Even though Gary had already been dealt with, Everly still didn’t want to linger at Red Oak Camp.
This ti, it was mainly because of nerves.
As the saying goes, “set fire to the mountain and end up in jail,” and sumr was approaching. The air in the forest was dry, and because of the rocket launcher from before, the red oak forest on the hillside was still burning. No one knew when it would finally be completely burned out.
Although Everly hadn’t intentionally started the wildfire, she couldn’t be sure how a judge would see it. In the U.S., forest arson carries heavy penalties; a conviction could an not only imprisonnt but also massive fines.
So, unfortunately, she decided to pin this one on Gary.
The rocket launcher, the shotgun, the Glock—those were all weapons that crazy murderer sohow got his hands on! Old John and Everly had only co because of Misha’s call, picking up a friend on the way ho—they didn’t know anything.
—You ask where those weapons are now?
Well, of course, they all went into the lake with the murderer and vanished without a trace!
After gathering all the survivors and checking everyone’s statents to clear both herself and Old John of any suspicion, Everly and Old John cleaned up the remaining rocket launchers on the ground and left the scene with Misha ahead of the others.
The rest wanted to leave too, but they had to stay behind to provide false testimony for Everly and the group. After witnessing Everly raise the shotgun and spray the killer with it, they were all a little intimidated by this ruthless young woman and didn’t dare make her angry.
And so, with her friend Misha in tow, Everly and Old John successfully withdrew from Red Oak Camp.
On the road, after the emotional turbulence of the incident had settled, Misha’s overheated mind gradually cooled, finally giving her the space to think about the entire event.
“Everly, how did you figure out that Andy was the killer in disguise?” She thought it over again and again, and finally asked the question she was most curious about.
Facing her friend, Everly naturally held nothing back. She raised three fingers: “There were three reasons.”
“What three?”
“First, the mask. In the fragnt I foresaw, the killer wasn’t wearing a white porcelain mask—my description was wrong. But when the killer actually appeared, his face had the exact mask I described. That ans he could have been hiding among us.” To explain her seemingly magical intuition to her friend, Everly used the excuse that she could see glimpses of dangerous monts.
“And the second?”
“The second suspicious point is that Andy always acted indecisive and low-profile in front of us. But after we left, he was the first to step forward and tell Benjamin that the matching fuses could be found in nearby houses. That’s a complete break from his usual behavior, very suspicious.”
“If there were only these two clues, I still couldn’t be sure. What truly confird Gary’s identity for was this.” Everly opened her hand and showed Misha a small ID photo.
When placing the fuses in Andy’s car, Everly had accidentally knocked over a small ornant on the dashboard. Its base was magnetic, and when it fell, the base popped open, releasing a dozen small ID photos with blue backgrounds.
The person in the photos was a young man with reddish-brown short hair and a face full of freckles. Apart from being roughly the sa age, he and Andy didn’t resemble each other in the slightest.
“Seeing that photo made suspicious. Later, after closer observation, I even found cigarettes in the car door storage compartnt. The car seat had burn holes from cigarettes, and in the seat crevices, I found ash and a few strands of reddish-brown hair. In my impression, Andy was very clean, and when I approached him, I didn’t sll tobacco on him at all.”
“As a man, finding ash and another man’s hair in Andy’s car, along with that photo, is already very strange. After all, he doesn’t seem to be dating a man… In short, putting all this together, I concluded that the Andy in front of us wasn’t the real Andy, but the killer in disguise.”
“I see now!” Misha exclaid, suddenly understanding.
There was actually another reason: Gary was extrely handso. Soone with his looks could never play just an ordinary role in a movie. If he were the protagonist, that would seem too impulsive and not fit his behavior, so the only logical choice was to lean toward the villain role.
And, in the end, that guess turned out to be correct… though this reason touches on the truth of the world, so she couldn’t tell anyone.
The jeep drove on for almost an entire day. Fortunately, this ti there were three drivers instead of two, and the vehicle was spacious enough that sitting for long periods wasn’t especially uncomfortable.
Late at night, the vehicle stopped in front of a house in Lemot town. After seeing Misha safely ho, the jeep turned and headed toward a quiet gas station.
It wasn’t until she lay down on a familiar bed that Everly’s nerves truly relaxed.
…
The next day, she and Old John enjoyed the rare treat of sleeping in.
After waking up, Everly began thinking of ways to handle lingering historical problems.
Gary’s words before sinking had left her uneasy, and according to the movie’s description, he was likely to break free and climb out of Erald Lake in the future. If that happened, and Gary ca looking for revenge, wouldn’t that be a huge problem?
If only there were a way to rid him of his immortality.
Everly didn’t even need to try—the scientific side of things couldn’t do it. In the Bloody Camp movie series, the victims had already tried every possible thod for her. In one film, they even pushed Gary into a furnace and burned him to charcoal—but when they turned back, he was still alive, crawling out of the furnace completely unhard. He simply could not be killed.
But what if powers from the mystical side were introduced—what then?
So Everly called Rebecca, asking her to help check in the exorcist group if anyone knew how to kill soone who could not die.
Unfortunately, the group that had always been reliable in the past was of little use this ti. After hearing Rebecca’s description, the exorcists mainly reacted in two ways: so insisted that immortality didn’t exist unless the person was a demigod with divine blood, or a mythological-level being like Lamia; others said nothing in the group, but privately bombarded Rebecca with ssages, trying to extract the “immortal’s” location or asking to buy a vial of blood.
“Then I asked the group what to do if the person was a demigod with divine blood,” Rebecca added. “Everyone thought I was crazy. They told never to entertain such a dangerous idea unless I wanted to risk the wrath of that god. As for those who ssaged privately asking for the location, I blocked them all—because it was obvious they had bad intentions.”
“…” So… does that an Gary really is the offspring of a god?
Everly was first shocked, then deeply troubled.
Rebecca’s aning was clear: it was theoretically possible to kill Gary using non-physical ans, but doing so would invite retaliation from his father—so unknown evil god—so it was strongly advised against.
Everly was furious. But no matter how angry she got, what could she do? Being “divine” just put Gary a cut above everyone else.
She could only hope that Gary would stay put in his fridge and stop running around.
…
The rest of the sumr passed very quietly.
The survivors left at Red Oak Camp proved to be surprisingly law-abiding—or maybe they were simply terrified of Everly settling scores later. In any case, they all stuck to a consistent story, answering the police exactly as Everly had instructed before leaving.
Although the Viska police sensed that sothing was off, the forensic results confird that a super-strong killer had indeed massacred more than a dozen people around Mirror Lake. Honestly, such a troubleso existence was the last thing the police wanted to deal with. Since the students all claid the killer had been brought to justice, they decided to close the case.
As a result, through the combined efforts of the victims and the police, the tragedy around Mirror Lake ended up being reduced to a minor, almost invisible news snippet in the local newspaper’s society section.
Misha, too, had been shaken by the camping incident. For the remainder of the sumr, whenever other friends invited her to travel or camp, she refused flat-out. She spent every free mont driving her parents’ old car to the gas station to et Everly, where they would read, study, or work out together—practically turning herself into a second Everly.
New Osebuch State University started classes on August 25. By mid-August, Everly had already begun planning her trip to the university.
Dwight State is located in the southwestern U.S., while New Osebuch State lies in the northeastern corner, about 3,300 kiloters apart in a straight line, with vast stretches of uninhabited land in between.
Given the distance and unfamiliar territory, self-driving was imdiately ruled out. After all, road-trip horror is a long-standing subgenre in U.S. thrillers, and Everly wasn’t willing to risk her beloved car being dragged into endless chases and roadblock attacks.
She planned to have her fully modified Grand Cherokee shipped directly to New Osebuch State. As for herself, taking public transportation to the university was definitely the safer choice.
Although even U.S. public transport could be dangerous—like eighteen years ago, when Old John took her on a plane and they nearly got caught up in a cult’s scide ritual—that was a low-probability event. At least the odds were far lower than driving across the country and running into trouble on the road.
The U.S. has 50 states, so naturally not every state has direct flights to every other state. In Dwight State, where Everly lived, there were three airports. The busiest was Sunken International Airport in the state capital, Sunken City. From there, to reach New Osebuch State, there were three possible routes, none of which were direct; each required a layover.
The first route was Sunken → Gegha → Concord (the capital of New Osebuch State), with a 24-hour layover.
The second route was Sunken → Gilosha → Concord, which required a 36-hour layover. Moreover, because Gilosha is in Yanifly State to the west of Dwight, this route was effectively a detour, taking more ti in the air.
The third route was Sunken → Radyard → Concord, with a 40-hour layover. Radyard is located in the southeastern corner of the U.S., so this route essentially traced a right angle along the southern and eastern parts of the country—also sowhat indirect.
All three routes required a 1–2 day stop in a layover city. To be safe, before booking her ticket, Everly opened her computer and researched the three cities and their surrounding areas.
Gegha is located in the heart of the U.S. As soon as she typed the city’s na into the search bar, a long list of suggested search results popped up below. At first glance, none of them were anything positive.
Sure enough, after pressing Enter, Everly imdiately found a series of disasters linked to the city:
Recently, Gegha had been struck by a wave of sudden calamities. First, the Garry River that flowed through the city turned into a river of blood overnight, with all fish and shrimp rotting and stinking. Soon after, a bizarre rain of frogs fell from the sky. Then flies, lice, and locusts began ravaging the land, followed by hailstorms and sores affecting both humans and animals… one disaster after another fell upon the city, leaving the residents in utter chaos.
But that wasn’t even the scariest part. An online theologian pointed out that the disasters hitting Gegha matched almost perfectly with the first eight plagues of Egypt described in Exodus—the so-called “Ten Plagues” from the Bible.
The theologian suggested that so evil presence must have angered God, bringing such severe punishnt. He called on the local churches to seek help from higher authorities imdiately, so that the situation could be contained before the remaining two plagues arrived.
“…”
Wow. Even the legendary Ten Plagues of the Bible are showing up—life in the U.S. really is deep water and scorching fire!
Everly silently crossed off the first route and began searching for the second one.
Compared to the supernatural chaos in Gegha, Gilosha was much calr. Recently, there had been no supernatural incidents, and the serial killers in the area had been keeping a low profile.
However, dockworkers in Gilosha had recently gone on strike.
Although the governnt intervened to diate between labor and managent, the results were not ideal. As ti passed, the striking workers lost their livelihoods and began gathering in the streets, staging massive protests. Among them were opportunists who took advantage of the demonstrations to storm nearby shops, carrying out a series of freewheeling acts of looting, smashing, and destruction…
Just yesterday, the situation at Gilosha had escalated to the point where dockworkers were throwing homade Molotov cocktails at police, who were responding with tear gas, each side flinging projectiles over riot shields like monkeys throwing… well, you know.
“…”
Everly silently crossed off the second route.
Her gaze fell on the last hope: Radyard City. Located in Abazi State, it was a small, relatively unknown town. Due to environntal limitations, the local economy had never developed well. Three years ago, the local governnt invested heavily to build a large, sprawling airport—Jack-Feld Airport—hoping that improved transportation would kickstart economic growth.
This was also why the small, remote city of Radyard could serve as a layover point.
Radyard wasn’t very famous, so there wasn’t much news about it. What Everly could find were either articles praising the airport’s convenience or promotional pieces on local tourism; nothing major had happened recently.
After careful consideration, Everly decided to take the third route.
—————————————————————
Author’s Note:
The layover tis in this chapter’s flights are completely made up. Please treat them as fictional [pleading]
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