The settlement of New Kettle Springs, Pennsylvania, to the streets of Fandom, Monday morning

[deathtofrendo]

Quinn stood, taking the machete from Johnny’s belt but not the nail gun.

Her foot was bad. Four of her toes were gone, the one that remained stubbornly clinging to the ball of her foot by a superficial band of skin.

The heel of her shoe was heavy with blood, liquid squelching out the hole in the toe as she walked.

If she didn’t get a tourniquet around her ankle son, she’d pass out and die.

It could wait.

Just one more thing.

Yes. She would be finished with her list. She would be done.

After she crossed off one final name.

Arthur Hill’s body was being picked apart right now. Mystery solved. No ghosts, just psychosis. The people eating that body . . . they’d suffered enough, they were officially off the list.

There were no more loose ends, except. . . .

When she caught up with Jason Alton he was in an army man crawl, dragging his injured legs behind him.

He hadn’t made it far from where she’d left him, off the stage. There was a thin snail trail of blood in his wake as he crawled toward the giant Frendo effigy.

The clown sculpture was burning brighter now, the orange flames finally having taken hold, dark, ash-tipped char on the outer logs.

“You’re a murderer,” Alton said, his words doubling through the speakers. He lifted himself in a push-up, pointed to the town square. “Look what you’ve done to these people!”

She reached for his face, felt along his sideburns, and ripped the mic away from where it had been affixed to his cheek. There was a patch of hair on the tape.

There, now she could talk with him, if that was what he’d wanted.

“You called me and I came,” Quinn said.

“Like a plague unto us, like –”

“Now I have a question for you,” Quinn said, ignoring the act. “Why all this? Why wear another person’s face? Why build. . . “

She didn’t feel like she had to finish the questions for him to understand, just wave her hand.

“I am filled with the light of –”

She poked the wound on the back of his leg with the end of the machete, touching bone. He squealed and she waited for him to be able to listen again.

“I just heard you say you weren’t taking the host. The girl explained it to me, what you’ve been feeding them. He was embalmed, you monster. Have you seen them? You poisoned all these people. Why? Speak to me.”

He slumped against the ground. His expression seemed to change, like he was going to let her try talking to the old Jason Alton, or the new Alton. Or whatever.

“I tried a lot of methods to find my ministry,” he said, no longer speaking in biblical hellfire aphorism. “I changed my approach for years. Kept pivoting. Nothing worked. Then, after something I said at my lowest point, a musing I made because I was frustrated, that maybe the murderers in your town were right: they found me.”

“They?”

“My ministry. Then the rest, it . . .” Alton tried readjusting so he could look at her, but it must have taken too much effort, so he flopped over onto his side.

“It got out of hand,” Quinn said, understanding, not wanting to hear any more.

“Look, I don ‘t believe any of it. You got me. You can leave now. Send the police and an ambulance!”

Quinn’s skin was hot and dry from standing so near the fire. But she paused, tried to make her expression look like she was considering his suggestion.

“That’s a stupid reason for all these people to have died,” she finally said.

He wiggled, started to fight her, and she nicked him on the side of the neck with machete. Deeper than she’d meant to, more than enough to get her point across.

Then she bent, grabbed Alton by the seat of his pants, ready to hoist him into the clown’s mouth.

It almost worked, too, then a shot of pain rolled up from her foot, into her spine and neck, and she dropped him down onto his face.

No. Maybe at the beginning of the day she could have lifted him. But not now.

“Fine, we’ll go together,” Quinn said. She tossed the machete in ahead of her and pulled her shirt up over her mouth. Then grabbed Alton by his wrists.

She dragged the man into the mouth of the clown, the bottom row of burning teeth scraping his belly as she did.

The interior of the sculpture was roomier than the jail cell had been.

Alton screamed as she swung him into one of the flaming mini-pyres, where the clown’s left ear was on the outside.

She watched for a brief moment as Alton’s polyester robes began to catch, smoke billowing from under his collar.

This wasn’t something she would have done a few weeks ago.

And it troubled her, who she’d become.

But maybe it was the natural evolution. What happened when you kept practicing violence . . . eventually you perfected it.

She’d meant to step out once the man was all the way inside.

She really had.

You can stop and go home.

She really did intend to honor Johnn y D’s wishes. To try to go back to the real Kettle Springs. Once there she would hug her dad, then face the consequences.

Her eyes stung with smoke. It was like a kiln. She needed to leave.

But then the beam supporting the clown’s upper row of teeth cracked, she watched as it broke, and it collapsed and barred her exit.

The clown had swallowed her up.

No, Quinn Maybrook thought, Not here, not now, not like this. She took up the machete, plastic handle already soft. She punched and slashed against her cage.

No. This wasn’t the ending she’d chosen.

She burned with the unfairness of it, kicked so that the wound on her foot cauterized with the heat.

She bashed the handle of the machete against the wood, would have clawed with her fingers if it wouldn’t have melted her skin.

From inside looking out, she could see that there was now a blue sky, the sun fighting through the smoke.

Was the sky outside real or wishful thinking? Was the kiss of the cool air hallucination or the music of crumbling ash? Was she standing in heaven or hell?

There was no answer inside the cage.

So Quinn Maybrook broke free.

The sun hurt her eyes at first. And when she blinked back the glare, nothing she saw made any sense.

Gone were the muddy fields of New Kettle Springs. Gone were the primitive buildings, the blood, the bodies. The chanting cultists begging for the Host. The burning Frendo head.

She was on a cobblestone street that looked like something out of an old movie.

Heaven or hell? she wondered as she staggered forward, machete swinging from nerveless fingers, leaving bloody footprints in her wake. Is this heaven or hell? Do I deserve heaven or hell?

She knew which one she deserved. She just . . . hadn't expected it to look this quaint.

[Here she is, folks! Quinn Maybook is on the island. I have someone lined up to get that foot of hers looked at, so this is going to be for them for now. I can't imagine anyone else happening across a sooty, bleeding 19 year old and, like. Not trying to get her foot looked at. . . .]

Comments

[sharp_man]

Hannibal was on his morning jog and stopped to give the bloody, sooty girl a curious look.

After a moment of contemplation, he went with the polite response. "Hello; would you like some help?"

He was staying out of range of that machete, though.

[deathtofrendo]

That was extremely wise.

Quinn flinched hard, pivoting to face the man while balancing on her good foot, machete suddenly much more firm in her grasp as she aimed its point at him.

"Why?"

Girl. Seriously.

[sharp_man]

Hannibal raised an eyebrow at her. Then he nodded to the trail she was leaving. "Because you seem to be bleeding. That generally is detrimental to your health."

He was a doctor; he knew these things.

[deathtofrendo]

Quinn peered behind her.

"Fuck. I thought the fire cauterized it."

Because that was definitely going to be reassuring. At least she lowered the machete.

"You know if they do much for toes that get chopped off by a shovel?"

[sharp_man]

"It depends on how long ago they were severed, and how cleanly." He nodded at her shoe. "Do you still have them with you? And perhaps you'd like to continue this conversation on the way to the clinic?"

He gestured in the appropriate direction and offered her his arm.

[deathtofrendo]

The arm got a scowl.

"They're probably still in my shoe."

Or they'd fallen out at some point with all the limp-jogging she'd had to do while fighting Alton's less-crazy cultists. She wasn't entirely sure she cared which.

"Clinic sounds . . . okay." She'd hadn't been attacked in a hospital at all yet. She didn't have ID on her, and this guy wasn't going "oh my god, you're that terrorist Quinn Maybrook" so maybe she'd be able to skip out again before they hit her with the inevitable bill.

There was probably something else she was supposed to say. Oh, right.

"Thanks."

[sharp_man]

"You're welcome." Hannibal nodded. He started moving toward the clinic; if she didn't want help, he wouldn't insist. "If you don't like clinics, I am a trauma surgeon, but my house, while clean, is hardly sterile."

Most of the people he cut up these days were already dead.

[deathtofrendo]

He got some side-eye now as Quinn limped along after him.

Right. She stumbled out of a burning clown head in a deliberately pre-industrial town and the first person she ran across happened to be a trauma surgeon?

Her luck didn't generally work like that.

"Clinic's fine," she said. "You get a lot of injured girls showing up randomly around here?"

[sharp_man]

"More of them at the start of the school term," Hannibal said. "Welcome to Fandom. It's an island that tends to grab people, often in traumatic moments. And while we're doing introductions, I am Dr. Hannibal Lecter."

[deathtofrendo]

The name meant nothing to her. Which was a good thing; most names that meant things to her of late were of people on her list.

Which was now empty.

Which was weird.

"What, is this Trauma College or something?"

[sharp_man]

Hannibal chuckled. "It's called Fandom University, but that would be as good a name for it as any. You could put in a suggestion for a name change. At the very least, it would give them a better acronym to put on merchandise." He'd let her figure that one out.

"Do you have a name you'd like to be called?" He wasn't going to insist on it being factual, but he did like to have something to refer to people by.

[deathtofrendo]

Quinn adjusted her grip on the machete. The plastic had cooled into a reasonable impression of her clenched hand.

She was maybe going to have trouble putting it down later.

"Does the name 'Quinn Maybrook' mean anything to you?"

Time to find out if she was going to have to hurt this guy.

[sharp_man]

That just meant it would suit her better!

"Not a thing," Hannibal assured her. "Is that what you'd like to be called?"

[deathtofrendo]

Quinn ignored the question.

"What about the Kettle Springs Massacre?"

[sharp_man]

"Not a thing," Hannibal said. "Should I know it? You should be aware that people here are from a variety of different worlds. Many different Earths, many other different planets, realms, worlds, and planes."

He shrugged. "It's more common than not that we know very little of each other's. Unless you've heard of the Chesapeake Ripper?"

If she had, she might be a little quicker on the machete. Or maybe not; who knew?

[deathtofrendo]

Quinn stopped her slow limp forward. This was an error -- it was only going to be even harder to start up again -- but she definitely couldn't process that bit of existential ridiculousness and stagger at the same time.

". . . Okay, well now my head hurts too. Thanks."

[sharp_man]

"It will take attention away from your foot," Hannibal declared blithely in the way of parents everywhere.

"Right this way." He nodded toward the clinic.

[deathtofrendo]

Glenn Maybrook, former ER doctor, probably would have picked a different reassurance, but sure.

Quinn swallowed down a groan and got back into motion, telling herself she just had to make it to the building that said "clinic" and that was all.

"Do you work there?"

[sharp_man]

"Only in emergencies," Hannibal said. "Although I've considered it. I have a private practice these days. Psychiatry and those individuals too paranoid for the clinic." Though there hadn't been too many of those since Eliot, actually. "They have a doctor and several clinicians, although I'm unsure which of them is there today."

[deathtofrendo]

“ER got to be too much for you?” Another teen might have said that snidely, but Quinn was simply idly curious. She knew how trauma medicine could burn a person out; it’d happened to her father. That was how she’d ultimately ended up in Kettle Springs and dealing with everything else. “Wait, what kinda of emergencies are we talking about?”

[sharp_man]

Hannibal shrugged. "I disliked losing patients." And surgeons were a high-probability serial-killer occupation. "Emergencies here tend to involve things like sharks falling from the sky, or robots invading. It doesn't happen often, but it can lead to injuries."

[deathtofrendo]

Quinn squeezed her eyes shut. This was some kind of hallucination from blood loss and smoke inhalation, wasn’t it. Alton’s stupid crew had probably stuck something extra funky in the Frendo effigy.

“How did the sharks get in the sky?”

[sharp_man]

"I believe they were sucked out of the ocean by hurricane winds," Hannibal said, straight-faced. "Though to be honest, sometimes it is best not to ask. We got a good meal out of it, anyway."

[deathtofrendo]

“Ew.”

Girl, you ate a gas station hot dog to prep for your last battle.

“‘Not asking questions’ is how you get . . . bad things.” She was too worn out to think of a better way to say that. “And who knows where those sharks had been.”

[sharp_man]

"In the ocean, and then in a hurricane," Hannibal said. "They were themselves perfectly natural sharks, merely out of their traditional milieu. And I don't mean not to ask questions at all - I highly approve of questions. But asking how things happen tends to be a fruitless pursuit around here."

[deathtofrendo]

“And there’s definitely nothing gross in a hurricane,” Quinn grumbled. The world was starting to spark and wobble. “How is there blood loss in Hell? That’s not fair.”

Not that Hell was a place known for its fairness, traditionally.

[sharp_man]

"I would think there would be plenty of it. Why?" Hannibal glanced back over at her. "Ah. We're nearly there." He held out a hand again in offer. "You needn't accept my help, but if you collapse, I'll have to carry you anyway," he pointed out.

[deathtofrendo]

“No thanks,” Quinn said. “I can handle myself.”

It’s literally not that deep, Quinn. Your foot is half-off.

[sharp_man]

Hannibal shrugged. Suit yourself, Quinn. Until and unless you collapsed, it was your own lookout.

"If you insist. Am I permitted to hold the door?"

[deathtofrendo]

“You can do what you like with the door.”

She could get around to maybe warming up to people later.

[sharp_man]

"Regrettably, as it is only a door, our options without involving other materials are limited to opening, closing, and breaking." He opted for opening and holding it for her.

[deathtofrendo]

“Ha,” Quinn mumbled. And wobbled on in.