It was surprisingly hot outside for late November. The leaves should have turned already and the power of the sun should have lessened. For some reason, it didn't. Riding on the bus, the world felt like it had changed beneath his feet. James looked at the sky and saw nothing good. He knew that it was getting worse out there and there was no doubt in him that the climate was changing. In fact, he felt as if the world was being prepared for the new world to come.
There was no doubt at all, about that.
The planet was getting ready to take back the land with a multitude of dark creatures that would live and hunt in the night.
'But, who cares? Right?' James whispered to himself.
Once James found his wife, he would no longer have to think about those kind of things. Soon, he would no longer care about any of it.
It was too late now, anyways.
What was he suppose do? What was he suppose to fight for? She was gone.
It was over for him, before it had begun and there was nothing left for him to do. He had lost his wife to the night and there was nothing else in this world without her.
James looked up at the overcast sky. For the last couple of years, the summers have lasted long into fall and have lingered on longer, than the previous one.
Leaving Riker’s Island, the guards took James and the other three inmates on a prison bus to a narrow peninsula in the Bronx to move dead bodies. The neighborhood that they were going to was named Island City. They were taken there to work on the waterfront for 50 cents an hour. During the mornings, they moved the dead bodies from a truck unto a 103 year old wooden barge. The name of the red barge was stenciled on the bow in white paint, "The Lehigh Valley # 23."
In the early 20th century, old barges like these were a part of an army of ships that carried supplies, equipment and machinery to and from the manufacturing companies sitting along the shores of the Long Island Sound and the East River. For years, these factories polluted the water. These parts were no longer as fresh and pure, as when the Native Indians once roamed these same lands.
Now, this place was something else.
The manufacturing industry in New York City was dead and an economic downturn had left devastation in it's wake. The great buildings of a once great industry were no more. And now, the waters of the bay were dark and still, with a thick white fog haunting the shore.
This morning, the Lehigh Valley #23 barge had a different purpose. It's job, today, was to haul the remains of the dead out to a small island, somewhere out there. This island was where the bodies of the forgotten would be buried. They would lay out there, in their final resting place, a final refuge for those who have died without a name. Under the white sun, the bodies of the dead were placed on the barge by the inmates of Riker Island. In to the fog, they went, discarded and forgotten.
For the last two days, James worked on the pier to search for the girl or at least a part of her. He didn't know what to expect. He didn't know how she would come to him. Would she be whole or in pieces.
Sometimes, the bodies that James moved around were whole. And sometimes, they were in pieces. But all were found on the streets of New York City, discarded, unidentified and unclaimed. These bodies were of all types. All kinds of bodies were found in the streets that summer of 2012. All kinds. Women. Men. Children. White. Black. Even babies.
Some one should have said or done something. But, the world had spiraled out of control and all we could do was pretend that it was all going the same way. No one did anything. Every night, we turned our backs. And every night, we lost a battle against the beast. Every night it got worse. And we didn't want to admit that we were in war with the night, a war that was just beginning.
No one understood the night back then, not really.
Back then, the dead were just unfortunate souls and nothing else. Together, they were a string of unconnected tragedies of the great machine.
They were the forgotten.
James didn't know why people didn't looked closer at what was happening, out there on the streets. If they would have cared an inch more, they would have sensed something wrong. They would have sensed the edge of the cliff that we were all about to fall over.
Instead, they ignored the truth. They sat back in their seat to have their coffee and watch a television screen carrying someones else's dreams. But in the back of their heads, they hoped that the world would somehow just work itself out. As along as they were alright, that was all that mattered.
How the dead bodies and severed limbs were found, was simple. They were found on the streets of the great machine, discarded and laid out on the concrete as if they were being displayed for all to witness. I guessed that even the devil needed a more little recognition that summer.
Later on, the beast took whatever it wanted during the night. And no one could do anything about it.
On the streets of New York City, there were valleys of white and black bags piling up, where rats foraged for food. Every morning, heaps of bags and cheap furniture were piled up on the sidewalk on every street in New York City. Every bag sat calmly, ready to be picked up, before the day broke.
Sometimes, these bodies were found by people, like you and me, living ours days, walking from block to block, looking ahead but not really noticing anything out of place. It was easy to feign indifference and just walk away. But, there were others.
Sometimes, a garbage collector stumbled upon a dead body sitting out there on the curb, as plain as anything else. With so much trash in the street, it was easy not to notice the bodies piling up. It was easy for the dead to slip right by.
At that time, it was amazing to see so many buildings in New York City produce so much trash. There was a time, when James marveled at this city. But not any more. Instead, he looked at the mountains of trash falling over and into the street. There was so much of it that we threw away every day, so much. Now, the city he knew was gone. It was now something else, entirely.
That time in his life was before the collapse. And he did nothing to stop it. He could only watch with great awe at the great machine at work…the meat grinder. It was the meat grinder that took the girl away from him. It was the meat grinder that pulled her soul down into the bottomless night. It was the meat grinder that turned them all into a shadow.
2
A Garbage Bag on the Street
For the past two morning, there were many shadows that talked to James as he worked the pier with the other prisoners. But, none of them were her.
It seemed like everyone was finding all sorts of things on the streets of New York City during that summer of 2012.
It was inevitable that a shadow reached out to him. On the first day, he was handed a body bag to pass along. He grabbed and paused for a moment. If he needed more time with the body, he would listen a little longer to the dead. Some of the prisoners and guards noticed James speaking to himself, as if he were praying to each body.
They said nothing to him and let him be. They did so until James moved on.
As he held the black bag with a dead body inside, he imagined her face and it was as pale as ice.
Through the body bag, he felt the harden bones of her dead body. In that instant, she told him, her story, where and how she was found. And James listened. It was the least that he could do. he would listen, until he was ready to continue to search for the girl again.
One morning in the Bronx, the hydraulic compactor of a garbage truck flooded the neighborhood with a harsh sound that woke up the neighborhood. It did every morning. But this time, it sounded like the nightmarish screams that would eventually come from the night.
The green garbage truck echoed down a crayon of three story row houses. The wretched sound of the compactor overshadowed the chirping of the birds sitting on the last tree on the block.
Few residents could sleep when the garbage collectors were working. They were loud and wore green jumpsuits, working as best as they could. So they could make good time. They picked up the trash as efficiently as possible. The p
arked cars on the side streets were an obstacle and they were not suppose to be there this morning. But no one has been observing the 'No Parking Hour' signs for the last couple of weeks. The police department was too busy in other parts of the City, collecting severed body parts. The last thing on their mind was passing out parking tickets
The garbage collectors worked around the parked cars and made the best of it. They worked their way down the block, clearing the sidewalk, loading heavy duty black garage bags and kitchen trash into the back of their green truck. They lifted one bag after another, without fail.
Throughout the morning, most of the bags were very manageable and even easy to handle.
Everything was going fine, until one of the garbage collectors found a bag that didn't feel right.
The garbage collector's name was Terence and he was a large black man who wore a weight-lifting belt across his belly. Quickly, he released his grip on the bag. He couldn't help but think twice about moving it. Terence stood there, paralyzed by what he felt inside. Something deathly cold crawled over the meat of his hand.
Owen, the other garbage man, threw his bag into the back of the truck. Owen was a thin man who wore thick glasses. He grabbed another bag off the sidewalk and noticed that Terence was no longer working, no longer hauling trash.
"What's wrong big guy?"
Terrence didn't say a word.
Owen placed his bag down on the ground and went to go see what kept the big guy from working.
There was a moment of silence between them, when both men looked at the black bag. It was as if they knew what was inside, was no good. They could sense it.
Either way, the bag at their feet had caused them to get a little hot underneath the collar and red in cheeks. Their anxieties rose with a notion of what that they had to deal with, right then. Both men looked at each other and raised their eyebrows with suspicion. Owen finally spoke up, trying to gloss over it.
"What's up, T? Let's get this bag off the street and move on."
"I don't know if we can. Here. Feel this."
Owen tried to lift the bag. Then, they both took turns trying to raise the bag off the sidewalk. But, the bulk of bag never left the ground. The back of their necks shivered every tine they tried. Both men felt something weird inside, something that shouldn't have been there. Owen grabbed onto the bag again. It felt heavier than the others ones that he had collected from the cracked sidewalk, just before.
"Awe damn," Owen kicked the bag toward Terence. The bulk of the bag shifted in Terence's direction.
Terence tried to sense the bag's weight. He had experience telling that sort of thing. He was an amateur weightlifter and could easily tell that there was something inside that weighed about 150 pounds. It was too heavy to be normal trash, too heavy. He hoped that it was just a very large dog that was thrown away by a heartless owners. And that was all. Then again, he wished it wasn't.
"So what is it?" asked Owen.
"I don't know, if we should mess with this one, O."
Then, a wicked smiled appeared over Owen's face.
"Maybe, we could take a look inside."
"No, that wouldn't be a good idea, O."
For a moment, they thought it over. Then, the silence was broken by Owen.
"To hell with it," said Owen with a smile. He pulled out a plastic box cutter from his green jumpsuit.
"No. No. Don't do that. Don't."
A second later, Owen sliced open the bag.
Without warning, the lifeless body of a girl fell out of the garbage bag. She fell unto the street floor, like a slimy fish wrapped in newspaper. She reeked of death and the men were paralyzed by terror.
A second later, Ralph, the driver of the garbage truck, got out of the cab and walked around to the back of the truck to see what was holding everyone up.
"Hey..." The driver called to them. "Come on let's get this show moving. What's the deal?"
The driver saw both men standing there, like a pair of dummies, looking at the ground. At first, the driver could not see what they were looking at because his vision was obscured by the thick bumper of a Ford Explorer.
"What's the deal, guys?"
Terence and Owen said nothing to Ralph. They acted as if he did not exist. Instead, they just kept looking at the floor. They ignored the driver's question. The driver's job was to make sure that they didn't fall behind. Ralph was good at it, too. He got a bonus every time he drove the route on time. But this time, the driver failed to get their attention.
"Come on guys! Let's keep going. What's up?"
Finally, the driver followed their gaze around the bumper of the truck and toward the floor and his face dropped. He was just as surprised at what the two garbage men had found.
Now, all three men were looking the same thing. They looked at the dead girl laying in the street. Half her body was on the street and the other half was on the sidewalk. She laid there, like something the night had chewed up and spit out.
"...Damn it." Said the driver. "Why did you guys have to open that bag?"
All three men stood around the mangled body of the girl, unable to look away. They looked at her without sympathy. They gave her no sermon, no prayer, nothing for her soul to rest. No one respected the dead like that back then. Not like they do now. Instead, they gawked at her.
They stared at the victim's dyed red hair that partly covered her face. With their eyes, they followed the strands of her hair that stuck to her pale white forehead and bloodless cheeks. Her youth looked all used up. They followed a string of bruises along her neck and along the curves of her shoulders and arms.
It appeared as if most of the blood inside of her body had been squeezed out. The girls's face, neck and hands were colorless. The girl's body now looked like an empty vessel, where there had once been a soul.
Ralph called the police on his cell phone, while Terence looked into the eyes of the dead girl and it scared him. But, he couldn't look away. He had never seen anything like that in real life, only on television.
"Her eyes…" he whispered to himself.
Terence realized that it was the first time that he looked into the eyes of a dead girl and he gasped.
The girl's eyes were still open and he tried to close them with his chubby fingers. Terence pulled his hand away and her eyes reopened, ever so slowly. They would not close on their own for at least another couple of hours. Terence stood there paralyzed by what he saw. It was horrible. Her dead eyes revealed a door that led to no where.
But, he could not turn away from her. As the morning light broke across his face, a string of words crossed his mind.
Faded. Pale. Empty. But, none of them were her.
3
The Girl from a Long Time Ago
"THOSE ARE MY SHOES," WHISPERED THE DEAD MAN SITTING BEHIND JAMES ON THE PRISON BUS. On the third day, James was on the way to the pier when the dead man started speaking to him. It was the guards who made him put on the shoes that he wore that day. James thought that he would have heard the dead man once he slipped into them. But, the dead man waited for the right moment to scare him.
"Those are my damn shoes."
James spine became a little straighter, when he heard the dead man's voice. But he dared not look back at him. He dared not pay attention to a word the dead man said. He promised himself that I would not be distracted from finding the girl. Not today. Not on the third day.
James was sitting alone and away from the other prisoners. From time to time, he looked at the guard sitting behind the driver. More specifically, he stared at Officer Jesse Mendez.
"Listen to me James," said the dead man.
James ignored him and kept looking at the side of Jesse's face who he had known, since they were kid. Back in Chicago. Their mothers were friends and James and Jesse grew up in the same apartment building. They used to play together. They used to throw pennies at each other, for fun. Now, they were both older and their relationship was different.
Now, they stood on opposit
e sides of the prison gate. They had grown into two completely different type of people.
Anyways, James was surprised that Jesse still had a full head of hair. James admired it, from a far. He once thought that Jesse would be the first to go bald. But, James took a closer look at it and he could tell that Jesse dyed it. The color was too deep, too rich. It looked unnatural against the white complexion of his face.
On the way to the pier, the bus smelled of sweat the whole way.
"Those are my shoes. Listen to me James. I know you can."
James ignored him again. There wasn't anything that he could do for him. He was dead and a horrible bastard while he lived.
Officer Jesse Mendez sat in the front of the bus with a shogun rack at his feet. Two seats behind him, there was a chain link gate that separated us from guards. James sat in the middle of the bus, while the other three inmates sat in the back, talking among themselves.
The whole time, James ignored the dead man by looking outside the window or by keeping his eyes on Jesse. He noticed Jesse fidgeting with the set of keys spiraling out of his hand. They were probably the keys to the shotgun rack by his feet.
The whole time, James wondered why he could hear the dead, while everyone else was blissfully ignorant. He wondered why no one else saw the shadows rise from the dead. Why did God make him see such terrible things. To tell the truth, James never found God's special plan for him. There was a time when he believed in one, in her. But now, she was gone. And he no longer believed in any of them.
Each time he thought about it, he came to the same conclusion. It didn't matter and he didn't care to find out. The only thing that was important to him was the girl. Once, he found her, it would be over for him and this world.
"Those are my damn shoes. And I want them back."
Before James boarded the bus, he told Jesse that he did not want to wear these shoes. But Jesse made me wear them, anyways.
Purge of the Vampires (Book 3): The Night Never Ends Page 2
