The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy) (24 page)

The coyote reached down, snapping at Lloyd as
it flew over him, but missing. It hit the ground, turned and went after Lloyd,
who was already moving at top speed.

Lloyd’s mind raced as the coyote chased him.
He listened intently, trying to discern if it was gaining on him, if it was
faster than him. It was, just barely, but it was.

The headlight of the old hell-raiser was
little more than a dim yellow flashlight in the darkness, flickering constantly
from the vibrating engine. The bulb should have been replaced years ago, but in
all honesty, Frank didn't think he'd ever be riding the damn thing again, much less
at night.

Frank knew the road well, so the half dead
light didn't slow him down much. He felt a confidence on the bike that he
hadn't expected. She was his old iron horse and he ruled her the same as he had
twenty years ago.

"Too old to be cocky,"
he thought to himself then shrugged,
cranking the throttle.
"Confidence of the righteous, perhaps."
He
smiled at the irony of that last thought, right before a rock the size of his
fist came sailing at his head.

Ducking to the left, the stone flew past,
skimming his ear with a painful slash as his sudden shifting caused the back
tire to slide out to the side on the wet pavement.

"Damn," he growled through gritted
teeth as the bike started to go down. He locked up the brakes, trying to slow
it down as much as possible before his leg touched the road and started getting
chewed on by the street.

Once the bike went all the way down, he let
go, watching it slide on as he came to a sliding stop himself. Luckily, his
jeans had taken the majority of the road rash.

"Where the hell did that rock come
from?"
he asked
himself, slowly getting to his feet.

"Pretty fancy riding there,
Franky," a voice from the darkness said. "Here I was afraid this was
going to be way too quick and easy, but here you are, still in one piece."
He stepped up close enough for Frank to see his face, pale and yellow from the
dim headlight of the bike that was still on somewhere behind.

He was a vet from the war as well. Frank had
seen him at the VFW years ago, when he still drank, but he couldn't remember
his name to save his life, he could guess who he was working for though.

“Hell of a night,” Johnny said as he took
another long drink of whiskey.

“You don’t know the half of it,” replied.

“The hell I don’t!” he said. “The fuckin’
twister at the carnival, killing people and shit. It was wild!”

“A tornado touched down?” She asked. She had
been sitting in silence ever since Jake and Johnny had left earlier. Neither
the television nor the radio had been on. The only other thing she had heard
had been when the demon visited, and he mentioned nothing about a tornado. Only
the tip of the storm had passed by her house, so she had gotten a strong rain
outside, but only for a few minutes before it passed.

“Oh yeah, and it was some serious
entertainment. You should have seen this one bitch that got electrocuted,” he
started laughing. “It was like she was doing the funky chicken!”

“You’ve gone off the deep end, Johnny,” she replied.

He backhanded her across the face, knocking
her right out of her chair and onto the floor. In her weakened condition, it
almost caused her to go unconscious, but she fought it off, suddenly knowing
just how dire her situation had become.

Frank slowly stood up, his bad knee
threatening to give out at any moment. "So, what has it promised you for
your loyalty?" Frank looked at his fellow veteran, haunted by the fact
that he could have very easily been in the same boat as the vet in front of him
if not for his wife and daughter, both who were dead because of him, because of
his oath to fight evil. "Is he delivering all your hopes and dreams to
you, while you help destroy the human race?"

"What makes you think I had to be paid
off for my loyalty?" Jack replied, moving forward. "I don't know what
your boss did to get you to throw away everything to be his warrior slave, but
my boss," he touched his chest with his hands. "He showed his loyalty
to me down in the tunnels of Nam. He kept me alive down in the dark, where your
boss never showed his scared face. How could I not pledge my loyalty to the
only person who ever gave a damn about me? The only person who ever backed me
up!"

"Is that what you think it is? A person,
like you and me? You are nothing more than a tool it'll use and then throw away
when it no longer needs you to do its dirty work."

Jack chuckled, pulling a large wrench from
his back pocket. "And you think your boss is any different? Be honest
Franky, if you would have known your daughter was going to be murdered because
of your decision to be a foot soldier for the good guys, would you really have
stuck with that?"

The two vets looked at one another for a
moment in the yellow, flickering light of the dim headlight. They slowly
circled one another, very similar to how Lloyd and the coyote had out in the
field just moments before.

"What do you know about that?"
Frank asked, his stomach going ice cold.

"You're not that stupid, Frank,"
Jack whispered, touching his chest with the wrench. "Who else do you think
would have done that job?"

"You?" Frank's voice whispered back
in dazed horror. "You killed her," the volume increased with each
word. "You destroyed my wife!" Tears started to stream down his face.
"You destroyed everything important to me because some damned creature
told you to! You killed an innocent young girl for no other reason than to make
your master happy!"

Tears had started to fall from Jack's eyes as
well. "Fuck you!" He pointed at Frank with the wrench. "Fuck
you!"

The time for words was over as the aging
soldiers went at one another with total abandon, with no other thought than
murdering the man before him.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long damn
time,” Johnny said as he grabbed a cigarette from her open pack and lit it.
“You and that fucking mouth of yours.”

She summoned up the energy to sit up from the
floor. “I suppose I have been too hard on you,” she said, wiping the blood from
her mouth with a shaky hand.

He blew smoke down at her. “Like I give a
shit what you think,” he kicked her in the shoulder, putting her on her back
yet again.

She coughed, trying to catch her breath.
After awhile the coughing turned into wheezing as she just lay there on the
floor, trying to think of what to do next.

“No smart ass comments now, huh?” he said
from above. “Maybe you’ve finally figured out the best thing to do is just lay
there quietly and die, like the fucking dog you are.” He chuckled.

“
He’s going to kill Jake
,” she told
herself. “
I have to stop him,
” but her chest hurt badly, and it was an
effort just to breath. It felt like there was a car on top of her, stopping her
from sitting up.

“This is taking too long,” Johnny said,
walking over to the phone. He picked it up, dialing Jake’s cell phone.

“Jake, it’s Johnny. Listen, you got to get
home man, your mom is freaking out. She says she has to see you.”

Jack held the wrench high, swinging down as
the two men came together.

Frank's fury had caused him to move forward
without thinking, facing an opponent with a weapon when all he had were his
fists. At the last moment, he dived low, taking a hit from the wrench on his
lower back to the right of his spine as he knocked Jack's legs from under him.

They collapsed into the mud, immediately
going into grappling mode. This wasn't the first time for either of them
fighting for their life in the mud and the dark, with nothing more than fists
and teeth, although it had been more than thirty years ago.

They both knew the wrench could quickly end
things, so they both focused on it, trying to vie for position to either use it
or block it.

Jack landed on his side with the arm that
held the wrench. Rolling over, he got his arm loose to swing his weapon. Frank
saw what he was doing and got his arm up, blocking it, then bringing in his
other fist, making contact with Jack's jaw.

Jack took the hit with a grunt, trying to get
his arm free with the wrench. He scraped his other hand across Frank's face,
opening up three gashes with his fingernails and nearly blinding Frank.

"You fight like a bitch," Frank
growled, getting a hold of the wrist that held the wrench, pinning it down. He
then slammed his forehead into Jack's nose, crushing it.

Jack replied by biting into Frank's face,
taking a big chunk out of his cheek, spitting it back into his face.

Frank got his hand on Jack's neck, his other
still pinning down the wrench. "Her name was Lisa, did you know
that?" he asked Jack.

Jack stopped struggling against Frank, his
hand actually letting go of the wrench. "Yes," he rasped back as
Frank's hand strangled the breath out of him. "I wish I had known the
names of the other girls back in the jungle." More tears streamed from his
eyes. "How can I ask for their forgiveness if I never even knew their
names?"

Frank took the wrench from Jack's hand.
"I've got their forgiveness right here," he brought the wrench down
on Jack's skull several times, not stopping until his arm ached and started to
spasm. Pushing up from the corpse, Frank turned, throwing the wrench as hard as
possible into the nearby field, then crumpling to the earth in pain and misery
of both the past and what he had just done in the present. 

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself,"
the voice of his dead wife told him.
"Get
up and do what needs to be done before it's too late. You don't have much time
left."

Her words made Frank raise up and limp toward
the dim light of the Indian's headlight. After a couple of tries, he was able
to get the bike back up, and it actually kicked over on the first try. The old
man sped off into the night once again.

She could hear Jake saying something on the
other end.

“That’s not your fucking problem, man. Just
tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you.” Jake said something more.

“She’ll be fine, so long as she knows I’m
coming to get you, now stay put and I’ll be there in a minute.” He hung up the
phone.

He loomed over her with the demon’s knife.
She hadn’t recognized the switchblade till right now. She knew that blade well.
Its previous owner had held it to her neck when she was seventeen years old
while he raped her. His initials were still etched into the black handle: M.T.

“This would normally be where I end you,” the
demon’s voice said through Johnny’s mouth. “But that kick I gave you will do
the job soon enough. Far be it from me to quicken a painful death,” he said
with a smile.

An engine sounded in the background.

“What the hell?” Johnny said looking out the
window.

She listened as Johnny walked to the door. It
was a motorcycle, an old one. She closed her eyes as they started to tear up,
praying to God it was whom she thought it was and that he had a gun.

The screen door banged shut as Johnny went
outside. She looked right above the door where the 22 rifle was sitting on a
gun rack. Her dead husband had kept it there, loaded, so he could grab it and
shoot coyotes when they got in the yard. It had been a couple of years since
anyone had so much as touched it, but she was sure it was still loaded.

“
Get up off your old dying ass and go save
your son,”
she screamed to herself as she slowly started climbing up off
the floor.

Jake dropped his cell phone back in his
pocket. Johnny was supposed to come pick him up so he could go console his mom
who he was unbelievably pissed at. His emotions bounced all over the place.
Johnny actually sounded concerned about her, which had to mean she was on
death’s door because Johnny didn’t give a shit about anybody. She’d have to be
really bad to freak him out.

The lights had come back on, and paramedics,
cops and firemen were all over the place.

“Hey!” Jake yelled to a cop that was passing
by. “I need a ride back to my house! My mom is at home alone and she’s got cancer!”

The cop shook his head. “I’m sorry son,
you’re going to have to wait.”

“Damn it!” He wanted to get a ride from
someone other than Johnny, mainly because he doubted Johnny would be able to
find him in the middle of all the chaos from the tornado.

“We’ll give you a ride,” a voice said from
behind him.

Jake turned to see Steve and Sarah, holding
each other but standing. “We need to leave this place anyway.”

Jake’s mouth fell open. “I don’t want to put
you guys out.”

“It’s on the way, come on.”

Lloyd hauled ass toward an abandoned
farmhouse, with the coyote dangerously close behind. He could see a hole under
the porch that he could hopefully squeeze into that the coyote couldn’t follow
through.