The Black Death
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 Aric Davis
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
eISBN: 9781611096606
CHAPTER ONE
“Don’t crush it up, dude. You’ll just waste it on the floor.” Ron took the pipe from Jeff’s hands and showed him how it was done. “You don’t bust up crystal like this—you want the flakes in the bowl. Otherwise, what’s the point?” After dropping the jet-black meth into the glass, Ron fired up the torch and gave Jeff a look. His friend seemed almost nervous now that they were actually doing it. Dipping the fire into the pipe, Ron gave Jeff a nod, and the stem from the bubble dipped into his mouth. Ron saw his friend huffing in the smoke, which was almost as black as the flake itself, easily the darkest smoke he’d ever seen from crystal. Jeff pulled away from the pipe, not with the pale, glassy look that accompanied a normal hit of good meth, but with a grayness in his cheeks and a change in his eyes already. Ron gave his friend a look—
Wicked, bro
—then slid the glass tube into his own mouth and ran the blowtorch over the bowl.
The smoke came in at an astonishing rate, but unlike with regular crystal, Ron didn’t want to cough. He just kept sucking in, easily the biggest draw he’d ever taken from a pipe, and it just kept going. Finally, with his lungs screaming, Ron set the pipe and torch down. Even his eyes felt as if they were full of smoke. Jeff was sitting in the same spot that he had been in before, but he looked much farther away now. Finally, smoke came pouring from Ron’s lungs, and he collapsed into the chair behind him.
Goddamn intense
, he thought, and then just like the very first time he’d ever smoked crystal—a puff stolen from the glass dick of one of his mom’s many boyfriends—Ron felt that pop in his head, that rush that all junkies crave and are willing to search for until they finally die.
Free told the truth
, thought Ron as the smoke overtook him.
It really is like the first time all over again.
The walls of the trailer felt almost as if they were rushing in on Ron, but in a good way. He didn’t have a care in the world, not about Mom’s new boyfriend, Bill, saying he was going to kick Ron’s ass if he didn’t either get a job or move out, not about the hundred bucks he owed Danimal, and sure as shit not about Christine dumping him last month, the stupid bitch. Right now, all he cared about was in this room, in his head, and in the rush. All those old junkies they got to come to the school to talk to them in that last year before he dropped out had been wrong. Your buzz could come around, that rush could come back, and if anything, this time it was even stronger.
Wishing they’d turned on some music, maybe some Nickelback, Ron watched Jeff pick up the pipe again, almost drop it, and then light the torch. “Dude, what are you doing?” Ron asked the question in a voice that didn’t even feel like his own, and sure didn’t sound like it, either. He was slurring, but that was par for the course—he spent lots of time slurring. His voice was deeper, thicker somehow, and when Jeff spoke, his voice was different, too.
“I’m hitting this pipe. What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?” Jeff said in an annoyed voice. “You don’t want any more?”
“Nah, man, I’m good. I just can’t believe you’re not. I’m like the furthest from tweaking out in a long time. I feel good, really chill, but still wired up.”
Ron watched as Jeff ducked the flame into the glass and took another hit, a huge one this time, then exhaled and did it again. “You’re kind of blowing my mind, Jeff. You’re a beast!”
“It’s not working,” said Jeff as he stood, still holding the torch, smoke pouring out with the words. “It’s not working at all.”
“You need to give it a minute, man. This is good smoke.”
Ron smiled as Jeff set the bowl down. The dude needed to chill out. The smile left his face as Jeff quickly crossed the room and leaped atop him, knocking the chair over and spilling them both to the ground. Ron was trying to speak when Jeff started on him with the torch, hitting his mouth first with the MAPP gas, and as his lips fried under the extreme heat from the torch, Ron still felt pretty damn good.
***
Matt Cahill was cruising through the southern tip of Indiana, spinning wheels as his Honda CB550 motorcycle got to pushing him through towns with names like Santa Claus, Liberal, and New Boston, but with no real destination in mind. Riding the bike felt good, sometimes almost as if the Honda were an extension of his body, accelerating when he needed it to, crisply turning on a long-ago-replaced suspension. Matt had no destination in mind—he just wanted blacktop underneath him and miles behind him. The motorcycle was perfect for both.
Matt wasn’t sure if he’d been running from a problem or chasing after one for the last year or so, never really sure if he was facing it with his hands up and balled into fists or if he was backing away with his palms wide and outstretched. Either way, the time spent since being trapped underneath ice and dying had brought him more conflict than Matt would ever have guessed one man could encounter, especially when that man was he. Invariably, that conflict was
brought on by a there-but-not-there entity that Matt thought of as Mr. Dark, a presence that meant bad things were going to happen, and usually sooner rather than later. Time without meeting people, without hearing tales of woe and seeing awful things in their eyes, meant time away from Mr. Dark, and that was just fine with Matt.
Not that running away was a perfect solution, or even really a solution at all. It was just the way things were right now. But deep down, Matt knew that wherever he went and whatever he did, the head was going to catch up with the tail. Whether that meant Mr. Dark was following him or some other less visible entity was pushing him into bad situations because of what was needed from a man who had died and had been brought back to life, Matt didn’t know. Not that it mattered much, it wasn’t his choice, and hadn’t been for a long time.
Matt had been arguing with that empty stomach since bedding down the night prior, one of those nights that managed to finally cool off just enough to be enjoyed when his head hit the pillow—his stomach wanted food, but his duffel was empty. Like it or not, it was going to be time to stop soon. The thought of interacting with another person for more than the few seconds it took to pass them on one of these dusty roads made him feel half-sick.
A blast of black smoke from the bike’s engine brought Matt’s attention back full force to his method of transportation, and when a loud noise accompanied the smoke, Matt knew the decision was being made for him, and he nosed the sputtering Honda to the shoulder of the road.
Hopping off the still-smoking bike, Matt popped out the kickstand with a deft kick from his boot, then took a moment to give a sour look to his no-longer-faithful steed before checking out his surroundings. Two-lane road, last car he’d passed was a truck full of chickens about an hour back, and the blacktop itself had the look of disrepair that indicated that the highway commission wouldn’t be fixing this one anytime soon.
Matt wasn’t sure whether to laugh or get pissed off over the situation. All things considered, at least the warning signals that would have indicated the presence of Mr. Dark weren’t flashing in his head. So far, this was just plain old dumb luck. Matt Cahill was perfectly okay with dumb luck as he took off his jacket, laid it across the seat of the bike, and sat down next to the road.
The first car that passed him was a minivan that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a postapocalyptic movie, and of course, the van didn’t so much as slow. The next car not only slowed—it stopped, rolling up behind Matt half in the road and half not, and wearing signs that said County Sheriff. Matt stood, watching as the lights came on atop the car, but the siren stayed off. A few minutes later, the door opened, and a man in the rumpled brown suit that the county boys in this particular jurisdiction had been issued came out of the driver’s seat, head topped with a flat-brimmed hat that Matt could only assume was a required part of the uniform.
“Got some trouble?” The cop asked it in a way that was as much a challenge as a question, almost as if he were really asking Matt why he had to have trouble in this particular county.
“Yep. Couldn’t tell you what, though,” said Matt with a half smile, “other than she started smoking and seemed loath to quit.”
“I have an ex-wife with a similar disposition, and she was about as fun as your busted two-wheeler. You got a license on you, Mr.—”
“Matt Cahill,” said Matt as he went fishing in his wallet for his license and the papers for the bike before handing them over to the cop.
“What brings you to Spencer County, Mr. Cahill?”
“Matt will be fine, Officer. I’m just passing through, no real destination in mind.”
“All right, Matt. Is there anything on your person that I need to know about, any guns or weapons, drugs, anything that we could probably agree that a traveling fellow shouldn’t have with him?”
“I’ve got an ax in the duffel tied to the back of my bike,” said Matt, not sure what he would do if the cop tried to take it from him. The ash-handled weapon was the only remnant of his life before dying in the ice and had once belonged to his grandfather. “Other than that, I’m clean.”
“I’m not too worried about an ax,” said the cop, “as long as you’re not riding around waving it. You are missing a motorcycle endorsement on your license, though. Since I imagine you’ll be looking at a day or two in town to get your poop in a group, transportation-wise, I’ll have time to amend your ID. After all, it’s just a stamp here.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that.”
“Well, take it from my perspective, I never actually saw you riding. I do have to ask one favor—computer in the car is on the fritz, so if you don’t mind, we’ll call a wrecker and go run your license on the machine down there.”
“Sounds fine to me,” said Matt, his heart skipping a beat. He was dead to the world. What was going to come up when the cop ran his ID? If he came up marked deceased, the cop was going to assume he was using a stolen identity, and that was going to result in a lot of time and trouble. Matt shook the dark thoughts from his head, then continued speaking. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to grab my stuff off the back of the bike. Not that I don’t trust your mechanic, but—”
“Take it from me, you’d trust him less if you did know him. You can throw your bag in the trunk, all right?”