He rolled the ball around in his hand and fingered the groove. He opened a small kit of miniature tools and ran the tweezers over the line. It’d been polished until it was perfectly flush. Yes, he thought. Very good work indeed. He felt something along one of the grooves. It’d been bent, protruding out.
“Damn kids,” Old Man Marley said.
This thing, whatever it was, hadn’t been made for kids to play with. It wasn’t a toy. He didn’t care to know what its purpose was. But it was important to him he fixed it. He liked fixing broken things.
He needed to remove the tiny bent wing of the orb. Perhaps he could reshape it so it was as good as new.
He unrolled his miniature toolkit and took out a single long spike. He placed the tools on either side of the damaged wing and pushed them both down to force the tiny panel up and gently pry the tiny panel off. The wing gradually came up. Slowly, carefully. He didn’t want to damage it further. The panel popped off with a metallic ting! and bounced across the workbench.
Old Man Marley leaned his head to one side to peer at the innards of the orb. Inside it was. . . was. . .
His mouth flapped open and his hands shook. In all his years, he’d never seen anything like this.
The outer shell was merely the protective crust. Inside were various layers. At the little orb’s heart was a core of glimmering light that spun to and fro like the molten heart of the Sun, pulsing with red-tinted energy.
Old Man Marley dropped his tools and took a step back. He almost lost his feet, stumbling back into a shelving unit. It rocked unsteadily. Some of the items from the upper reaches smashed on the floor. His mind’s filing system automatically removed them from his internal database.
The orb sat on his worktable, innocently spinning and flashing red waves of light.
What was this thing? Was it from another world? He was certain it was beyond anything the human race was capable of building. Could it be from the future, then? He shook his head. It didn’t matter how it came into being, only that it was.
His heart leaped with joy in a way it hadn’t done for forty years, releasing endorphins and all kinds of chemicals that his brain didn’t know what to do with.
His imagination raced for the best possible avenues of use for such technology. He desired to take it apart, to try to figure out how it worked but he was fully aware of how advanced it was. Take it apart and he might never successfully put it back together again.
The thought of handing it over to a company or a sinister government organization was the very last thing he would do. This was his discovery. He wasn’t about to let anyone else take it away from him.
He moved back to the workbench and picked up his tools. He would get to work right away. He would take it apart piece by piece and make detailed notes. He would—
The core flashed red, becoming brighter and more vivid. Then the orb hissed as a red gas ejaculated from the groove. It hit the old man in the face. He stumbled back and fell to the floor.
He knew something was wrong. Desperately wrong.
His ancient enfeebled heart was pumping faster and harder than it had in a decade. His lungs struggled to perform their job.
Old Man Marley scratched at his throat with his nails. Something was burning the back of his throat. His tongue poked out and his teeth clamped shut, slicing through his tongue. Blood gushed from it, running down his chin and drenching his clothes.
15.
DAMO SLAPPED the steering wheel and cursed the day he bought this hunk of junk. He’d had a problem with it ever since he bought the damn thing. He worked all the hours God sent at the crummy local supermarket to save up and get away from this hellhole known as Dustbowl.
His father had died years ago and his mother had opted to stay there as some form of misplaced loyalty. Damo, for all his faults, simply couldn’t bring himself to leave his mother alone by herself.
She passed a month ago. Damo had itchy feet ever since. Immediately after her funeral, he packed his things to leave. He had a huge garage sale and put the house on the market. He wouldn’t hang around to see it sell. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t. No one wanted to live in Dustbowl, Damo least of all.
His only real friend in town—a lifer as his parents had been—was Jack. He sat in the passenger seat.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Jack said.
“No, it’s a terrible idea. But it’s the only option I’ve got.”
“Maybe you’d be better off saving up and going to the garage. The old man probably can’t fix it anyway.”
“Pull the other one. I guarantee Old Man Marley can solve it. In fact, he told me I’d have this problem two years ago! It’s nothing serious. Just an issue with the filter. He offered me the spare part then, but I didn’t believe him and left it there. Hopefully, he’ll still let me have it.”
Jack bit his lower lip. “Maybe we should go back to yours and check it again. Old Man Marley won’t be too happy if we interrupt him.”
Jack had been terrified of the old man ever since he’d wrapped his arms about his head and frogmarched him home to his parents—all while the entire school stood watching. Jack had been something of a tearaway from a young age and that little incident had straightened him right out. Nothing like searing embarrassment to fix character flaws.
“All the old man can do is say no,” Damo said. “My only other option is the garage. Can you believe they wanted—”
“Five hundred bucks.” Jack completed. He’d heard this line of argument a dozen times already.
“That’s right. This car’s never been worth that much!”
The car was his vehicle to freedom. Its only job was to get him to Chicago or New York or Boston. Anywhere so long as it wasn’t Dustbowl.
The car bunny hopped, jerking like a rodeo bull. He could depress the gas as much as he liked but the car simply would not top thirty miles an hour.
Repairs would have taken a huge bite out of his savings. He needed it for fuel, food, and the first month’s rent somewhere before he found a job. Anything would be fine at the beginning.
Damo had a dream, and he couldn’t achieve those dreams in Dustbowl. He wanted to be somebody. He wanted to do something with his life. He was convinced everything he’d done so far had merely been a prelude.
Unless he wanted to spend six months scraping together the money he needed for repairs, he only had one option, what all people in this stinking town had to sink to when they had no other recourse.
Old Man Marley.
He knew his way around an engine better than anyone. And he’d work for free. Everyone knew this, but most still preferred to pay the exorbitant garage fees.
They pulled up outside the old man’s giant barn. Normally, the officials would have fallen on him like a ton of bricks for constructing something so large in this back garden. But no one else lived nearby and no one complained. The officials wanted an easy life too, so never bothered the old man.
Damo turned the engine off. It didn’t stop until it’d performed one last bunnyhop.
“This is one sick-sounding vehicle you’ve got,” Jack said. “Here’s a better idea: how about we perform an exorcism and dump the car somewhere? You can put in a few extra shifts at work and buy a new one. Sound good? Let’s go.”
“I’m not going until I get Old Man Marley to fix it.”
“Think about this for a minute—”
“I have thought about this. I’m sick of being trapped here with nowhere else to go. I want to get on, to live my life somewhere that isn’t doomed.”
“That means you need to be alive. Go and see the old man when he’s in a bad mood and you might not be.”
“You’re genuinely terrified of the old dude, aren’t you?” Damo chuckled behind his hand. “The guy’s got to be over a hundred years old!”
“Try a thousand years old and you might be closer to the truth. I swear this guy’s a vampire.”
It was one of many rumors that circulated the town. The old gu
y had more origin tales than the Brothers Grimm.
“Quit being a chicken shit,” Damo said.
He climbed from the car. Jack took a moment to gather his courage before he too stepped out of the vehicle. He stared up at the ugly barn, the wood bent, warped, and twisted.
“Dude even lives like a freakin’ vampire,” he grumbled under his breath.
Damo approached the barn door and pulled on the big round metal handle. No good. It was locked. He banged on it with his fist.
“Yo! Old Man—I mean, Marley!” he said. “It’s Damo. You helped me with my car a couple of years ago. I’ve got another problem with it. Do you think you can help me? I know you’ve got the spare part I need. You said I could have it, remember?”
The wind howled through the barn and kicked up a miniature dust devil. Damo banged on the door again. Inside, chains rattled.
“Looks like no one’s home,” Jack said. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. Did you hear that?”
Jack listened for a nanosecond before turning to leave.
“Nope,” he said. “I suggest we come back some other time. Like never!”
A low groan, like someone attempting to move a particularly stubborn wardrobe.
“There!” Damo said. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what? I didn’t hear anything.”
Damo could tell by his friend’s obvious at lying that he had heard it.
“You should be ashamed of yourself for not wanting to help an old man,” Damo said. “What if it was you in there?”
“I would have died a long time ago. I would have ended myself out of good conscience.”
Damo listened more intently. The sound was no longer there. A building as old and decrepit as this one must make all sorts of weird noises.
Damo pressed his face against the wall and peered through a small hole.
“There!” he said. “I can see the filter on the shelf. Right where he showed me before!”
“That’s great news,” Jack said, downtrodden. “What use is that? It’s in there and we’re out here.”
Damo moved from one hole to another, peering through them in turn.
“This door has a lock,” he said. “If I can see what kind of lock it is, maybe I can figure a way to get it open.”
He moved around the side of the barn and cupped his hands over his eyes as he peered through the slits and holes. He made out the long, tall shelving units rushing away from him down the middle of the room.
He angled himself right to peer left. And there it was. The lock on the door. He was relieved to see it wasn’t a bolt lock—those things could be nasty to get open—but a basic arm lever.
He took the opportunity to glance on the other side of the barn for the old man. He thought he saw a shadow moving there, heading deeper into the shadows, but when he looked again, it was gone.
“No luck, right?” Jack said hopefully as Damo came back around the front.
“Tons of luck. It’s a simple lever arm. We can get it open easily enough.”
But how?
It was while he was coming up with increasingly complex systems that the obvious answer came to him. Sometimes the solution could be so simple it was staring you right in the face.
He moved to the trunk of his car, opened it, and lifted the carpet. There was the spare and tire iron. He released the iron from its fastenings and approached the barn.
“Dude, what are you doing?” Jack said.
Damo identified a length of board he thought was on par with the lock he’d seen earlier. He slipped the tire iron into a gap and pressed his weight against it.
“This is breaking and entering you’re doing right now,” Jack said.
“Shut up and give me a hand.”
Jack grabbed the tire iron from the opposite side and pulled. Damo pushed. The panel was surprisingly strong. The nails squeaked loose. Jack hit the ground. Damo caught himself before he followed suit.
“Great,” Jack said. “Now I’m an accomplice.”
Damo peered through the hole left by the board and put his arm through. He reached for the lock, going by feel alone. His fingers felt something. He pictured the shape of it in his mind’s eye. He grabbed what felt like the lever arm and lifted it.
It fell from the hoop and rattled on a wooden panel. He grabbed the door ring and pulled on it. The door opened.
The wind snatched it. It careened toward Jack’s face. It snapped to a stop an inch from his nose. His eyes bulged.
A length of rope held the door a shoulder’s width apart. Damo took a step forward, then leaped back as the door slammed shut again like a billowing pair of jaws. He waited for the door to thrust open again before leaping forward and bracing the door with his shoulder. He edged inch by inch into the barn.
“The bastard built booby traps!” Jack said. “I’ll, uh, wait out here.”
He said something else, but the wind took it. It was unlikely to be anything worth listening to.
Damo turned to the large room. The tall shelving units loaded with items looked like giant totem poles. There were a great deal more items now than the last time he was there.
The door flapped open and shut in the wind like a loose tooth in a rotten mouth. Bang! Bang! Bang!
He moved for the shelf that held the pieces he needed. He hesitated before he took them. It seemed wrong to take them without the old man’s consent. Of course, he had given his consent. Two years ago. He might have changed his mind.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Damo handed the filter to Jack outside.
“Put it in the trunk,” Damo said.
“That’s it, right? We can leave now.”
“In a minute. I’m going to leave some money.”
“Money? I thought this whole thing was about saving money? He’s not going to miss this part anyway!”
“That’s not the point. I’m not a thief.”
“He said you could have it, right? It’s not stealing if he gave them to you.”
Damo’s mind was made up. He left the slit of light and proceeded deeper into the barn’s bowels. It was a dark and creepy place. Glancing one way made the shadows move, forming creatures cast by multiple globs of light.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
It was only when he moved around the final shelving unit that he saw the light’s origin. It emanated from a small ball on the tabletop. It might have been a lamp. It was white, quite beautiful, and cast flickering waves across the ceiling and walls.
Damo edged toward it. He peered at the exposed shell that created the light. He relaxed, his body relaxing. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
It was like the x-ray images of the Sun he’d seen in science class. The Sun was in a constant battle to prevent itself from exploding, to contain the incredibly powerful nuclear explosions occurring at its heart. A battle it would ultimately lose one day.
He reached for it. His fingers shook as he bent down to pick the thing up—
Clang.
At the opposite end of the shelving unit, something fell over.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Marley?” Damo said. “Is that you? This is Damo. The guy you helped with his car a few years back. You predicted something would happen, and you were right. That’s why you offered me the spare filter. Do you remember? I didn’t mean to break in. I’ll fix the wall and leave you alone. I wanted to leave you some money for the part—”
A figure moved into the outer fringes of light tossed by the glowing orb on the table.
“I like this thing you’re making,” Damo said. “If you make more, I’m sure you could earn a bundle with it. Sort of like a modern-day lava lamp. I’ll be heading out of town soon. If you’re looking for a guy to distribute—”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Old Man Marley stumbled into the shelving unit. It rocked back before coming to a standstill. Items on either side slipped and fell off, smashing on the ground.
“Marley?” Damo said, taking a step
closer. “Are you all right?”
He was within two yards of the old man now. Old Man Marley barely seemed capable of holding himself upright. He was cast in semi-darkness by the glowing orb. He looked up. The light caught his eyes. A chance flash from the orb as it performed a revolution.
Damo saw there was something very wrong with Old Man Marley.
“Marley, I think you ought to lie down—”
The old man groaned deep in the back of his throat. The same sound Damo had heard earlier. Up close, it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Marley threw his arms up and forward. It was the momentum he needed to shove himself off the shelving unit and in Damo’s direction.
Damo backed off, eyes unable to shift from the old man’s haggard face. Split-second flashes of light illuminated his gruesome emotionless face.
Damo bumped into the workbench. He ducked at the last moment. He spun around, resuming his slow backward movement. He took his wallet from his pocket and extracted ten bucks. His hands shook violently. He dropped it on the floor.
“Take it!” he said. “I’m sorry! I’ll give the filter back! I swear!”
Old Man Marley was already turning around. He pressed against the workbench as he did with the shelving unit. He was going to launch at him again, shoving off the bench like starting blocks.
Damo turned and bolted for the door.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
He needed to throw himself through the doorway at the right moment, or else it would smash into him, knocking him back into Marley’s waiting arms.
The door slammed shut again, casting him in darkness. The bright white of day flashed purple on his retinas. He aimed directly for it. The squint of light began to open up as he drew closer. He roared as he hurled himself at it.
His legs curled up behind him. His right shoulder struck the door, causing him to grunt. It didn’t slow his momentum as he sailed through the open door and crashed to the ground outside.
A pair of hands grabbed him from behind. Damo screamed, kicking and flailing at the unseen creature.
“Damo! Damo! Damo!” Jack said, raising his hands. “It’s me! It’s Jack!”
Death Squad (Book 2): Zombie State Page 5