The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy)

by Weaver, Scott

  The electricity coursed through the water on the road and made it to Lloyd, but there wasn’t enough fluid to make the current deadly, in fact Lloyd barely even yipped as it traveled up his paws. It did confirm to him just how close death was yet again.

  The wire bounced back off the pavement towards Lloyd once again, reaching out to him like a rattlesnake.

  He knew it was coming, shooting his ass forward like someone was trying to kick him, which is what saved his life, because as it came down on the pavement again instead of his backside, both of his back feet were still flying forward, not touching the ground. He felt a small surge go up his front paws, but it was even less than the first time.

  The wire popped back up into the air once again to go after him, but he was already out of range, going full speed once again towards the fields. The wire still jumped around but it seemed random now.

  The dog could hear the demon’s curse on the wind as he escaped. The wind blew against Lloyd’s face for a moment as he ran, making it look like he had a half smile on his face.

  Frank pulled open his garage door and limped inside. He had walked back home at a very quick pace, and his arthritic knee was giving him holy hell about it. He grabbed the old blanket that covered the bike and yanked it off, and there she was in all her tarnished, hell raising glory: a 1942, model 841 Indian WW2 motorcycle. Her paint was a dull black and her chrome was more rust than anything. She was the only thing he still had from the old days when he was on the wrong side of the war. Back when he always did the wrong thing and loved every minute of it. He kept it as a reminder of what he used to be, like a little piece of cancer in his garage.

  He climbed on, primed it, took a deep breath and then reared up and gave it a hard kick. His knee screamed and the tailpipe let out a brief cough and then went quiet.

  “Never on the first try,” Frank said with a shake of his head as the cloud of smoke drifted up to his face.

  He cleared his throat, giving his knee another moment to recuperate, and then jumped up and gave another kick.

  She answered with an angry belch of smoke and then a tired roar. He coaxed her with the throttle as she teetered on the edge of going back to sleep.

  “C’mon baby,” he cooed. “That’s my girl.”

  She answered him with a mean spit, scolding him for talking to her like she was his sweetheart. The engine got into its rhythm as it started to warm up.

  He brought up the kickstand, his reflection looking at him from the window in the back of the garage. Mortality hit him like a hammer as he looked at his worn image. An old man on a worn out hell raiser of a bike, the denizens of evil were certain to be shaking in their boots.

  He smiled at the thought in spite of himself. Doubt crept in as he started to wonder just what it was he thought he was going to be able to do when he got out to the Simmon’s farm. They had figured out where the final showdown was going to happen tonight, but they had no idea what they were walking into. Lloyd was probably already halfway there.

  That got him moving. He wasn’t about to leave Lloyd out there on his own. He started backing the bike out of the garage. His eyes caught himself in the window one last time.

  “One last ride, old man.” He said to himself, putting the bike in gear and speeding off into the night.

  He was a mile down the road before it occurred to him he hadn't even grabbed a weapon of any type.

  ”Not just getting old but stupid as well," he thought to himself, knowing full well he didn't have the time to spare to go back now.

  Jack sat on the metal step of his trailer, enjoying the storm as it came down on him like an angry deity. Squinting as the rain attacked his eyes, he looked off into the horizon, seeing a dark shape moving across the sky.

  "Twister?" he asked no one.

  "Sure is," the demon answered, suddenly beside him.

  The booze already in his system steadied his nerves as he looked his old evil friend in the eye. "What you up to now, boss?"

  "There's one last showdown I need you to take care of, my man," its smile was anything but real.

  "That so?" Jack took the cap off the bottle of Charlie's Sippin' Bourbon and took a long drink.

  "Yeah, he's on his way. I need you to make sure he doesn't make it past you."

  Jack held his empty hand out. "Which must mean you've got my switchblade, an you're going to give it back."

  "No," the demon whispered, barely above the hiss of the rain. "Someone needs it more than you to do what's needed."

  "So," Jack replied. "After all this time, you've sold me out, giving me less than what I need to do the job."

  The fiend let out an annoyed sigh. "Quit being a pussy and do what needs to be done. It amazes me that I've got more trust in your abilities than you. Why the hell do you need a pocket knife with a spring to get the job done anyway?"

  Before Jack could reply the hell-beast folded off into the darkness. He seemed to take the rain with him, as it slowed down to a drizzle and then stopped.

  The words that came to Jack's mouth were telling the fiend to eat shit. He was no pawn.

  The roar of the old Indian motorcycle coming towards him should have solidified his feelings, but the wear of old sins have a way of warping things, and instead of letting Frank go by without incident, he stuck to the old ideal: that what he had done in the past had to be the right thing, because there was no going back and fixing it.

  Steve had to run less than twenty feet before he found his wife. She lay in a broken heap, smashed and ripped to tatters, so mangled, he couldn’t even bring himself to touch her, he was so fearful that wherever he put his hand, it would cause her pain.

  After a moment of shock, logic crept into his mind, telling him he could touch her because she was dead. She wasn’t going to feel anything.

  That was when he fell to his knees, stroking her hair. He wanted to pick her up, and hold her one last time, but he knew she would just fall apart in his arms, and that would make things even worse, so he just sat there in the bloody mud and stroked her hair, not knowing what else to do.

  Sarah pulled on Jake’s arm as they made their way through the dark parking lot.

  “Slow down!” he pulled back, almost slipping in the mud. “I can’t see shit!”

  She yanked free of his hand. “Mom!” she screamed into the night. “Dad! Where are you guys?”

  Something moved in the darkness in front of them, crawling up off the ground like a swamp monster. Jake pushed forward to catch up with Sarah as the shape came towards them.

  “Sarah?” Steve almost whispered.

  “Oh, thank God,” she said, hugging him. “I was so scared for you guys.” She glanced around. “Where’s mom?”

  His eyes told her everything.

  “No,” she said doubtfully as she shook her head. “No,” this time she said it with forceful certainty. “No,” the doubt was back in full force as she sank to her knees.

  Her father went to his knees with her, holding her, as they both shook with grief.

  Jake watched, his mouth dry as a desert as tears started to well in his eyes. He forced himself to look away, out in the direction of where his home was.

  His mind started to wander as the sobs of the grieving family mixed with the sound of the rain, which was starting to slow.

  “Did she know this was going to happen?” he thought to himself as he looked out into the darkness. “Did she know all these people were going to die?”

  Anger welled up inside him over his dying mother. What the hell else did she know that she hadn’t told him? If she had died sooner, instead of holding on this long, maybe none of this would have happened. The crazy bitch had some serious explaining to do when he got home.

  His cell phone started ringing in his pocket.

  Margaret could hear the old Mustang coming down the road as she sat at the kitchen table. She suddenly had an urge for a cigarette, but she restrained.

  She heard the car shut off and a door open and close. Apprehe
nsion started to bleed into her thoughts as she heard only one set of feet climbing up the porch steps.

  Johnny was wearing his typical shit-faced grin as he stumbled through the door. “Hey, good-lookin’, what’s shaking?”

  “Where’s Jake?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. After he sucker-punched me, he ran off in the rain with his bitch.”

  “With Sarah?”

  He nodded his head as he grabbed a bottle of whiskey off the counter.

  “So why did you come out here?”

  “Cause I couldn’t find your dickhead son at the carnival, so I thought I’d just come back here and wait for him to come to me, and I’d also ran out of refreshments.” He wiggled the bottle of whiskey and then took a drink.

  “And when he gets here?” she asked.

  He popped open the switchblade and smiled at her.

  She noticed the demon in the mirror on the wall, also smiling at her.

  “So?” Johnny said as he started carving a small hole in the kitchen table with his knife. “What are we going to do, while we’re waiting on your prick of a son?”

  Lloyd had just turned four years old last month, which essentially put him in his prime physically. He weighed around twenty pounds, and it was all lean muscle. His heritage was mixed, but a large part of his genetics came from breeds that had been built for speed and distance. In other words, he was making damn good time, with no sign of fatigue.

  His nose picked up something, and then his ears. He slowed down as something approached him. He inhaled deeply. It was a dog. He sniffed again and then growled. It wasn’t a dog; it was a coyote.

  It weighed almost twice what Lloyd weighed, making it one damn big coyote. Lloyd stopped and bared his teeth, lowering his head. The coyote did the same, and they slowly started circling one another. To their left was an old gnarled crabapple tree, hovering over them like an old skeleton.

  The coyote let out a low growl and briefly licked its teeth. “You’re my rabbit,” it implied.

  Lloyd replied with a sharp growling bark that meant: “I WILL fuck you up!”

  And with that they went full speed at one another. The coyote was bigger, but Lloyd was a hell of a lot smarter. He acted like he was going to jump right at him, but at the last moment went low, actually running under the coyote as it jumped through the air.

  The coyote reached down, snapping at Lloyd as it flew over him, but missing. It hit the ground, turned and went after Lloyd, who was already moving at top speed.

  Lloyd’s mind raced as the coyote chased him. He listened intently, trying to discern if it was gaining on him, if it was faster than him. It was, just barely, but it was.

  Chapter 18 Dangerous Reunions

  The headlight of the old hell-raiser was little more than a dim yellow flashlight in the darkness, flickering constantly from the vibrating engine. The bulb should have been replaced years ago, but in all honesty, Frank didn't think he'd ever be riding the damn thing again, much less at night.

  Frank knew the road well, so the half dead light didn't slow him down much. He felt a confidence on the bike that he hadn't expected. She was his old iron horse and he ruled her the same as he had twenty years ago.

  "Too old to be cocky," he thought to himself then shrugged, cranking the throttle. "Confidence of the righteous, perhaps." He smiled at the irony of that last thought, right before a rock the size of his fist came sailing at his head.

  Ducking to the left, the stone flew past, skimming his ear with a painful slash as his sudden shifting caused the back tire to slide out to the side on the wet pavement.

  "Damn," he growled through gritted teeth as the bike started to go down. He locked up the brakes, trying to slow it down as much as possible before his leg touched the road and started getting chewed on by the street.

  Once the bike went all the way down, he let go, watching it slide on as he came to a sliding stop himself. Luckily, his jeans had taken the majority of the road rash.

  "Where the hell did that rock come from?" he asked himself, slowly getting to his feet.

  "Pretty fancy riding there, Franky," a voice from the darkness said. "Here I was afraid this was going to be way too quick and easy, but here you are, still in one piece." He stepped up close enough for Frank to see his face, pale and yellow from the dim headlight of the bike that was still on somewhere behind.

  He was a vet from the war as well. Frank had seen him at the VFW years ago, when he still drank, but he couldn't remember his name to save his life, he could guess who he was working for though.

  “Hell of a night,” Johnny said as he took another long drink of whiskey.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” replied.

  “The hell I don’t!” he said. “The fuckin’ twister at the carnival, killing people and shit. It was wild!”

  “A tornado touched down?” She asked. She had been sitting in silence ever since Jake and Johnny had left earlier. Neither the television nor the radio had been on. The only other thing she had heard had been when the demon visited, and he mentioned nothing about a tornado. Only the tip of the storm had passed by her house, so she had gotten a strong rain outside, but only for a few minutes before it passed.

  “Oh yeah, and it was some serious entertainment. You should have seen this one bitch that got electrocuted,” he started laughing. “It was like she was doing the funky chicken!”

  “You’ve gone off the deep end, Johnny,” she replied.

  He backhanded her across the face, knocking her right out of her chair and onto the floor. In her weakened condition, it almost caused her to go unconscious, but she fought it off, suddenly knowing just how dire her situation had become.

  Frank slowly stood up, his bad knee threatening to give out at any moment. "So, what has it promised you for your loyalty?" Frank looked at his fellow veteran, haunted by the fact that he could have very easily been in the same boat as the vet in front of him if not for his wife and daughter, both who were dead because of him, because of his oath to fight evil. "Is he delivering all your hopes and dreams to you, while you help destroy the human race?"

  "What makes you think I had to be paid off for my loyalty?" Jack replied, moving forward. "I don't know what your boss did to get you to throw away everything to be his warrior slave, but my boss," he touched his chest with his hands. "He showed his loyalty to me down in the tunnels of Nam. He kept me alive down in the dark, where your boss never showed his scared face. How could I not pledge my loyalty to the only person who ever gave a damn about me? The only person who ever backed me up!"

  "Is that what you think it is? A person, like you and me? You are nothing more than a tool it'll use and then throw away when it no longer needs you to do its dirty work."

  Jack chuckled, pulling a large wrench from his back pocket. "And you think your boss is any different? Be honest Franky, if you would have known your daughter was going to be murdered because of your decision to be a foot soldier for the good guys, would you really have stuck with that?"

  The two vets looked at one another for a moment in the yellow, flickering light of the dim headlight. They slowly circled one another, very similar to how Lloyd and the coyote had out in the field just moments before.

  "What do you know about that?" Frank asked, his stomach going ice cold.

  "You're not that stupid, Frank," Jack whispered, touching his chest with the wrench. "Who else do you think would have done that job?"

  "You?" Frank's voice whispered back in dazed horror. "You killed her," the volume increased with each word. "You destroyed my wife!" Tears started to stream down his face. "You destroyed everything important to me because some damned creature told you to! You killed an innocent young girl for no other reason than to make your master happy!"

  Tears had started to fall from Jack's eyes as well. "Fuck you!" He pointed at Frank with the wrench. "Fuck you!"

  The time for words was over as the aging soldiers went at one another with total abandon, with no other thought than
murdering the man before him.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long damn time,” Johnny said as he grabbed a cigarette from her open pack and lit it. “You and that fucking mouth of yours.”

  She summoned up the energy to sit up from the floor. “I suppose I have been too hard on you,” she said, wiping the blood from her mouth with a shaky hand.

  He blew smoke down at her. “Like I give a shit what you think,” he kicked her in the shoulder, putting her on her back yet again.

  She coughed, trying to catch her breath. After awhile the coughing turned into wheezing as she just lay there on the floor, trying to think of what to do next.

  “No smart ass comments now, huh?” he said from above. “Maybe you’ve finally figured out the best thing to do is just lay there quietly and die, like the fucking dog you are.” He chuckled.

  “He’s going to kill Jake,” she told herself. “I have to stop him,” but her chest hurt badly, and it was an effort just to breath. It felt like there was a car on top of her, stopping her from sitting up.

  “This is taking too long,” Johnny said, walking over to the phone. He picked it up, dialing Jake’s cell phone.

  “Jake, it’s Johnny. Listen, you got to get home man, your mom is freaking out. She says she has to see you.”

  Jack held the wrench high, swinging down as the two men came together.

  Frank's fury had caused him to move forward without thinking, facing an opponent with a weapon when all he had were his fists. At the last moment, he dived low, taking a hit from the wrench on his lower back to the right of his spine as he knocked Jack's legs from under him.

  They collapsed into the mud, immediately going into grappling mode. This wasn't the first time for either of them fighting for their life in the mud and the dark, with nothing more than fists and teeth, although it had been more than thirty years ago.