“They’re in the fridge, dummy,” Stone answered. “You think I’m gonna leave ‘em out here in this heat?”
“Eat it,” Jonas said, making his way to the lake house with his own gym bag thrown over his shoulder.
Jonas was a big dude, standing about six-four and weighing around two hundred and twenty pounds. He was all muscle, too. That wasn’t surprising, considering how he had loved the gym and the gridiron from a young age. His uncle got him into football in the fourth grade, and he played in high school and could’ve gone on to play at some small college if he wanted to. Maybe professionally if the cards had all fallen the right way. By the time of our graduation, I think he was sick of it. Still, despite no longer having to drill or whatever it is they do in the Marines, Jonas got to the gym five days a week, at the crack of dawn before the twins woke up. But Stone could probably still take him. His joke was that he always had weapons…his crutches.
Me, I’ve never been much of a morning person. Before the shit hit the fan, I worked the night shift at the station. That kind of schedule is hard to shake.
“So,” Stone said, “what do you wanna do tonight? Toss the pigskin? Rent a boat? Grill some burgers?”
“Shit,” Jonas said, “how about all of the above?”
I looked at him, a ghost of a smile on my face, and nodded. “Hell yeah.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Stone said, “might be hard, considering the first item on our agenda is getting fucked up.”
“You know us so well,” Jonas said.
“Wish I didn’t.”
We all laughed. It was a good sound, which the summer breeze carried out toward the lake. For the first time in a long time, I felt better…normal because I was with my two best friends, far away from the now-empty lot on the corner of Swan Drive, where the boy died. Far away from the Harlington Cemetery, where he’s now buried.
It’s a shame those good feelings were already coming to an end.
Stone was right. What we all wanted to do was, as he so lovingly put it, “get fucked up” and unwind.
Once we got all settled in, we went to the beach. The stairs leading to the shore weren’t exactly great for Stone’s crutches (or safe, for that matter) so I helped Stone, steadying him as he went down slowly.
“You let go, Grady, and I swear to all things holy that I’ll use a Sharpie to draw dicks all over your face tonight—you know, after you pass out from those wine coolers you made me bring,” Stone said.
“I’ve actually been thinking about getting a tattoo,” I replied. “Wouldn’t hurt having a trial run.”
“You ain’t a tattoo guy,” Jonas said from close behind us. One hand was looped through a couple of fold-out chairs, and the other dragged a cooler full of ice, beer, and a few bottles of whiskey. No wine coolers.
“You’re right,” I said.
“I know I am, I can just…tell.” Jonas nodded to his left shoulder. He was wearing a striped tank top, so the tattoo there was visible. It depicted a serene scene of a beach, the tide crashing against rocks, birds in the sky, all in front of a gorgeous sunset. “Oahu” was written in cursive below it. This was just one of the many tattoos Jonas had. On his other shoulder was an outline of the great state of Ohio. The cursive word beneath it read “Home.” Jonas liked the ink.
Getting a flu shot or my finger pricked at my doctor’s office made me squeamish. Needles aren’t exactly at the top of the list of things I love. So no tattoos for me, and both Stone and Jonesy knew this.
“Even if I didn’t know how you cry whenever you get your blood drawn,” Jonas continued, “I could still tell. It’s in your eyes.”
“All right, Jonas,” Stone said. “Quit being weird.”
Jonas shrugged. “It’s true, like how you can tell the kind of person who’s gonna complain to the waiter at an Applebee’s or something.”
“Like a sixth sense,” I joked.
Jonas didn’t exactly catch on to my ribbing because he was nodding and saying, “Yeah, exactly!”
“Man, you been drinking already?” Stone asked.
“No. I just have an open mind.”
We both kind of rolled our eyes. To Stone and me, we filed psychics, telepaths, ghost hunters, and all that type of stuff into the same mental drawer we put Santa and the Tooth Fairy.
At least, we did at that point in our lives.
What happened only a few hours later, what we ended up seeing with our own eyes, changed that.
Our part of the beach was deserted, but looking down the shore, I caught glimpses of a couple of campfires and some people splashing in the water just a few houses down. There was a boat puttering around in the distance, too. No wakeboarder or water skier tagging along, though.
We set up around the bones of a fire pit, the same one we’d sat at more than a decade before. Jonas set the chairs up. Stone sat opposite of me, his back to the water.
“Man, this place is a little…” Jonas began.
“Dead?” Stone said.
“Yeah, and depressing,” Jonas agreed.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I like it this way. It’s a lot more calm.”
Jonas snorted. “A vacation shouldn’t be calm, man. It should be party central.” He began mimicking the beat of a terrible dubstep song.
Stone plugged his ears and shouted, “We’re not nineteen-year-olds on spring break!”
“Spoken like a guy who’s got one foot in the grave,” Jonas replied.
“Well, I can’t walk too well, so I probably stepped in it by accident…” Stone said.
This got us laughing again. It may seem mean-spirited to an outsider, but it wasn’t. Stone no longer took his disability too seriously. He told me once, that when he had enough time to grieve the loss of his parents and get his head clear, he was glad to be alive. I was glad, too. My life would’ve been a lot more dim without Stone around. Same went for Jonas. We were the Three Musketeers, after all.
I reached into the cooler and grabbed a few beers.
“Uh-uh,” Jonas said, shaking his head. “Liquor before beer and you’re in the clear, remember?”
So I switched the beers for the bottle of whiskey and some cold glasses. Poured us all about half a glass, much more than I probably should’ve, and passed them out.
“To the Three Musketeers!” Jonas said, raising his drink.
“To the Three Musketeers!” I echoed, then we were both looking at Stone.
“Seriously, you’re gonna make me say it?” Stone said. He rolled his eyes so hard, I thought he might roll out of his chair.
“C’mon,” Jones said, “don’t be a prick.”
“Fine. To the Three Musketeers!” Stone raised his glass, and we knocked them together over the pit and drank. The whiskey burned me something fierce, but it brought on a good buzz pretty quickly, and I was grateful for that.
“But seriously, guys,” Stone said, grimacing after he’d swallowed his whiskey, “we really need to work on a new nickname.”
“What’s wrong with the Three Musketeers?” Jonas said. “That’s an epic name!”
“It just makes me think of that one episode of Tom & Jerry, and I hate that show.”
“You hate Tom & Jerry?” I asked. “What’s wrong with you? Do you hate Scooby-Doo, too?”
Stone took another gulp. “No. I love Scooby, you know that. But that mouse was way more of a dick to the cat than necessary, and Tom was painted as the bad guy. So wrong.”
I sat there and blinked dumbly at him.
“Go on…” Jonas said. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees as he stared at Stone intently.
Stone continued, “I mean, do I really have to? If you’ve seen any of those cartoons, you’d know Tom was a goddamn jack of all trades. Seriously. He could play all types of instruments, dress like a fashion model, and blow smoke rings that said ‘Howdy’ and shit. What the hell did Jerry do besides be a little dickhead? He stole food all the time, food that Tom’s owner probably worked super hard for—and
he’d always steal way more than he needed. I mean, he’s a mouse. How much cheese does it take to fill his stomach? He sure ain’t got a tiny refrigerator to store all he stole for later, so it’s just gonna spoil. And Tom was just doing his job, you know, being a cat. His owner wanted the mouse gone, and he put his cat on the job. And if Tom failed, he’d be thrown out on the street. He didn’t have a choice.”
A film of sweat glistened on Stone’s forehead. He wiped it away with the back of his arm. I noticed the sun was on its way down by this point and the temperature had dropped a considerable amount—more than normal on a summer’s evening, even for Ohio—so the weather wasn’t to blame. Stone just felt…strongly about the subject, I guess.
When he was done, he took a deep breath, exhaled, then downed the rest of his whiskey. With a shrug, he said, “There, that’s all I got to say.”
A moment of silence fell between the three of us. The happy voices of the other lake-goers drifted down the beach. The boat’s motor droned on. One thing I didn’t hear were the birds. Around there, with the woods and the lack of nearby traffic, I should’ve heard them, but when I think about it now, their silence was just another warning sign of what was to come.
Jonas laughed. “Holy shit, Stone, that was…that was—”
“Really weird,” I finished for him. “But passionate, and I respect that…I think.”
“Yeah,” Jonas agreed. “Weird.”
“I couldn’t imagine getting you going about politics,” I said.
Stone shook his head. “Fuck politics.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Jonas said.
So we did.
Night fell, and we were still on the beach. The moon was a cold sliver of white high above us, its reflection shimmering on the swaying surface of Prism Lake. In the far distance, from neighboring towns, fireworks popped off in celebration of our country’s two-hundred and twenty-fourth year of independence. The people down the shore were still out and about, though no one was getting any night swimming in. It was seventy degrees with a chill wind blowing. The three of us barely noticed, and I blame the alcohol for that. Whiskey has a way of keeping you warm.
By this time, I’d guess it was going on ten, the Three Musketeers had become the Three Drunk Musketeers, and I was thinking about the episode of Tom & Jerry Stone had mentioned where the two mice dressed up like characters from Alexander Dumas’ famous novel. In the episode, one of them—I can’t remember which—gets into a barrel of wine or some other type of alcoholic beverage and drinks more than his weight. For the rest of the show, the mouse stumbles around and hiccups constantly. I thought it was funny, but I wasn’t smiling. It was hard to smile.
Jonas was stoking the flames of our fire, which had been burning low but giving off a comforting amount of heat. He looked my way, the embers reflecting orange in his right eye.
“Grady, man, I gotta ask…what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said without missing a beat.
“Bull. You’ve been staring at the fire like you want to kill it, or at the very least, whip out your micropenis and piss on it. What, did your boyfriend dump you or something?” Jonas offered me a cautious smile. His way of disguising the seriousness of the situation with our trademarked immature humor. We were pushing thirty, but we still acted like we were in high school ninety-five percent of the time.
“No,” I said, “I’m still banging your mom—and my micropenis is good enough for her.”
Stone threw his head back and laughed so hard, the beer bottle he was holding—mostly empty—tumbled from his grip and thumped in the sand. “Nice one!”
I stood up on drunk-rubbery legs and gave half a bow. Anything more than that and I would’ve gone tumbling like Stone’s beer.
“Real funny,” Jonas said. He ripped off a couple of fake laughs and raised his fist in front of his face. Then, with his other hand, he began turning the handle of an imaginary reel while his middle finger slowly unspooled.
I blew him a kiss and said, “Get your future daddy another beer, will ya?”
Smiling, Jonas said sure thing. He swiveled his body in the chair, bent over, and rummaged through the mostly melted ice in the cooler. Aside from glass craft beer bottles, Stone had also crammed in half a forty-eight pack of Coors—or as he liked to call them, “Silver Bullets,” though I doubted hitting a werewolf with one of these would do much of anything besides piss it off.
Jonas held one of those Silver Bullets in his left hand now. Before I could move, he shook it up hard and popped the tab, spraying me with foamy beer. I swatted at it, my eyes squeezed shut, and lost my balance. Before I knew it, I was falling back in my chair and hitting the sand with a little more than a thump. The wind whooshed out of me, but I still had a big old grin on my face.
“Oh, shit,” Jonas said. “Grady, you all right?”
Stone, of course, was laughing like a maniac and clapping his hands. This got me laughing, too. Couldn’t help myself. The last domino to fall was Jonas. He ended up doubled over and clutching his stomach before he helped me onto my feet.
We were still laughing when a man’s voice broke in and said, “Hey there, don’t mean to intrude…”
I turned around. Standing in front of me was a fella of about fifty in a pair of cargo shorts, Jesus sandals, and a black Hard Rock Cafe Myrtle Beach shirt. Next to him was a boy of about sixteen or seventeen. Put a goatee on the kid and he’d be a spitting image of the man. The boy was smiling wide—I’m guessing at me all drenched in beer and covered in sand. The wetness only made the cool night air all the more noticeable. I suppressed a shiver, wanting only to get back into my chair and scoot a little closer to the fire.
“Sorry,” Jonas said. “We being too loud? We’ll turn it down a bit.”
The man waved a hand and shook his head. He looked vaguely familiar, like maybe I used to see him here when Stone’s dad brought us all those summers ago. “No, no, don’t worry about that. Y’all are just having a good time.” He looked out at the lake with nostalgia-filled eyes. “I ain’t so old I don’t remember what it was like being a young man, you know. Anyway, the reason I came up here was ‘cause I was wondering if y’all wanted to join us for some s’mores. Besides the group a few houses down from my place, you’re all that’s celebrating the Fourth on this side of the lake, and they ain’t nothing but high school and college kids. Too cool to be bothered and all that.”
“Shit,” Stone said in a not-so low whisper, “I could go for some s’mores right about now.”
I flashed him a look that said Manners, dude! and Stone squinted, not catching my drift. So I gave a not-so-subtle nod toward the boy.
Stone understood then. “Sorry, I meant, ‘Crap, I could go for some s’mores right about now.’”
The man laughed. “Relax, fella, ain’t nothing Mikey hasn’t heard a million times before. Ain’t that right, Mikey?”
The boy nodded. “You bet your fuckin’ A, Pop!”
This brought on a sharp glare and a frown from the man. “Now don’t push it, Mikey. Your momma ever found out I let you talk like that, and she’d have me in the doghouse for a month.”
The boy slapped his father on one shoulder. “Exactly, Pop. Exactly.”
I stepped forward, realizing we hadn’t properly introduced ourselves. First impressions are the most important, right? And my drunk ass falling out of my chair all covered in beer wasn’t exactly going to win First Impression of the Year.
“I’m Grady, Grady Hill. The tall guy’s Jonas, and that’s Stone.” I stuck out a hand, realized it was probably sticky with beer, gave it a swipe down my leg, and stuck it out again. The man shook it.
“Pleasure to meet you fellas. Name’s Ed Hark, and this here’s my son Mikey. We live just up yonder a few months out of the year.” He was pointing over his shoulder at one of the lake houses, two down from the one we had rented. It put ours to shame. “Wife don’t like the cold, so we spend the rest of the year down south in Alabama. Near Birmingham. That’s wh
ere most of her family’s from. Me, I’m an Ohioan, born and raised, so it hurts mighty bad to admit that, but you know what they say: happy wife, happy life.”
“Amen, brother,” Jonas said. He made the OK sign with his left hand. “To happy wives and pure-blood Ohioans!”
Ed nodded, his eyes gleaming. “So, what do ya say? Wanna soak up some of that booze with honey graham crackers, Hershey bars, and marshmallows? The first two ain’t the best for ya, I’ll be honest, but it says on the back of the marshmallow bag that they ain’t got no calories. Evens out, if you ask me.”
Feeling good and genuinely smiling, I said, “If you ask me, Ed, that sounds fantastic.”
“Yeah, you’re a saint,” Stone added. “All I packed for food was some Funyuns.”
“And dogs. Don’t forget the dogs and burgs,” Jonas said.
“Hey, don’t even think about it, Jonesy,” Stone said. “Those are for tomorrow.”
I agreed. A July 4th without hot dogs and burgers isn’t much of a July 4th at all.
“I like y’all already,” Ed said.
“Likewise,” Stone said. He nodded at Jonas. “Give the guy a beer.”
Jonas fished out a Bullet and tossed it Ed’s way. Ed caught it with an ease I hadn’t expected. He looked longingly at the sweating can, again with nostalgia-filled eyes. “Damn, I ain’t have one of these since college.”
“Dad, you didn’t go to college,” Mikey said.
“No, son, I didn’t. Not to any classes anyway, but I sure as hell found my way into a few frat parties down in Cincinnati. You know what we called it, don’t ya? Cin-Cin City, baby!” He cracked the beer open and downed the can in three gulps. All of us, Mikey included, looked on in utter disbelief. Then Ed wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and belched loudly, and we got to laughing again.
Yeah, we laughed a lot in those hours leading up to the end.
The Snow: A Supernatural Apocalypse Novel Page 2
