The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy)

by Weaver, Scott

  They both knew the wrench could quickly end things, so they both focused on it, trying to vie for position to either use it or block it.

  Jack landed on his side with the arm that held the wrench. Rolling over, he got his arm loose to swing his weapon. Frank saw what he was doing and got his arm up, blocking it, then bringing in his other fist, making contact with Jack's jaw.

  Jack took the hit with a grunt, trying to get his arm free with the wrench. He scraped his other hand across Frank's face, opening up three gashes with his fingernails and nearly blinding Frank.

  "You fight like a bitch," Frank growled, getting a hold of the wrist that held the wrench, pinning it down. He then slammed his forehead into Jack's nose, crushing it.

  Jack replied by biting into Frank's face, taking a big chunk out of his cheek, spitting it back into his face.

  Frank got his hand on Jack's neck, his other still pinning down the wrench. "Her name was Lisa, did you know that?" he asked Jack.

  Jack stopped struggling against Frank, his hand actually letting go of the wrench. "Yes," he rasped back as Frank's hand strangled the breath out of him. "I wish I had known the names of the other girls back in the jungle." More tears streamed from his eyes. "How can I ask for their forgiveness if I never even knew their names?"

  Frank took the wrench from Jack's hand. "I've got their forgiveness right here," he brought the wrench down on Jack's skull several times, not stopping until his arm ached and started to spasm. Pushing up from the corpse, Frank turned, throwing the wrench as hard as possible into the nearby field, then crumpling to the earth in pain and misery of both the past and what he had just done in the present.

  "Stop feeling sorry for yourself," the voice of his dead wife told him. "Get up and do what needs to be done before it's too late. You don't have much time left."

  Her words made Frank raise up and limp toward the dim light of the Indian's headlight. After a couple of tries, he was able to get the bike back up, and it actually kicked over on the first try. The old man sped off into the night once again.

  She could hear Jake saying something on the other end.

  “That’s not your fucking problem, man. Just tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you.” Jake said something more.

  “She’ll be fine, so long as she knows I’m coming to get you, now stay put and I’ll be there in a minute.” He hung up the phone.

  He loomed over her with the demon’s knife. She hadn’t recognized the switchblade till right now. She knew that blade well. Its previous owner had held it to her neck when she was seventeen years old while he raped her. His initials were still etched into the black handle: M.T.

  “This would normally be where I end you,” the demon’s voice said through Johnny’s mouth. “But that kick I gave you will do the job soon enough. Far be it from me to quicken a painful death,” he said with a smile.

  An engine sounded in the background.

  “What the hell?” Johnny said looking out the window.

  She listened as Johnny walked to the door. It was a motorcycle, an old one. She closed her eyes as they started to tear up, praying to God it was whom she thought it was and that he had a gun.

  The screen door banged shut as Johnny went outside. She looked right above the door where the 22 rifle was sitting on a gun rack. Her dead husband had kept it there, loaded, so he could grab it and shoot coyotes when they got in the yard. It had been a couple of years since anyone had so much as touched it, but she was sure it was still loaded.

  “Get up off your old dying ass and go save your son,” she screamed to herself as she slowly started climbing up off the floor.

  Jake dropped his cell phone back in his pocket. Johnny was supposed to come pick him up so he could go console his mom who he was unbelievably pissed at. His emotions bounced all over the place. Johnny actually sounded concerned about her, which had to mean she was on death’s door because Johnny didn’t give a shit about anybody. She’d have to be really bad to freak him out.

  The lights had come back on, and paramedics, cops and firemen were all over the place.

  “Hey!” Jake yelled to a cop that was passing by. “I need a ride back to my house! My mom is at home alone and she’s got cancer!”

  The cop shook his head. “I’m sorry son, you’re going to have to wait.”

  “Damn it!” He wanted to get a ride from someone other than Johnny, mainly because he doubted Johnny would be able to find him in the middle of all the chaos from the tornado.

  “We’ll give you a ride,” a voice said from behind him.

  Jake turned to see Steve and Sarah, holding each other but standing. “We need to leave this place anyway.”

  Jake’s mouth fell open. “I don’t want to put you guys out.”

  “It’s on the way, come on.”

  Lloyd hauled ass toward an abandoned farmhouse, with the coyote dangerously close behind. He could see a hole under the porch that he could hopefully squeeze into that the coyote couldn’t follow through.

  The coyote surged forward, knocking Lloyd to the ground as they rolled and bit one another. Lloyd regained his feet and shot towards the house, allowing the coyote to get a wicked bite on his right leg.

  Lloyd yipped in pain, but he was there, he was at the hole, climbing through. The coyote got two more good bites in on Lloyd’s back as he scampered beneath the porch.

  Bloodlust carried the coyote right after Lloyd, but his shoulders were too broad to get through. As soon as Lloyd was under the porch, he flipped around, coming at the coyote from above and quickly clamping down on his throat.

  Lloyd’s teeth sank into soft tissue and artery as he started to furiously shake his jaws back and forth.

  The coyote ripped itself loose, took four steps back, and then fell over and died.

  Lloyd looked at it from the safety of his hole, and when he was certain it was dead, he climbed back out and started making his way to the Simmon’s farm again, much slower than before and with a bad limp.

  The wind blew a scent towards Lloyd from the house, making him stop and look back for a moment. Faint traces of Frank and his dead family floated to Lloyd's nose. This had been their old house. The house they lived in when Lisa disappeared. The house where Beth had hung herself.

  Lloyd bowed his head to the ground for a moment and then was back on his way.

  Johnny came out of the house and could see the motorcycle coming down the road towards him. He held his knife down behind him and went to meet the surprise visitor.

  “How many fucking people am I going to have to kill tonight?”

  The words came out of his mouth and seemed to turn right around and punch him in the face. He blinked several times as memories of the woman that got electrocuted at the carnival, the guy he stabbed for no real reason, and the old lady in the house floated around in his head.

  He looked back at the farmhouse. He had beaten her pretty bad. Why had he done that?

  “Because she’s got a mouth on her that just never stops,” he told himself.

  The anger he felt tried to boil up again, but the weight of his actions stopped it from taking over.

  “You’re not such a bad guy,” Jenny had said to him once, before he used her and threw her away.

  Then another mental punch hit him in the face as thoughts of his father crept to the surface. The image of his old man lying there, blood pooling around his head with his eyes looking in different directions. At the time it had seemed hilarious, now all it did was make his throat dry. He swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the dryness, but it didn't help, it just hurt.

  The motorcycle pulled up in front of him, stopping.

  Margaret pushed herself up off her knees, leaning up against the kitchen table. Her chest was on fire and her legs felt like lead weights, but she dragged herself forward. She pushed herself from the table and shuffled toward the wall where the rifle was hanging.

  Her knees almost gave out, but luckily she hit the wall, and was able to use it as
support. Leaning up against it, she wheezed, trying to catch her breath.

  Looking up, she saw the rifle. The bike was getting closer; it would be pulling into the drive at any moment. She reached upwards and her ribs screamed, nearly making her pass out. She held her breath and tried to ignore the pain.

  She got her hand on the weapon, pushing upwards to get it off the hooks. A ragged groan escaped her lips as the rifle came loose and almost fell out of her grip.

  The butt hit the floor but she managed to keep a hold of the barrel. Leaning up against the wall, she flipped the gun around and used it as a cane as she made her way out to the porch.

  The motorcycle had just come to a stop in front of Johnny.

  “Now or never,” she thought to herself as she raised the rifle.

  The man climbed off the bike. He said something to Johnny, but she couldn’t tell what.

  The rifle was too damn heavy for her to hold it steady. She took a step forward, so the barrel pressed against the screen door.

  “Thank God, the door latch caught for once,” she thought to herself as she flipped the safety off.

  “Is everything okay, here?” Frank asked as he put down the kickstand and got off the bike.

  Johnny recognized him from earlier at the carnival. He had been talking to Jake. They were sitting on the park bench, talking like they were old buddies.

  “I’m not such a bad guy,” Johnny said.

  “Excuse me?” Frank asked, smelling the liquor on Johnny’s breath.

  Johnny stepped forward and stabbed Frank right in the stomach.

  “I’m a bad ass, is what I am,” Johnny said with a smile, pushing Frank off his blade and to the ground.

  Johnny stepped forward and stabbed the other man.

  “Damn it,” she whispered as she cocked the rifle and took aim.

  Johnny pushed the man down to the ground.

  She held her breath, closed one eye, aimed for the back of his head, and squeezed the trigger.

  Back in her heyday, Margaret had been quite the deadeye when it came to hitting the target, but that was a long time ago, and age has a way of eroding almost everything, not to mention the agony she was in. Needless to say, her aim was off.

  Instead of hitting Johnny in the back of the head it ripped through the side of his neck, opening up a major artery.

  Johnny was just about to say something to Frank when the pop of the rifle went off and suddenly he had trouble breathing and his shirt was getting all wet.

  His hand went to his neck and when he looked down he saw the blood. It was coming out of him like a stuck pig.

  He looked back at the house and saw Margaret push open the screen door with a rifle in her hands. She sat down heavily on the steps, raising the rifle to take aim at him again.

  Johnny panicked, not knowing what else to do, he took off towards the cornfield, trying to find cover from the crazy old bitch with the gun.

  Margaret watched him run. She could see the blood on his shirt as he ran by the porch light.

  “He’ll bleed out soon,” she thought, letting the rifle drop to the ground.

  She could see the man that had been stabbed slowly rising from the ground. Slowly he made his way towards her. She didn’t raise the rifle, nor did she let go of it.

  Once he got in the porch light, she relaxed her grip on the rifle. “Hey, stranger.”

  “Are you okay?” Frank asked.

  “No,” she replied plainly.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll call 911,” he said, passing her as he went inside.

  She sat and tried to get control of her breathing, hoping the pain in her chest would subside soon. She could hear Frank talking on the phone.

  He came back out and sat down beside her. “An ambulance will be here as soon as possible. They’re pretty backed up from the tornado earlier.”

  “Understandable,” Margaret said with a nod. “So what brought you out here?”

  He shrugged. “Just a hunch.”

  She looked down at his stomach. He had his wound covered with his hand. “That’s gotta hurt.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “I saw it coming at the last minute and tried to twist out of the way, so it’s not as deep as it could have been.”

  “Ain’t we the banged up pair?”

  He smiled at her. “Just like the old days.”

  "He had your dad's old switchblade."

  Frank looked off the way Johnny had run with a quick exhale through his nose. "I should know better than to be surprised by that." He looked back at Marge. "How did you know what my father's knife looked like?"

  "He showed it to me once," she whispered.

  Frank kept looking at her, wondering when good old Max would have shown her that damn blade.

  “How much do you know?” She was desperate to change the subject. Besides, she didn't think she had much time left, and the current conversation would take up way too much of the limited time she had left.

  “That this has something to do with you and Jake, and that’s about it.”

  “He got Sarah Hendrix pregnant earlier this summer.”

  “That’s a strange pairing,” Frank said with raised eyebrows.

  “This is all about the baby.”

  “The demon has some kind of plan for this child?”

  She nodded her head. “They were anticipating that Jake would leave her high and dry, but he won’t do that.”

  “So, he’s said he will stick by her?”

  “Not yet, but he will. I’m not even sure he knows she's pregnant yet.”

  Frank looked out into the darkness. He could see Lloyd limping towards them from the field. “We’re getting too old for this.”

  She grabbed his hand. “You have to help him. You have to make sure he does the right thing.”

  He looked into her eyes. “I will.”

  “I wish things would have been different between us.”

  He rubbed her hand with his thumb. “We were young and stupid, we never had a chance.”

  “The child growing up to be something other than the demons’ pawn, that will be my redemption.”

  “Redemption for both of us,” Frank nodded.

  She smiled at him. “You climbed out of that hole a long time ago, Frank Tyler.”

  “I won’t be out of that hole until you are,” he replied.

  She closed her eyes, put her head on his shoulder, and died.

  Lloyd came up to them and sat down.

  Frank kissed Margaret good-bye and then looked at his old friend.

  “Looks like you had a rough night, too.”

  Lloyd yawned and then they both looked at the black SUV that was coming down the road towards them.

  Johnny ran into the corn, holding onto his neck as blood spurted out like a half broke sprinkler.

  “Go back and finish it!” A voice screamed in his head.

  He shook his head furiously as he fell to his knees. He just couldn’t catch his breath.

  “What a panty waste,” a voice said in front of him.

  He looked up and saw Jenny, crouching down, glaring at him.

  “What’s a matter, stud? You can only handle half conscious, teenage girls? Some old lady is too much for you?”

  He shook his head harder, trying to get up, but fell to his side instead.

  Jenny suddenly turned into the carny with the farm implementation ball cap.

  “Fucking lost cause,” the demon said, grabbing the switchblade from Johnny's hand, then turning and walking away.

  Johnny passed out from all the blood loss and a few moments later died.

  Chapter 19 Dark Endings

  The old Indian growled up to the curb with a choke before Jake killed it. He climbed off the cracked leather seat and made his way to the old folks home. He lit up a cigarette right before stepping in, taking a couple of minutes to finish it before going in.

  The old bike seemed to watch him as he burned up his cancer stick. Its paint was faded and chipped i
n a couple of places. The chrome was tarnished and even rusted in a couple of spots. He blew smoke out of his mouth, swearing he could hear oil hitting the pavement from beneath its pan.

  “Leaky fucker,” he said, throwing his smoke to the pavement and crushing it out.

  He smiled at the nurse as he walked past her, she didn’t smile back. He didn’t like coming here, surrounded by old people that acted like zombies, staring off into nothingness as they waited to die.

  “So this is what it's like in the end,” he thought to himself. “What a shitty way to go.”

  He picked up his pace, he wanted to get Frank and get him outside and away from this cemetery.

  Walking past a catatonic lady in a wheel chair, he was quite surprised when she grabbed his wrist.

  Her cataract eyes stared at him like the glare of a dead fish. "You're the reason my Drew is dead," she rasped through teeth-less lips. "You got my grand-boy killed."

  Cold seemed to creep through her hand and into his wrist. It felt as if he had plunged his arm into the arctic sea all the way up to his shoulder.

  He could've yanked free of her grip easily, probably spilling her onto the soul-less, bleached stained linoleum floor, but his arm was already numb and beyond his control from the intense cold. His arm still looked the same, but he had as much control over it as he would a frozen solid salmon.

  "I-I'm sorry. I should have been a better friend," he stammered, as her stagnant breath somehow still reached his face, even though he was high above her. "He was a good man," he was starting to shiver from the chill. "Knowing him has made me a better man. A stronger man."

  She released her iced death grip, grinning slightly. "Don't you fret, young man. You'll have your chance to put your money where your mouth is." She slipped back into a catatonic state.

  Without another word, Jake stumbled away from the wheelchair bound oracle, his mind spinning, rubbing his burning cold arm.