by Jay Brenham
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
EXODUS FROM THE SEVEN CITIES CHAPTER ONE
EXODUS FROM THE SEVEN CITIES CHAPTER TWO
EXODUS FROM THE SEVEN CITIES CHAPTER THREE
EXODUS FROM THE SEVEN CITIES CHAPTER FOUR
EXODUS FROM THE SEVEN CITIES CHAPTER FIVE
Call to action
Acknowledgements
Fall of the Seven Cities
Jay Brenham
Fall of the Seven Cities
Jay Brenham
Copyright © 2015 by Jay Brenham. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is a coincidence.
Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. The author greatly appreciates the time you spent reading this story. Please consider leaving a review where you purchased the book, tell your friends via social media or in person, and help spread the word.
Brenham, Jay. (2015-07-20). Fall of the Seven Cities: Oak Penny Literature. Kindle Edition.
To my wife:
When I’m in the trough of the wave I look up and there you are at the crest, reaching out a hand to pull me up.
CHAPTER ONE
The first thing Matt Hess did was knock on the front door. No answer. That was a good sign. He never liked doing a job when the owner was home, no matter how big the house was. It always felt like he was intruding.
From the outside, the house was amazing. If the inside looked half as good, he would hit the jackpot. It was hard not to count your money before going into a house, not when it looked like this. The mansion was built on an inlet that had access to the Chesapeake Bay, with a deep water dock and enough room for a one-hundred-foot yacht.
In an hour Matt would show this house to a potential buyer. In the beginning, when he was starting in the real estate business, he never tried to sell a buyer on a specific house. He might have pointed out a nice amenity here or there, but a house usually sold itself. Hell, back then buyers were bidding prices up. It wasn’t uncommon for a seller to receive multiple offers.
The market was different now. Now everyone wanted a deal; serious offers went out the window with the economy. If a property was listed for $300,000, people were offering $150,000 and they refused to negotiate.
Matt’s company took three percent of the sales price in commission. He got half of that. That was pretty good if you sold a lot of houses but bad if you weren’t selling, and Matt wasn’t selling.
This house was different. It was listed at seven million dollars, a price tag fourteen times higher than the most expensive house he’d ever sold. If he could make this sale he would walk away with $112,000 in his pocket. That was more than enough to set him straight with his creditors and still have some green backs left over for a rainy day. This one sale could change the course of his life.
With hope in his heart, Matt walked through the house and turned the lights on, jotting notes on a legal pad about what made the house unique: hardwood floors, a chef’s kitchen with granite counters, an infinity swimming pool, and a wine cellar. To top it all off, the house had a courtyard with a large central fountain.
It was nearly an hour before he finished. What really stuck in his mind was the sailboat: a 28-foot Bristol Chanel Cutter that was waxed to a mirror shine. The name “Carver” was painted on the stern. The sailboat looked absurd in a boat slip big enough to house a yacht. Matt didn’t know much about boats, but he knew if a person could afford this house, they could afford a bigger boat than that.
Matt nervously checked his designer watch. He’d gotten it for the same reason he’d gotten the Audi: he wanted his clients to think he lived in a house like the ones he was trying to sell. He needed to establish his credibility as a successful Realtor. The luxury home market was a niche and if he could establish himself as the go-to man, he would be set for years to come. Fake it until you make it.
Time ticked by as he waited for his client. As much as he wanted this sale, he had to admit the joke was on him. It was almost noon and the appointment had been at 9:30 a.m. He’d called the number the client had given him. An orthodontist’s office answered. The orthodontist was not his client.
Other Realtors had warned him about this. With the rise of the internet, the real estate world changed. People could see every house that was for sale and, as a result, teenagers—or maybe just mean-spirited adults—would set up a showing for an extravagantly priced home. One of two scenarios ensued: either the people who showed up couldn’t dream of purchasing the house, or they stood the agent up. A practical joke.
It wasn’t that Matt didn’t have a sense of humor. One summer when he was working as a lifeguard, he’d called a pool down the road and pretended to be “with the lounge chair refinishing company.” He’d requested that the lifeguards set all the chairs out by the curb to get new strapping. It probably took the three lifeguards an hour to put all those chairs out front, and another hour to bring them back in the next day. Man, how he and the other guards had laughed at that. It had been such a great joke at the time. The next week the other pool’s lifeguards had gotten them back by tossing a candy bar in the deep end, some member’s thought it was a turd and they were closed down for an afternoon. He was busy shocking the pool with chlorine and taking samples of chlorine levels the rest of the work day. This felt different. It wasn’t a harmless summer prank among teenagers; he could have been showing a house to people who were actually interested in buying property. The entire situation was exacerbated because of his financial problems. Last month he hadn’t even been able to make the minimum payments on his credit cards or student loan debt.
He looked one more time at the house flier he’d printed out. It said, “This is an Architecturally designed home.” Architecturally was actually capitalized, as if that made it a selling point. Every home is architecturally designed, Matt thought. Fuck this place and the pretentious assholes who built it. He shut off the lights, put the key back in the lock box that hung on the front door and went to his car.
He’d bought the Audi in February, new to him but still used. It was a nice car except for the air conditioning. Sometimes it would spit out cold air; other times it would heat the already hot car. This wouldn’t be such a problem if it wasn’t hotter than hell at the moment. His appointment to get the car fixed wasn’t until later that afternoon, but he had some free time right now. Might as well drop it off.
Summer beach traffic was always bad in Virginia Beach, but today it was compounded by a crime scene along the waterfront. The radio said that one man had been killed and others were wounded. What is this world coming to, Matt wondered. It seemed that every week there was another shooting, another stabbing, or another mother drowning her children in the bath tub. He wasn’t even that old, but the world had gotten itself dangerous in a big hurry.
The heat made it feel like he was sitting in traffic for hours, but after half an hour he pulled into the Audi dealership. His back, wet with sweat, was pasted to the leather seat. The dealership would be air conditioned, he thought hopefully, a refuge from the midday sun.
“How can we help you today?” asked the young blond woman at the front desk. Her name tag said Tricia.
“I have an appointment to get my air conditioning fixed,” Matt said.
“License plate?” Her smile was almost too perky.
Matt gave her his tag number and she pulled up his information on the shiny tablet in her hand. “Oh. I see your appointment isn’t until three o’clock this afternoon. You’re a little early.”
“I know. I was hoping to drop it off now. I had a cancellation at work and was able to come in.”
“Not a problem!”
“Great.”
Tricia hit a button on the screen and her face turned sour.
“Sir, it looks like you requested a loaner vehicle, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Sir, the vehicle you were scheduled to receive won’t be back at the dealership until 2:30 p.m.”
“Can’t I take another?”
“That’s the thing, sir. All of the vehicles in the fleet are already out. Is this a problem for you?”
Matt sighed. “No, I can walk home.”
“Are you sure about that, sir? We do have a complimentary shuttle service. I’d be glad to arrange a ride for you.”
“No, I live right around the corner. I just need to grab a few things from the trunk.”
“Not a problem!”
Nothing was a problem for Tricia. He wondered if behind her perky facade she was just as miserable as he was. Was she barely treading water? One moment full of hope and then next, plunged into the depths of despair?
He hadn’t exactly been honest when he said he lived around the corner. His house was five miles away, but he needed the walk. A little time to focus on his next move would be nice.
He pulled workout clothes and a pair of running shoes from his trunk and changed in the dealership bathroom. Walking home in a suit would be miserable.
He handed the key to Tricia and left, his mind already engaged with his problems. What would he do about money? He could always get a second job. It wouldn’t be enough to pull him out of debt, but it might help him make the minimum payment.
Sweat ran down his back but he didn’t regret his decision to walk home. Thinking things out were good for him.
His mind wandered to Jennifer Glastonbury, his ex-fiancée. He’d purchased his house, the largest portion of his debt, with her in mind. It would’ve been a nice house for a family. Life was good then, even if it had been a lie. Jennifer had looked happy. Maybe she really had been.
CHAPTER TWO
Matt remembered it like it was yesterday. His friend Ryan was over having a beer before they went to an Admirals hockey game. They were going to meet up with Jen at the rink in a few hours. Ryan was the kind of guy who always perused the personal ads on Craigslist, not because he was actually interested, but because he enjoyed laughing at the absurd.
“Look at this. ‘Deployment Special.’ And only 75 dollars,” Ryan said, shifting his laptop so Matt could see the screen. The pictures started with the woman in lingerie and picture by picture she took a piece off. You couldn’t see her face, but Matt hadn’t needed to.
“That’s Jen,” he whispered.
“Shut the fuck up,” Ryan said, laughing.
“I’m not kidding,” Matt said, not taking his eyes from the screen. “That’s my god damned fiancé. I bought that lingerie.”
“Shit.” Ryan closed the window. “I’m sorry. I just thought it was funny because it said deployment special.”
Matt didn’t break down. He didn’t sob or ask why.
“Don’t confront her right now,” Ryan called as Matt left the room. “You’ll do something stupid.”
“I’m just going to the store. Come with me if you want.”
They drove to the store in silence. Matt bought a prepaid cell phone and, from the parking lot, used it to send a text to the number listed on the Craigslist ad. It wasn’t her cell number. At least, not the cell number he had.
“I’m deploying. How about tonight?”
The reply was one word. “Yes.”
It couldn’t be Jen, Matt thought. She was meeting him tonight at the hockey game.
“What time do you want me?” the person texted a moment later.
Matt squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, he texted “Can you do 7:00 tonight?” Seven was when they were supposed to meet for the hockey game.
“Yeah that’s fine with me.” Then she told him where to meet her—a seedy little motel in the bad part of town.
Two minutes later Matt’s phone rang. It was Jen.
“I’m sorry, babe. I’m just not feeling well,” she’d said.
“It’s no big deal,” Matt said. He couldn’t believe how calm his voice was. Why wasn’t he screaming? “A guy from work wanted to go anyway. I can call him up and see if he still wants to meet us.”
“Thanks for understanding. I love you.”
“Love you too. Feel better.”
Jen had opened the motel door wearing the lingerie he’d bought her. Her jaw nearly hit the floor when she saw it was Matt, but she recovered fast.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to see that post on Craigslist. Isn’t this hot?”
“Fuck you, Jen.” He flicked 75 dollars at her and walked out.
“Matt, I’m sorry. I have a problem. It’s an addiction, a sickness. I don’t love you any less than I did before,” Jen said. Her voice was pleading.
Matt didn’t even acknowledge her. He just got in the car with Ryan and went to the hockey game. That had been almost a year ago and his life had literally fallen to pieces since that night. It’s not even that he was all that upset about losing his fiancé. It was so fucked up that it was hard not to laugh about it a little bit. Maybe it was the shock of it all. It was more like he’d lost faith in humanity. He only continued to live and provide for himself out of habit.
He still went to work, but people had a sixth sense for the broken and despairing; it poisoned everything he did. Suddenly people who would have selected him as their Realtor went elsewhere. When he showed a house to buyers they didn’t respond to him in the same way. No one took his advice. His buyers bid at the wrong price and the sellers he represented ignored credible offers. His ability to make a deal seemed to evaporate overnight.
Maybe it was all bad timing; maybe he was reading into things too much. What did normal people do in these situations? Suicide? He didn’t have any family; his parents had died a few years ago. No girlfriend either, not even a cat to eat part of his body before the neighbors realized he was missing. Nobody would even care if he vanished.
For one, brief moment he contemplated suicide and then, just as quickly, rejected it. Of course he had people who cared. Suicide was preposterous, silly to even think about. He was instantly ashamed for having allowed the possibility to enter his mind. At worst, his house was foreclosed on, he declared bankruptcy, and moved into a smaller place. It would be hard but not the end of the world.
He rounded the corner and saw the hospital at the end of his road. As he took a shortcut through the parking lot, he saw a young child with a bandaged arm sprint out of the emergency room. A woman came running after him. They got into an old Dodge Caravan with fake wood paneling, backed into a parked car and sped out of the parking lot.
Matt made a mental note of the license plate and walked toward the emergency room doors to report what he’d just seen. Why would someone be in such a hurry to leave the emergency room? Had she just kidnapped that child?
As he neared the emergency room doors he heard screaming. A man and a woman burst through the doors and ran toward the street. Blood streamed down the woman’s face, her chest was heaving in long racking sobs. Matt paused, then ran toward the doors. Something bad must have happened inside. Maybe he could help. If there was a shooting or some other kind of attack happening he couldn’t sit by and do nothing.
The glass doors slid open as he reached them.
Matt barely had time to take in his surroundings—a few desks on his left for patient check-in, a long hallway in front
of him, its locking doors swung wide—then he saw a man attacking a male nurse. The nurse lay on the floor, screaming and trying to push the man away. The man bit the nurse’s nose, clenching his teeth and pulling back, like a wolf tearing meat off a caribou.
No one moved to help. People spilled toward the exit or stood watching, transfixed in horror. In two strides, Matt had reached the struggling pair. He lifted his foot and planted it in the side of the attacking man’s head. The man reeled back, his head smashing into the corner of a wooden coffee table.
Matt’s thoughts were sharp, focused on the scene in front of him and his desire to act; everything else fell into the hazy background. Blood surged in his veins; his breaths were rapid but even. Looking back, Matt would identify this as the moment everything changed. For the first time in months, he felt alive.
At first Matt thought he might have killed the man. Or at least fractured his skull. But the man didn’t flinch or cry out, just pushed himself to his knees and lunged toward Matt’s leg. Matt jumped back, kicking the man’s head a second time, sending the man back into the table and twisting his neck at an odd angle. This time the man stayed down.
More screams were coming from the hall at the end of the emergency room. A thin man wearing a pair of blue board shorts ran from the hall into the waiting room. An older woman was making her way toward the exit when Board Shorts tackled her from behind and bit off a piece of her ear as easily as a deer would pluck a berry from a bush. He leaped off of her and launched himself at a group of people standing nearby, first biting a woman’s arm, then latching onto a man’s face. It was a frenzied attack, much different from the way the man had attacked and bitten the nurse’s nose.
Matt didn’t stop to wonder where Board Shorts had come from. He didn’t contemplate whether the man was in his right mind or if he was in control of his actions. Matt picked up a wooden chair and ran at the man in board shorts. The man locked eyes with Matt and charged.
