wear camouflage sweatsuits and orange flap jackets. It’s hunting season. They say they’ll give the kids a five-minute head start. To make things sporting. Maybe their original idea is only to scare the kids off the land. Watch them flee into the woods never to return. But the kids don’t budge. One of the truckers fires a shot in the air and someone screams. A rock is hurled. Another shot. The kids turn around to find a pregnant girl lying on the ground with a bloody blown-out stomach. Then things get ugly.
The hunters’ guns seem to fire at once. They explode throughout camp in a kaleidoscope of colors. Gleaming knives are drawn and brandished. The kids are in trouble and know it. They scatter in all directions. Kids running into the forest. Kids cowering behind trees. Kids with contorted mouths, red tongues lolling, screaming for help. Not that it makes any difference. They’re target practice. Bullets in the leg. Bullets in the chest. Bullets in the head. Crimson fountains of blood cascading into the air. The truckers are ruthless. Their thick black mustaches mask inscrutable emotions.
The kids beg for mercy. But the laws of decency are flouted. The truckers pour gasoline on the bushes and fan the day-glow orange flames. They saw off a boy’s limbs. There are faces without eyeballs, slick gray organs tumbling loose from chests, a human head planted on a makeshift spike. The truckers fuck girls in the ass. They fuck girls in the nose. They fuck a boy in his detached arm socket. One trucker pisses shimmering yellow streams on the corpses nestled in somber hues of grass. It’s a backwater holocaust. A bucolic apocalypse. A total extinction.
At least that’s the story the painting tells. It’s an enormous work that stretches across several canvases and it takes me a long time to absorb the details. The title: The Ballad of Liberia. Lydia created it over several months, hidden away in the woods, veiling her efforts under waterproof tarps. She unshrouds her masterwork in the meadow. Muted gasps are followed by an ecstatic round of applause. The thing is so over the top that everyone can’t help but love it.
It isn’t finished. Lydia has left some blank spots so people can express themselves, enter into the communal spirit, et cetera. We choose brushes and congregate around the long canvases. There’s a hushed air of reverence as we confront the lurid and savage details of the painting. People move between the cans of paint and start applying respectful dabs of color. Some outline the carcasses in majestic shades of purple. Others plop shiny pink dollops on the cheeks of the living. A few jokers apply their strokes to the backside of the canvas.
Daniel throws the first handful of paint. A red splotch that hits Nycette square in the chest. Isaac retaliates by hurling a fistful of yellow at Daniel’s face. Nycette pours purple paint on Isaac’s head for being presumptive. The mohawked girl takes Isaac’s side and flicks paint at Nycette, but ends up splattering my pants instead. Then Daniel empties an entire can of blue down the mohawked girl’s back. Just for the hell of it. And that’s when pandemonium really breaks loose.
Soon everyone is coated with paint. Some kids take refuge behind the hammocks, retreat into the woods, launch counteroffensives near the river. Laughter and shouting echo throughout the camp. Lydia and I are the only ones left by the painting. She sits beside the canvas, arms wrapped around her legs, chin resting on her knees, sulking. Her white tank top is a fresco of smeared pigments. Her frizzy red afro looks more unruly than usual. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to drag that much paint out here?” she says.
She asks if I’m an art lover. I say not exactly. She says nobody else seems to be one either. I ask if she thinks the truckers might really attack the camp someday. She shrugs. “People are capable of anything,” she says. While she adjusts the strip of silver duct tape that holds the bridge of her glasses together, her darting eyes give me a once-over. “You want to see my inspiration for the painting?” she says.
We hike through the forest to the abandoned theme park. She scouts to ensure nobody is lurking, then leads us past the empty cages toward the cement office buildings. They seem so boring I’ve never given them a second glance. In the back courtyard stands a narrow shed. A janitor’s storage room of some kind. “I haven’t shown this to anyone,” she says. “It gives me nightmares.”
The hinges of the shed are rusted shut, so she forces the door with her shoulder. It’s a small concrete room with dingy gray walls. Cobwebs in every crevice. Dust motes choke the air. The light is so dim that at first the place looks empty. Lydia digs her nails into my arm and gestures at the corner. “People are bastards,” she hisses. Then I see it. Against the back wall, pocked with scabby patches of gray mold, the mummified skeleton of a dog hangs from a noose.
The kids talk about the place in whispers. Everyone calls it the dead village, but the row of condemned houses on the edge of the woods is officially named Monrovia. It’s a failed settlement that no longer appears on even the most local maps. Briefly converted into an outpost by the forest rangers, the houses are now abandoned. These once stately structures are marked by decay, wood rot, flood lines, and scattered rubbish. The only inhabitants are three girls who are reputed to have occult powers. Kids occasionally leave camp to visit them and have their fortunes told. Most are too spooked to make the journey.
Lydia says there’s a treehouse that offers a view of the dead village. She leads a small group through the woods to see for ourselves. She blazes a fresh trail through the thick undergrowth of weeds and ferns. We follow the blue marks in the trees. They’re painted in the hatchet scores on the tree trunks. Every few minutes another blue slash appears. It’s the sort of code that you have to know to notice, a clandestine swath of color that beckons us forward.
None of us have laid eyes on the dead village. Isaac wonders what we’ll be able to distinguish through the thick foliage. Daniel suspects the place gives off a subtle supernatural aura. Nycette believes the derelict houses have absorbed some of the properties of the oracles who now inhabit them. I find it hard to imagine anything more mysterious than our own campsite. Lydia remains silent. She maintains the steady pace.
The sky darkens. Storm clouds press down upon the treetops. The first raindrops start to sift through the branches. Soon we’re soaked to the roots of our hair. Lydia says it’s only another hour to the treehouse. Several people turn back, but the rest of us march onward. We tent our shirts over our heads and train our eyes on the boot prints in front of us. The booming bass of thunder resounds in our chests. Flashes of lightning bleach the air. More people peel off, but Lydia never turns around. Even the overstuffed backpack strapped to her shoulders doesn’t slow her tempo. I’m not sure how long it takes her to realize that she and I are the only ones left.
Lydia halts in a clearing and peers up at the pelting rain. She wipes her frizzy red hair from her forehead and adjusts her glasses. I huddle beneath my sweatshirt and hug myself for warmth. “It’s right around here,” she says. She strolls under the trees, her head cocked toward their canopies, staring with the intensity of a hunter sighting game. She stops beneath a towering oak and signals to me. The treehouse is nestled high in its gnarled branches. We scale the wobbly rungs tacked to the trunk and squeeze through a narrow opening.
We find ourselves in a musty wooden room built with thick planks. Lydia lights the candles stationed in glass bowls along the floor. The place slowly takes on a cozy feel. Black garbage bags are tacked over the windows to keep out the elements. A stained mattress with rumpled sheets and a wool blanket is flopped in the corner. A sequence of faded magazine photos are taped to the wall: Shots of a naked couple walking hand-in-hand along the white sands of a beach. “I haven’t been here in ages,” Lydia says.
We’re both soaking wet. Lydia searches her backpack for a towel but it’s soggy as well. She instructs me to strip off my clothes and get under the blanket before I catch cold. I remove my T-shirt and jeans, but I’m too shy to take off my waterlogged briefs. She laughs and precariously balances her thick black glasses on my nose. “You can hide behind these,” she says. Everything appears slightly distorted, a filmy fish-bowl perspective. Lydia inspects how the glasses affect my features.
She kisses me. Her lips are rough and chapped. She peels off her wet tank top. Her neck and arms are slightly sunburnt, making her breasts seem almost lunar in their whiteness.