The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy) (7 page)

”Partners in the darkness,"
it seemed to whisper in his ear.

The clarity of the enemy's location came back
into focus for Jack. Six feet right in front of him, crouching, waiting for
him.

"Together, nothing can
stand against us down here."

He nodded his head slightly,
taking the knife from his mouth, throwing it hard into the pitch.

A gurgled choke came from ahead
as his knife sank deep into the Viet Cong's throat. After a few moments, he
moved forward, retrieving his knife.

Squatting over his kill in the
darkness, he wiped the blood from his new knife on the shirt of the dead Cong
and then put it back between his teeth. After examining the body and finding
nothing of significance, he moved on slowly through the dark, listening
intently. No noise came from the tunnels or his new mystery friend as he made
his way forward.

Sensing something ahead, he
stopped, waiting for more information to come to his ears or possibly his nose.
After several minutes of nothing, he near silently laid down, leaning up
against the right side of the tunnel. He pulled his pistol out with his right
hand, and lifted his flashlight up with his left, holding it up high above his
body. Stretching his right hand forward, he aimed at the center of the tunnel,
ready to adjust his aim at a moment's notice. He turned his flashlight on for a
fraction of a second and then back off, going more on the imprint the light put
on his pupils than the actual moment of illumination.

As the glowing image of the ahead
tunnel quickly faded from his eyes, he now knew what it was his senses had
hinted at him. The tunnel was about to fork into two different directions. He
put his revolver back in his belt.

If someone would have asked Jack
how he sensed the tunnel was about to split, because there was no way he could
have heard or smelled something like that, he wouldn't have had an adequate
answer.

"It's a tunnel rat
thing,"
would have been
his reply, and unless you were a member of that brave but crazy alumni, you
most likely wouldn't quite understand.

Moving up to the tunnel split, he
stopped, crouching down, breathing slowly as he drew a circle in the dirt with
the butt of his flashlight, waiting for the right moment to go into the correct
tunnel.

It took less than a minute for
him to decide to move down the left tunnel. In the same slow methodical pace,
he crept on for about ten feet before stopping. There seemed to be a quiet
scrapping, but he wasn't sure. It was so subtle, he couldn't tell if it was
real or just his imagination. Then something fell on his shoulder.

It scurried down his arm in the
spindly way that only a spider moved. He swiped it away with the flick of his
hand, more out of concern of a potential venomous bite than the creepy feeling
spiders give most people. Spiders were just another pest, like all other
insects, like all other people.

Then another fell on his head,
and another on his back. Brushing both off, he took a step back, realizing what
he might have stepped into. Turning on his flashlight, he confirmed his hunch.
The tunnel walls in front of him shifted and seemed to pulse. The entire
passageway was covered with small spiders with purple backs. He stood right
before the beginning of the horde, but he was more than close enough to be
exposed to a light rain of the arachnids.

He increased his pace back to the
fork, which still wouldn't be classified as anything faster than a slow walk.

Brushing the last of the spiders
off of him, he decided to head back topside. If he was gone much longer, they
might think something happened to him. Their concern meant nothing to him, but
if they sent some rookie down here after him, they might end up doing something
stupid, like throwing a grenade at Jack cause they heard him coming back. Nobody
wins against a grenade in the tunnels.   

Jack wasn't sure what it was he
had found in the tunnel that day, and in all honesty he didn't really care what
it was. For the first time in his life, he had what he considered not just a
partner, but a friend.

The demon stayed as nothing more
than a whisper in Jack's ear for the rest of the year, but in his dreams, the
fiend was much more: his ally and confident in all things, supporting all the
dark desires that Jack had hid all of his life.

"This is the playground,"
it had whispered to Jack in his slumber.
"You
can do whatever you want here and get away with it, you just need to be
cautious. Cover your tracks and no one will ever notice anything."
The
monster's words sank into Jack's subconscious like hungry maggots, chewing away
his already stunted morals, slow and sure.

It was soon after that day in the
tunnel that Jack started acting on his dark thoughts instead of just daydreaming.
It was quite surprising how easy it was to kill the hookers instead of just roughing
them up. He was a US soldier, who was going to stop him? His fellow soldiers
actually backed him up when it became an issue with the pimp. Of course they
never actually saw what Jack did to them. Perhaps the state of their dead and
torn bodies might have waived their loyalty to him, but they never went that
far. They just wanted to back up their brother in arms.

With practice, he branched out to
victims he got on his own, with no witnesses. Women, whether they were hookers
or just women that trusted him cause he was a US soldier. They would follow him
regardless of where he took them, no dark hole was wrong as far as they were
concerned, because he was the good guy, the GI hero. The dark horror in their
eyes when they finally realized what his true intent was, was almost better
than when their lives faded away as he slowly killed them.

It's not like they were real
people, they were the Cong, nothing more than animals waiting to be killed for
whatever purpose presented itself; like deer during hunting season. It's just
what they were there for. The demon cultivated this mentality, prepping Jack to
bring this ideal home. The demon was successful.   
 
  

They cruised the back roads and
dirt paths, waiting for the sun to fall. Drew took it slow on the beer, and
passed on the weed, since he was behind the wheel, while the other two indulged
with abandon. This was as close as they ever got to a designated driver.

"Such a trooper to take it slow while we
cruise," Johnny said from the back seat, pinching Drew's cheek.

Drew pulled away from Johnny's hand. "To
some responsibility comes easily." He looked at Johnny in the rearview
mirror. "To others, not so much."

"Yet another reason you never score
pussy," Johnny replied as he fired up the one hitter.

Jake couldn't help but to chuckle from the
last remark.

"Fuck both you guys," Drew replied,
lighting up a cigarette.

"It's getting dark," Jake
commented. "Let's go out to the pond."  

"Sounds good," Drew replied, taking
a turn towards the pond.

The pond pretty much was just
that, a small body of water left from the excavation of a nearby overpass
that's sole purpose was to go over the interstate, keeping small town traffic
out of the way of the fast and furious vehicles of industry and leisure.

The resulting bridge of
discrimination left a nice little valley near invisible from the interstate,
and easily accessible from the country road that didn't see much traffic on
Friday nights after eight. The closest house was an easy two miles away, and
the hill was between it and the party spot, so the travel of sound was hindered
from the get go. All this along with the small body of water made this a pretty
good place to party for a bunch of bored teenagers.

"Shit," Drew pulled
onto the dirt road leading up to the water. "We're the first ones
here."

"What's the prob,
chubs?" Johnny asked. "We get the best spot next to the pond,
now."

Drew parked. "How stupid are
you? It's never good to be the first one at the party."

"Is this the kind of stuff
you sit around and think about while you jerk off and eat cheese puffs?"
Johnny asked as he opened the door. "It don't mean shit if you're the
first person or the last person to show. What matters is what you do while
you're there, you geek." He got out, slamming the door.

Drew looked back at Jake.
"That's three things he's said today that might actually be worth
listening to."

"Yeah, he's on the roll of
his life," Jake replied, opening his own door. "Probably means he's
going to die tonight."

Drew chuckled darkly. "God,
I hope so."

Jake spit the beer out of his
mouth as he started to laugh.

Johnny climbed onto the hood of
the huge ford, leaning against the front window. "I need a cig."

Drew handed him one.

"Wow, is this a late birthday
present?" Johnny asked. "You never let me bum smokes."

"That's for the words of
wisdom that have somehow spouted out of that foul mouth of yours in the last
couple of hours," Drew said, lighting Johnny's smoke and then his own.
"Besides, that might be the last one of your pathetic life for all we
know."

Johnny looked at his two friends
as they chuckled. "Whatever, dick-heads."

Sarah and Jenny cruised down the
old dirt road in Jenny's old Toyota Celica.

"Do you think they'll really
have any alcohol?" Sarah asked, in desperate need of a drink at the
thought of Jake being at the pond.

"Drew's word is good,"
Jenny replied. "If he says they'll have booze, then it will be
there."

They pulled onto the dirt road of
the party pond as the sun hit the half mark on the horizon.

"That's them," Drew's
voice was a near whisper.

"Don't jizz in your pants
quite yet, lover-boy," Johnny replied, sliding off the hood of the old
Ford like a hungry panther. "We haven't seen the goods quite yet."

"Shit," Jenny said as
their headlights hit the other car. "Johnny's here."

"Forget about it,"
Sarah replied. "Drew will take care of him if need be." Sarah's eyes
kept creeping towards Jake, but she forced herself to look away, hoping he
didn't notice.

Jacky lit up a smoke. "The
fat kid is the smartest of the bunch and has a bigger set of cojenes than I had
thought he would. The one that's Shane's kid, whatever his name is..."

"Johnny?"

"Yeah, Johnny." Jack
took another swig of his whiskey. "He's an asshole that can't keep his
mouth shut to save his life. The other two didn't seem to really like him, so
why the hell they hang out with him is beyond me."

"Every Judas has their own
special skill set, my friend."

"What do ya mean?"
Jacky looked over at the demon, but he was gone. The bottle of whiskey he had
brought sat on the bucket instead.

Jack picked it up, looking at the
label. "Charlie's Sippin' Bourbon? Never would have guessed you preferred
the cheap shit." He raised his own bottle to his eyes. "You should
step it up to some Dead Ace--" His voice suddenly stopped as the label in
his face mirrored the one in his other hand. "Charlie's cheap shit? Damn
it, did I grab the wrong bottle at the liquor store?"

He looked down at the ground and
slowly shook his head in silence. After a moment he sat one bottle down and
started drinking from the other. "So long as it gets the job done, who
cares?"

Sarah didn't want to be the first
one to approach the boys, but Jenny was definitely going slow since Johnny was
here.

"Hey," she called  out.
"What's up?"

"Hey yourself
good-lookin'" Johnny replied. "Ready for a drink?"

"Sure," she said with a
smile, glancing at Jake, which both Johnny, Jake and Drew noticed.

Johnny grabbed a spiked lemon-aid
out of the cardboard box with a quiet but annoyed sigh that only Drew heard.
Fortunately for Johnny, Drew's mind was awash in the image of a girl named
Jenny, so he completely missed the potential pot shot at his nemesis.

"Hey Jake," Jenny said
with her best smile, quickly walking past Johnny. "Got a smoke?"

Jake reached for his pack, but
Drew stepped forward, whipping one out quicker than a gunslinger. "Here ya
go," he said, pulling out his lighter like a magician on the Vegas Strip.

"Thanks," Jenny said,
flinching from the magically appearing flame suddenly in front of her face.

This put Jake between a rock and
a hard place. He wanted to step away and give Drew a chance to talk to Jenny,
but he felt weird about walking up and talking to Sarah while Johnny did his
best to spin his web around her. That night out in the cornfield still drifted
through his head. It seemed important but also wrong, which made no damn sense.

Drew's eyes pleaded for a moment
alone with Jenny. Sarah seemed to be waiting for him to come over, which just
creeped him out. He used the only excuse he could come up with to escape both
situations.

"I gotta take a piss,"
he said, moving away from all of them.

He drained his can of beer as he
walked off into the darkness, crunching it with one hand and letting it fall to
the ground, a broken aluminum model of his life left alone in the blackness as
he walked on.

Johnny popped open a bottle of
the hard lemonade, handing it over to Sarah.

"Thanks," she replied
with a distant smile.

"No problem," he said
with a wink, which she quickly looked away from.

Jake zipped up as Johnny walked
up beside him.

"Here," Johnny said,
handing over a beer as he started pissing.

Jake took the can, cracking it
open. "Thanks," he said, turning back.

"You oughta fuckin' thank
me," Johnny replied with a loud belch.

A sigh escaped Jake. "Why is
that, shit-head?"

"Cause I'm gonna be a hell
of a friend and give you first dibs on Sarah."

Jake chuckled softly. "She
already shot you down?"

Johnny looked over at his friend
and shrugged. "Pretty much."

"Loser," Jake said,
lightly pushing Johnny.

"Careful, asshole!"
Johnny hissed. "You almost made me piss on my hand!"

"You've had worse on those
dirty fingers," Jake held out a cig.

"True," Johnny replied,
taking the cancer stick.

Jenny blew smoke out of her pouty
lips as she looked over at the boys taking a piss break. "What's Jake's
story?"

Drew looked at the tip of his
burning cigarette, that slowly smoldered, just like him since Jenny was asking
about another guy. "Whatta ya mean?"

"I don't know," she
said with a shrug. "What's he into?"

Drew looked over at Sarah as she
walked towards them. The devious gears of his brain started to move.
"Her," he said with the tilt of his head her way.

"No shit?" Jenny's
voice dripped with bitterness, a taste that went right to Drew's heart.

Sarah could sense that she was
the topic of their conversation. "What?"

"You've got an
admirer," Jenny replied.

"Johnny admirers any girl
that walks past him," Sarah replied, taking a drink of her spiked lemonade.
"Not interested."

"Not Johnny,
sweetheart," Jenny said with a smile, seeming to recuperate from the bad
news. "Jake's the one that is sweet on you."

The silence was as thick as the
humidity on that June night as Sarah looked from her friend to Drew. "Is
that true?" Her heart raced, and she hated herself for that.

Drew tried not to smile, and
almost succeeded, but it was lost in the darkness regardless. "I thought
it was obvious."

"What has he said?"

Of all the voices that could have
whispered in his mind, it was Johnny's:
"Be cool, less is more,
bro."

"It's not what he's
said," he hesitated for a moment for effect. "It's more what he
hasn't said, ya know what I mean?"

Jenny put her hand on her chest.
"Be still my heart! Does it get any sexier than that?"

"Sure it does," Drew
whispered, which neither girl seemed to hear.

"What are you going to
do?" Jenny asked.

Sarah finally found her voice. "I
don't think he's my type," she stammered.

"What?" Jenny asked.
"Tall, muscular, and hot isn't your type?"

"Shush!" Sarah hissed.
"They're coming back."

Johnny strutted back into the
conversation. "Who's ready for some drinkin' games?"

"Hell ya," Drew
replied.

"Now that's what I call a
good attitude," Johnny said, pointing Drew's way, totally missing his tone
of voice, along with everyone else. "Early bird picks the game."

It was a moment of clarity like
Drew had never had before. The alcohol played a part in the feeling, most
likely. The devil's milk was known to turn mice into paper tigers and idiots
into short term comedians, maybe this moment in time was no different, or maybe
it was.

Perhaps this was the point in
Drew's life that today had been leading up to: his growth in the ability to get
shit done all on his own. Hadn't that been proven with his interaction with
Whacky Jacky? He was on a roll and the shit wasn't going to stop anytime soon.
This was his night, at least that was what the drunken thoughts that buzzed
around in his mind said.

"Truth or Dare," Drew
said with a dark grin.

"Fuckin' A bro," Johnny
made his way over to Drew, draping an arm over his shoulder. "Sometimes
you surprise the shit out of me on how cool you can be."

It was one of those rare moments
when Johnny's words intentionally made Drew smile. He patted Johnny on the
back. "Start it up, my man."

"You got it," Johnny
said with a wink. It was the last affable words they would have with one
another that night.

The demon watched from the nearby
cornfield as the kids started partying, quite pleased with himself.

"After all this
time,"
the monster
thought to itself.
"Things are finally starting to come back
around,"
it looked hard at Sarah.
"You're on your way back to
me, aren't you, my little bird? But this time, there will be no one to help
you. No one to stand by you, I've seen to that. All those around you are either
ignorant to what you face, or too weak to defend you. Of course let's not
forget about the ones that stand around you now; children that are nothing more
than traitors in training. They will leave you in your darkest hour to fend for
yourself, for such is the way of today's youth."