The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek(89)

But the spirit had other ideas, wrenching them back toward the wall.

Rex was ready to concede defeat. There was no way he’d be able to swim all the way across the spring again.

Before they’d even been pulled halfway, though: another splash.

Then two more.

And another.

Whitewood and the cult must have been getting desperate, throwing in several students at a time. Ben and Rex took full advantage of the diversion, somehow finding the energy to zoom forward.

A young blond boy was accepted and pulled along to the wall, the three other students ruthlessly catapulted to the shore, all of which gave Rex and Ben more than enough time to pull Leif and Alicia all the way to the shallows.

As their heads broke the surface of the water, Alicia and Leif lurched to life, coughing and gasping like newborn babies torn from the womb.

They’d made it. Rex wanted to pass out.



* * *



—

“WHY IS NOTHING happening!” Whitewood screamed. “The Keeper has accepted two more! That makes eight!”

On the opposite side of the spring, he saw the reason his math was wrong: two of his rebellious souls were no longer with the Keeper.

Ben and Rex were helping Alicia and Leif to shore, where the two freed captives both collapsed onto all fours and began, with a series of terrible retches, to purge the spring water.

“Get them!” Whitewood yelled. “We only need one more Lost Cause!”

Mary Hattaway, Travis, Dr. Bob, and Shackelford raced toward the escaped Lost Causes, abandoning Janine and Donna. Seizing the opportunity, Janine immediately ran to help the tied-up kids. Donna followed.

“Well, this isn’t good,” Ben said, seeing the four adults headed in their direction.

Rex knew neither of them had the energy to fight off the cult members. “Do you have a plan?”

“Let me think,” Ben said, silent for a few seconds. “No.”

This definitely wasn’t good.

But then Rex heard something. A sound both foreign and familiar.

Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh

“Do you hear that?” he asked Ben.

They looked across the spring, where the Horn-cart was barreling through the grass toward the cult, and suddenly Rex knew what he was hearing.

New Kids on the Block.

Mark Hornhat sat behind the wheel, one triumphant finger in the air, nodding his head to “Hangin’ Tough” as it blasted from the golf cart speakers. He was upon the cult in a matter of seconds, not slowing down before crashing into two of the robed figures holding torches.

They fell to the ground in a daze, and Hornhat steered the still-speeding Horn-cart toward Sheriff Lawson, who was unable to dodge it before his legs rolled up under the bumper, the electric vehicle running him over, knocking him unconscious.

“Don’t cross our path ’cause you’re gonna get stomped!” Hornhat sang along with NKOTB as his back wheels made a speed bump of the sheriff. He drove over to the line of students waiting to be thrown into the springs, where Janine and Donna were already untying two kids.

“Now you guys untie the others!” Janine told them, and the students sprang into action.

“Stop them!” Whitewood screamed, spit flying from his mouth as he watched his plan unraveling. A small crew of cult members who had been tossing students into the water ran toward Janine, Donna, Hornhat, and the newly unbound kids.

“Here!” Hornhat parked his cart and passed two golf clubs from the back to Janine and Donna. He then grabbed more for the students who’d been freed before reaching into the cart one last time and emerging triumphantly with his nunchucks. “Time to party,” he said, swinging them around indiscriminately in the air, just barely missing Donna’s face.

The small group of cult members was closing in, led by C.B. Donner of C.B.’s Auto Parts. “Get yer hands off the Candidati!” he shouted, charging straight at Janine, an unhinged look in his eyes.

Janine reared back with Hornhat’s Big Bertha driver—accessing the one golf lesson her dad had given her when she was eleven—then swung the club around at full force, the bulbous metal head connecting with C.B.’s “fuzzy dice.”

“Fore,” Janine said as the howling man fell over.

The other cultists were upon them, trying to restrain whomever they could, but the kids held their ground next to Janine and Donna, wildly swinging their clubs. None of them was really hitting their targets, but they were still enough of a threat to keep the cult from tying any of them back up. And they were more effective than Hornhat, in any case, who was currently doing nothing but grimacing after having nunchucked himself in the thigh.

Across the spring, Alicia and Leif were still retching. Rex and Ben removed their tanks, fins, and masks, preparing themselves to become a human blockade as Travis, Mary, Shackelford, and Dr. Bob stepped toward them.

“I hate that it turned out this way, y’all,” Travis said, placing his head in his hands. “I really do.”

“Shut up!” Mary said. “Just throw them back in!”

Travis took a reluctant step forward, followed by the less reluctant Leggett Shackelford.

Rex and Ben raised their hammers.

“Don’t do this, Travis,” Rex said, still out of breath.

“I’m sorry, bud,” Travis said. “You’ll thank me one day.”