The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy) (23 page)

The drunk didn’t notice the dog, but he did
notice one of the houses that had been turned into kindling.

“Shiiit,” he replied, as the cigarette fell
from his mouth. “What the fuck?”

The car drove past, but he kept looking at
the woodpile, craning his neck as he looked through the back window. The
unattended vehicle veered to the right, directly towards Lloyd.

The dog sensed the danger, glancing behind,
it saw the truck coming down on him, so he dodged to the left.

The destroyed house was nearly out of sight
for the drunk so he turned back around, noticing he was about to go off the
road and hit a tree.

“Shit!” He screamed as he over steered back
to the left, directly toward Lloyd.

When an automobile is flying towards someone,
with moments left before impact, it’s very difficult to keep calm, much less
make a smart calculated decision on what to do in order to survive.

Many would argue that making a logical choice
that required analysis would be beyond a simple canine. Of course most people
had no idea there were dogs like Lloyd.

Whether it was raw instinct, higher brain power
or just stupid luck, was unknown, but Lloyd hopped to the right and laid down.
The tires roared past him by less than two inches, the frame of the truck about
half an inch above him.

The old vehicle screeched to a halt as it hit
a telephone pole with a glassy crunch. The drunk’s head hit the steering wheel
and stayed there.
Atomic Slaughter
rocked on through the speakers about
being hungry and wanting their bitch to feed them. The jarring impact knocked
loose a power line. The black line of electric death fell towards the ground
like a discarded evil serpent.

Lloyd was up and moving as soon as the truck
was past him. Back on the trail, focused once again on the Simmon’s farm. He
didn’t see the line falling towards him, but he sure could hear it.

It sounded like meat sizzling on a pan, but
just a little different, and there was no good smell. The only thing his nose
was picking up was burnt rubber, and there was nothing good about that
unnatural smell.

It was right above him! Coming down like
angry, noisy rain. He cut to the right, just as the live wire hit the wet
pavement.

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. Apprehension 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.