Mark Ziegler woke up from unconsciousness with a bump, hitting his head on a low ceiling. He panicked, hyperventilating and completely unaware of where he was.
“Where am I?” he screamed.
The shaky container he was trapped in screeched to a halt as a door slammed shut somewhere in front of him. The trunk opened up and O’Brien stood over him, radiating power.
“What’s going on, O’Brien?”
“Get out of the car.”
Ziegler stood up, blinded by the light as he grew accustomed to the sun again. He looked around at the empty field.
“What do you want?”
“Stop asking so many questions,” snapped O’Brien. “You’re gonna help me out in a couple days at Hubbard’s dinner party… don’t you remember our little chat?”
“Yeah-yeah I remember,” he said. “But how am I gonna help you?”
“You’ll find out-but right now I just need you to keep cool. Both of us know if I let you go, you’d run spilling your betrayal to Hubbard. If you do that, though, they’ll kill you and my plan’ll be ruined. So we’re not gonna do that.”
“I wouldn’t say anyth-”
He hit the floor with a thump, again.
“Don’t lie to me,” O’Brien muttered to himself.
The next time Ziegler woke up he was chained to a bedpost at the Charlie Rose Inn, a charming little motel on the outskirts of town. By now, O’Brien had left, leaving Ziegler alone with his thoughts. Obviously, O’Brien wouldn’t let his key to success wander around telling his associates of the plan, no matter how quiet he claimed he would stay.
As night fell, O’Brien stood at the top of the motel roof listening intently to his old police radio. At any time the troops could be closing in on him and he needed to know where they were. Besides that, it served as a nostalgic reminder to him. How long it had been since he was driving around, working the job he loved so much.
Suddenly, static ceased on the radio and O’Brien heard his old boss over the speaker.
Dew had started to form on the pristine grass of the picture-perfect neighborhood, especially the front lawn of the Calvin household. A young man stumbled across the lawn, leaving bloody footprints and tainting the lawn’s innocence. He broke through one of the front windows, near where his parents were eating their dinner.
“Noah!” Mrs. Calvin screamed. “What are you doing?”
She stumbled backwards from the table terrified of what he would do. Noah was in a frenzied state, perceiving nothing and focusing on tearing his old house to shreds.
“Enough Noah,” Mr. Calvin said, nervously trying to calm him down. He had given up searching for his son a while ago and now the failure of his mission began to haunt him much more. The frentic animal pulled out a knife and the Calvins sprinted up the stairs, phone in hand, dialing 911, and looking for a place to hide.
“We have a domestic disturbance at 42 Whitewash Ave. Noah Calvin is wielding a knife at his parents… All units in a 10 mile radius report to the scene,” Hubbard said over the speaker.
O’Brien jolted up, finally able to locate his old enemy. As he sprinted down the stairs from the roof, he looked back into his room where Ziegler still laid chained to the bedpost. Everything was clicking for him. The detective jumped into his parked Lincoln MKZ, a personal vendetta burned into his head.
Sirens turned on and weaving in and out of traffic, Hubbard continued to rehearse how his plan would be carried out. If everything went well, at the end of the night Noah Calvin would be dead and blamed for the death of Katherine Greene. Of course he would kill Noah, otherwise the cult in the woods would get out-and that could not be allowed to happen. The corruption that defined the town’s police would be exposed and the aftermath would be apocalyptic. Yes, Noah would be killed in a “scuffle”, blamed for the murder, justified because of his “insanity” and so on.
“Officers,” Hubbard yelled as he stepped out of his car and onto the crime scene. “Use any force necessary this boy is a killer and more innocent lives could be harmed. He is in the house somewhere. Find him, find his parents, let’s all get home safe.”
Two houses down, a camouflaged O’Brien sat watching- observing the corruption that was unfolding in front of him. Of course there was nothing he could do now, Hubbard would arrest him on the spot, charging him as a murderer and enemy of the town.
For a while, nothing happened. He couldn’t hear anything happen inside the house, but suddenly something caught O’Brien’s attention as a lanky figure slipped out from the side of the house, sprinting towards the woods. He wasn’t the only one that saw him however.
“NOAH!” screamed Hubbard, streaking after him. “All units, the suspect is fleeing into the woods. Stop him by any means necessary.”
Gunshots went off, turning the civil neighborhood into the scene of a guerilla attack. The peace was interrupted and the pleas of the Calvins were drowned out as Hubbard barked orders at his minions. Furious, Hubbard grabbed the boy’s parents from their hiding spot.
“You’re coming with us to the station,” he yelled, clearly enraged.
“Why? What did we do? What’s going on?”
Slowly, the rows of cop cars filed out of the neighborhood as O’Brien stood waiting and watching. When the last sedan had left, he quietly moved into the empty house, picking the lock and heading for the boy’s room.
“Why had Noah decided to come back to his parents house if he was really innocent,” he thought to himself. “If he was truly innocent he could’ve continued on living with the cult. Coming back here was essentially giving himself up to the police, especially if he had this plan to kill his parents. Nothing was making sense.”
The rogue detective pondered his situation. How quickly everything had escalated. He lost a friend, his family was all but ruined, now he was too far into this endless, revolving corruption to quit it now. He and Hubbard were now in a twisted game of cat and mouse where the consequences for either were terrifying.
A small box in the closet caught the detective’s eye. On instinct, he picked it up and found a small button on the side revealing a picture of Noah and Katherine. It was clearly hidden for some reason, but why? He picked up the necklace inside the box, a grin beginning to form on his face while clarity seemed to reach his jumbled head.
Some distance down the road, a group of officers were following Noah’s trail led by Hubbard.
“Keep pushing!” he barked. “He’s got to be here somewhere.”
Suddenly, the group of officers stumbled upon a clearing. A noise grew from within the forest, unsettling the team and the usually calm director. An arrow whizzed past Hubbard as he threw himself to the floor.
“Get down!” he screamed, trying to protect his valuable assets. “Fire on sight!”
The hoard of antlered man sprinted out of the woods at full speed with a purpose to kill as many of the officers as possible. There was no treaty anymore as the cult had nothing but an agenda to preserve their land and save themselves.
Terrified, the young officers either fired away or took off into the other side of the woods, driven by fear no matter the choice they made. Most of these boys had no idea of the cult, too low in the system to be involved in corruption. But no matter who you were, the sight of the murderous men was too much for anyone to bear.
As the night pushed on the slaughter grew more intense, and by the time the sun was forcing its way over the treetops the scene was indescribable. The last remaining cult members had either fled with the elders of their clan or died fighting for what they believed in. One thing was undeniable. The cult was revealed to the world, right in the backyard of the town and the police’s headquarters.
The corruption could be detained and suppressed, but the reliance of the citizens onto the law enforcement would obviously take a hit. “The Deer-Horned Massacre”, the media pinned it.
While the town’s attention was focused on the scene in the woods, O’Brien made his way to the home of Amy Palmer, catching her right as she was leaving her home. Before she could step outside, he returned to some of his previous habits shining his flashlight in her face and showing the badge.
“Back in the house, please.”
“What are you doing?” she screamed. “I know you killed your partner, it was all over the news. And you were fired! You can’t do this.”
“I saw the picture of you and Noah at his house, hidden.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Don’t act stupid. You were obviously together.”
She kept denying and denying, but in typical officer fashion, O’Brien’s interrogation was enough to break her down.
“Fine!” she gave up, in tears now. “We were together. Katherine found out and she got really mad at me… So we went into the woods after prom, and-and… I swung at her with a branch on the ground. I didn’t mean to kill her!”
She broke down on the ground, seeking pity and flushed with pain. O’Brien stumbled back, horrified.
