STRANGEST
THINGS
BY
BOWIE V.
IBARRA AND MAXIMILLIAN MEEHAN
Copyright 2017 Bowie Ibarra, Maximillian Meehan
I.
“Hey,
Goldie. You hear about that explosion in
SoHo?”
The
man at the business end of the question curled his lip into his trademark
repugnant condescension, revealing the root of his moniker – a gold-capped
incisor. Goldie responded through the stogie tucked tightly into the corner of
his mouth, every syllable blowing out cheap smoke with a Brooklyn accent, “What
do you think? You know I got the scanner in here, ain’t nothin’ better to do.
Goldie was
the man perpetually planted in the window of a lunch-style truck parked in a
bombed out lot beside a similarly-scorched brownstone. He’d been in that same
location for a good five years at that point, emerging as a fixture shortly
after the building which had previously been occupied the lot met its demise at
the flaming tip of the all too common killer known as ‘Jewish lightning.’ The
lot was cleared shortly after flames had brought the tenement to the ground,
but nothing ever rose in its place. And so, the lot had remained open – a plain-but-professional
‘FOR SALE’ sign peeked up in its corner with a phone number that the kids in
the neighborhood found suitable for pranking.
And then
there were the adult denizens of the area had come to regard the space as some
sort of dump. Weeds and brush grow out and around various couches, mattresses,
tires, and several junker cars to create no vacancy. But a quarter of the lot
belonged to Goldie. No one was sure if he was paying rent for the plot. He
never harassed anybody who might be making an odd trash deposit behind him, but
he might sell them a bratwurst, or a cup of coffee. Hell, maybe he wasn’t
supposed to be there after all, either.
His super
leaded brew and various greasy items mainly dwelled in the bellies of folks
returning from a Manhattan club at some nauseating hour, in search of something
to soak up the alcohol. His food wasn’t particularly good. He wasn’t even
charming or particularly good smelling either. His presence was reliable in
spite of apparent mobility, which he rarely took advantage of. But it was
perhaps his cartoonish marketing, which he’d spent ample time on, which drew
eyes and feet in his direction.
The
lettering was simple and bold enough. Outlined
in tarnished gold, it read, ‘WURST BRAT.’ Nothing special, unlike the
strikingly child-like curmudgeon statue attached to the top of the truck. The regulars
had collectively named the plaster mascot “Frankie” – a Looney Tune delinquent
with a ginger flat top, aiming an ACME slingshot with a large wiener pinched
between his fingers at some unfortunate target below.
All day and,
apparently, night, Frankie and Goldie stood watch from their lot in the heart
of the Bronx, the police scanner blasting from the serving window with a steady
current of acrid stogie smoke.
Bobby ‘The
Boxer,’ a regular at Goldie’s window, was the man who’d asked the question. His
nose was facing five o’clock, and his teeth were a mangled set of black and
white keys. He’d obviously taken a few shots to the mug in his time, but it was
anybody’s guess as to whether or not he earned his name for some sort of
background in pugilism, or if it was simply because he looked like some kind of
British dog.
Goldie
slid a glossy bratwurst piled high through the window. The Boxer unwittingly
unraveled a typical home for pestilence as he poured sauerkraut on his dogs from
a plastic jar on the outside counter as he asked, “So’s that’s why I’m asking.
You got the skinny, or what?”
Goldie
hemmed, “They been trying to use some kind of code, but it ain’t been hard to
crack. I was in the field, back in Korea, ya know. So, it’s basic. But from
what I can tell, I think they’re smoking out some kind of hippie cult under
City Hall.”
“’Hippie
cult’? What?!” echoed Bobby with a grin, as if he were waiting for a punchline.
“Yeah, you
know, bunch of them mole folks.” Goldie shrugged with a speculative tone as he
produced another shimmering hot dog, this one on a bun and drenched in some
sort of cheese that wasn’t really cheese. “Don’t sound like your usual bums,
though. Probably militarized, or something.”
Bobby received
the other dog with a distracted grin, “You don’t say?”
“Lots of
people down there in them tunnels,” said Goldie. “Lots of them. Ain’t as
fortunate as a guy like me. They come back from Korea, Nam. Nowhere to go. No
job. Can’t fit in. They’re brains been retweaked for war. But when they come
back, nobody fixes ‘em. Because nobody can. Can’t undo that kind of thing.
Believe me, I know. These fellas, they’re still wired for war. Get enough of em
together, they start to fall into the only thing they know.”
By the end
of Goldie’s point, Bobby’s smile had diminished. “Could be,” he shrugged.
Goldie grinned, flashing his tooth. Bobby slid the man a Lincoln. “Keep the
change,” he uttered as he turned away.
Bobby took
a seat at the carved-up lunch table nearby as Summer, a well-manicured Puerto
Rican woman in her twenties, approached the window. Goldie croaked, warm and
familiar, “Hey, doll, what can I get ya this evening?”
Summer’s
glistening red lips broke into an infectious smile. “A cup of that nuclear waste
you call coffee might get me through tonight.”
With the
nudge of his leathery fingers, Goldie materializes a smoldering cup of Joe
toward the lovely young woman in the fur-trimmed coat and dangling earrings. Her
smile grew two sizes as the vendor purred, “I could smell that perfume of yours
a coming two blocks away, beautiful. On the house.”
Summer
blushed and thanked the old man before joining Bobby at the table as he stuffed
meat casing into his crooked face. She
chirped, “Hey, Bobby, how you doing tonight?”
He answered
through the slop, “Better than you’re gonna be when you find out the trains
ain’t runnin’!”
“Yeah?”
Summer took her first sip of the powerful caffeinated concoction, “Do tell?”
“Well, if
you’re working tonight, you’re walking. Trains are down.”
Savvy,
Summer fires back with a pang of exhaustion in her voice, “Yeah, well, I’m
coming, not going.”
Bobby’s
eyes widened, “You walked that bridge?”
“Well,
I obviously didn’t swim it. Anyway, Rico walked me.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Bobby remarked as he began to dig into his second dog, “He doing okay?”
She sighed,
“Losing his damn mind. You shoulda heard the stuff he was trying to feed me
tonight on the walk back.”
Bobby
snickered, “Lay it on me, sister.”
“Rico was
saying that the reason the trains was shut down was because some heavy dudes in
big suits is hunting something in the tunnels.”
“Suits?”
he quizzed.
“Yeah.”
Summer lit a cigarette as she struggled. “You know, not like uptown. Like, big
yellow suits, like they was handling waste.”
Bobby’s
brow went flatter than last night’s beer. “HAZMAT?”
Summer
shook her head. “I don’t know what that is.”
He shot
back, dead-pan, “Hazardous materials.”
“Hazardous
something, that’s damn true. Some kind of mutants down there, or something.”
The
Boxer chortled through a mouth full of sauerkraut, curdling his breath.
“Go ahead
and laugh, you can go up to Marble Hills and ask one of them Black Pearls, that
is if you can find one.”
Bobby
took the bait, iniquiring, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Summery
obliged with a serious air. “Rico told me that one of them things they’re
hunting down there climbed out of some storm drain. The Pearls tried to jump
it. Wound up getting cut up pretty bad and losing a lot of brothers, but they
eventually got it. Out’a eighteen of them, only three of the Pearls made it.”
Eavesdropping
all along, Goldie bellowed from his perch at the window, “Guess their choir got
cut to a trio.”
Summer shot
a glacial look back at the old man, but his amusement was unfazed. The Black
Pearls, an all-Asian street gang from a neighboring borough weren’t necessarily
dear friends. In fact, the neighborhood Nomads had run their soldiers out of
the Bronx many times over the years. Nevertheless, there was a grudging respect
toward anybody who wears any color and guards the parameter of their
neighborhood from ill elements. It could have just as well been Rico zipped in
a bag with his throat torn out by one of those things, and it still could be.
Summer
scolded back, “We’ll see if you’re still laughing when those things start
sniffing around your truck. All the blasting they been doing down there is driving
them into the streets and God knows where else.”
Goldie
smirked, flashing his tooth again, but another gleam drew Bobby and Summer’s
eye to the old man’s hand on the counter as it laid a nickle-plated 357 beside
the ketchup and mustard pumps.
“Yeah,
well, when they do, I got something that ain’t on the menu for ‘em.”
II.
The
trademark denim-clad Greasy Greg Neeley sat at the top of the stairs,
double-knotting his long Converse laces behind his ankles – a religious
practice he’d taken to after catching the dangling strands in his BMX chain
earlier this year.
Greg was
what the other kids at school called a “hasher” – a misfit among even the other
freshmen, whom he’d alienated through his interest in the most extreme heavy
metal. His denim vest, sewn over a dirty maroon hoody, bore meticulously
arranged patches and band badges, from Kreator, to the more obscure Cathedral.
But his back patch – an ode to Slayer’s ‘Haunting in the Chapel’ was a true
masterpiece, which Greg had managed to render by hand on a white shirt using
markers and acrylic paints. Overall, the likeness hinted at a real talent, but
the mixed medium had been diminished by the elements over time. Nevertheless,
he flew the flag proudly.
Ironically,
his ‘uniform’ hit all the right notes. He represented no false metal. He took
great pride in the quality and arrangement of the band pins and patches that
lined his ‘battle’ vest. Wrists clad in spiked bracelets, and a few morbid
rings – one a raven, and the other, a tarnished skull. His hair – at the center
of relentless teasing, even spawning the infamous ‘Greasy Greg’ taunt – had
grown out to a proud length over the last summer, and created quite the
head-banging spectacle.
Still, in
spite of the nuance and dedication to it all, Greg was, for the most part, a
complete and total slob. Some might say Greg was a class-A weirdo and probably
sacrificed hamsters in effort to summon Beelezebub in his spare time. Perhaps
certain contemporaries of the more conservative persuasion avoided Greg out of
a certain fear toward the morbid wrapped around him, but if you stripped away
the studs and the Satanic imagery, people would probably still avoid him. The
bottom line was that he was hygienically challenged to a point of repulsion.
The onset of puberty had long since passed by, but Greg’s grooming habits never
really evolve passed what he had developed during mere boyhood.
Greg
harbored some deep-seeded shame about his acrid qualities, but making excuses
is always easier than consistent action. Indeed, he had woven a powerful defense
to go with his smell; that it was a part of his rebel persona; that it was a
defensive and offensive trademark, in a way. It was the smell of ‘The Beast,’
and if it kept casualties of the system at bay, then it was worth stewing in
his own filth.
That
morning, as Greg sat at the top of the steps, a report from the blaring kitchen
television came in. He’d been glued to the news since the wild news about the
caves, and had even began clipping out articles on the gruesome details
regarding the body that had been discovered at the mouth of Green Briar’s
Natural Oddyssey Caverns.
Greg hadn’t
visited the Caverns since his father was alive, but he’d been consistently
enough as a boy that he had both fond and vivid recollections of the natural
attraction. Aside from the town’s pig slaughtering and meat casing industries,
the Natural Oddyssey caverns were one of the things Greenbriar was best known
for. Truthfully, it was the less embarrassing of the two earmarks. Beyond that,
families from the city would routinely make the trek up to the small town,
which brought a nice year-round influx of tourist dollar.
Several
days ago though, that one sacred attraction took a hook to the gut when the
remains of one of the tour guides was found. Details were initially
sketchy. But small town people are
generally prone to talk, and it wasn’t long before someone who knows somebody
whose cousin handled ‘the pieces’ started to trickle into the conversation that
revolves around those Rockwellian dinner scenes.
A seeker of
morbid curiosities and extremism, Greg was naturally peaked by the graphic
details, which involved heavy disembowelment and dismemberment. That blood and
entrails would be smeared across the cavernous walls of a revered childhood
haunt made it all the more tantalizing.
Greg
remembered as a kid hearing reports that they’d found mountain lion bones deep
in the caverns, and that was the first thing that leapt to his mind when he’d
heard about the fatal mauling. However, some of the town’s people with fairly
specific interests tied to the local church didn’t have to do much to churn the
horrific discovery into total hysteria. Less credible rumors of satanic ritual
murder had begun to make the rounds, and went just short of suggesting that
Natural Oddyssey Caverns was the gateway to the McMartin preschool tunnels.
Greg was certain any day now, he and his friends would probably find themselves
down at the station being interrogated as natural suspects, due to their
devotion to ‘devil music.’ He and his friends, Stoney and Jacob, had joked about
it in the past twelve hours. And while
they were sure to make a point to laugh, there was a certain nervous pang to
it.
There
weren’t any new updates as far as Greg could hear this morning, so he made
stealthy toward the front door, slipping away like a spy.
Outside,
Greg climbed onto his Mongoose bike and began peddling around the side of the
house and toward the driveway when something large pelted him in the side of
the skull with a crunch. The distraction and the force combined was enough to
knock the boy off his bike, and send him palms-first into the gravel path.
His hands
burned, and Greg immediately knew he was bleeding as he popped back up. What he
heard next made his ears hot – his stepfather’s raspy, Woody Woodpecker cackle.
Greg had
assumed that his stepfather, Joe was at his usual post in the kitchen in front
of the television, pretending to comb the want ads while his mother made
breakfast before leaving for her job at the meat packing factory. He had
assumed wrong.
Fuming, Greg’s
eyes immediately fell on a brown paper lunch sack on the side of the driveway.
His brain quickly fused the pieces together as he wiped his bleeding palms off
on his sleeves.
There stood
Joe, near the garage, smoking a cigarette. Joe was definitive white trash –
sinewy and long-armed, and usually barefoot, with a wild-eyed expression under
a bushy head of hair. He taunted smugly, “Don’t forget your lunch, Greg.”
Greg kicked
the bag back at his stepfather before grabbing his bike to ride away.
Joe
sneered, already revving up for his next encounter with the kid. With a North
Carolina twang, he crowed, “Awe! You’re gonna hurt your mama’s feelings, now!”
Greg
flipped the bird as he rode away, and he was too scared to look back and check
for Joe’s reaction. He knew better. He also knew he’d probably regret it later.
II - B
Greg came
speeding around the bend of the hill, stood upright, when he spotted his
accomplices parked in their usual spot at the abandoned roadside rest stop.
Greg settled back onto his seat to some degree of relief as he peddled toward his
friends. If this had been two weeks ago, there would have been zero trepidation
while approaching their usual meet-up point. But with the town currently in the grip of a
full-on Satanic panic, Neeley wouldn’t be surprised if there was a sudden
change in routine one of these mornings.
Fellow
soldiers in the metal militia, Jake and Stoney sat on the vandalized lunch
table. Their so-called uniforms barely deviated from Greg’s in nature – all
denim, spikes, patches, and pins, with a few deviations in band taste, which
were still respectable among this particular brood. Their heads lightly banging
to the faint tempo blasting from their Walkman headphones, they didn’t even
notice Greg’s steady approach.
The
identity of these three teenagers might blend if not for the radical variations
in their physical appearance. Greasy Greg was easy to peg for his stink and
struggling acne problem, but he was also much more slight in frame than
fair-haired Jake. In fact, Jake’s allegiance toward his life-long friends
probably kept him out of more conventional social circles. He was a
good-looking square-jawed kid. His
physique was the epitome of a cornfed, lil’ Abner type. He was also group’s lynch
pin. No one dared mess with Greg or Stoney for fear of incurring Jake's wrath. His stature intimidated even the athletic set.
And then on
the opposite-end of the spectrum was the sweet-faced, baby blubber-covered
Stoney – an easy target, but perhaps the most charismatic somehow. This had to
do with the fact that he was the brightest of the three. Stoney had a gift for
speaking. He’d talked his way out of numerous precarious spots over the years. At
one point, he’d even managed to convince his grandparents of heavy metal’s
merits as a modern day evolution of classical music, due mainly to its
virtuosity. He insisted it exhibited far more class than the low-brow pop
garbage they might see on American Band Stand. His weight was a little ironic,
though, and both Greg and Jake had wondered privately to one another why he was
so big when he rode more than twelve miles to and from school every day – by
far the longest distance any of the trio had to peddle.
Greg
dismounted from his Mongoose in his usual calamitous way, allowing his bike to
crash into a nearby table. Moments later, he was lighting up a Marlboro.
Stoney hit
stop on his Walkman, and lifted his head, “You ready, or what?”
Still
fuming from his encounter with his stepfather, Greg responded, “In a minute,
alright?”
Jake sensed
the tension from over the high volume of his mixtape, and hit stop, too. He queried,
“You alright?”
“Nothing”
Greg stonewalled. “Just Joe being an idiot. The usual.”
Jake and
Stoney knew the drill, and they proceeded to let a bit of time pass so their
friend could wind down before they started their ride.
Jake broke
the ice. “So, either of you racing home after the bell today?”
Stoney
replied first, “Not particularly. Why?”
Jake
replied, cool and casual. “Bill Farr said he found a big honkin’ stack of
nudity books down on old Creek Road yesterday. Probably been cherry picked by now,
but I thought it might be worth checking out.”
Stoney
replied, “Then what, we just take turns holding each other out in the woods
while we look at the pictures?”
Jake shot
back, “Maybe we can find some broads.”
“Listen to
James Cagney and Lacey over here. “Broads.” Who says broads?”
Exhaling a
halo of carbon, Greg interjected, loosening up with a grin, “Wouldn’t that make
you Lacey, Stoney?”
Jake
laughed. Stoney fired back, “That’s preferable.”
Jake asked,
“To what?”
Stoney
answered confidently, “To going out to some cold-ass woods and poking a pile of
used horny books with a stick. You don’t know where those things have been or
what someone did to or on them. It’s sick, man.”
Greg
attempted to ease Jake’s fuming. “Wouldn’t mind riding out there anyway. My old
man once showed me some area with some caves near the creek that ran into the
caverns.”
Stoney
arched an eyebrow. “You’re not worried?”
Jake
teased, “What’s the matter, Stoney? Afraid
of the big bad Satanists?”
Stoney let
logic be his shield. “Didn’t say that. But something tore that guy up real
bad.”
Everyone
went quiet.
Stoney once
again broke the silence. “I’m in.”
Greg
flicked his cigarette butt into a nearby trash can and the trio road away in
silence moments later.
II - C
As normal,
school was inconsequential, and thanks to the acute awareness of Satanic
symbols brought about by the brewing witch hunt in town, the social aspect was
without any sort of sting on that particular day. Jake wasn’t just tempering a
hot tide of rejection for his two friends. There seemed to be a genuine fear
and wariness now toward all three of them. For now it was comfortable, but they
knew it would probably get much worse once the squares started passing and
comparing notes with the faculty. For now though, the boys were just going to
enjoy the lack of hassle and worry about the inevitable blow up later. The
wheels in Stoney’s head had already started to turn, and he suspected they
might even be able to get something out of the mess if they kept their heads down
in the meantime.
The boys
had reconvened at Jake’s house, which wasn’t too far from the start of old
Creek Road. Jake was fortunate enough to have been born with hippie-type parents,
who only settled in Green Briar due to its proximity to Woodstock, and it’s
ultimately cheaper real estate purchase price. The folks were absentee and
hands off, giving their child a wider berth than wiser heads might allow. Their
thought was that this methodology would allow their child to grow firm and
flourish, like a wild vine. Jake’s opinion was that they wanted him far enough
away so that they could smoke weed, and his independent streak made it easy for
them to take off for a day or two.
Jake kept a
towel across the foot of his door to keep the stink of sage his parents used to
cover up the marijuana smell from their bedroom up. Meanwhile, he kept the
volume up on the Judas Priest to reduce the hum of Morrison Hotel that seemed
to be on repeat in the living room.
Greg always
enjoyed the strange sensation of stepping from one parallel universe, made up
of dream catchers, crystals, pastels, and artifacts from another period into
the pitch blackness of Jake’s D&D lair, pasted with heavy metal posters and
nude pinups. The oddest note of angst was perhaps the tidiness Jake embraced,
which was in complete contrast to his parents’, who dwelled in waist-high
clutter.
Stoney sat
on the edge of Jake’s tightly made bed, reading the liner notes to Agent
Orange’s ‘Sodom’ LP. Greg sat back in a
chair, gazing out the window, fixated on a Dungeons & Dragon’s miniature of
the monstrous Kobold. Jake had just
finished painting the miniature the night before.
Priest’s ‘Stained
Class’ was blasting at a respectable level, but unfortunately mauled by the
constant high-pitched yipping of a ratty dog at the fence of their back yard.
Greg could see the mutt from the second-story bedroom window, his lip faintly
bent by annoyance. Greg wasn’t the type of guy who’s ever hurt an animal, but
he had a great deal of contempt for small dogs. He had said on several
occasions, “If I can kill it with one hand, it’s not a real dog.” And the weird
wire-haired yapping creature in the yard behind Jake’s house was the epitome of
why he really hated small dogs – their nervousness and Napoleonic need to never
shut the hell up.
Jake burst
from his closet, where he’d been rummaging for the last twenty minutes. He bellowed, frustrated, “I hate that goddamn
dog. It never shuts up. Can’t wait til that old bitty back there bites it. Hope
they bury that rat with her.”
Greg
grimaced, pleased by his pal’s fiery resentment. Nevertheless, he was ready to
go so he wouldn’t have to listen to another minute of that dog’s incessant,
raspy whining. Jake’s house was otherwise ideal, but his nerves were wearing
thin.
Rising from
his chair, Greg dumped the books from his backpack out, and disappeared down
the stairs, into the kitchen, where he opened the fridge. His eyes drifted
through the paltry offering of mostly past-due goods and settled on a pack of
greasy, Green Briar Franks – the town’s main export.
Moments
later, upstairs, Jake emerged from his closet with a sheathed machete and a C02
pellet pistol, which he stowed into his backpack. Jake’s realization that Greg
was missing perhaps distracted him from noticing that the incessant barking
from next door had ceased.
Stoney
looked out the window behind him, and said, “He’s smoking.”
Jake took a
gander, and sure enough, Greg was on his Mongoose, sucking on a Marlboro,
waiting. They locked eyes. Through the pane, they both could hear Greg shout,
“What’s the goddamn hold up?”
III.
The
afternoon was abysmal to start with, but under the thick of the natural canopy,
it felt like they were closer to dusk. One would not have to stray too far from
the road before they either got lost or developed a sense of isolation, and
that was the appeal of this place for these rogues – a sense of lawlessness and
that anything could occur.
As Jake
cleaved a swath through the overgrown limbs with his machete, he developed the
fantasy that he was moving in to some virgin territory, and that almost
anything could be just ahead of them – from treasure to ghost.
Stoney
followed up, brandishing the Co2 pellet gun, poised like an undercover cop in
too deep. Again, fantasy was at play. He knew that if he aimed it at anything
bigger than a squirrel he’d be in for it. Still, the feel of the handle in his
palm gave him a sense of security and strength.
And lastly
there was Greg. He was deliberate in lingering at least thirty steps behind his
friends as they wound their way through the thick of the woods.
The boys
had spent numerous hours out in these woods, shooting off bottle rockets and
air guns and driving off wild life with blasting cassette players. Anybody in
their shoes might be a little lost at this point, but they knew exactly where
they were going. Their ears were
following the sound of rushing water in the distance.
The boys
skittered down an embankment, landing on the muddy shore of a knee high stream.
The three of them traversed downstream, hopping rocks and occasionally slipping
with a splash of profanity.
The outline
of a monolithic boulder loomed through the trees, marking a bend in the small
river just ahead, and as they drew closer the graffiti that caked this
otherwise impressive landmark grew sharper.
The massive
geological specimen didn’t have an official name, or at least not to their
knowledge. But amongst to those who know of the spot, it was referred to as ‘Gilby’s
Blunder,’ ‘Gilby’s’ or simply, ‘The Blunder.’ The spot was typically littered
with beer bottles and cans and other traces of contraband. An essential party
and make-out spot for the high school kids in town, it was solid, high, secure,
and impossible to miss if you followed the stream for long enough. It was also
reputed to be haunted. The mythology of the spot dated back to around 1974,
before the spot had earned any sort of name. Even then, it was popular amongst
young people, and at that point in time, the waters which ran under the rock
were much deeper and powerful, making it slightly more difficult to reach.
Legend had
it that a popular boy by the name of Gilby Connor had arrived at the rock one
evening with several friends and a case of Rheingold. They probably were
bickering over the last can or so when without word, Gilby toddled out to the
peak of the rock and took a jump. There was a splash a moment later, and his
friends rushed to the edge to see Connor whisked away downstream into the
darkness. It would be the last anybody ever saw of him.
Of course,
there was some rumor that Gilby – by no means a popular boy – had eventually
clawed his way to shore but just never went home. The fact that his body was
never recovered, along with a few vague sightings made this a particularly
popular theory. However, realists believed that Gilby’s body had most likely
been sucked into the ellipsis of cavern that siphon off the river. The current
generation of teenagers held onto that firmly as the reality since about a
dozen of them – all of whom probably had something exciting in their blood
streams – had witnessed what they claimed was the spectral image of Gilby
taking a leap off the rock.
The myth of
this fatal tragedy and the apparent ghost that haunted the site added a
romantic aura to this spot, and kept the kids coming back. Over time, too, the
river that previously rushed around it had ebbed into something shallow and
more still, making it all the more accessible.
Jake
shouted back, “They said it was right up here!”
The trio
climbed up the embankment, beyond the rock, and continued deeper into the
forest, and not ten minutes later, Greg watched his friends stop dead and take
a few steps backward. The reaction was so odd that Greg forgot about what he
was hiding and flanked Stoney.
As Greg
drew closer the acrid, unmistakable stench of death tickled his throat.
Sure
enough, several feet in front of them lay a cache of pornographic magazines,
roughly the size of a king mattress – a veritable goldmine of tits and ass,
enough to get off to for months, in theory. But there was something laying
across the virtual mattress of colorized flesh photos that dampened any
enthusiasm there should have been otherwise. Splayed across the battered
magazines lay an adult buck – or at least half of it. Tongue clenched between
its teeth, the visible eye had deflated into a port of goo as a horde of
insects pecked and lapped at it. One of the antlers had been snapped from the
skull. At the midsection, the beast ceased to exist – bone was blaring, while
entrails and blood spilled across what had essentially become sexy butcher’s
paper. A pond of gore dragged across the clumps of skin mags. Greg’s eyes
followed the bloody streak, as it lead off into the forest. Chunks of meat and
fur scattered in the wake of whatever had claimed the other half of what was
once a very elegant trophy.
The kill
was cold by now, and the elements and other wild life had taken their toll, but
the coagulated blood was still wet and its nickle stink permeated the air.
Stoney
blurted under his breath, “Jesus H.”
Jake
lamented, kicking at the pile of blood-soaked periodicals in front of him, with
heartbreak all over his face, “What a waste.”
Stoney
looked at his friend in abject disgust, impressed by his callousness. He knew
he wasn’t talking about the buck. Stoney didn’t have much time to be offended,
because in a matter of seconds, a noise from Greg’s backpack caught his ear ---
the unmistakable sound of a small dog whining.
Stoney
looked over at Greg and fired, “What the hell was that?”
Stoney spun
Greg around, and unzipped his bag. Seconds later, the yipping dog from Jake’s
next door neighbor poked its head out of the book bag.
Alarmed,
Stoney pulled the cowering, rat-like dog out of the bottom of the bag. Jake
smirked.
Greg
snatched the dog away from Stoney, who merely stared in silent judgement of his
friend.
“Oh,
relax,” Greg assuaged, “I wasn’t gonna
do anything to it anyway!”
Jake
quizzed, “well, what were you gonna do with it?”
Greg
responded in a tone oozing condescension. “I was going to let the poor creature
be free, as god intended. I figured it would find its way back anyhow, but
after seeing this, I’m not so sure he’d make it back in one piece.”
Greg
cradled the dog with an assuring stroke as he began to follow the streak of
gore leading into the woods.
Jake began
to follow, clenching up on his machete.
Stoney
shouted, “Where the hell are you going?”
Greg kept
walking without answering. Jake continued to follow. Soon, Stoney joined them
as they wound deeper into the forest, following the still-slick trail of
carnage.
IV.
Donna
Barton’s vehicle went into a full furl as her sedan cruised up the pretty,
plush path that approached the Green Briar Natural Odyssey Caverns. She had
anticipated there might be someone there to greet her – perhaps a local
authority to keep press or curiosity seekers at bay. Instead of anything so
local, a pair of men in green fatigues clutching M16 rifles loomed into view
through her bug-spattered windshield. Their posture bristled as she slowly
rolled toward them, and their bulldoggish expressions were less than welcoming.
One of the
men raised his hand, motioning for her to stop, but she was already in the
process of complying. She rolled down her window as the other approached her.
The
fresh-faced officer remarked curtly, “I’m sorry, ma’am. But I’m afraid you
cannot proceed. I’m going to have to ask you to turn around.”
Donna was
in her thirties, earthy, sunbaked blond, but well kept. She was dressed casual
for what she anticipated to be a bit of hiking in the wilds, but the
description of the task and just who might be there to receive her was all
vague. She had initially been contacted by federal authorities, whom had been
directed to her by someone at the state game and park board. The man on the
phone was dry and evasive, and conveyed to her that they were looking for
someone with environmental knowledge. Donna had just that, but most importantly
she also knew the caves.
Ms. Barton
had attended NYU throughout her twenties, and graduated with a degree in
forensic anthropology. From there, her goal was to find her way onto the NYPD
force, where she had hoped to walk the beat for several years before graduating
to a position in homicide. As a little girl, Donna was obsessive when it came
to puzzles – the more pieces the better. It was an inclination that survived
childhood fed her curiosity when it came to the subject of bones – human or
otherwise – and what they could teach her about the body they once occupied.
She was an encyclopedia of tell-tale marks, wear, and damage. If you gave her a
cup of coffee and some sun-washed skeletal remains, she could identify gender,
age, and possibly even the cause of death by the time she hit the bottom. Her
professors were certain she would have been an asset to any homicide
department. However, the one thing they didn’t teach her about was department
politics.
The written
tests were a breeze, and she spent six months training for the physical. Prior
to stepping onto the academy course, her body was lean and cut, and seeing the
definition improve every day to a peak had imbued her with a confidence that
allowed her to conquer almost any physical obstacle. She watched several large
but doughy applicants struggled through the course and fail before it was her
turn, but when she finally got called up, she took off like a thoroughbred out
of the gate, and reached the end of the course by dragging a 180 pound dummy to
hypothetical safety. The instructors were impressed – she wasn’t just capable
for being a woman, but capable for anybody. And considering the need for women
on the force to handle more delicate situations that might involve the fairer
sex, she should have been a shoe-in.
Six months
after she conquered that course, though, the shoe hadn’t come. She’d had to
start taking secret handouts from her mother, which put a dent in her
self-esteem. So, she began to explore her options and quickly hit what she
thought was a sweet compromise. It didn’t necessarily put her exactly where she
wanted to be, but it was a step in the right direction in terms of experience.
She was soon hired as a Park Ranger and deployed to Green Briar’s Natural
Odyssey Caverns, where she provided care services, patrolled the grounds, and
even gave the occasional tour when required. Recreationally, she’d even spent a
fair amount of time doing a bit of amateur spelunking, though it was
discouraged by her superiors.
She was in
her late twenties by the time a particularly brutal summer took her out of
commission. While recovering, Donna considered returning to school, but those
notions were quelled when an offer came from the New Hampshire division of
Forest and Lands as a ranger. Donna immediately leapt at the opportunity. She’d
not only developed a taste for a more scenic work place, but she’d adapted to
the pace of her previous position, and she knew she might be able to parlay
this into something bigger. However, at this point she’d been in the position
for three years and hadn’t exactly had any inclination to claw her way out of
it.
There was a
definite nostalgia about returning to Green Briar, though the town was
definitely a podunk mess full of cretins with mangled teeth and strangely
Appalachian accents. Still, she loved those caves and that forest.
The second
guard on duty had returned to the military Jeep parked nearby and began
chattering into a squaw box with a low and guarded tone as the other gun-toting
grunt instructed her to turn around.
Donna’s position
and the dangers it entailed had firmed up her tone and she was accustomed to
putting up a warm front out of sheer diplomacy. She responded with an
attractive smile, “My name is Donna Barton. I’m a ranger from the New Hampshire
division of Forest and Lands.”
Donna
handed her ID and credentials over to the guard, who reluctantly took them.
She
continued, “My services have been requested by an agent Hankamer. I’m a little
early, I’m afraid.”
The guard
gave her a thorough eye over before taking her credentials back to the jeep
where more squawking ensued. After several minutes, though, and some droning
confirmation on the other end, the guard returned her wallet and badge and
waved her through.
Just like
old times, she rolled beyond the gates and within two minutes she pulled into
the parking lot – empty, save for a cluster of local squad cars, unmarked
sedans, and – unexpectedly – several military vehicles, all parked at the
cave’s entrance.
Donna had
been briefed about the death, which rattled her slightly. She didn’t know the
man in question, but he had been her replacement and had been in place for
several years. The thought of what might have been was not as pervasive as it
could have been. But based on her
familiarity with the wild life in the area, she was curious as to what all this
could be about. The idea of a cougar
hiding somewhere in the cavern, behaving so aggressively, seemed unlikely to
her based on her experience and knowledge so far. Now, with the presence of
military, she was sure that her briefing was about to expand wildly.
V.
The lithe,
female voice perforated what had otherwise been dominated by baritones.
“Harve?”
The voice
sent a surge of electricity through square-jawed EPA man Harve Tesser’s scalp,
freezing him in mid-stir of his coffee. The centrifugal force of his about face
in the direction of his name sent a wave of scalding coffee splashing across
the floor in front of him. “Ah, crap!” he exclaimed, involuntarily.
A shallow
mote of java steamed just at Donna Barton’s toes. Her face lit up as she met
eyes with Harve. Harve succumbed to the contagiousness of her smile as he
nervously ran his hand through his wavy, black hair to make sure it was still
in place.
She chimed
again, surprised, “Harve Tesser!”
She took
his hand, warmly, and inquired, “What are you doing here? I thought for sure you’d
be back in the city, dealing with whatever’s going on down there. Unless of
course I just put my foot in my mouth and you’re not—“
Harve
struggled to keep up, voice breaking, “Hey, Donna! No, I’m still with the EPA.”
Donna
paused with a quizzical expression – one which Harve understood fully. He knew
Donna had only bare bones rather than specifics.
He made a
frail attempt to divert, “Looking good as always.”
Donna’s
voice dropped as her game face emerged, and she continued, fluidly, “Thanks,
you, too. What’s the EPA doing here? And what about the army? And for that
matter, what am I doing here?”
She was not
a woman to be detoured by mere pleasantries or basic flattery, and Harve knew
that too well. He’d first met the bright-eyed Barton several years back on a
stretch of cold New Hampshire beach, when a suspect barrel with some ‘troubling
markings’ had been brought in by the tide. When the EPA line rang, they
deployed Harve – young but fastidious, and charismatic enough to melt even the
most frigid iceberg of formality.
Harve
adjusted his face and lowered his tone, working up his most disarming
half-cocked smile. “Well, I assume you’re here because of a certain federal
check with a fair amount of zeros. Now, at least two of those extra zeroes were
to keep this quiet. So, for the time being, let’s keep it down, alright? As for
the boys in green, they’re backup. They are here to contain a problem that we
suspect might have leaked into the caves.”
Savvy,
Donna patterned her low voice after Harve’s. “leaked from where.”
Harve
responded, coyly, “You know, that problem in the city?”
Donna kept
it tight. “How?”
Harve
nodded. “Let’s take a ride. Come on, I’ll show you something.”
VI.
Donna
approached a line of yellow tape wavering in the light breeze and gingerly
placed her hand on it to duck under. Harve’s voice rang out sternly from behind
her, “I wouldn’t go much further than where you are.”
She looked
back over her shoulder. Harve was casually leaning against his government issue
sedan’s fender, stirring his coffee. He continued, “Not without a suit anyways.
Unless, of course, you wanna light up like a Christmas tree when the sun goes
down. And then there’s the nausea and the hairloss—“
Donna cut
him off, “I think I got it, Harve, thanks.”
She kept a
safe distance, even taking a few steps back as she looked down the wooded
embankment toward a towering concrete wall that stretched on as far as she
could see. In the center of the wall was a massive tunnel opening, fifty feet
in diameter. Deep in its recesses she could barely make out large fan blades,
and so she assumed this was an in-take of some sort. At the bottom of the
opening, signs of something making some sort of escape were evident, as the
rebar grating had been pushed outward to grant access to the outside.
Donna
asked, “So, what am I looking at here?”
Harve
replied, simply, “It’s an intake.”
Incredulity
crept into her voice. “Right, but for what?”
He replied,
“City sewer.”
Harve was
being evasive, and it was starting to wear on Barton. She pressed, “We’re a
long way from the Big Apple.”
Donna
crossed her arms and walked back to the car, casually. “Look Harve, you can cut
the crap or you can keep the check. It really makes no difference to me. I’d
rather go back to the beach anyway. It’s nice and crisp this time of year.
You’re welcome to join me.” She shot a
loaded smirk in his direction.
Harve began
to crack. Calculating the pending scenario, he knew time was off the essence.
He also didn’t know if there was anybody with credentials who might know those
caves better than Barton did – and he was certain his problem lay somewhere
inside of them. He decided to level with her, “Alright.” He wound up, “It’s part of a government
facility.”
Donna
interjected confidently, “What base? There are no bases around here.”
Harve
gesticulated awkwardly. “Well, it’s underground, and by ‘underground’ I mean it
to be—uh—“
Donna
filled in the blank, “A double entendre?”
He
chuckled, “Sure.”
Donna was
well aware of certain secret installations that dotted the cost all the way up
to Canada. As a ranger, she’d begun to collect a wide and colorful assortment
of mythologies, ranging from cryptid and ghosts to even UFOs – the latter of
which leaned heavily on the government conspiracy paranoia. More likely,
though, many of these rumored bases had something more to do with underground
missile silos in conjunction with a line of coastal defense against the
Russians. It was what she’d heard referred to as ‘Reagan’s Last Stand.’ The
wildest speculation was that many of these bases were connected via underground
monorail, running all the way from Maine to the tip of Florida. Considering the
country’s current political climate, the idea of underground silos never seemed
too far-fetched, and she assumed what she was seeing was perhaps some sort of
cooling duct.
Donna said,
“Well, whenever you feel like cutting the proverbial crap, I’m all ears.”
“Alright,”
Harve mustered, “I’ll level with you. We’re dealing with something radically
challenging underneath that city down there. Some sort of mutation, humanoid
and aggressive.”
Barton was
connecting dots rapidly, “Love children of the NRC in some way, no doubt.”
Harve took
the shot, bowed his head and continued. “Wilson’s been working with city
authorities to contain and quarantine the sewers and train tunnels, but it’s a
virtual maze down there. There were maps, sure.
But no one even considered that some stuff had been left off of paper,
and for the purpose of national security. We found that out the hard way when
we discovered a series of ducts that shouldn’t have been there.”
Donna made
it easy on Harve. “And they made it this far, huh? Quite a trek.”
“We’ve come
to find that this mutation is cunning as it is sturdy. Nothing surprises us
anymore.”
“And the
guide down in the caves?” Donna said, asking another hard question, “It wasn’t
mountain lions, or devil worshippers, I take it?”
Harve shook
his head, slowly. He continued, “An unfortunately fortunate circumstance that
put us back on the trail. Anyway, I remembered your dossier—“
Donna
quipped, surprised, “I have a dossier?”
Harve fired
back with cold finality, “Every single one of us does. Your dossier had
mentioned Green Briar, the caverns. Apparently you know those caves pretty
good. For now, they’re quarantined down there. Now, it’s our job to find and
quell the problem.”
Donna
responded with honest modesty. “I’m no spelunker. Strictly amateur, actually.
But I’ve been pretty deep.”
Harve
asked, “Just how deep?”
“Oh,” Donna
attempted to recall, “Can’t give you an exact measurement, but deeper than just
about anybody else. You said the problem was quarantined?”
Harve
responded confidently, “We’ve been posted at the cave’s entrance since we
tracked them there.”
Donna
suddenly looked concerned, “And that’s it?”
Harve
didn’t like the question. “What do you mean ‘that’s it?’”
Donna
ditched her cool. “I mean that there’s the tourist entrance, but there are
veins that stretch all over. There are several entrances to the caverns by a
small river just on the other side of the hills in fact.”
Harve flew
into full on panic as he dropped his coffee and jumped into his unmarked sedan.
“Come on!”
Barton ran,
climbing into the passenger seat just barely as the car flew into reverse,
speeding back down a rural path toward a main road.
VII.
Greg sped
through the dark on his mongoose, ripping around the bend toward home, peddling
for dear life. His lungs heaved erratically, a tangled pattern of racing heart
and physical exhaustion. The cold air stung his eyes, but they still stayed
peeled back in disbelief from what he’d just seen half an hour before – though
he felt like he’d been running for an eternity.
Greg pushed
up the hill, nauseated, and reached the peak. Below, the road descended, and he
could see the comforting light of home, brimming from the kitchen window. He
consciously forced deep, steady breaths into his lungs as he cruised down the
hill, trying hard to collect himself. But still, his mind went racing back to Gilby’s
Blunder, the deer, and the gore trail that lead them back to the cave. He began
to replay the events in his mind again. Terrified by what he saw as he may have
been, he was desperate to recount the details, hoping that maybe he’d been
mistaken. Hell, maybe it was even some grim prank pulled by one of the more
territorial blunder regulars. Still, what he’d seen was too gruesome and would
have required a level of creativity that the high school art students, who were
routinely called ‘queer’ and beat up by the high school senior jocks, could
summon.
His mind
shot back to the deer leaking out across the bed of pornography – both more
titillating and repulsive a sight than any suggested by the album covers he
routinely obsessed over. He had started into the woods, following one
particular strand of entrails, with a ratty, quivering dog in his clutches.
Jake and Stoney tread after him.
Stoney
called out after him, “What the hell are you doing?”
Greg
ignored him. Jake choked up on the machete, while Stoney kept his finger
snuggly on a very futile trigger. He knew that, too.
The trail
of gore continued up a small path, toward the side of the hill. Chunks of flesh
and fur were mixed in with the visceral, syrupy blood that had soaked into the
ground and painted across several large stones in the ground. Greg speculated
in his mind that this red swath could only have been painted by whatever it was
that had dragged the other half of that buck away. He shook with anxiety and
excitement. He’d always wanted to see one of the wild lions his father used to
tell him resided in the hills. He was certain that if he saw one, it would
probably skitter away, but if it were bolder he imagined a scenario where he
would throw the decrepit mouthful of canine meat in his sweating palms at the
beast as a distraction that might allow he and his friends to escape.
By the time
the trio arrived at the towering mouth of the cave entrance, the sun had almost
gone, and what they could see of the sky was a grim, cornmeal blue. It was
narrow and tall, as if cleaved into the hill’s face. The viscus trail continued
into the dark recesses of the cavern.
Greg
inquired as he attempted to peer deeper into the cave, “Anybody got a light?”
Jake
responded, doltisihly, “Got a lighter.”
Stoney
objected, firmly. “You’re goddamn crazy, man. I ain’t goin’ in there and
neither are you two ‘tards.”
Greg was
almost gleeful. “Why not?”
Stoney’s curt
logic once again prevailed. “Because whatever the hell it was that tore that
buck up is up in there, and all I’ve got is this stupid pellet gun.”
But Greg
didn’t care. “I only wanna see what it.”
Stoney
quipped, “Those sound like terrible last words if ever I heard ‘em.”
Greg removed
his bag with a free hand. Reaching
inside he retrieved the package of Green Briar Franks he’d liberated from the
refrigerator back at Jake’s house as he crept closer to the mouth of the cave.
Jake and
Stoney hung back. Both went quiet, gripped by their own morbid curiosity.
Standing in
the archway of the cave, Greg tossed the remaining hot dogs across the ground.
They accrued filth and turned crimson from the blood as they rolled.
Finally, he
placed the dog on its feet, and released it. The trembling, rodent-like dog
sniffed and looked around for a moment before picking up the scent of the dogs.
It scampered toward the blood-tainted treats and began to tear at them with is
muzzle, wolfing down two of the dogs within a minute.
Greg
kneeled, watching the dog tear at the third dog when something in the true
darkness in the cave began to stir.
The ratty
mutt tore into the final dog when from the dark sprang an arm, bearing a
clawed, glimmering hand. Within an instant, the dog was gone with a yelp,
disappeared into the dark, and from the recesses of the pitch black the dog’s
cry was snipped short by the send of ligaments and flesh snapping and tearing
like several pieces of drenched paper. Seconds later, a foul gust followed by a
guttural growl wafted from the cave. Iridescent eyes raised up, peered out at
them, and reflecting the last of the day’s fleeting light, which all three boys
watched fade.
Greg
scampered backward and turned to run, but Stoney was way ahead of both he and
Jake. The boys screamed and bolted,
fleeing through the woods. Stoney’s feet stuttered, and sent him crashing into
the crimson-soaked pile of porno magazines. He began to gag as he leapt down
the bank and into the creek. He could hear branches breaking and his friends screaming
close behind him, but he wasn’t sure if anything might be on their tail. He
never bothered to look for fear of seeing it coming – an idea that seemed worse
than an actual death, knowing how imminent it might be before it took you.
The three
boys blew like hell fire into the clearing and grabbed their bikes without a
word. Jake went in one direction, while Stoney and Greg went in the other.
There was
no space for words as they sucked air, peddling as fast as they could down the
road. Stoney eventually broke off at a fork in the road in the direction of his
respective home without so much as a peep.
By that
point, Jake was probably in the security of his own room. Stoney would have a
longer way to go, but that only meant he was further from whatever it was that
they had just seen. Meanwhile, for Greg home was at the bottom of the hill. But
from there he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do.
Greg flew
down the dirt driveway leading to his home. The night was greasy black, and his
dried-out eyes struggled to adjust in it. He dropped his BMX, and briskly
walked in the direction of the light in the kitchen window. He could hear the phone in the kitchen begin
to ring, and he quickened his pace to a jog.
Then
everything went true black, and he was seamlessly snatched from consciousness.
The ringing went dead.
VIII.
Much like
the day before, and every other day since the school year had started, Jake and
Stoney sat perched on the picnic table of the roadside rest stop. However,
there was one wrinkle that made today’s waiting session different – silence.
There were no headphones. No heavy metal tapes blasting their brains and
heightening their adrenaline before their ride to school. The air of these
warriors beefing up for some sort of social battle was absent. Scowls had
eroded into looks of concern as the two sat silently beside one another, eyes
trained on the bend up the road.
Jake’s
homecoming the previous evening was a bumbling and chaotic one as he fumbled
through the house, closing and locking every window and door around the house –
disrupting the ‘energy flow,’ as the Deadheads he called mom and dad would call
it. He then fled to his room, where he sat in silence, processing what he had
run from out in those woods.
He sped
through a rolodex of emotional stages in the matter of forty minutes. First
there was terror. Then there was something he hadn’t felt since he was probably
about eight, when his grandparents took him to Disney World – he was ecstatic
to be alive. That sentiment was routinely blocked by the woe of cliché
adolescents. Thirdly was doubt, questioning what he had seen, but he was
certain they all had seen it. But then again, was it real? Was it a prank? He
had questions he needed to ask, which directed him to his next phase: total
concern for his friends, Stoney and Greg. Had they made it back home? He needed
to talk about the shimmering five fingers he had seen wrap around that dog
before it was dragged into ultimate darkness. The silence, typically occupied
by that same yipping animal now nagged at Jake, who felt a pang of guilt even
though he hadn’t been the one to snatch the dog in the first place. His mind
immediately flashed to Greg and he dialed his number. The phone rang for what
seemed like forever, and eventually he hung up. Jake’s chest filled with dread
for several moments until his own phone rang this time. He snatched the
receiver up immediately and heard his fat friend jabbering nervously on the
other end, asking the same questions he had, with the same amount of fear in his
voice, too.
Over the
next several hours, they spoke feverishly about the possibilities of what they
had actually seen, and they reached the final stage together – strange
enthusiasm for this thing, whatever it was, that they agreed that they all saw
it. Could it have been a hoax? They, too, concluded that Green Briar wasn’t
exactly a thriving artistic community. The majority of its tax payers didn’t
even have a sense of humor, let alone one so dark at this point of panic in
their town. They knew it was real, but what the hell was it? They lingered on
the five clawed fingers, a definitively human trait, but still with something
distinctly animal about them.
And then
there was suddenly concern when Greg’s name found its way back into the
conversation. Jake mentioned that he had tried to call his house, but there had
been no answer. This was usually routine, but in this instance it was cause for
worry. Stoney contemplated calling, but decided against it when confronted with
the idea of Greg’s step father answering. They both echoed the hopeful
sentiment that they would all talk about it when they saw him tomorrow at the
stop.
And there
they sat, at their usual designated meeting place, waiting for their friend to
come cruising around that bend. Hoping he would sail into sight any moment.
They had reached the point where they knew they’d be late for school, but there
they remained, with zero regard for their academic attendance record. They never
even questioned whether or not they should leave out loud to one another.
Instead, they sat perched, sentry-like, full of hope, and getting increasingly
itchy with every passing minute.
Jake didn’t
care about school, but he had begun to wonder just how long they ought to wait.
He piped up. “Screw school,” he said, “but maybe we should ride over to his
house or something? This is driving me nuts.”
Stoney
warned, “I dunno, what about Craig?”
The C-name
carried with it a certain dread-imbued gravity. Craig was, unfortunately,
Greg’s stepfather. Perpetually unemployed since moving into the house
previously occupied by a happy family, Craig had made little effort to find
steady work in town, or even a little outside of it. This left a tremendous
burden on Greg’s mother, Peg Ford, formerly Neeley. By dusk, she typically left
for an overnight shift at a plastics factory in the next county. Green Briar
wasn’t exactly a town known for industry. Most of the folks that occupied it
were content to cruise down their velvet rut and ultimately into whatever cheap
coffin their local job might afford them – that is, if they were lucky. But
with a son and a husband to support, she never questioned stepping up. She was
simply propelled by the initiative she developed during the illness that had
taken Greg’s father.
Colon
cancer was the aggressive culprit that took Richard Neeley two years prior.
Still, in Greg’s brain, he saw it as less oppressive a presence in his
household than Craig’s. Greg had developed the keen sense that while cancer
took his father, Craig would probably be the death of both he and his mother.
While his mother worked herself sick as the mule at the head of the cart, Greg
suspected one day Craig might take the opportunity to simply shove him off of
it and under a wheel, so to speak. Greg had made an art out of laying low. He
mostly stayed out of the big man’s way, hiding in his room, married to his
headphones. Greg knew a handful of boys who’d met the backhand of some male
authority figure, but he never got the benefit of a slap. Straight away, the
first time he crossed Craig, he took a clenched fist to the gut.
Stoney
still recalled the time Greg showed up at his house, white as a sheet and out
of breath and begging to be hidden. The best Stoney could think to do at the
time was to throw his pal under some unfolded laundry he’d been stockpiling in
his closet. Greg lay there, like a still embryonic ball under layers of t-shirts
and jeans, behind a closed door. Under a mountain of cotton, he heard an
aggressive knocking at the door. The clatter of the door handle was interrupted
by Craig Ford’s angry voice.
The boys
couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it was no doubt as foul as the tone
was aggressive. Fortunately, Stoney lived with his grandparents. His grandfather
in particular was a stout man – a WWII veteran who’d done time overseas for an
extended tour. His grandmother once told him he’d joined the army simply
because his family couldn’t afford shoes for him. His cracked leather hands had
rarely seen a day off, even at his current age. Craig’s bark was bad, but he
was limited to it, unless it came to women or children.
One of the
primary reasons Craig could find no work in town was only partially because he
was a shiftless ne’er-do-well. The other half was probably because nobody liked
him. He was viewed as a loud-mouth lout and a bully who left his brain and his
heart back in high school.
Suffice to
say, Craig didn’t get beyond Stoney’s grandfather and probably left as badly
shaken as Greg was under all those clothes.
Jake
answered after several seconds, “I don’t care. Let’s go.”
The boys
climbed on their bikes and they were pedaling toward the bend when they saw
something break around the corner slowly. Their hearts soared and lungs popped
open when they noticed the shape of their friend approaching in the distance.
Their relief, though, slowly dissipated. First, they noticed that he wasn’t
quite moving in the usual way. Greg was typically the sort of kid who pedaled
away from his home faster than he did going back. This time, though, there was
something lethargic to his approach. It was hobbled. His head, too, hung low at
the end of a pained slouch.
The boys
stopped hard as his face came into clear view, and they could see something was
very clearly wrong.
IX.
The trio
sat in Jake’s room, in total silence. Jake averted his eyes out the window.
Stoney on the other hand couldn’t look away from what had been done to his
friend.
Stoney
mustered, “I think we should take you to the hospital, or something.”
Greg lifted
his head from sifting ice water through a knocked-out tooth, and laughed. “Really?
And say what?”
Neeley
looked his friend in the face, though he was barely capable of eye contact
thanks to the beating he’d incurred the night before.
Stoney studied
the bruising and contusions that left his friend barely recognizable. He
fixated on the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut, though an aneurysm had colored
in the white around his iris blood red. Greg struggled to speak through several
cracked teeth and a badly split lip.
When first
he approached them by the road stop, Greg was a mess of matted hair, blood, and
caked on filth. Hemoglobin and dirty had mingled to scab while he lay in the
dirty outside of his kitchen.
When Greg
awoke that morning, the first thing he heard was a ringing in his right ear,
and then he became acutely aware of the pain. And then he became aware of the
blood as he pulled his head off the ground. The sound and sensation reminded
him of carefully peeling Scotch tape off of some course surface. As he stood,
he wobbled from the deep, steel-toe sized bruise in his left thigh.
Greg didn’t
remember the first punch, but it had been hard enough to set back time and put
him out simultaneously, and he was grateful for that. Nevertheless, the culprit
was not content to stop there. Once Greg dragged himself off the ground, he
attempted to make it inside, only to freeze when he saw his reflection in the
kitchen window. His face had been beaten so badly during his unconscious state
that the shape was no longer the same, while blackening around his eyes had set
in. He looked back to where he’d been and saw the blood – more of the human
variety than he’d ever seen before.
Greg
stumbled back off the stoop and realized his mother was not home yet from her
commute. But he knew the man who’d done it to him was probably inside. He
shuffled toward the legitimate puddle of his own now-cold essence, and noticed
the abundance of cigarette butts that littered the ground. He had the faculty
to connect those dots. The man who’d done this to him had smoked several
cigarettes after he’d doled out the beating, and then gone back inside, where
he probably sat still in his recliner, drifting off.
Greg was
filled with a rage, but he was in no condition to act on it. He could barely
move one of his arms, and walking was nearly impossible.
And so,
Greg once again mounted his bike and pushed it up the hill before he began his
ride.
Stoney
countered, “You don’t look good, man. I’m just worried. Just don’t know how bad
you’re hurt. That eye--”
Greg cut
his friend off, frustrated. “If I go to the hospital, they’re going to ask how
this happened. Then what?”
Jake
answered matter of factly, “Tell them who did it.”
Greg
chuckled out of the corner of his mouth. “Hell, man, I’d get a beating worse
than this one.”
Stoney already
knew, but he asked anyway. “So it was Craig?”
Greg nodded
faintly. Stoney asked, “Why?”
Greg shook
his head, but deep down he knew exactly why. It had been that middle finger
he’d flown at his stepfather as he’d left the previous morning. He kept that
detail to himself for fear that someone might think he asked for it. He knew
Craig well enough that he expected some sort of repercussion, but nothing to
the level of brutality that had actually been dealt. After he’d finished his
cigarette that morning, Craig most likely retired to his recliner for a few
beers, and grew more agitated at the thought of the gesture his stepson had
made to him that morning, until it had stoked to a nice roaring rage. That night,
he probably waited in the shadows for an hour or two, waiting for Greg to
return so he could unload his anger and frustration, only this time things got
out of control.
Jake shared
a surprisingly rare and rational thought. “What the hell does it matter why? Nothing makes what he did okay!”
Stoney
lowered his head in shame. He knew Jake was right and was suddenly awash with guilt
for even asking. Still, he asked another question. “So, what are you gonna do?
You can’t hide this. People are gonna ask.”
Deafening
silence proceeded for several moments. And then Greg lifted his head, sounding
lost, but determined to find a way out of this mess, “It doesn’t matter
anyway.”
Jake
assured his friend, “You can stay here for a while.”
“No,”
Greg said. “I’m going to sleep in my own bed tonight. And it’ll be alright.
Because I’m going to get rid of him.”
Stoney
looked across the room at Jake, and saw a reflection of concern.
X.
In certain
people, there is a quality of self-loathing that allows one to take a sick pleasure
in just how rank they are. Craig was one of those animals, and he consistently
reached a level of stench that kept his wife far from the thought of intimacy.
And then there was the funk of body odor and feces that rose from his usual
Lay-Z Boy chair that warded anyone from potentially taking his prime television
viewing spot. Today, the bouquet of alcoholism, nicotine and unemployment was
particularly aromatic as Craig Ford sat in his recliner, feet up. A cold can of Rheingold set against red, agitated
knuckles.
He took
sips in between nursing his hand as he watched a man with a bag on his head
tell a flat comedy routine on the television – the gong was poised to ring any
moment now, but the tension barely kept him from drifting off. But what did jerk
him back into a complete state of consciousness was a knock at the door.
Craig’s eyes rolled around in his head until the set of hardy raps repeated.
He pulled
the lever on the side of his chair, and lurched forward with a groan, ready to
tear into whatever sad sack might be fool hardy enough to disturb him during
his program. However, when he opened the door, he wasn’t prepared for what he
saw.
He stepped
out onto the stoop with a quizzical expression. Several feet away from him sat
the open tailgate of an old model Chevy truck, while in the bed stood teenager
he recognized as one of Greg’s friends, poised with a metal bucket.
Before
Craig could draw a breath, the sturdy youth hurled the bucket contents, which
flew from the mouth and hit Craig dead across the chest and face.
Despite his
own brand of overwhelming pungency, Craig immediately knew what the slop oozing
down his body and into the crevices of his pursed lips – a concoction of feces,
earth, and urine. His gag reflex began to heave and his eyes watered. Almost instantaneously,
Craig leapt down the steps toward the truck, which peeled away, tires spinning
gravel and dust in his direction. Craig forced his eyes open to see Jake
flipping him the bird from the back of the truck as it sped away.
Craig
quickly ran to his own truck, never thinking twice about it and was shortly in
pursuit.
XI.
The
stinging pain all over Greg was overcome briefly by giddiness as he looked
through the rear window of Jake’s parent’s truck, which their lack of parental
restriction had graciously permitted him to use on occasion, in spite of the
fact that he had never bothered to get a license. Stoney sat behind the wheel,
leaning on the pedal. He had developed some merit as a driver on his
grandparent’s farm, taught by his grandfather how to handle the wheel.
Stoney kept
a steady pace until he saw Craig’s truck roar around the bend and after them.
He laid it in and sped up. Jake, still in the back of the bed, clung to
whatever he could. From there, Stoney was sure to keep a good distance between
them, because they’d need it considering their friend’s limited mobility.
The plan
had been set into motion and now there was no turning back. It didn’t take Greg
too long to come up with it, drawing partial inspiration from the poster from
the 1976 film Carrie hanging in the corner of Jake’s room, with the waifish
Sissy Spacek wide-eyed and covered in pig’s blood. He anticipated some push
back from his friends, but was surprised when they agreed to help him assemble
the components. It was an actual shock when no one objected to what the
ultimate outcome might be. Personal risk was one thing, but wantonly putting
someone else in harm’s way was where he thought the plot would end.
Nevertheless, Jake secured the truck, and from there, they made a small stop at
Stoney’s family farm, where they loaded a slop bucket with pig excrement and a
natural concoction of urine and mud.
Pure
gratification washed over Greg’s body when he saw the pig waste hit his
stepfather, but then his legs started to hum when he realized they’d now be
forced to deal with him. If he caught up with them, his wrath could be fatal.
Mashing on
the pedal, Stoney sent the truck around the west bend. He could see night closing in faster than
Craig’s truck, which was struggling to keep up with their pace.
Stoney hit
the brakes and the truck skittered off the side of the road onto a shoulder.
Jake screamed as the back of his head collided with metal. Stoney rushed from
the cab and screamed for Jake, who tumbled out toward the passenger side. Greg
was struggling against his own pain to climb down, but his friends assisted,
and propped his arms over him before they bolted into the thick of the woods.
Jake took the lead point, slashing through brush his machete.
The sun was
almost gone, but it might as well been before midnight under the thick shade of
the forest. The creek had just begun to fade in over their heavy breathing when
they heard the faint echo of a truck door slamming. Craig had found their
abandoned truck, and was most likely hot on their trail.
The boys,
collectively toting their wounded friend, made sure to take no care in their
retreat further into the woods. In fact, they made effort to make their path
clear with a racket that signaled their direction to their pursuer. Jake
continued chopping when a familiar voice rang through the woods from a
still-safe distance. Craig’s crazed shout pinball’d and reverberated through
the thick trunks behind them and hummed against their backs, “DON’T WORRY!
AIN’T GONNA HANG YA!”
And then
came a dreaded, thunderous sound familiar to anybody who’d spent any time in
the Green Briar hills – a KABOOM that froze the trio. In all his haze and
haste, Greg had forgotten that his stepfather usually kept a 12 gauge pump
action shot gun under his cab seat. Hunting was popular around these parts, but
Craig wasn’t much for any outdoor sport. Rather, he used this particular
firearm as an intimidation tactic, in case things got a little too rough down
at the Shillelagh Club, down on main.
Greg’s head
hung and mumbled, “Crap!”
Stoney
mused, “It’s okay, guys. He’s not gonna hang us or anything. It’ll be much
quicker.”
The gravity
of what was happening had set in, and they all felt heavier as they resumed
their retreat into those dark woods.
XII.
Craig slid
down the soggy embankment with plates of mud under his boots and nearly toppled
into the creek below, relinquishing balance in fever of clinging to his rifle.
His head shot back and forth in search of a trail to pick up on. Twenty feet up,
he noticed the glistening bank with a cluster of foot prints descending up to
the other side.
He
trudged up the creek and through the water when something struck his head and
his ears began to ring. His legs buckled as the magnitude of the blow set in. A
stone bounced off his skull with a solid amount of force and splashed into the
rushing water behind him. Seconds later, blood began to collect in his bushy
right brow, overflowing down the ridge of his nose.
Craig
looked up the face of the massive rock across the bank to spot Jake standing at
the peak of the Blunder.
Craig
immediately aimed, but the blood pooling around his eye lid complicated what
should have been a clear shot. Jake dove backward as Craig pulled the trigger.
The buckshot glinted off the peak of the rock in a puff of dust.
He raced up
the bank and climbed the hillside. His eyes scoured the ground as he
intermittently wiped the blood away. The sickly sweet stench of death stung his
nostrils before his eyes found the dear carcass splayed across the bed of
magazines. Then came another rock, bouncing against the rifle’s body. Craig
lifted the rifle with lightning speed an aimed at Jake. He pulled the trigger,
but the gun would not cooperate. Luck was on Jake’s side as Craig had forgotten
to pump the 12-gauge after his previous shot, allowing him to flee into the
woods.
Frustrated,
Ford expelled the shell and took off into the dark after the lithe teen.
Greg stood
several feet outside of the cave, poised to move. Jake had come running with
the tipoff and hung a hard left thirty seconds earlier, and he’d neglected to
take note of what direction Stoney took.
Greg’s feet
took root when he saw a shape breaking through the low branches. Eventually
Craig emerged, clutching the 12 gauge. Greg couldn’t determine the distance
between them. His head was swimming. Craig paused and slowly lifted the muzzle
of his rifle, aiming at his step son, but before he could line up the sight,
Greg was easing backward into the abyss of the high cavern.
Craig fired
anyway. Greg screamed from inside as hot pellets tore through the denim of his
leg. Craig cocked and fired again. He reloaded as he approached, grinning
sadistically. He entered the cave, cautiously, craning the nose of his rifle
out.
“Boy, you
learned too late that you do not screw with smoke,” Craig preached on, “because
where there is smoke, there is certainly going to be fire. You can’t close a
door on me. Because what good is a deadbolt when your house is burning down?
Gonna take more than a rock to put me out. For damn sure. Too bad you ain’t
gonna live long enough to use what I’m teaching you.”
Craig
stumbled as his foot hit a rock, his ankle nearly buckling under him. He
uttered some profanity and then tightened his finger around the trigger. The
muzzle flashed, illuminating the cavern for a split second. Buckshot pinged
down the cavern’s gullet. He heard something scurrying. Craig pointed in the
direction of the sound and fired off another shot. This time, he caught a
glimpse of a moving shadow.
Craig grinned
in the pitch black, edging forward. His boots scraping against the rocky
surface elicited the sound of a scurrying, which he did his best to pursue. As
he moved what his senses told him was deeper into the caverns, due mainly to
the dropping temperatures, something caught his ear. He paused for a moment as an erratic clicking
sound echoed through the black, and grew closer. The dimension of the distance
suddenly started to make sense, as a queer light began to creep across the
walls. A green and yellow phosphorescent light ring laced through the hull of
the cave, slowly creeping forward, with a dim flame at the center, all the
while the strange clicking grew louder and more erratic.
Craig
pumped his gun and took aim at the flame, and as he lowered his muzzle, a
spotlight blinded him, lighting up his threatening posture, and almost
instantaneously, the flame bridged the darkness between itself and Craig with a
ferocious blast.
Craig
dropped his gun as his clothing ignited, roaring to life, and his flesh
constricted under the intense inferno now enveloping him. Staggering forward,
Craig lashed out toward the source of the blaze.
Greg
remained coiled in a corner he’d felt out, and his sensitive eyes, which had
adjusted to total blackness squinted against the sudden moving bonfire that
swallowed his stepfather whole. Even over the intense howls of agony, Greg
could make out strange static-wrapped voices barking orders. What followed was
a hail of automatic gunfire. Greg covered his eyes as he watched the flaming
figure picked apart in a series of gory halos. Bits of flaming gore rained past
him, coating the walls and the floor of the cave, highlighting up the whole
area in a violent pyre. The bulk of Craig Ford little more than a splayed,
smoldering core, encircled by his own entrails.
Before
Greg could move to flee, a towering figure in a HAZMAT suit loomed over him,
aiming an M16 directly in his face. The teen lifted his trembling hands in a
show of automatic surrender. Tears streamed down his cheeks and he sobbed. The
figure lowered his weapon after surveying the boy, and extended a gloved hand.
Greg accepted and as he stood, he soon found himself surrounded by six others
in suits, several of which had black light lanterns fixed to their artillery.
The Geiger counter in one of their hands clicked rapidly to the point of
near-static as they swept the cavern. One of the men toted a flame thrower –
its dim pilot dancing in the grim atmosphere.
One of the
figures approached, and Greg could make out the delicate features of a woman
behind the helmet’s glass face guard. She immediately placed her hand on the
profuse bleeding seeping from the shredded coat sheathing his upper arm. She
called out, urgently, “We’re gonna need to get this boy to a hospital.”
The man
with the Geiger counter eyed the boy from a distance, and corrected, “We’ll
need to get him to decontamination first.”
She
insisted, “Harve, he’s been shot!”
Harve fired
back, “Well, that may be the least of his problems, Ms. Barton. This place is
red hot.”
The man she
called Harve pressed forward, while the woman cradled her arm around him,
assuring, “It’s alright. We don’t want to hurt you.”
Greg
nodded. She asked, “Do you know who that was?”
Greg nodded
again, and squeezed her hand, and spoke softly, “Thank you.”
Donna
looked at the boy perplexed, as she guided him back in the direction he’d
entered. “Come on. Let’s get you fixed up.”
The
troop emerged from the tall cavern, stopping dead. Barton and the boy were
last. She made a frustrated inquiry, “Do we have a medic kit?”
She went
ignored as the other men stood on guard. The man with the flame thrower
pressed, “So, what now?”
Harve
blasted, giving away his own confusion, “Give me a minute!”
The other
men in suits made exasperated shifts and sighs. The man with the fire said what
was on everyone else’s mind, “You have absolutely no goddamn idea what you’re
doing, do you?”
Harve
scrambled, “We’re up against something unknown. It’s never been studied in
captivity.” He trailed off, and picked up again, trying to stave off all doubt.
“They’re searching for food. But once it’s light out, they’ll seek shelter. So,
we’ll set up base here. Sweep the area in the meantime.”
The
flame-bearer spoke up again, “We’re not sweeping a damn thing.”
Harve shot
him a look of sheer astonishment. Donna had grown weary of the situation
herself, and interjected, “You don’t even know how many of them there are, do
you? Could be five. Could be an entire colony.”
A sense of
betrayal swelled up in Harve as he began to sweep the area with his counter in
a vain attempt to pick up a trail. The machine in his hand clacked frantically,
no matter what direction he moved in.
Greg
immediately knew these people were hunting for the thing he and his friends had
seen the day before – the thing he had hoped would take his stepfather, even at
the risk of succumbing to it himself. He was prepared to never leave that cave
to spare his mother from the man who’d made both of their lives an increasingly
hotter hell over the past years. Then his mind whipped back to his friends. But
he was in no condition to summon any words, as shock had set in, and he was
fading fast from the blood loss. Every ounce of his constitution funneled into
his ability to stay conscious.
Harve
reasoned, “They’ll be back come sun up.”
Donna
ripped his logic to shreds with one colorful statement, “They could be marching
down Main Street for all you know.”
Harve’s
face went slate white once again, and he muttered something indiscernible.
Donna looked down at the boy in her arms, his open eyes froze and unmoving. She
knew he was gone, and no one around her had lifted a finger to stop it. She
resigned, and took advantage of the apathy toward the child’s well-being by
slipping back into the cavern. Nobody noticed.
Harve
continued sweeping the area with his counter, attempting to lead the men in
some certain direction, but the counter continued its rapid racket in every
general direction. He stumbled, his feet caught on something. He toppled
forward with a scream. Harve struggled to get to his feet, pushing himself up
off the object underneath him as the soldiers came to his aid.
One of the
men shined a light down on Harve. His yellow suit was covered in a red viscus,
and it didn’t take more than a moment before they realized the NRC man had
tripped over a mangled carcass – recognizable as human by the denim clad
portions of the corpse. A few of the remaining limbs were a tangle, with one
hand on a defensively posed arm torn completely off. One of the troops pushed
long strands of hair out of the marred face of the stout victim. He remarked,
“Another kid. Fresh kill. Can’t be far.”
Harve
gagged as he scrambled to untangle the intestines caught around his boots.
The man
with the fire retrieved Harve’s Geiger counter, which had landed square in a
mash of trampled organs, clattering madly. “She may be onto something,” he
said.
“There’s
no telling how many there are.”
The
gruesomely painted counter’s activity began to rise steadily. The troops took
this cue back away from the woods, and as they did the man with the fire saw
the first set of eyes peering back at him from beyond a cluster of brush. More
began to emerge as a strange, beastly sound gathered a collective momentum.
Within the course of one single minute, the woods were like a sky mad with
stars as an army of iridescent eyes bounced back at them, creeping forward
through the blackness.
The man
with the fire unleashed a blaze as a matter of instinct, torching several
trees. The other men pulled their triggers in a barrage of nonsense, as they
were blinded by the flames. But before their eyes could adjust to the pillars
of fire ahead of them, the first of them had already been taken, arms pulled
from the sockets, and still screaming until one of the cannibal humanoid creatures
took his head. The mouth gargled out the last few seconds of a scream even
after it had been rendered from its body.
Countless
numbers swarmed the men, cleaving through yellow HAZMAT material with teeth and
claws, and gulping down gullets of flesh, while dragging limbs and whole
waggling corpses in the throes of death twitching into the darker recesses of
the forest, away from the flames that had already begun to fan out across the
forest.
In a flash
of tooth and arterial spray, the clearing was only littered with shreds of
meat, yellow plastic, and guns, and the storm of flame gleamed across the blood
soaked foliage. All the while, the counter continued to clack madly, eventually
drowned out by the sound of far-off animals bickering over the last shreds of a
feast.
XIII – EPILOGUE – TWO DAYS LATER…
Goldie made
the drive up to Green Briar on a quarterly basis rather than deal with the
miniscule markup from some inner-city distributor. Some would call him cheap,
but he preferred shrewd. Those were the only four days where Goldie’s truck was
shuttered up on its lot as he made the drive up in his beater sedan at some
nauseatingly early hour. He was a hard man, but even he usually enjoyed the
reprieve of the lush, green trees that hemmed in the two lane road that wound
through the hills and into that sad little hot dog town.
But today
was a let-down. As Goldie chugged up the grade, the usually picturesque scene
was nearly apocalyptic. The air was thick with smoke and stray ash, all wafting
from the former forest, now a wasteland of what looked like withered
matchsticks stretching back into the mountains. The fire that had started
several days prior had raged for some time before the heavens took mercy and
opened up.
As Goldie
rolled onto Main Street, another eerie difference set in. Green Briar was
always a dead-end sort of town, but the remainders who clung to their positions
were always the kind of folks who gave the local diner a reason to crack their
doors before dawn, and the rich smell of coffee permeated the early morning
hours. But this time there was no coffee. The diner’s lights were dim. There
were a few stray cars parked along the street, but otherwise, not a single sign
of life was apparent. Atmosphere is best described as the soul of a place. The
soul was somehow gone.
Goldie
continued his cruise, wondering if Green Briar Franks had folded up business
and killed the town. But his speculation
halted when his eye caught something in the middle of the road. His breaks
screeched and his car lurched to a stop.
Annoyed,
Goldie got out of his idling car and ambled toward a manhole cover lying in the
middle of the road, fifteen feet from the sewer opening ahead. Goldie strained to lift the huge iron lid
onto its rim, rolling it toward its rightful place.
Goldie let
loose as the manhole cover got momentum going toward the open hole in the road,
letting it drift into place, collapsing half-way over where it ought to be.
Hovering
over the open sewer, Goldie paused when his eye caught a flash of something
below – something like the reflection of a cat’s eye, which blinked out as soon
as he met it. And then there was the sound of something sloshing below. Goldie
chuckled as scooted the manhole back into its slot, and said to himself, “The
rats is big out here, too.”
FIN
Copyright 2017 Bowie Ibarra, Maximillian Meehan
“Be safe,” he called
out as she dashed out into the rain.
Lighting flashed in the sky before he closed the door. As he was locking it, the thunder
rolled. It’s deep reverberation muffled
only slightly by the closed door. In the
distance, a car alarm went off as the skybound rumble of thunder resonated
through the building.
El
Aire nodded, still rubbing his back.
“Great. Meet me at the Montana
Bar in an hour. We’ll talk there.”
