Madness: Asher Benson, #2

By Jason Brant

Asher Benson has once again fled to a secluded cabin in the mountains outside of the sleepy town of Arthur's Creek, West Virginia. Government agents surround him day and night, blanketing his entire life in constant surveillance under the guise of keeping him safe.

That facade is shattered when every cell phone in Arthur's Creek rings simultaneously. Anyone who answers the call is driven into a violent, psychotic madness that turns the entire town into a slaughterhouse.

And Ash is caught in the middle of it all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jason Brant
• Release date: Nov 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502253873

Jason Brant

"JASON BRANT" is an anagram for Bas Trojann, a former Bigfoot hunter who, after being abducted (and subsequently returned) by aliens, decided to hang up his ghillie suit and enter the world of professional arm wrestling. Despite back-to-back first place finishes in the South Dakota World Championship League, Bas receded from athletics to invent cheese and give Al Gore the initiative to create the internet. Nearly a decade after writing the bestselling self-help series, Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese (Cut into Four Pieces) for the Soul, Bas has left his life of notoriety and critical acclaim behind him to write existential, erotic poetry. His wife washes their clothing on his abs.

Book preview

1 – The Road is Closed

Allison fumbled with her radio as she rounded the slight bend on Crescent Road. The early morning hour meant that no one else would be driving along the back road, so she wasn’t concerned with oncoming traffic.

The popping of her tires boomed like a shotgun blast.

Allison’s entire body clenched.

The steering wheel jerked in her hands.

Screeching metal resonated through the wooded area as the rims dug into the concrete road.

The lone working headlight in her sedan bobbed and weaved as she fought to keep the car on the road.

Her foot mashed the brake pedal to the floor.

Vibrations ran up her arms from the shaking steering wheel.

The car skidded sideways, the front right rim slamming into a pothole she’d complained to the sheriff about more than a dozen times. Every morning on her way to work, Allison had to swerve around it for fear of it popping one of her tires.

The rim dropped into the hole with the car still doing forty miles an hour. The sudden stop flipped the car sideways into a barrel roll.

Allison’s stomach constricted even further as the weightless feeling of freefall consumed her. Her hair flew around in wild snaps. The wheel yanked free from her grip.

The windshield shattered.

Her door flew open.

Glass stabbed at her face.

The roof bowed inward.

Swirls of spinning trees, rending metal, and yellow sparks filled her vision.

And then the car stopped flipping, landed on its roof, and slid to a stop in a drainage ditch beside the road.

Harsh breaths sucked through her teeth as Allison dangled upside down, her seat belt suspending her in midair. She stared through the empty space where her windshield had been only a few seconds before.

Quiet overtook the woods again, save the thunder in her ears as her pulse hammered away.

Slowly, as if just awaking from a nightmare, Allison touched her face, her neck, her breasts.

Everything seemed to be in one piece.

An owl hooted from an obscured perch behind her.

How long she stayed there, held in place by the straps digging into her shoulder and waist, she didn’t know. Blood rushed to her head, flushing her face even more than the initial shock of the accident had.

Allison reached for the ceiling and brushed glass away from the spot below her head. She tested the strength in her arm before pressing firmly against the dented roof, hoping to stymie the force of what she was about to do. Taking a deep breath, she reached down to her hip with her right hand. Her fingers found the clasp of her seat belt and pressed the button.

It took more pressure than usual.

When it finally released, she fell to her shoulders, the jolt forcing a grunt from her.

God, she would be sore the next day.

After worming her way around, Allison carefully brushed more glass aside so she could place both of her hands down. The contents of her purse littered the inside of her car.

She didn’t bother picking anything up.

Arthur’s Creek, the small West Virginia town she lived outside of, only had a single cellular provider, which charged exorbitant rates. On her meager paycheck, Allison just couldn’t justify owning a cell phone.

So, she was one of the few people in America who didn’t have one practically attached to the side of her face at all times.

It had never been an issue before now—when she was bloody, disoriented, in need of medical care, and a stiff drink.

Careful not to stick her hands in the broken glass covering everything, Allison crawled through the small, misshapen space where her window used to be. She had to nearly flatten herself out to squeeze through.

What should have been a refreshing breath of early morning air reeked of burnt rubber and gasoline.

Smoke wafted around the car.

Allison dragged her legs through the window and let her body slump into the drainage ditch for several seconds, waiting on her heart to slow down. Though she was only thirty-five, she couldn’t help but wonder if she was dangling at the precipice of a stroke.

After several seconds, she forced herself to stand up, ignoring the way her hands and knees quaked from shock. She stared at her upside-down car, absentmindedly picking marble-sized chunks of windshield from her hair.

Holy shit, she muttered.

Her car hadn’t been particularly nice before the accident, but it got her from point A to point B with minimal fuss. Sure, the exhaust rumbled like a Harley and the brown cancer of rust had worked its way around the wheel wells, but the damn thing had done its job.

Allison knew as she stared at the crumpled metal and leaking undercarriage that her little rust bucket had driven its last mile.

And she was stuck in the middle of nowhere without a means to call for help.

She’d been on her way to start her shift at the gas station, her mind still groggy from getting up at five in the morning. The accident had burned away the sluggishness of her thoughts, but now she didn’t know what to do.

The edge of town was a mile or two ahead.

The walk wouldn’t be too bad, though she feared making it a quarter of the way there before her adrenaline wore off and she discovered that she’d broken her foot or cracked a rib. She could have waited for someone to drive by, but the back road she took to work every morning didn’t get much traffic at all, let alone before the sun had even come up.

As she mulled over her options, she noticed that all four of her tires were flat.

Even with her mind still aflutter from the accident, Allison recognized the oddity of the situation. She’d experienced tire blowouts before, but she’d never had two go at the same time before, let alone all four.

She took a shaky step closer, squinting in the darkness to see if something was sticking out of the deflated rubber. The headlight shining into the trees didn’t give her much to work with.

Unable to see anything, Allison climbed from the ditch and walked around the back of her car, shaking her head as she took in the damage. Almost every visible inch of metal had a dent or scratch.

The roof had practically caved in.

The side mirrors were gone.

But what really bothered her was the idea of all four tires popping.

Still woozy, Allison wandered back the road, following the trail of glass and rubber streaks, searching for anything that could have destroyed her tires. She walked for almost fifty yards when she spotted something ahead.

Moonlight glinted off metal in the road.

By the time she moved closer, most of the awkwardness had left her gait. She still felt amped up, but her thoughts had regained their clarity. Her stride smoothed out.

The object in the road became clear when she was ten yards away.

Oh my god. Her hand went to her face, fingers covering her open mouth.

Spike strips, like those she’d seen police officers use in movies to end a high-speed chase, stretched across the pavement.

Someone had intentionally caused her accident.

Fear streaked through her thoughts.

Allison hunched slightly as her eyes cast around the forest surrounding her. She listened to crickets and the continued hoot of the owl.

Was someone out there? Were they watching her?

A pang of anger made her want to holler out for the sadistic bastard, but she feared what they might do to her. If someone were capable of causing an accident, then they could be interested in far worse acts.

She looked down the road in the direction she’d been driving. The sheriff’s office was a mile or two ahead. If she could get there, he could take care of the problem.

He had a gun.

Allison had the clothes on her back and nothing else.

She silently cursed herself again for not having a cell phone.

Or a Taser.

The solitude of living outside of Arthur’s Creek gave her the peace and quiet she’d needed over the past year, but now she was regretting not having a way to call for help. It was one thing to want to be left alone and something else not to have the means to deal with an emergency.

Allison started back in the direction of her wrecked car, her eyes still watching the tree line. If she hurried, she could make it to the sheriff’s office in fifteen or twenty minutes.

No one jumped out of the woods and attacked as she walked on.

She didn’t hear so much as a snapping twig.

The outline of the forest and the bumpy surface of the road were barely visible in the darkness. Stars twinkled overhead, but the tree canopy above her muted most of their light.

When she was fifty feet beyond the wreck, she paused, cocking her head to the side. She thought she’d heard something ahead.

Headlights pierced the darkness in front of her.

The rumble of an engine grew louder.

Allison hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should stand her ground and force the vehicle to stop. They might have a phone she could use to call for help.

At the very least, they could give her a ride to the sheriff’s office.

But the thought of the spiked strips in the road made her wary of anyone she might meet just then.

She scurried off the road and hid beyond the wide trunk of an oak tree. Twigs jabbed at her ankles. She wore shorts to work on the hottest days of the summer and now she wished that she’d actually followed the gas station’s dress code and worn pants.

Bob, her manager, a hard-driving stickler for the rules, had never threatened her when she came into work with shorts on. Allison knew it was because he enjoyed staring at her legs, but that was something she would bear if it meant not sweating her ass off all day.

As she hunkered down behind the tree, she couldn’t help but ponder whether Bob would fire her for being late. He’d been close to terminating her anyway, and this might be the push that finally sent him over the edge.

It wouldn’t matter to him that someone had damn near killed her.

Allison brushed the thoughts of her job away as the oncoming vehicle drew near. It slowed as it rounded a slight bend in the road. Allison held her breath as the headlights washed over the tree she hid behind.

A van became visible as it pulled beside her hiding place, still decelerating. It stopped a few yards further down the road, the headlights shining directly on her wrecked car.

The passenger door opened, and a man stepped out. Allison could only see an outline of them in the dark.

Someone else climbed out from behind the wheel then. A male voice asked, You see anyone in there?

No, the passenger said. Looks like they climbed out.

Shit. Think we should look for them?

The second man paused for several seconds. Nah. Hell with it. We got less than an hour ‘till go time. They won’t be able to do anything about it.

But the boss said—

I know what he said. You want to crawl around the woods and look for someone?

No, but—

Besides, they’re probably all fucked up anyway. You see how mangled that car is? Odds are they were thrown out.

The driver slammed his door shut and walked around the front, his body intersecting the beams of the headlights. He had dark, cropped hair, a square jaw, and he wore stained overalls that could have passed for the average clothes of any blue-collar worker in Arthur’s Creek. Then it shouldn’t be too hard to find them. If we don’t even look, the boss will be pissed, and you know what happens to people when he gets like that.

The second man sighed. Fine. I don’t even know why it matters anyway. He said not to let anyone leave. The idiot who wrecked that car was coming into town, not heading out.

Stop your bitching and grab a flashlight. The driver walked toward Allison’s car. Is anyone in there? We’re here to help.

Allison tried to swallow, but her throat had gone dry as she’d listened to the men argue over whether to look for a body. They’d clearly put those spiked strips in the road for the purpose of keeping people from leaving Arthur’s Creek.

And she didn’t intend to wait around and find out why.

As the men moved closer to her wrecked sedan, Allison slid around the trunk of the tree and made her way through the woods. The darkness made sneaking in silence difficult, but she did the best she could.

Fortunately, the tree floor didn’t have a heavy covering of leaves because fall hadn’t arrived yet. But twigs were still interspersed between the trees, causing the occasional snap as she walked around on her tiptoes.

When she’d made it almost fifty yards away, her shoe caught on a stone and she stumbled two steps forward.

Her right foot trampled several sticks propped up against the trunk of a tree.

The snaps echoed through the woods like the crack of a .22 rifle.

The men behind her shouted.

Allison ran.

2 – Not So Isolated

My chest heaved like crazy as I stumbled to a stop in front of my shitty cabin. Sweat poured down my back and chest, glistening from the porch light that I’d left on.

Cramps threatened to seize my calves.

That was what happened when you drank all night, didn’t sleep, and then went for a run before the sun even came up.

I did that when I couldn’t sleep, which was damn near all the time.

The knee-high grass in front of the cabin resembled a jungle more than it did a lawn. I hadn’t mowed it since I’d moved in, and I didn’t plan on getting around to it any time soon. If I wasn’t going to worry about my own grooming, I sure as hell wasn’t going to bother with upkeep on that dump.

My breathing slowed down as I stood there, hands on my knees.

My early-morning runs had finally worked my conditioning back to a point where I didn’t feel like a sloth.

My strength wasn’t where I wanted it to be, but that had ratcheted up quite a bit lately too. It had taken my body several weeks to heal after the multitude of ass whoopings I’d received back in D.C.

There weren’t any weights out here in Bumfuck, West Virginia either, so I spent time tossing around heavy rocks like a caveman. That didn’t build up the glamor muscles the way my ego would have preferred, but it was hard to argue with the functional power I’d gained.

I straightened my back, hearing a few audible pops, and rolled my neck out.

With a grimace, I worked the shoulder that had taken a bullet not that long ago.

It still got stiff in the mornings, though it usually loosened after an hour or so. The scar wasn’t too bad. Not that any women would notice anyway—dinosaurs had roamed the Earth the last time I’d been laid.

Footsteps came up behind me, their patter mixing with the heavy panting of the FBI agents trailing me.

I got a lot of joy out of making them chase me through the woods on those trail runs. They were in good shape, but they didn’t spend half of their time working out like I did.

One of the two men tailing me sneered as I gave him a shit-eating grin.

Guess the dude didn’t like getting clowned. Who knew?

I didn’t appreciate having them follow me all the time, so I considered us even.

They kept me under twenty-four surveillance, which allowed me to take them on wild-goose chases if I got the desire. When I first got out of the hospital, I always spotted several men watching me out of the corners of their eyes.

Vans or SUVs would drive by and circle the block, reappearing a few minutes later only to park across the street. To say they weren’t good at their jobs would have been an understatement of hilarious proportions.

Then again, maybe they wanted me to know they were watching. Maybe that was their way of keeping me on a leash, even if I couldn’t feel it tugging around my neck.

That was the thing about surveillance: people behaved differently when they were under it. If someone was tapping your phone, you watched what you said. The internet searches you performed came out filtered because you didn’t want someone to think poorly of you.

People liked to pretend that they had nothing to hide, but I knew better than most that everyone had skeletons in their closets. A watched society might be a polite society, but it sure as hell wasn’t a free one.

And I had the freedom of a fly snagged in a spiderweb.

Not that any of it was a surprise. My ability made me a liability and everyone knew it, me most of all. The fact that I’d saved President Thomas’ life was probably the only reason they hadn’t kidnapped my ass and thrown me into a hole so deep that no one would ever hear from me again.

After I’d been discharged from the hospital several weeks ago, it had been more than just the Feds following me around.

The paparazzi had found a new toy in me, and they wanted to make sure they got a lot of playtime in. Saving the life of the most powerful man in the free world had a way of drawing unwanted attention. Most of the blood-sucking reporters hounding me day and night wanted interviews, some wanted to write my biography, and a few others wanted to dig up my past and get me all wound up.

America loved hoisting up her heroes.

But what the bitch really wanted was to watch those heroes fall.

Not that I viewed myself as a hero. Some had anointed me as such. That day in the Mall was one of the worst of my life. I often wondered if I would do it all again, given the choice. It was a tough call.

I had a hard time admitting that, even to myself. My mug had been all over the news for a few weeks after I put a pill in Murdock’s head. Having people view me as more than an alcoholic, maladjusted soldier with PTSD was nice for a change.

The exposure had been rough, though.

Living in the shadows kept my ability secret.

Kept my life normal.

As normal a life as an unemployed, sarcastic telepath could live anyway.

I still didn’t have full control of my ability, so staying away from the spotlight was of supreme importance. I didn’t grant any of the billion interview requests sent my way. Reporters waited outside my building, snapping photos of my window as I stood in front of it, swilling beer.

The alcoholic rumors swirled soon after, and America’s interest in me exploded.

Team Asher Benson had seen better days.

That was about the time the government came calling.

They wanted me to use my ability to help them.

Clearly, they didn’t know who they were talking about. Those assholes had so screwed up my life that I wouldn’t have pissed on them if they’d been on fire.

OK, maybe I would have, but only for the purpose of peeing on them, not to extinguish the flames.

All the attention had proved too much, so I’d fled Baltimore and gone back to the cabin in West Virginia that I’d spent nearly five years in.

The place was just as grody as I’d remembered.

The landlord didn’t give two shits about the property, but it served my purposes.

My nearest neighbor was more than a mile away with most of that distance covered in trees. I could let my guard down for once.

Relax my goddamned brain.

Not having to hear the thoughts of the guy in the apartment above me was a blessing that I can’t fully articulate. That asshole had been waffling around about whether he should rob his own brother’s house so he could afford to keep snorting coke day and night.

The press had no idea where I was, so the attention had mercifully died.

I didn’t have a television, phone, or computer at the cabin.

Were they still looking for me? I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.

The government had followed me, of course, and they kept agents on the road leading to the cabin and in the woods surrounding it.

That didn’t bother me as much as I’d expected, though it wasn’t exactly a vacation.

If they wanted to watch me wander around naked and get hammered every night, then that was fine by me. It also gave me a bit of entertainment when I went on runs, zigging and zagging between trees and sprinting up steep hills.

You guys want a beer? I called over to the two who had followed me.

One flipped me off. I doubted that was official FBI procedure.

The other guy said, It’s not even six in the morning.

I shrugged. It’s happy hour somewhere.

Were FBI agents even allowed to drink? I’d heard somewhere that they couldn’t, but my knowledge of their rules began and ended with The X-Files. Mulder would have drank. He was a man’s man.

I could have sifted through the agent’s minds and found out, but I didn’t care all that much.

I could drink, and that was all that really mattered.

Smell you later. I headed for the front door, but stopped by the edge of the dilapidated porch and took a piss into the weeds.

A mixture of disgust and exasperation baked off the agent’s behind me. I wasn’t inside their heads, per se, but I could still feel their emotions. I couldn’t help but grin. Mission accomplished.

They had no idea that I was a telepath. Their orders were to keep an eye on me, never to let me go anywhere of consequence, such as D.C., and to report all of my activity.

I tried to pee outside every day, just so they would have to call it in. I was cool like that.

Moths buzzed around the light hanging from the front of the cabin as I walked underneath it. Living in the woods at this time