove that they caused Lewis Romero's death, any more than he could prove they had caused the death of Frank Cheek, something about their behavior was deeply suspicious. Why run? Why clean up and change clothes? Why, unless they did not want anyone to know they had been there? And then there was the whole decapitation theme. These were not just random accidents, but two people known to the kids had both died in such a way as to remove or destroy their heads. McKinley had been full of accidents lately. Never mind that nasty bit of business up at Red River Park.
Clark was not a detective or some thriller flick forensic genius. He was just a small town cop. He didn't have the chops for this kind of shit.
"Do you think we need to call in Valentine?" Polanski asked, voice low and almost awed at the prospect.
Clark shook his head. The last thing this case needed was Nick Valentine. The McKinley Police Department was unapologetically podunk, just under a dozen employees including dispatch and the janitor. They had only one detective, a burnt out old son of a bitch named Nick Valentine, and he covered everything from robbery to vice and homicide. Valentine was fifty-one and looked a hundred, especially around the eyes. He had been a big guy once, but now he seemed shrunken inside clothes that always looked just a little too large. He chain-smoked generic cigarettes and chewed those super strong mints whenever he was not allowed to smoke. Clark always smelled him before he heard him, that sharp, minty stink, followed by his wet, tubercular cough echoing through the empty squad room. There was barely enough work to justify keeping him on the payroll, but he went way back with Chief Firebaugh in some mysterious and often speculated upon sort of way. Rumors varied, and Clark's favorite was that Valentine had incriminating photos of Firebaugh in some kind of kinky scenario that would hurt his chance for re-election. Clark had also heard that Valentine took private snoop jobs on the side to supplement his income and pay for his Altoids habit. In fact, Clark feared Valentine for that very reason. Clark had more than one married woman going at the moment, and he was always expecting to see Valentine outside his window with a camera.
"I really don't think we need to throw Valentine into the mix quite yet," Clark said, "but we really do need to talk to those two kids."
20
Erin and the Riverview House
Erin stood for a moment outside the massive iron gates that bordered the McKinley estate. Through the lacy green branches of ancient birch and maples, the faded gables of historic Riverview House were just visible, peeping through like an aging beauty hiding her flaws behind a delicate fan. Everyone in town knew the history of the McKinley family and their landmark estate.
The original McKinleys, brothers Garris and Galen, came over from Ireland just before the turn of the Nineteenth Century with barely a penny between them. Humble weavers with big dreams, they built one of the first textile mills in the United States. Garris was a genius with finances, wrangling investors and massaging the books, while clever Galen locked down several patents on innovative new machinery. They both married into money, Garris to railroad heiress Virginia Byles and younger Galen to legendary beauty Triphosia Dollerhide, daughter of a wealthy merchant. Within a few short years, they had completely taken over the tiny village of Beaversport and were two of the richest men in the state. Ten years and eight mills later, Beaversport had been officially renamed McKinley.
The brothers bought up acres and acres of land and built themselves twin mansions, Riverview House and Meadowview House. Several generations of McKinleys battled through the drama and infighting and scandals of any big wealthy family until finally Garris's branch of the family decided to sell off Meadowview House and its surrounding land to developers in 1921. Galen's branch, represented at that time by Ian's great grandfather Connor McKinley and his wife Beryl, were outraged and furious at this blatant disregard for roots and family history. However, eight years later when the stock market crashed and Connor lost almost everything, he saw that what had looked on the surface to be uncaring disrespect was really canny financial foresight that would have made old Garris proud.
Connor was forced to let all the servants go, shut down Riverview House and move Beryl and their three children Myrna, Desmond and brand new baby, Ian's namesake grandfather, into the small guest cottage on the far end of the property. They weathered the lean years of the depression with nothing more than spit and determination, and came out the other side with big plans for the future. The elder Ian McKinley rebuilt the family fortune to a respectable size by the time he died, but never forgot those lean years. He instilled a militant work ethic in his own firstborn Troy, constantly railing against the dangers of relying on inherited money. Subsequently, Erin's boyfriend Ian suffered daily harangues about the dangers of becoming a lazy worthless playboy, an apparently unavoidable fate if his father ever gave him so much as a nickel for any reason whatsoever. Ian had been given a laughably meager allowance of ten dollars a week until he was fourteen, after which he was expected to get a job and earn his own keep, including paying a token "rent" for the carriage house in which he lived.
He was sent to the local public school rather than going off to private school with a bunch of rich mama's boys that wouldn't know hard work from a hole in the ground; just the sort to give young Ian all the wrong kind of values. To his father's endless dismay, Ian had developed his own independent set of values that had nothing to do with hard work or money. Ian could not have cared less about the McKinley fortune. He just wanted to be a writer, a starving poet living an edgy, counterculture lifestyle in some garret deep in the heart of a vibrant, diverse and happening city. He couldn't wait to get out of this town, away from his family and his name, and the two hundred years of expectation that threatened to crush him beneath its monumental weight.
