Dead river, p.1
Dead River, page 1
DEAD
RIVER Brian J. Smith
Copyright © 2023 by Brian J. Smith
All Rights Reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Brian J. Smith at brian.joseph913@yahoo.com
ISBN: 9781666401035
ISBN: 978-1-66640-103-5
Publisher’s Note:
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real places, or real people are used fictitiously. Other names, places, characters, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Publications
Dark Avenues (novella)
The Tuckers (novella)
1342 Lindley Road (novella)
Dark Avenues (short story collection)
Consuming Darkness (novel)
Abbie’s Wrath (novel)
Bad Allergies (novel)
This one is for George A. Romero, Brian Keene and Joe McKinney.
Thank you for feeding me a steady diet of zombies. This book wouldn’t have happened without any of you.
Thank you.
PART ONE
I’m The Motherfucking King Of Ninth Street
HE was here but then he wasn’t. At least the real him.
Colin McCoy stared quietly across the room, his eyes fixated on the dark brown bole in the knotty-pine walls of Room 14. He’d seen it there a hundred times-or so it would seem-as if he were waiting for something to happen. It wasn’t the cleanest motel in the world; if a roach had crawled across the wall then there was no denying that.
He sat up in bed, resting his back against the headboard when that thought occurred to him. The pallid-white sheets felt cool against his skin even though they could’ve had more diseases than he could pronounce. Silence filled the room save for the mingled sounds of early afternoon traffic and the pitter-patter of his heart beating wildly in his ears.
He switched his gaze from the wall to the window facing the left side of the parking lot and sighed. It was a bright summer day with the sun shining in the clear blue sky; the wind sighed and bowed the treetops. Mid-afternoon traffic floated along the main drag running in and out of Columbus; chrome bumpers glinted like polished mirrors.
Through the V in the flimsy white curtains, a pair of teenage girls were trotting across the parking lot. They had pale skin and dark eyes; the girl on the right bore only a large strip of hair the color of hamburger while her friend wore a bright green stripe across the top of her bowl-shaped dark hair. The girl on the left wore an ankle-low black dress, a white button-down blouse and thick soled dark shoes; her girlfriend wore matching dark shoes to go with her fishnet stockings, tight black skirt and tight black ATREYU tee-shirt.
They’d worn enough jewelry to set off a metal detector and thick rings of dark mascara around their heavy-lidded eyes. He admired them in a way that only he would know because he’d been there before; it was a certain kind of magic.
He caught a tiny pinprick of light glinting in their eyes and knew that it wasn’t the sunlight reflecting back at them. It was that deep undeniable flicker a person got when the love of their life walked beside of them and held their hands as if they were ready to embrace the dangers of the world together. It triggered a memory he will never forget as long as he lived; a memory he’d tucked deep inside the core of his heart.
He and Alicia walking together through the center of the city at an annual flea market, which always took place during the first three weekends of every August, where gap-toothed yokels sold “antique” furniture or other refurbished junk for cheap prices. She’d leaned against him, flashing a crescent white smile, her boyish-cut red hair glowing in the sun like waves of molten lava. They’d never taken their hands, or their eyes, away from each other without the magnetizing pull of their love reel them back together, their skin prickling with both awe and self-admiration.
It was one of those days you never forget. There was no words to define your emotions, no CGI effect could imitate the magic behind true love.
If he’d loved her so much, then what was he doing here?
Had the sweet profound love they’d shared for seven wonderful years finally die? He’d hoped not because there was no turning back; there were no refunds when it came to the years you lost when your love for another person faded.
He’d never felt so empty before in his life. His soul was as black and invisible as the shadows of a pitch-black room. If any shred of blood were pulsating through his veins right now, it was colder than any human being could ever–
CHAPTER ONE
IF anyone knew Colin McCoy, they would say he slept like the dead but these days it was no longer a joke.
A loud groaning sound stirred Colin McCoy from a deep sleep. He sat up, opened his eyes and peered over his right shoulder passed the boat’s scarred metallic railing.
A bald skinny male zombie in a dingy white tee-shirt and blue jean cutoffs shambled toward him, his right eye dangling down from an empty socket on a pink optic nerve. A tall willowy blonde shambling beside of him in a blood-speckled hospital gown dragged her left leg out from behind her; a sliver of bone jutted out from below her knee.
His body bristling with fear, he kicked at the sleeping bag until it slid into a crumpled heap at his feet and scrambled across the boat on all fours. The boat shimmied, slapping at the water and spreading a series of concentric ripples across the surface of the water. He snatched the Colt .45 1911 from the floor next to the steering podium and fired, sending waves of recoil rocketing up his arm that stung his shoulders and vibrated his teeth.
A series of thunderous reports roared against the canopy and rang in his ears. The first bullet cut the optic nerve holding the man’s right eye and struck him in the eye socket, spraying a mist of pulpy red brain matter and broken skull fragments across the air and onto the shore behind him. The blonde hissed at him from between two rows of rotting black teeth and decaying gums when the second bullet struck her above the left eye.
As they toppled onto the shore, Colin rose up on his feet, leaped over the railing and got off the boat. He shot them again to make sure they were dead and cursed under his breath. He drew back a breath, sucking a cloud of pine sap and death into his lungs. Behind him, mid-afternoon sun kissed the railing and winked off the river’s sleek brown surface.
He massaged the pockets of sleep grit gathered in his eyes with the back of his right hand and sighed. The breeze teased the back of his neck, bristled across his skin and recharged his senses. He checked his watch and saw that it was ten minutes till three; heat crept across his clean-shaven head, warmed the back of his neck.
He hadn’t taken a nap like this in months before the zombie apocalypse started. It revitalized him somehow as if it’d lifted all of the stress and fatigue that occurred these past months off of his chest. He had to run some errands tonight so there was that; he was sure he’d be tired later on tonight once he was done.
He looked up from his watch and gazed at a rustic looking A-frame house sitting on a tall grassy hill overlooking the river, looming in the sky like a giant billboard. He licked his lips at the thought of a hot meal he hadn’t ate in months. His stomach gave a loud guttural growl to emphasize his hunger as he sauntered into the forest and whizzed into a mass of thick leafy trees standing along the shore.
He made sure to put his back to the water in case those gunshots attracted any unwanted attention. At least they couldn’t swim, which made him feel lucky to have been living on a boat that wasn’t exactly made for that; they liked to attack you in great numbers before overpowering you and then tearing you apart.
When he finished, he zipped his fly and collected a handful of rocks from the nearby edge of the shore. He walked back to the two dead zombies, hunkered down next to them and winced at the smell permeating from their motionless hulks. He slid the front of his tee-shirt up and over his nose, tucked the rocks deep inside of their pockets; there was only one pocket in the front of the dead blonde’s gown so she got the biggest one of the bunch.
He dragged them away from the shore and across the river until the water grew waist deep. He gagged until his throat felt hot and raspy and pushed them across the river. They floated away, spreading small ripples across the water and sunk below the surface one at a time. Bubbles rose up to the surface and dissipated.
He raised his arms at shoulder level and trudged across the river, his bare bony feet mashing against the soft viscous bottom. He caught the stench from the two zombies tickling his nostrils again, felt his body tighten with disgust and gave a loud gagging sound. He cradled his arm against the pit of his stomach, lurched over and spewed a stream of hot yellow vomit into the river.
Once he reached shore, he said, “They smell worse when they’re actually dead.”
Behind him, the murky brown horizon of the river blended with the murky brown color of the tree-choked hills rising in the distance. He glanced back at the tied-arch metal bridge running east-to-west above the river and looked away, feeling a sense of nostalgia jabbing at the core of his chest.
It reminded him of what the world used to be like before all of this chaos when everyone was patriotic and hard-working; now they were the kind of people who wore aluminum-foil hats and separated mind from matter with their trigger fingers and left you dead on the side of the street without a tear in their eye. It’d done him no good to dwell on the past so he brushed it away, headed back to shore and returned to his boat.
He remembered having rented his parents having rented a pontoon boat when he was twelve but they hadn’t done anything but poke at the scenery around them; he tried to drag Alicia onto it a few times, but she fought him every step of the way. It wasn’t like any pontoon boat he’d seen back in the day.
This boat could’ve housed a family of four, maybe more; green felt carpet and two plush white seats shaded by a large dark blue hard-top canopy. A metallic three-step ladder hung down from the middle of the boat, stopping only a few inches from the lake. The name ALICIA was scrawled along the front of the bow along the nearest section of the bow
He used a propane stove to heat up water and brushed his teeth; a Paul Simon song about a camera played in his head. Sporadic bursts of static burst from the CB radio fixed to the steering podium but nothing piqued his interest; the survivors knew the proper channels if they wanted to reach him.
He did his morning stretches and then three minutes of meditation. After the incident with the prick in the dark blue Explorer, Alicia had signed him up for Tai-Chi classes at the local Y. He'd been more excited about the use of the swimming pools and less about the class itself, but she'd done it before he could protest.
She’d laid her hand on his thigh and grinned. "If it doesn't work out for you, then you can quit. Do it for me, please?"
If it was so important to her, then all he could do was try.
He'd grown to like it. He’d used it to channel his anger and lower his blood pressure. At five-feet-eleven, he was half as fit as he was back in high school.
He liked to refer to Alicia as his amuleto de buena suerte, which was the Spanish term for “good luck charm”. As it is with love, it wasn’t until he’d met her that his life had changed in a way he would’ve never expected.
He’d first met her six months after he graduated from a local community college with a degree in Drug and Alcohol Counseling. Two months later, he’d applied for a position at a rehab center in Marietta with all the trimmings (a signing bonus, company car and benefits). At the age of twenty-nine, he was so confident he’d sat beside the phone in his one-bedroom studio apartment and waited for the good news.
“Thanks for coming in.” The PR guy had said. “but the position has been filled.”
Although he’d felt defeated, there was only one thing that could lift his spirits. A steaming cup of coffee and a plate of chili-cheese hash browns from Della’s Café, whose smells had come wafting into his apartment from across the street.
As a child, he’d grown up in a middle-class kind of life; he’d done everything he could to keep his grades up but he’d never gone farther than Merit Roll. His father Sam had worked a series of minimum wage jobs to keep food on the table while his mother Lydia stayed home to clean and cook, an act that she hadn’t minded at all. When Colin reached the age of sixteen, he’d gotten a job stocking shelves at a local grocery store.
After he’d graduated from high school, he’d applied for a scholarship without telling his parents. They hadn’t found out until the middle of his graduation when they’d asked everyone to stand up for recognition of their achievements. He’d remembered the look on his parents’ faces when they’d discovered their son had made them proud.
He'd loved his parents more than anything but the last thing he wanted to do was tell them he’d struck out in the “job department”. He’d also known that Lydia would’ve begged him to move back in until “things got better” and who knew how long that would’ve lasted before they got on each other’s nerves.
And so there he was—not so bright-eyed—walking through the front doors of his favorite café with a spring in his steps. The place had been another relic from an era when hot rods and poodle skirts and Archie comics existed while still trying to keep up with the twentieth-century: metal cushioned stools sitting around a white Formica countertop, wood cushion-backed booths and a jukebox in the corner.
He’d noticed her as soon as he walked in, sitting on the right end of the front counter nursing half of an omelet with salsa and a cup of coffee. Having been mesmerized by her beauty, he smacked his knee against the edge of the stool and cursed under his breath. It hadn’t hurt as much as his pride, but it was enough for her to laugh about it.
She was tall and slender, stood somewhere between five-eight or another inch taller. She looked to be in her mid-to-late twenties. Her asymmetrical blood red hair that framed a round pale face. Her oval green eyes, light-beige skin, smooth-looking nose and full uneven lips glowed under the café’s lights.
She’d worn khaki shorts that accentuated her slender pale legs, brown-leather cowboy boots (which was too much for the summers in Ohio) and a white tee-shirt with a sarcastic slogan on the front. On the stool beside of her was a dark green duffel bag with colorful stickers (a bright yellow smiley face and a peace sign surrounded by an onslaught of jovial cartoon characters) and thick dark-green side straps.
He didn’t know where she was going but he kind of envied her in a way. To just cram everything into a duffel bag and drift across the country to take in all the sights on your way toward wherever God intended for you to go. He’d wished he could’ve done that himself, but he’d had better plans on his mind.
The waitress, a sour-faced woman with pale blonde-hair named Phyllis, filled his cup and took his order. He winked at her, nodded to the redhead and stuffed the girl’s check back into the front of her apron; she winked back, and a smile drew up from the corner of her lips. The redhead was reaching into her pocket for the money when she noticed the exchange and then slid her hand back onto the counter.
She’d said. “I guess this means I should let you take me into the back, huh?”
When he didn’t react like she thought he would, she felt a little disappointed.
“No.” He’d said. “The thought had crossed my mind.”
“Then the offer no longer stands.”
On the jukebox, Blue Swede sang “Hooked On A Feeling”
“I was just trying to be nice.” He’d said. “I would’ve asked you to join me but you’ve already eaten so I won’t.”
“Are you kidding me?” She’d said. “You paid my bill and refused free sex. I’d be the dumbest bitch in the world if I didn’t offer you place at my table.”
When she’d gathered her duffel bag and parked it on the stool next to her, he felt a little uneasy. A wild strawberry scent wafted from her skin and permeated around his head, almost paralyzing his senses.
Although he’d stuttered through a few of his words, they’d talked long into the afternoon. The more he learned about her, the more he’d understood why she’d decided to do what she’d done. Her past bore all the makings of a future drifter: Mother worked a dead-end job while she performed chores around the house while Daddy drank and smoked and watched television all day long when he wasn’t gawking at her like a pervert.
She’d had enough and didn’t even leave a note.
After he’d paid his tab, her bill included, they left. She’d slipped an arm around his and took him up on his offer to tour the city of Marietta. Her smile, her voice and the joyful exuberance in her eyes had opened a whole other world for him.
He knew it’d existed, knew that it’d been there waiting for him to see it for himself at just the right moment. There wasn’t nothing he could’ve given to relieve this moment. The sky had a bottle-gas blue glow above a on vulva-pink horizon when they shared a kiss inside the booth at a coffee house called Casa Buenos.
She stayed at his place that night.
Then the next.
And then the next after that and then the one after that. They believed that their meeting had a purpose, that they were meant to give light to each other’s impenetrable darkness.
