Too Old to Trick or Treat, Too Young to Die - Alternate
By Wolfemann & Kate
Disclaimer: The show, Point Place, the ep. title and characters belong to Carsey-Warner.
Summary: It's Halloween again - but this time Eric and co. really do have to worry about staying alive.
Rating: R
Warnings:Gore, violence, death.
Notes: Pairings may or may not necessarily fit with the timeframe of the original episode - however, I'm reasonably sure they're not too far off. Locations were written under the assumption that Madison izs supposed to be a half hour to an hour away from Point Place. Also, this is the group's Halloween special, but it was posted now due to the fact that either of the authors will be either away from home or busy with school come October.
---
It was ten o'clock pm on Halloween night, and any gripes Michael Kelso had been giving about not being able to go do "Halloween stuff" with the guys had long since ceased. The reason for this was, naturally, the dark haired girl attached to him. Damn, he was glad his uncle had given him this van.
The night continued much as it had for the past half hour, and he was contented with it - until Jackie stopped moving, drew back, and supported herself on his chest by her elbows, seemingly intently focused on something.
"Oww," he whined pitifully, hurt more by her elbow bones than the weight of her slight frame. "Damn, Jackie, what?"
"Michael," she shifted compliantly, the urge to roll her eyes beaten out by said focus. "Did you hear something?"
"Uh," he genuinely considered it for a fraction of a second. "Nope." In his mind the interruption was dealt with, and he reached up at her again. She squirmed out of his loose grip and glared down at him.
"Michael, I'm serious," she insisted. "There's something I don't like here."
"Jackie," he protested, the whiny tone still in his voice.
"You know, my parents aren't in town," she remarked with a suggestive smirk - they weren't in Eric, Hyde, or anyone else's company, so she didn't need to bother veiling her meaning. "Could be more comfortable back home."
"Jackie.."
"Michael!"
"Aw, fine," he sighed heavily, acting more put out than he could possibly have felt. He sat up, twisted himself around to a more comfortable driving position, waited for Jackie to settle herself in her seat, then turned the key in the ignition. The radio buzzed and crackled to life.
"…mergency news bulletin. Samuel Davis has escaped from the Dane County Mental Institute. He is to be considered armed and dangerous. If you see him, lock the doors and report his presence to the authorities as soon as possible. He is described as -"
"Okay, well," Kelso clicked off the radio and interrupted it loudly and with bravado, "that guy's not around here," he declared in the same voice. It didn't bother him, but Jackie was in one of her weird moods. It was at that moment he heard what Jackie must have a moment ago; a low, screechy scratching noise from above.
"See, Michael," Jackie hissed softly, prying his hand from the clutch and grasping it tightly.
"It's nothin', Jackie," he rolled his eyes. "Probably just a chipmunk or something."
"Chipmunks don't sound like that," Jackie fretted, just before there was another scratching over the back of the van.
She made a sound like a half-formed screech. "Michael!"
"Let's go, then."
"Michael, it is *on the van,*" she began, voice trembling slightly. "Go and see what it is."
"Fine, if it means we can get moving," another long-suffering sigh, and he slipped out the van door, heading around the back of it to see what the noise was. Seconds passed, then minutes, all seeming like hours to Jackie, her gradual terror mounting as she didn't hear a word from Kelso.
She couldn't take it anymore. Carefully, she stuck her head out the window. "Michael," she called softly. "Michael, if this is some stupid joke, it's not funny."
A few more moments of silence followed, before she heard a rhythmic tapping on the roof, almost like something dripping onto the metal surface. Tap… tap… tap….
"Oh, God," she muttered under her breath. "Michael, this is *not* funny!"
Tap… tap… tap…. The drops seemed to be slowing down a little, but gradually.
Okay. If he *was* playing some stupid joke on her, he was dead. Shaking, she got out of the van as well, looking around slowly. At first, she didn't see anything. Then she saw a little red dripping down the side of the van. Looking up, she saw Kelso's body, hanging from the tree above the van, the front of his outfit drenched in blood, the source of the dripping sound.
She didn't scream - didn't utter a sound, because for a second she was quite literally choking on air. It was only after she was far away that she did, and it was only after she'd done that that she even realized she'd taken off running. Any grief she might have felt numbed by shock, and most thought barred too, she kept running - towards home.
~~~===~~~
Donna laid on her bed, paging idly through a Cosmo - God, Hyde was right, the thing was pointless, but she was bored - when the phone rang. Picking it up, it was Jackie, sounding astonishingly hysterical, even for her.
"Oh my god, Donna! I-"
"Okay, Jackie," Donna sighed - the cheerleader had become better company as of late, but it was still her instinct to think that whatever her friend wanted to discuss was pointless. "Slow down."
"No, Donna," she drew a deep breath, sounding almost like she'd forgotten to breathe. "I was just with Michael by the Water Tower, and I heard a noise, and we went to leave but there was something on the van, and, and," her voice literally faded away as she again ran out of air. "I-I… he went to look, but he didn't come back…. B-because there was something on the roof, and it killed him!"
"Ja - what? Jackie, what are you talking about? Slow down, what's going on?"
"Michael and I were at the Water Tower," she repeated more slowly. "And now he's dead. Easy enough for you, you lumberjack?!?" She snapped, barely if at all sane at the moment.
"How did -" Suddenly, the line seemed to go dead. A moment passed before she heard the too-familiar tones that came before the announcement that a line had been disconnected, and she hung up before the message was finished.
She was about to pick it up to dial the police, when it rung, literally when her hand was on it. Jackie must be calling back. She picked it up, getting worried when nobody said anything.
"Hello?"
"Well," a strange voice said on the other end, strangely smooth and menacing. "Sounds like my little lovebird sang. Who might you be, little girl?"
"I think you're the one that needs to answer that," Donna snapped in reply, speaking before she thought. "What did you do to Jackie and Kelso?"
"Give me… twenty minutes," the voice chuckled, "and you'll find out yourself. Tick tock, little girl. Wait up for me." There was a kissing sound on the other end, before the line went dead again, this time replaced by a dial tone.
"What the hell," Donna muttered to herself, shaken but still mildly disbelieving. She didn't know what was going on, but suddenly she didn't relish the idea of her night to herself. She took off for the Forman's, silently praying that Eric and Hyde had stayed in.
Meanwhile, back at Jackie's house, a long, thin hand closed the book of numbers and addresses the dark-haired girl had pulled out before he'd caught up with her.
"Tick-tock," Davis said with a thin smile, wiping the bloody knife he'd used to escape off on Jackie's blouse before he started off through the back lots towards Donna's….
~~~===~~~
An all too familiar smell accompanied a round of giddy giggles drifting up the stairs. Donna felt equal parts relief and annoyance. The good part - they were home. The bad part… they'd think it was some joke. She took the steps three at a time, bursting into the basement. Eric and Hyde were on the couch, an incense holder and an ashtray with a still smoldering roach on the table in front of them. The TV blared Gilligan's Island, but they were both more interested in the shapes Eric was tracing into the air with a lit stick of incense.
"Damn it," she muttered to herself, waving her hand to futilely try and clear the smell. "Eric! Hyde!"
"Heya, beautiful," Eric chirped cheerfully, pointing at her with the incense.
"Donna, man," Hyde more observed than greeted. "Hey."
"Could you two straighten *up*? The one time…." She made a frustrated sound, trying to think of some way to say things so they'd actually listen. "There's somebody after me! They already got Kelso and Jackie - we need to do something to stop them!"
"Hey," Eric remarked, grinning. "We haven't played this in, like, years!"
"Forman, man, that game *sucked,*" Hyde corrected. Then, with an amused smirk, he added, "But hey, if they got Kelso, I'm in, man!"
"I'm *serious*, you two," she said, exasperation in her tone. "We need to find some place he won't find us!"
"What, like under Laurie's bed," Eric teased.
Hyde was a little more perceptive. "You serious, man," he questioned, still looking the slightest bit like he wanted to laugh.
"Yes, I'm serious," she insisted. "I just got off the phone, whoever it was said he was going to come for me next… oh my God… did you two hear the radio earlier?"
"Nah," Eric shook his head. "Neither of us had anything stashed, so we went to Leo's.." His face contorted in confusion. "I think. But the Cruiser's radio's out and I don't think we took the El Camino…."
"Yes, we did," Hyde reminded him, then turned back to Donna. "That guy in Dane," he quipped. "Come on, you expect me to buy that?"
"Look, I don't know," Donna sighed loudly, "but I know that somebody cut Jackie's phone while I was talking to her, then called back and said he was coming for me next! Whoever it is, he's real, and we need to do something!"
"Well.. What," Eric pondered, though he seemed simply to be playing along.
"I don't know!" Donna looked around, trying to think of something. "Maybe we should head out to the shed, see if we can find something there?"
"Um… The hunting stuff's upstairs," Eric said, surprisingly earnest. "But Red'll kick my ass if…"
"Forman," Hyde began levelly, "if you keep this up, *Donna's* gonna kick your ass."
"Ah, yes, the hunting rifles are right upstairs," Eric corrected cheerily. Donna thought about that, honestly, for almost two seconds before fear of whatever psychopath had killed Jackie and Kelso outweighed her fear of the possibility of her friends, stoned, with guns.
"Okay," she said, "we'll get them, then head out to the garage. Even if he finds us here, he'll never think of looking for us there. Is Laurie here? We shouldn't leave her here for him to find."
"Don't think so," Eric shook his head and thought another moment. "Nah, I'm pretty sure she's whoring around somewhere."
"Figures," she nodded. "Come on! Let's get moving! Don't know how long we have!"
"Right," Hyde assented with a nod, "then let's go." The three of them ascended the stairs, Eric and Hyde still a little less urgently than Donna….
~~~===~~~
"Eric," Fez called, letting himself in the Forman house. "Hyde! Where are you?"
He looked around for his friends. He didn't find them. What he did find, though, was a few red droplets dotting the carpet, becoming more frequent and bigger as he neared the kitchen. Curious now, he followed the trail; then paled when he slipped through the door - Laurie lying there, unmoving and coated in the red substance he now knew was blood, a gaping hole in her shirt.
"Oh, my god," he squeaked. "Laurie! What has happened here?!"
"Allow me to demonstrate," a voice half-growled from behind him, before he saw a flash of metal in front of his eyes, and had his breath quite literally taken away from him, along with a good portion of the rest of his throat.
"So," Davis muttered to himself as Fez' body fell to the ground with a wheeze, "it seems you weren't 'Donna' after all." He looked at Laurie disdainfully and shrugged. "Oh well - I'm sure you're around here somewhere. It took me long enough to find you, I'm certainly not going to let you get away without a fight." With that, he started off, searching through the rest of the house….
~~~===~~~
Eric shifted uncomfortably in the back seat of the Vista Cruiser - the gravity of the air had sobered him slightly, though he was still decidedly shifty. Hyde, though he'd managed to have a handle on himself before Eric had, was very much back to normal, though Eric was tempted to guess that it was because he was high a lot of the time, just to a lesser degree - he suspected that while his friend had been living with his father he'd been waking himself up with his seldom used recipe for "special" tea. Eric still hadn't gripped the real seriousness of the situation, but his gun was at the ready and he was definitely weirded out.
Donna, for her part, was cramped between the two of them. On the one hand, it was distinctly uncomfortable. On the other, more important, hand, it was a lot safer than being out in the open. With any luck, they could just hole up out here until morning, or until somebody came back, then they could call the cops, and let them handle everything….
Her heart was pounding loud enough, to her, that she wasn't entirely sure that she wasn't just hearing it when there was a tapping at the edge of the garage door.
"Hey, what's -"
"Forman," Hyde hissed under his breath. "Shut up." Yeah, one could call him tense at the moment, Eric decided.
The tapping repeated, moving a bit, and Donna couldn't help but wonder if this was how he'd managed to get to Kelso or Jackie….
God, she'd almost managed to forget about that so far.
"Go away," she muttered under her breath, knowing it wouldn't do any good, but she couldn't really keep it out of her mind.
Eric and Hyde exchanged a look, and though Eric didn't seem entirely sure himself of their silent exchange, it wasn't long before they both had their attention - and guns - focused on what was going on outside the car. They heard the side-door of the garage creak, and Donna squeezed her eyes shut, taking a deep breath to try and keep from jumping out of her skin.
"You guys forgot to lock the door," she said, trying to convince herself that's all it was. They were in the car… they'd be fine like that as long as they stayed inside the car….
Eric shot her one of his childish, pouty looks as though to say that it wasn't *his* fault, and then turned back to the task at hand. Hyde just swore softly, not particularly encouraged by that fact.
"You think he's in the garage," Donna asked quietly, barely whispering. She couldn't see much of anything from where she was.
Then they heard a scraping from *under* the car.
"Shit," Hyde muttered by way of answering.
Eric echoed his friend's sentiments as the sound moved around, almost like it was searching for something along the chassis. The noise seemed to focus around the very back of the car… then it stopped.
All three of them tensed up, ignoring the urge to turn in their seats - none of them wanted to risk the noise. The silence was deafening, and for once it *wasn't* because they were on something. The only sound was a slight creaking from beneath the Cruiser, but even that wasn't enough to tell what was happening….
"Do you guys smell gas," Donna asked in a whisper.
"Mm," Eric murmured in an affirmative.
"Shit," Donna observed, as another sound started up… something like the tip of a knife tapping against the gas tank, alternating high and low.
Tink, tonk, tink, tonk…. Tick, tock, tick, tock….
"Why'd he empty the tank," the red-head wondered quietly…. Unless….
"What the hell," Hyde said in a question he didn't expect answered.
"He's going to blow us up," Donna whispered, almost frantically. Tick tock. "He can't get to us, so he's just going to blow us up and be done with it…."
"Well then let's get the hell out of the car," Eric concluded, more loudly than any of them had spoken in the past half hour.
"But he's still down there," she pointed out.
"Guns," Eric pointed out in return.
"Look, man, we're screwed if we stay in here," Hyde pointed out bluntly, "and maybe if we don't. But one's a definite screw-over and the other's not."
"Uh, I vote the non-definite one." As if on cue, the tapping stopped.
"Okay," she shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. "We'll have to try and jump or something… get as far as fast as we can… right?"
"Yeah, probably," Hyde agreed. There was a moment's silence and then both he and Eric looked prepared to bail from the car. "On three, okay?"
"Yeah," Eric exhaled deeply, intentionally keeping his breathing slow. "3.. 2.. 1." At that, both boys sprung out of the car, guns in hand. Or, at least, they tried to. Eric got out clean, but just as Hyde was lunging out, a hand came up from under the car, grabbing his ankle and sending him sprawling onto the cement floor of the garage, his rifle skidding away.
"Fuck," Eric half-screamed, glancing around wildly for *something* to shoot at, but finding nothing. "Hyde!"
"Christ," Hyde shouted, barely feeling the scrape that formed on his face for his heart pounding in his ears and his struggling against the almost inhumanly vice-like grip on his ankle. Much like Eric, he looked around the room, though he was searching for something to aid his struggle. He didn't find anything. Instead, he was just dragged under none-too-gently, the hand wrapped around one of his legs not loosening a bit as he kicked at the body that was being protected by the car they'd just been relying on. Donna jumped out, stumbling next to him and hurrying for his rifle, hoping to be able to do *something* with it.
That's when the knife came out, biting into Hyde's leg and side, as its owner dragged himself out from under the car.
Eric ran around to the car's other side, but he was still as helpless as he'd been before, especially when a blood-soaked specter seemed to pop out from under the car and knock him over, leaving Hyde lying in agony and the blend of his own blood and gas under the car. Eric's cry was a combination of horror and disgust, his fear numbed by shock as Davis' knife glittered, almost as if it was eager to continue its grisly chore. Suddenly, an explosive report echoed through the garage, and the back of the psychotic killer's head practically erupted against the Cruiser's side, fragments of brain and bone littering the interior as his body collapsed onto the ground. Time seemed to freeze for a moment before the sound of the rifle falling from Donna's hands to the cement snapped everybody out of their shock, as well as anything could.
"Holy… Hell," Eric panted raggedly, not moving from the floor.
Hyde looked as if he was going to say something, but his face screwed up in a pained grimace before he could make a sound.
"I-I'll go call an ambulance," Donna said raggedly, before starting out of the garage as fast as she could manage…..
~~~===~~~
A year later, the three of them were standing in the cemetery their friends had been buried in. Hyde still couldn't really stand without something to lean on, after most of his leg had been turned into something like a mad knife-throwers target, but he was there all the same.
"Hard to believe all that happened a year ago," Donna shuddered, looking at the bleak monuments to Davis' last victims. Things just hadn't been the same since.
"Harder to believe it happened at all," Eric muttered quietly, equal parts angered, disturbed, and sad at the memories.
"Yeah," she nodded, along with Hyde. "Wonder if there's any way to get away from it… don't know if moving'll be enough."
"There's still blood on the carpets," Eric observed, looking haunted. "They've been replaced, but I swear to God it's still there."
"Yeah… I," Hyde trailed off, then shook his head. "It'll sure as hell help, Donna."
"Yeah," she nodded again, swallowing hard. "We should probably get going… say goodbye, and get on the road."
"Yeah," Eric repeated with a small nod of his own. "Yeah, we should."
"Look on the bright side," Hyde began, not quite managing a smile. "We've all wanted out of this town since we were 13, anyway."
"Yeah," Donna sighed. "Kinda figured the farewells'd be livelier, though…." The others nodded slightly, before the three said their goodbyes to their friends, trying not to break down the way they sometimes would. Finally, they all piled into the moving truck, and started off for their new lives… somewhere away from their memories of Point Place….
By Wolfemann & Kate
Disclaimer: The show, Point Place, the ep. title and characters belong to Carsey-Warner.
Summary: It's Halloween again - but this time Eric and co. really do have to worry about staying alive.
Rating: R
Warnings:Gore, violence, death.
Notes: Pairings may or may not necessarily fit with the timeframe of the original episode - however, I'm reasonably sure they're not too far off. Locations were written under the assumption that Madison izs supposed to be a half hour to an hour away from Point Place. Also, this is the group's Halloween special, but it was posted now due to the fact that either of the authors will be either away from home or busy with school come October.
---
It was ten o'clock pm on Halloween night, and any gripes Michael Kelso had been giving about not being able to go do "Halloween stuff" with the guys had long since ceased. The reason for this was, naturally, the dark haired girl attached to him. Damn, he was glad his uncle had given him this van.
The night continued much as it had for the past half hour, and he was contented with it - until Jackie stopped moving, drew back, and supported herself on his chest by her elbows, seemingly intently focused on something.
"Oww," he whined pitifully, hurt more by her elbow bones than the weight of her slight frame. "Damn, Jackie, what?"
"Michael," she shifted compliantly, the urge to roll her eyes beaten out by said focus. "Did you hear something?"
"Uh," he genuinely considered it for a fraction of a second. "Nope." In his mind the interruption was dealt with, and he reached up at her again. She squirmed out of his loose grip and glared down at him.
"Michael, I'm serious," she insisted. "There's something I don't like here."
"Jackie," he protested, the whiny tone still in his voice.
"You know, my parents aren't in town," she remarked with a suggestive smirk - they weren't in Eric, Hyde, or anyone else's company, so she didn't need to bother veiling her meaning. "Could be more comfortable back home."
"Jackie.."
"Michael!"
"Aw, fine," he sighed heavily, acting more put out than he could possibly have felt. He sat up, twisted himself around to a more comfortable driving position, waited for Jackie to settle herself in her seat, then turned the key in the ignition. The radio buzzed and crackled to life.
"…mergency news bulletin. Samuel Davis has escaped from the Dane County Mental Institute. He is to be considered armed and dangerous. If you see him, lock the doors and report his presence to the authorities as soon as possible. He is described as -"
"Okay, well," Kelso clicked off the radio and interrupted it loudly and with bravado, "that guy's not around here," he declared in the same voice. It didn't bother him, but Jackie was in one of her weird moods. It was at that moment he heard what Jackie must have a moment ago; a low, screechy scratching noise from above.
"See, Michael," Jackie hissed softly, prying his hand from the clutch and grasping it tightly.
"It's nothin', Jackie," he rolled his eyes. "Probably just a chipmunk or something."
"Chipmunks don't sound like that," Jackie fretted, just before there was another scratching over the back of the van.
She made a sound like a half-formed screech. "Michael!"
"Let's go, then."
"Michael, it is *on the van,*" she began, voice trembling slightly. "Go and see what it is."
"Fine, if it means we can get moving," another long-suffering sigh, and he slipped out the van door, heading around the back of it to see what the noise was. Seconds passed, then minutes, all seeming like hours to Jackie, her gradual terror mounting as she didn't hear a word from Kelso.
She couldn't take it anymore. Carefully, she stuck her head out the window. "Michael," she called softly. "Michael, if this is some stupid joke, it's not funny."
A few more moments of silence followed, before she heard a rhythmic tapping on the roof, almost like something dripping onto the metal surface. Tap… tap… tap….
"Oh, God," she muttered under her breath. "Michael, this is *not* funny!"
Tap… tap… tap…. The drops seemed to be slowing down a little, but gradually.
Okay. If he *was* playing some stupid joke on her, he was dead. Shaking, she got out of the van as well, looking around slowly. At first, she didn't see anything. Then she saw a little red dripping down the side of the van. Looking up, she saw Kelso's body, hanging from the tree above the van, the front of his outfit drenched in blood, the source of the dripping sound.
She didn't scream - didn't utter a sound, because for a second she was quite literally choking on air. It was only after she was far away that she did, and it was only after she'd done that that she even realized she'd taken off running. Any grief she might have felt numbed by shock, and most thought barred too, she kept running - towards home.
~~~===~~~
Donna laid on her bed, paging idly through a Cosmo - God, Hyde was right, the thing was pointless, but she was bored - when the phone rang. Picking it up, it was Jackie, sounding astonishingly hysterical, even for her.
"Oh my god, Donna! I-"
"Okay, Jackie," Donna sighed - the cheerleader had become better company as of late, but it was still her instinct to think that whatever her friend wanted to discuss was pointless. "Slow down."
"No, Donna," she drew a deep breath, sounding almost like she'd forgotten to breathe. "I was just with Michael by the Water Tower, and I heard a noise, and we went to leave but there was something on the van, and, and," her voice literally faded away as she again ran out of air. "I-I… he went to look, but he didn't come back…. B-because there was something on the roof, and it killed him!"
"Ja - what? Jackie, what are you talking about? Slow down, what's going on?"
"Michael and I were at the Water Tower," she repeated more slowly. "And now he's dead. Easy enough for you, you lumberjack?!?" She snapped, barely if at all sane at the moment.
"How did -" Suddenly, the line seemed to go dead. A moment passed before she heard the too-familiar tones that came before the announcement that a line had been disconnected, and she hung up before the message was finished.
She was about to pick it up to dial the police, when it rung, literally when her hand was on it. Jackie must be calling back. She picked it up, getting worried when nobody said anything.
"Hello?"
"Well," a strange voice said on the other end, strangely smooth and menacing. "Sounds like my little lovebird sang. Who might you be, little girl?"
"I think you're the one that needs to answer that," Donna snapped in reply, speaking before she thought. "What did you do to Jackie and Kelso?"
"Give me… twenty minutes," the voice chuckled, "and you'll find out yourself. Tick tock, little girl. Wait up for me." There was a kissing sound on the other end, before the line went dead again, this time replaced by a dial tone.
"What the hell," Donna muttered to herself, shaken but still mildly disbelieving. She didn't know what was going on, but suddenly she didn't relish the idea of her night to herself. She took off for the Forman's, silently praying that Eric and Hyde had stayed in.
Meanwhile, back at Jackie's house, a long, thin hand closed the book of numbers and addresses the dark-haired girl had pulled out before he'd caught up with her.
"Tick-tock," Davis said with a thin smile, wiping the bloody knife he'd used to escape off on Jackie's blouse before he started off through the back lots towards Donna's….
~~~===~~~
An all too familiar smell accompanied a round of giddy giggles drifting up the stairs. Donna felt equal parts relief and annoyance. The good part - they were home. The bad part… they'd think it was some joke. She took the steps three at a time, bursting into the basement. Eric and Hyde were on the couch, an incense holder and an ashtray with a still smoldering roach on the table in front of them. The TV blared Gilligan's Island, but they were both more interested in the shapes Eric was tracing into the air with a lit stick of incense.
"Damn it," she muttered to herself, waving her hand to futilely try and clear the smell. "Eric! Hyde!"
"Heya, beautiful," Eric chirped cheerfully, pointing at her with the incense.
"Donna, man," Hyde more observed than greeted. "Hey."
"Could you two straighten *up*? The one time…." She made a frustrated sound, trying to think of some way to say things so they'd actually listen. "There's somebody after me! They already got Kelso and Jackie - we need to do something to stop them!"
"Hey," Eric remarked, grinning. "We haven't played this in, like, years!"
"Forman, man, that game *sucked,*" Hyde corrected. Then, with an amused smirk, he added, "But hey, if they got Kelso, I'm in, man!"
"I'm *serious*, you two," she said, exasperation in her tone. "We need to find some place he won't find us!"
"What, like under Laurie's bed," Eric teased.
Hyde was a little more perceptive. "You serious, man," he questioned, still looking the slightest bit like he wanted to laugh.
"Yes, I'm serious," she insisted. "I just got off the phone, whoever it was said he was going to come for me next… oh my God… did you two hear the radio earlier?"
"Nah," Eric shook his head. "Neither of us had anything stashed, so we went to Leo's.." His face contorted in confusion. "I think. But the Cruiser's radio's out and I don't think we took the El Camino…."
"Yes, we did," Hyde reminded him, then turned back to Donna. "That guy in Dane," he quipped. "Come on, you expect me to buy that?"
"Look, I don't know," Donna sighed loudly, "but I know that somebody cut Jackie's phone while I was talking to her, then called back and said he was coming for me next! Whoever it is, he's real, and we need to do something!"
"Well.. What," Eric pondered, though he seemed simply to be playing along.
"I don't know!" Donna looked around, trying to think of something. "Maybe we should head out to the shed, see if we can find something there?"
"Um… The hunting stuff's upstairs," Eric said, surprisingly earnest. "But Red'll kick my ass if…"
"Forman," Hyde began levelly, "if you keep this up, *Donna's* gonna kick your ass."
"Ah, yes, the hunting rifles are right upstairs," Eric corrected cheerily. Donna thought about that, honestly, for almost two seconds before fear of whatever psychopath had killed Jackie and Kelso outweighed her fear of the possibility of her friends, stoned, with guns.
"Okay," she said, "we'll get them, then head out to the garage. Even if he finds us here, he'll never think of looking for us there. Is Laurie here? We shouldn't leave her here for him to find."
"Don't think so," Eric shook his head and thought another moment. "Nah, I'm pretty sure she's whoring around somewhere."
"Figures," she nodded. "Come on! Let's get moving! Don't know how long we have!"
"Right," Hyde assented with a nod, "then let's go." The three of them ascended the stairs, Eric and Hyde still a little less urgently than Donna….
~~~===~~~
"Eric," Fez called, letting himself in the Forman house. "Hyde! Where are you?"
He looked around for his friends. He didn't find them. What he did find, though, was a few red droplets dotting the carpet, becoming more frequent and bigger as he neared the kitchen. Curious now, he followed the trail; then paled when he slipped through the door - Laurie lying there, unmoving and coated in the red substance he now knew was blood, a gaping hole in her shirt.
"Oh, my god," he squeaked. "Laurie! What has happened here?!"
"Allow me to demonstrate," a voice half-growled from behind him, before he saw a flash of metal in front of his eyes, and had his breath quite literally taken away from him, along with a good portion of the rest of his throat.
"So," Davis muttered to himself as Fez' body fell to the ground with a wheeze, "it seems you weren't 'Donna' after all." He looked at Laurie disdainfully and shrugged. "Oh well - I'm sure you're around here somewhere. It took me long enough to find you, I'm certainly not going to let you get away without a fight." With that, he started off, searching through the rest of the house….
~~~===~~~
Eric shifted uncomfortably in the back seat of the Vista Cruiser - the gravity of the air had sobered him slightly, though he was still decidedly shifty. Hyde, though he'd managed to have a handle on himself before Eric had, was very much back to normal, though Eric was tempted to guess that it was because he was high a lot of the time, just to a lesser degree - he suspected that while his friend had been living with his father he'd been waking himself up with his seldom used recipe for "special" tea. Eric still hadn't gripped the real seriousness of the situation, but his gun was at the ready and he was definitely weirded out.
Donna, for her part, was cramped between the two of them. On the one hand, it was distinctly uncomfortable. On the other, more important, hand, it was a lot safer than being out in the open. With any luck, they could just hole up out here until morning, or until somebody came back, then they could call the cops, and let them handle everything….
Her heart was pounding loud enough, to her, that she wasn't entirely sure that she wasn't just hearing it when there was a tapping at the edge of the garage door.
"Hey, what's -"
"Forman," Hyde hissed under his breath. "Shut up." Yeah, one could call him tense at the moment, Eric decided.
The tapping repeated, moving a bit, and Donna couldn't help but wonder if this was how he'd managed to get to Kelso or Jackie….
God, she'd almost managed to forget about that so far.
"Go away," she muttered under her breath, knowing it wouldn't do any good, but she couldn't really keep it out of her mind.
Eric and Hyde exchanged a look, and though Eric didn't seem entirely sure himself of their silent exchange, it wasn't long before they both had their attention - and guns - focused on what was going on outside the car. They heard the side-door of the garage creak, and Donna squeezed her eyes shut, taking a deep breath to try and keep from jumping out of her skin.
"You guys forgot to lock the door," she said, trying to convince herself that's all it was. They were in the car… they'd be fine like that as long as they stayed inside the car….
Eric shot her one of his childish, pouty looks as though to say that it wasn't *his* fault, and then turned back to the task at hand. Hyde just swore softly, not particularly encouraged by that fact.
"You think he's in the garage," Donna asked quietly, barely whispering. She couldn't see much of anything from where she was.
Then they heard a scraping from *under* the car.
"Shit," Hyde muttered by way of answering.
Eric echoed his friend's sentiments as the sound moved around, almost like it was searching for something along the chassis. The noise seemed to focus around the very back of the car… then it stopped.
All three of them tensed up, ignoring the urge to turn in their seats - none of them wanted to risk the noise. The silence was deafening, and for once it *wasn't* because they were on something. The only sound was a slight creaking from beneath the Cruiser, but even that wasn't enough to tell what was happening….
"Do you guys smell gas," Donna asked in a whisper.
"Mm," Eric murmured in an affirmative.
"Shit," Donna observed, as another sound started up… something like the tip of a knife tapping against the gas tank, alternating high and low.
Tink, tonk, tink, tonk…. Tick, tock, tick, tock….
"Why'd he empty the tank," the red-head wondered quietly…. Unless….
"What the hell," Hyde said in a question he didn't expect answered.
"He's going to blow us up," Donna whispered, almost frantically. Tick tock. "He can't get to us, so he's just going to blow us up and be done with it…."
"Well then let's get the hell out of the car," Eric concluded, more loudly than any of them had spoken in the past half hour.
"But he's still down there," she pointed out.
"Guns," Eric pointed out in return.
"Look, man, we're screwed if we stay in here," Hyde pointed out bluntly, "and maybe if we don't. But one's a definite screw-over and the other's not."
"Uh, I vote the non-definite one." As if on cue, the tapping stopped.
"Okay," she shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. "We'll have to try and jump or something… get as far as fast as we can… right?"
"Yeah, probably," Hyde agreed. There was a moment's silence and then both he and Eric looked prepared to bail from the car. "On three, okay?"
"Yeah," Eric exhaled deeply, intentionally keeping his breathing slow. "3.. 2.. 1." At that, both boys sprung out of the car, guns in hand. Or, at least, they tried to. Eric got out clean, but just as Hyde was lunging out, a hand came up from under the car, grabbing his ankle and sending him sprawling onto the cement floor of the garage, his rifle skidding away.
"Fuck," Eric half-screamed, glancing around wildly for *something* to shoot at, but finding nothing. "Hyde!"
"Christ," Hyde shouted, barely feeling the scrape that formed on his face for his heart pounding in his ears and his struggling against the almost inhumanly vice-like grip on his ankle. Much like Eric, he looked around the room, though he was searching for something to aid his struggle. He didn't find anything. Instead, he was just dragged under none-too-gently, the hand wrapped around one of his legs not loosening a bit as he kicked at the body that was being protected by the car they'd just been relying on. Donna jumped out, stumbling next to him and hurrying for his rifle, hoping to be able to do *something* with it.
That's when the knife came out, biting into Hyde's leg and side, as its owner dragged himself out from under the car.
Eric ran around to the car's other side, but he was still as helpless as he'd been before, especially when a blood-soaked specter seemed to pop out from under the car and knock him over, leaving Hyde lying in agony and the blend of his own blood and gas under the car. Eric's cry was a combination of horror and disgust, his fear numbed by shock as Davis' knife glittered, almost as if it was eager to continue its grisly chore. Suddenly, an explosive report echoed through the garage, and the back of the psychotic killer's head practically erupted against the Cruiser's side, fragments of brain and bone littering the interior as his body collapsed onto the ground. Time seemed to freeze for a moment before the sound of the rifle falling from Donna's hands to the cement snapped everybody out of their shock, as well as anything could.
"Holy… Hell," Eric panted raggedly, not moving from the floor.
Hyde looked as if he was going to say something, but his face screwed up in a pained grimace before he could make a sound.
"I-I'll go call an ambulance," Donna said raggedly, before starting out of the garage as fast as she could manage…..
~~~===~~~
A year later, the three of them were standing in the cemetery their friends had been buried in. Hyde still couldn't really stand without something to lean on, after most of his leg had been turned into something like a mad knife-throwers target, but he was there all the same.
"Hard to believe all that happened a year ago," Donna shuddered, looking at the bleak monuments to Davis' last victims. Things just hadn't been the same since.
"Harder to believe it happened at all," Eric muttered quietly, equal parts angered, disturbed, and sad at the memories.
"Yeah," she nodded, along with Hyde. "Wonder if there's any way to get away from it… don't know if moving'll be enough."
"There's still blood on the carpets," Eric observed, looking haunted. "They've been replaced, but I swear to God it's still there."
"Yeah… I," Hyde trailed off, then shook his head. "It'll sure as hell help, Donna."
"Yeah," she nodded again, swallowing hard. "We should probably get going… say goodbye, and get on the road."
"Yeah," Eric repeated with a small nod of his own. "Yeah, we should."
"Look on the bright side," Hyde began, not quite managing a smile. "We've all wanted out of this town since we were 13, anyway."
"Yeah," Donna sighed. "Kinda figured the farewells'd be livelier, though…." The others nodded slightly, before the three said their goodbyes to their friends, trying not to break down the way they sometimes would. Finally, they all piled into the moving truck, and started off for their new lives… somewhere away from their memories of Point Place….