“You are nothing. You mean nothing. We are old, and we are all.” Her eyes didn’t move, just kept staring into the distance.
“Crazy bitch,” Ratner said, pushing at her neck with his pistol. “Why’d you do it?”
“We like fear. We like to see it and smell it. And we like to watch the light go out when we snuff it.”
“You didn’t just kill Sidney.”
“No. We had fun. We will have more fun. Before we snuff your lights, we will smell your fear like a field of wildflowers, and you will beg us to kill you.”
She burst into motion before any of us could react, leaping from the porch. Ratner fired a shot that slammed into her back, but she didn’t notice. She hit the ground and rushed Davey, charging on all fours like a bull. Angry grunts punctuated each step. Davey scurried toward the forest, but his hurried, backwards steps couldn’t match her pace. She closed to within ten feet of him and leaped. I’ve seen videos of attacking tigers practically flying out of tall grass, and this looked like that.
Davey shot from the hip. The burst caught Renee in the chest and belly, ripping her from the air and leaving a red mist drifting down behind her. She didn’t stop, though. As soon as she hit the ground, she sprang to all fours and charged again. Davey screamed and backed up a few more steps, but Renee pounced before he could squeeze off another shot. The rifle fell from his hands, and I saw Renee’s nails sink into the soft flesh of his throat before she finished riding him to the dirt.
Ratner and I ran toward the pair. Maybe he had some idea what to do, but I was running on pure instinct. Nothing in my head resembled a plan. Renee hissed, and I heard this wet, tearing sound. Blood jetted into the air, and Davey’s screams became gurgles.
I reached them first, and I threw a kick before I could even come to a stop. The toe of my boot hit Renee in the temple, and she fell to the side. She rolled into a crouch and hissed. Backing up, I lifted my hands to my throat.
A pair of shots rang out. One caught Renee in the neck, spraying crimson, and the other punched through her skull. She dropped and stayed down, thank God.
I dropped to my knees beside Davey. My plan was to search through the ruin of his throat for his carotid and pinch it off, but his glassy eyes told me it was already too late. His blood flow had already eased from a violent surge to a weak trickle. He was gone.
From my knees, I watched as Ratner walked across the yard to stand over Renee’s body. He pumped three more bullets into her head. I didn’t even care how much the shots made my ears hurt.
Neither of us wanted to dig another grave, so we dragged their bodies into the woods and left them. We shut the door to the room where Sidney died.
Maybe we’ll try to give all of them a burial tomorrow. I think we might just dig one big hole and put all three inside. It’s not the most respectful idea, but I’m so tired of digging. Pretty sure Ratner is, too.
August 24th
Long talk with Ratner today. We should have been burying bodies, but neither of us has the strength or desire. Instead, we discussed leaving, just ditching the safe house and scattering to the winds. No orders had come in, but it wasn’t as though we still had a full team. Like it or not, we had to admit our usefulness was pretty much screwed.
We sat on the couch, the same place Davey had wrestled Renee’s hands from her face, and passed a bottle of bourbon back and forth. Because why not? We’d checked the news, and things were bad. Lot of our folks getting rounded up. For all we could figure, the feds might know about our cabin.
“I wonder if Jenny’s okay,” I said. “Her and the kids…I told them I was running out when I came up here. Followed the protocols to the letter, right? Now, I just want to know she’s all right. I want to hear her voice, even if it’s just her calling me an asshole.”
Ratner took a pull of the bottle and frowned as he smiled. “Yeah, that would be nice. Told ‘em you were skipping out, huh?”
“Uh-huh. You told your wife something different?”
For a long stretch of seconds, he didn’t answer. He sat beside me, motionless as a corpse. When he finally moved, it was to lift the bottle to his lips again. “Um, no. I mean yeah. Sure, I told her the same thing.”
“Mitchell should’ve done that.”
“Yeah. Guess you’re right about that.”
The bottle appeared in my hand, and I took a healthy swallow. Liquor burned a path down my throat and settled into my belly. The world canted to one side and then righted itself. “I think I’m going to go home tomorrow,” I said.
“Fuck the orders we don’t have, right?”
“Pretty much, yeah. It’s the last couple of days, y’know? Really messed up the way I look at all this. I don’t want to wait until we hit zero and then go see if Jenny and the kids are okay. I want to know now, and I want to fix things.”
“Fixing things is good,” Ratner said. “Got a few things I wouldn’t mind fixing.”
“You can. Not like one person can do a job two can’t.”
“You got a point, buddy. Got a real good point.” Grunting, he leaned forward and then stood on unsteady legs. He stretched, and I heard his backbone pop in a few places. “I’m going for a walk.”
“I don’t think—”
“Going for a walk. Don’t worry about it.” And then he stumbled out the front door and into the night.
I sat on the couch for a long time, my hand growing limp around the bottle’s neck. My head felt soft and heavy, and the shadows in the cabin’s living room writhed over the walls. With each passing minute, my eyelids grew heavier. I thought about Ratner, about what he might have meant and if he was safe alone, but I couldn’t seem to get off my ass and go after him. All I wanted was my bed.
The bottle in my fist, I climbed off the couch and shambled toward my bedroom. A bad smell filled the hallway, and I remembered Sidney stretched across the room at the end of the hall. I decided that once I woke up and shook off what would be a terrible hangover, I’d decide to either clean the room or leave. I think leaving’s the best choice.
I’m not sure why, but I went to the end of the hall and placed a hand on the door. In my head, I saw Sidney’s ruined body, saw her dead eyes stare at the ceiling. She didn’t deserve such a fate. When we signed on, we knew death was an option, but there’s a big difference between being martyred by the government and being ripped to pieces by a psycho.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I leaned forward and rested my forehead against the door. Was Renee a psycho? A part of me wanted to say so, but the rest of me thought about that shack and the heart nailed inside the dresser, the mad impacts and scrabbling of something trying to break in. I’d been in the woods a couple of hours and experienced that. Renee had been out longer than a day. What if something got to her? Changed her?
We are old, and we are all.
A shiver ran through me as I remembered the words and the voice that spoke them. I was still thinking about the voice when I heard another sound, something soft and rhythmic, keeping steady, determined time on the other side of the door. My eyes watered, and tears spilled down my cheeks. I whined, but the sound wouldn’t stop. Even in pieces, even with her heart nailed to the floor, Sidney’s pulse was strong.
Last Day
I don’t know how much time I have (probably not long), so I’ll write as quickly as I can. Yeah, I’m that asshole, the one who should leave but keeps writing instead. Trust me, I’d leave if it was an option. The banging on the door says otherwise. That scrabbling is back, too. It tells me it’s not the FBI or even the state police. I really wish it was one or the other.
I was packing my bag to leave when the first impact slammed into the front door. So at least I can say I was trying to leave. I’m not that idiot.
Didn’t see anything when I looked out the windows, not that I expected to. All the vehicles are still outside, but there’s no sign of Ratner. I’m guessing his walk didn’t turn out well.
Shit. Just heard the door splinter. Not much time at all.
I don’t know what that means, but I think I’ll find out soon.
I love you, Jenny. I love you and the kids, and I’m so sorry I had to lie to you.
The door just broke apart. Scrabbling on my bedroom door now.
We were supposed to be heroes. Save the whole damn country. Didn’t work out so well.
Reaching zero. Here it comes.
Goodbye.
PEEKING THROUGH THE CLOUDS:
AN AFTERWORD AND STORY NOTES
by Nate Southard
So, here we are. I hope you enjoyed yourself. If you didn’t, I hope you have the decency to keep it to yourself. Lie to your friends; tell them you loved it. I’ll give you a dollar.
Of course, I don’t mind telling you folks the truth, even when it’s ugly. In the spring of 2014, I was just about done. At that point, I’d been publishing almost ten years. Now, if you ask a great writer—or a great comedian, chef, athlete, etcetera—they’ll say you spend the first decade of your chosen vocation pretty much sucking. You’re still building your chops and finding your voice, paying your dues as you lay the foundation for the pitiful, broken existence you’ll eventually call Your Career. I knew I was coming up on the end of that, and I knew I was heads and shoulders better than I’d been back in 2004.
The only problem was I was still positive I sucked. Hard.
I was on my way to Norman, Oklahoma with my friends Shane McKenzie and Gabino Iglesias for a Noir at the Bar event. The drive up was great, because Shane and Gabino are great company. We listened to standup comedy the entire way and created a running joke about Carl’s Jr, ham sandwiches, and fried pies that kept us in stitches for seven hours (trust me…you had to be there). What they didn’t know was that I was pretty sure this would be my last hurrah, a quick reading to promote my crime novel Pale Horses, and then I would quit. I still didn’t think my writing was any good, and the endlessly frustrating cycle of write novel, try to land agent, fail to land agent, try to find publisher, maybe find publisher, try to promote book when bookstores won’t stock said book was wearing me down.
And the thing was, I knew that was the game. I never lost sight of that. You suck for ten years, and, if you’re lucky, you come out of those ten years sucking a little less. Part of the problem was that I’d spent the past several years dealing with serious depression issues. Another part was my growing envy of Shane, who seemed to succeed at everything he decided to try (look...I’m an asshole, and I’m petty). Seriously, last week he said he wanted to try standup comedy. I look forward to his first HBO special, coming sometime shortly after Christmas, I’m sure.
But I digress. The point is, I was sad and broken and exhausted, and I didn’t want to do this shit anymore. The fact that I’d started referring to writing as This Shit is probably the most indicative thing I’ve written so far. So, I’d go to Norman, read the first chapter of Pale Horses, go sleep in the hotel, and then drive back the next morning and start my new life without This Shit. Or at least without the mountain of self-pity I seemed to be carrying around.
Then, I met J. David Osborne, owner/head honcho of Broken River Books. James had set up the Norman event, and exuded this strange kind of casual enthusiasm. It took me a while to catch on that there was anything else going on beside him just being a nice guy, but once I did, I was infected by it. He believed in this event, and I wanted to do right by him. Shit, I wanted to impress him. Back in high school, I was in a band, one of those mediocre cover bands that you’re sure is amazing at the time. As we all hung out in this Oklahoma dive bar, waiting to start our readings, I started to feel like the guy who’d been the drummer in that band, the guy who, when setting up his drums in a friend’s basement or barn, has a single, all-powerful goal in mind: let’s put on a goddamn show.
I decided that, in addition to reading the first chapter of Pale Horses, I’d read the first part of a story called “The Broken Ballad of Dr. Fantastic.” Serving as the middle chapter of my novel The Slab City Event, “Dr. Fantastic” is a pretty transparent stand-in for Hunter S. Thompson, and the story follows what happens when zombies attack the squat where he’s living in the middle of the desert. Let’s be clear…it’s a ridiculous story. It’s a fun one, however, full of all sorts of interesting language and phrasing, so I decided to read it.
And I read the shit out of it. I threw a lot into that reading, riding those words like waves. For the first time, something to do with writing was fun again, and it was because I wanted to show this quietly enthusiastic guy that I got it, that I was there to have a good time and help in any way I could.
When I stepped away from the mic, I received more applause than I’ve ever experienced in my life. Osborne grabbed the mic and said something like, “Man, what the hell was that?”
What was it? It was the best I could do. And the least I could do. Because when we realize we love writing, that we love the process of creating, the best we can do is the very least we owe the world. Me? I love writing again. So I’ll keep doing my best. Shit, it’s the least I can do.
STORY NOTES
He Stepped Through
The last season of The Shield remains, in my mind, one of the greatest single seasons in the history of television. There’s so much happening in those final episodes, and the tension just keeps ratcheting higher and higher.
Early in the season, however, there were a few scenes that really snagged my imagination. One was the house filled with bodies, and the other was the body that got dragged down the street, leaving a long smear of blood. In the show, they’re both used as examples of escalating violence in the community, but I kept coming back to the idea that it might be cool if they were part of something greater. Imagine if that last season of The Shield kept getting darker and darker, and then the last scene goes full-blown supernatural. Okay, so there would have been a million cries of bullshit, but I would have dug the hell out of it.
So I wrote He Stepped Through. Bloodletting Books released it as a chapbook back in 2010, and I’ve been looking for the right way to re-release it.
For this book, I made some pretty massive rewrites to He Stepped Through. Most notably, the original version of this story was pretty blatantly Lovecraftian, complete with Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep references and lots of sentences that were mostly consonants. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, but a few years ago I wrote a novel, Down, that introduced something called The Darkness Below. Ever since, I’d kept kicking around the idea of expanding on that idea. I’m still not sure I want to pull the trigger and call it a full-blown mythos, but I’m very much enjoying playing around with The Darkness Below and seeing what I can do with it.
Something Went Wrong
In 2011, I went through a breakup. It wasn’t a bad breakup with lots of screaming or anything. To tell the truth, my ex is still my best friend. At the time, however, it felt like the end of the world. After eleven years, we’d fallen apart, and both of us felt like that meant we’d failed at life in some fundamental way. If you’ve never experienced it, I don’t know how to explain it to you. It big and horrible and it takes over your entire life.
Obviously, this plays a big part in the story. I needed to work through some things, so I did. The rest of the story is an interesting patchwork of other ideas I’d had over the years. The body parts left in paper bags stuff has been in my head since 2006, and I just hadn’t been able to make it fit anywhere else. There was also a restaurant on Lake Travis called Carlos and Charlie’s that ended up going out of business after a years-long draught. They were still clinging to life when I first wrote this.
Both this and He Stepped Through are good examples of the kind of stories I really enjoy. I like when there are several plot threads that weave in and out of each other until you realize it’s all telling the same story. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but, when it does, it’s a thrill. Hopefully, these worked for you.
Deeper Waters
Meet Charlie Crawford. Redneck. Asshole. Ma
gician. I’m not sure he’s my favorite creation, but he’s easily in the top three. As I write this, I’m putting the finishing touches on what I hope will be the first of several Charlie Crawford novels. Time will tell. This was his first story, and he’s a little different here than he eventually became in my head. I won’t say Charlie is currently kinder and gentler, but I will say he has a few more issues than he shows here.
The idea for the flood came from my hometown of Aurora, Indiana, which I don’t mind admitting was the inspiration for Sulfer. It sits right on a bend in the Ohio River, and it flooded really bad a few years before I moved to Texas. In the early part of the 20th century, however, the river smothered the entire town, water rising to the second story windows along First, Second, and Third Streets. In the neighboring town of Lawrenceburg, there are several spots in town where you can see the tops of windows peeking over the sidewalk. My third grade teacher told us this was because, after the big flood, it was decided it would be easier to toss everything that was ruined into the streets and raise the street level eight feet. I don’t know how true that is, but I hope it isn’t a complete fabrication.
Safe House
In the summer of 2013, Michael McBride and Thunderstorm Books publisher Paul Goblirsch contacted me about co-editing an anthology to celebrate Thunderstorm’s 100th release. I agreed, and a few months later Mike and I birthed Mia Moja, where this novella originally appeared. The idea behind the antho, that it would contain Thunderstorm’s ten most prolific authors, meant Mike and I had to appear in it, despite our hemming and hawing over the idea. I’m glad we gave in, because I was very pleased with the story that came out of it.
Again, I’d wanted to tell an epistolary story about a group of militia members hiding out in the woods for some time. Originally, I’d thought it might be a novel-length story called The Revolution Diaries, but I think it works a lot better at this length. Even then, I took three different stabs at it before I found the right way to pull off Safe House. Those first attempts were a little too…well, they sucked. How’s that?
Will the Sun Ever Come Out Again? Page 18