The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy) (18 page)

The official name of the park was Bonn-James
Park, which was named after the last names of two long dead business men that
were the first people to make a killing on the railroad over one hundred years
ago in Storm Illinois. The only thing left of these two men's legacies was the
park name, which very few townsfolk knew anything about.

The three hoodlums who had agreed to meet at
this local landmark referred to it as BJ Park. Mainly from a story that Johnny
had told a couple years back that exemplified his sexual prowess with the
ladies. A story that Drew always pointed out lacked any substantial proof that
any of it ever took place. Regardless of the validity of the tale, the nickname
stuck.

It was in this park, that Johnny sat on a
pick-nick table, waiting for Jake.

"What the hell is the hold up?" he
asked a nearby squirrel, tapping his one hitter box as a desperate need of a
cigarette chewed at his brain. His swollen nose throbbed constantly, and still
dripped blood occasionally.

Drew's old Ford answered his question as it
pulled into view.

Johnny glared at the huge car.
"What--"

"--the hell is this?" Drew finished
as he saw Johnny.

The two antagonists looked at one another for
a long moment, neither knowing what to think or do.

"Pussy probably won't even get out of
the car,"
Johnny
thought to himself, glaring at Drew.

Drew seemed to read his mind, opening his
door and making his way towards Johnny. His left eye was black and swollen, his
right eye looked slightly better.

"What are you looking at?" Johnny
called out.

Drew stopped about three steps from Johnny.
"I'm looking at someone who seriously got their ass kicked last
night."

"Sounds like you're itching for round
two."

Drew raised his hands, palms up.
"Whatever."

The woman from the night before whispered in
Johnny's head.
"Be cool,"
it said.
"You don't need
this fat-ass, but you do need Jake, and you don't want to damage your
friendship any worse than you already have with him because of this
lardo."

Johnny nodded slightly, actually
understanding what the point was of the demon's words. "In all honesty, I
came out here to chill, not get in another throw down."

"Same here," Drew replied with a
nod.

"Jake is supposed to meet me out
here," Johnny said. "He tell you the same thing?"

Drew held up his cell phone. "Texted me
to meet him."

"So I'm guessing he was going to be the
diplomat and try and smooth things out with us."

Drew shrugged. "He was going to be the
mediator I'm guessing."

Johnny pointed at Drew. "Exactly, that's
what he is going to be." Johnny had never heard the word mediator before,
but he just went with it. "So, why don't we just cool our jets while we
wait for him to show?"

Drew nodded, sitting down beside Johnny,
lighting up a cigarette.

"Bum a smoke?" Johnny asked.

Drew turned on him like an angry cobra.
"Are you fucking kidding me?"

Johnny held out his one hitter box.
"C'mon man, I'll share, how about you?"

With a shake of his head, Drew traded his
pack of smokes for the box and they both lit up in silence, waiting for Jake.

With the workday coming to an end, Steve
looked down into the recently found burial pit, slowly rubbing dirt on his
forehead with his hand as his mind buzzed with more morbid evidence from the recent
find.

"You moonlight as a cat-burglar,
boss?" A voice from behind him said.

Steve turned to see one of the excavators,
holding out a bandana to him. "Your rubbing dirt on yer head."

Steve let out a chuckle, taking the cloth.
"Too busy thinking to pay attention to what I'm doing."

"Yeah, that's the problem with you smart
guys, you can multi-task." He adjusted the brim of his hat that advertised
farm equipment. "It's a lot easier for us simpletons, we can only do one
thing at a time."

Steve thought he knew all the workers on the
dig but this guy didn't look familiar. "Thanks," he said, handing
back the bandanna. "I worked construction back in the summertime when I
was in college, and I don't believe the simpleton remark nor the inability of
you guys not being able to multi-task. That was the hardest damn job I ever
had, and if I wasn't thinking on my toes at all times, I was either going to
get myself or someone else hurt."

The excavator gave him a smile. "Thanks
for the kind words boss," he looked down into the burial pit. "So
what's the dark story behind this?"

Steve studied the worker's face, wondering
what his archeologically untrained eye had picked up. "What do you
mean?"

He hunkered down, getting a closer look at
the bones and debris in the pit. "It reminds me of this old horror flick I
watched back in the eighties when I was a kid. One of those old grind-house
movies they played on cable in the dead of night, you remember when they used
to do that?"

"Sure, B-rated slasher flicks and
such."

He looked back up at Steve with a point.
"Right, right. The good ole' days, huh?"

Steve nodded with a smile. "Sure
was."

He pointed back at the pit. "This
reminds me of one that took place in South America, deep in the rain forest.
These scientists, or professors or whatever they were," he looked back at
Steve, not sure he was using the right terms.

"Sure," Steve nodded his head, not
seeing the point of correcting him for the sake of the conversation.

"Anyways, they find this isolated tribe
that no one knew existed until now. So they're all excited and shit, quickly
following them back to their camp, not even telling anyone else where they're
going."

"Sounds about right."

"Yeah, but this is when it gets really
weird. See, two of the scientists are a married couple, and not long into the
movie the shaman tells her she is pregnant, which is news to them. Being the
scientific type they just blow it off and continue to study this long lost
tribe, thinking it's just mumbo jumbo."

Steve gave a little nod, starting to get bored
with the recap of the impossible horror story. There were tribes that were
isolated from the rest of society in South America, even to this day. But that
was because that was the way the tribe wanted to live, not because they lived
in some secret valley no one could find. The simple truth of it was the few
tribes that were left were losing their homes from the violence of all the
guerilla warfare raging through those same jungles.

"So, during the research they come
across this pit, where they find the bones of children, but this is where it
gets really fucked up. Ya see, the bones show that the kids had been eaten but
not by bears or lions or anything. There is no evidence of bite marks from
those kind of teeth. It's also at this point they notice there are no children
in the tribe."

"Because anthropologist wouldn't notice
something like that until deep into the tribal study," Steve said with a
laugh.

"Right," the excavator replied, completely
missing Steve's sarcasm. "So they start getting spooked out and shit, and
that's when they come across another burial pit, with the same children's bones
and shit, but this one's new, not all old and fossilized and shit like the
first pit. That's when the natives show up and take everybody prisoner, taking
them back to this big bonfire where the shaman makes them all drink this funky
cold Medina drink that makes them all trip out and see these disturbing visions
of the past. It shows them that this tribe is made up of a bunch of immortal
monsters that stay alive forever by eating babies."

Steve's stomach got cold as his attention was
suddenly riveted back to the recap of the campy horror flick.

"Then the visions change to the future,
where we see the couples baby being born and taken straight to the cooking pot.
It also shows the other females that are in the research party being raped by
the monsters so they can eat their babies too. The vision ends with it showing
how these things keep the women for years, doing the same thing, over and over
for the rest of their lives."

Steve's eyes drifted back to the pit, as the
cold traveled up his chest and into his brain.

"Anyways," the worker waved back at
the pit. "That was what this hole made me think of when I first saw
it." His knees popped as he stood back up. "But what do I know? Every
time I hear a bump in the night, I think for a moment that a zombie invasion
has begun. Guess maybe I should just stick to watching reality TV, huh?"

It took a moment for Steve to find his voice.
"Yeah, maybe."

With a smile, he patted Steve on the
shoulder. "Have a good night, boss. I'll see you later."

"Yeah, you too," he looked back at
the pit, wondering what the name of the movie was that the excavator had
watched. He turned back to ask, but he was gone.

"How the hell did he disappear that
quick?" he asked the empty parking lot. Maybe he had been staring at the
pit longer than he had thought.

"I need a beer," he said aloud
again, making his way to his truck. It just occurred to him that he never even
got the guy's name. So much for asking around for him tomorrow, he couldn't
even really remember what he looked like. He was wearing a hat that was
advertising something, but what hat doesn't?

Drew and Johnny had been sitting in the park
for over an hour now.

"He's not coming," Drew commented.

"Lazy ass is probably sleeping it
off," Johnny added.

Drew stood up. "I'm leaving."

Johnny watched him take a couple of steps
"Smoothing
things with that fat ass might make things easier in the short term,"
the woman from last night whispered into his head.
"If the chips are
down, you know Jake will side with Drew, not you."

So it wasn't consideration for anyone other
than himself that got Johnny talking. "Hey."

Drew glanced back, not quite turning all the
way around.

"I know you and me aren't ever going to
make much of a team without Jake around, but things have gotten outta hand
lately."

Drew turned the rest of the way around.
"Think so?" He asked with a flat stare.

Johnny pushed down the anger that was
starting to boil. Like he needed to apologize to this chubby shit. He did that
last night! Not that he meant a word of it. "C'mon man, you know I was
just tryin' to have a good time, and I admit I took it too far last night. I
should have been more... considerate of you and Jenny."

Drew was speechless for a moment, utterly at
a loss. At least until the absurdity of such civil words coming out of such a
nasty mouth was fully absorbed in Drew's mind.

Looking straight up at the clouds, Drew let
out a deep belly laugh. "If you think for one moment, I believe that giant
lo--"

Johnny leapt from the pick-nick table,
landing right in front of Drew, nose to nose.

"Don't you fucking laugh at me!" He
hissed.

The humor was gone, as Drew was surprised
into silence once again. Their eyes mere inches from one another. Drew was a
good judge of character, and he had figured out Johnny a long time ago, but
something in his eyes was different this time. Anger was there, fear maybe in
exposing himself, but also maybe guilt.

”What the hell?"
Drew thought to himself.
"Who is
this guy?"

"Okay," Drew said, stepping back
and giving Johnny a chance he didn't really deserve. "My bad, but this isn't
really your way. You can understand my skepticism."

Johnny nodded his head, going back and sitting
on the table, words floated in his mind that weren't his, confusing the hell
out of him.

Drew let out a sigh. "Listen man, no
worries. We're cool, I'll talk to you later." He took another step back
but hadn't turned back to his car yet.

"That shit with the waitress, that
really pissed me off," the words came out of Johnny's mouth almost on
their own. "I really wanted to fuck you up after that."

Drew pointed to his bruised face. "I
think you got your dues on that."

"I just wanted you to understand why I
got so hostile about everything."

"I do man, like I said: we're
good."

"Back when my mom left home, when I was
just a fucking kid," Johnny looked into the palm of his hand, picking at
something. "We never knew where she went, never heard anything
again."

"Yeah, that was some horrible
shit," Drew nodded his head, trying to figure out where the hell this was
going now.

"She whispered in my ear that the night mom
left, she went with her." Johnny spit off to the side. "They ran off
on some lesbian vacation to Terre Haute. The last time Sue saw my mom was a
week later when she left her passed out at some crack house."   

"Damn, John, I had no idea Sue said any
shit like that," Drew stammered. "I never would have brought that
up--"

Johnny waved him down. "I know man, I
know. You got more class than that. Too bad I don't have the tact you do, then
I wouldn't have said the shit I did later that night."

"Did you just use the word 'tact'?"
Drew asked.

Johnny shrugged. "I don't know, I guess,
why?"

"Perhaps my extensive vocabulary is
finally rubbing off on you," Drew smiled.

Johnny looked off, shaking his head.
"Whatever, smart-guy."

"I'm heading out." Drew said with a
shake of his keys.

"I'd appreciate if we kept the Sue story
between us," Johnny said. "If that's cool?"

"Sure," Drew turned and walked
towards his car.

"Hey, can you give me a ride home?"

Drew replied without turning back. "Man,
I just did you one favor, now you're already asking for another?"

"C'mon, man, it's a four mile
walk!"

Drew waived his arm. "Fine, you'll
probably want a smoke for the drive as well."

Johnny jogged to catch up with him.
"Yeah, that would be cool."

From the shadows, the demon watched them
drive off. "Like candy from a baby," it said to the same squirrel
Johnny had been talking to earlier.

Steve drove home as thoughts of the stupid,
damn horror flick floated through his head.

"Baby eaters," he whispered.
"How could he have reached that conclusion from some old movie?"

How the worker had came to the conclusion was
irrelevant, the simple fact was he had nailed it. For some reason the natives
at the site had killed and then cannibalized their young for an as yet unknown
length of time, but the evidence was present that it had happened more than
once. It did not appear to be an isolated incident.

The remains that they had excavated had shown
a rise in the mortality rate across the board in all age groups in one of the
older pits, supporting the theory of disease, but that had yet to be confirmed
scientifically. The lab reports on the bones hadn't come back yet.

It was the newer pit that they had just
started excavating the last few months that had only bones of children. Bones
that displayed evidence of being sacrificed and then stripped of their flesh,
like cows at a slaughterhouse.

"Why would killing the children have
actually stopped this unknown epidemic that was killing the entire
population?" He asked himself. "And even if it did work, how the hell
would the tribe have been able to figure that out?"

He shook his head in frustration, he was no
expert when it came to infectious diseases and the research he had done on his
own had come up empty finding a disease that's primary carrier was human
children. He was slowly coming to the conclusion that he was going to have to
call in a real expert to look at the evidence. Which would not only be
expensive but would likely cause a media frenzy.

"An ancient, diseased tribe that ate
their own babies," Steve said with a sigh. "Sounds like the sequel to
the stupid ass movie the dig worker told me about."

He had yet to come across evidence at any
other site of infant cannibalism to the magnitude he had found at the dig. The
reports usually involved isolated incidents at best, and even those were quite
rare.

"Nothing more than scary fairy tales,
most likely." He blew out a sigh. "At least until now."

He drove down the road to his house, passing
the large rock where his daughter had lost her virginity just recently. The
same place that was the final resting place of the very answer to his questions
about his dig. Answers his scientific brain wouldn't have been able to really
believe.

The demon puma's claws slashed across Raven's
right wrist and fingers, forcing her knife from her hand, landing on a nearby
rock with a quiet tap. She got her left arm up in front of her face just in
time to meet the beast's jaws. She screamed in pain as the bones in her forearm
snapped under the puma's bite. Clenching her flesh ragged right fist into a
ball, she jammed her thumb into the demon's eye, refusing to give in to the
monster.

The puma flinched as she pierced its eye,
then snapped at her hand, catching it in her jaws, snapping more of her bones
in its maw yet again.

She didn't have another breath to scream from
the pain, all she could do is let out a hissing sigh. Her vision starting to
double and fade.

That was when her brother came surging
forward from the darkness. The monster sensed him, but wasn't quick enough to
stop him from bringing his tomahawk down on its skull with a massive crack.

The panther screamed in pain, rearing back to
attack the boy. Its claws slamming on either side of his face as it took him to
the ground. Raven saw her brother stab out at the cougar's neck right as it
covered over him.

"No!" she whispered as the demon
ripped the life from River.

The panther turned back to her, barely able
to still stand, River's knife sticking out of its neck, leaking blood like a
sieve. They looked at one another, fury and hatred in equal measure.

"He ended you," Raven spoke.
"Your curse ends here. You might have killed my people, but you never
broke us." She swallowed blood to clear her throat. "We broke
you."

The monster tried to take another step
forward, but slumped to the side, dead.

"There will be another time, little
bird,"
a voice
whispered in her mind.
"You can't escape your fate."

"My fate is what I make it, not what you
say it is," she replied right before her breath stopped and she passed on
to the spirit world.