by Bright,R. F.
The Dead Slam
R. F. Bright
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Afterword
Copyright © 2016 by R. F. Bright
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters in this work of fiction are inventions of the author and in no way represent actual individuals. Unless you are currently living in the year 2051, you are not in this work.
ISBN: 978-1537712215
ISBN: 1537712217
Cover Design: Cormar Covers
Photography: Priyanka Kochhar
First Edition
All inquiries: www.rfbright.com
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Dedicated To
THE PITTSBURGH PINBALL LEAUGE
“You can’t drink all day,
unless you start in the morning.”
The Driver
1
The first body was found frozen to a gigantic boulder in the Allegheny Mountains.
“Over there!” yelled Max Burdock, his young voice vanishing into the pelting snow. “Over there! Look!”
His father, Fred, lifted a furry earflap, struggling to hear what the teenager was saying.
Max raised his deer rifle to arm’s length and pointed it at a spot about fifty yards out on a football field-sized plateau buried in colossal shards of black granite. Through curtains of delicate white flakes, a tiny puff of bright red glared back at them. Max had promised his father he’d never go out on this lake of saw-tooth boulders that’d been falling here since the first Ice Age. Many stood five stories or more, stabbed straight into the ground and pointing up at two towering spires on the cliff above –- two six-hundred-foot tall stone bishops.
They pushed through knee-deep snow, scaling smaller boulders, skirting the giants, and soon landed before a body, completely iced over, reaching up the side of a fifty-foot granite splinter as though climbing. A spiraling wind had blown a lacy snowdrift up the victim’s neck and cheek. He’d been here a while.
Max had seen plenty of dead people, but this was troubling. There was no reason for anyone to be up here. Not in March, and certainly not in an expensive hiker’s outfit. Max and Fred were here to hunt, to feed their village. But this guy wasn’t from around here; he was too well dressed. A coat like that could only be gotten in one of the Walled Cities.
In better times and milder weather Max would have walked away, but times were tough and it was cold as hell. He tapped the ice cocoon with the butt of his rifle and turned sheepishly to his father, who looked uneasy.
Fred removed his makeshift goggles, slapping at a puff of snow blowing in his face. “Never saw this before,” he said, spitting out a few icy flakes.
Max wiped his hand across the ice covering the dead man’s head. “But he’s just as dead as if you had.”
Fred snapped his rifle to the ready. A huge snow eagle lifted off an outcropping and circled. A magnificent but common sight in one of the most remote places in what now passed for civilization; the Allegheny Mountains of Western Pennsylvania, about a hundred miles north of West Virginia.
“Uh, Dad?” said Max, plaintive eye darting at the red coat.
Fred’s face twisted into a questioning frown; he knew this was grave robbery, but nodded anyway.
Max pulled his skinning knife and chipped away with all the reverence he could muster. Once the glossy surface broke, the ice came off in sheets and the frozen torso was quickly exposed. The dead man was at least six feet four and seemed almost alive, slanting up the massively indifferent boulder. A moment of death sculpted in flesh and bad luck, or maybe worse.
Max peeled off his homemade fur gloves and ran his hand over the coat’s lavish red fabric. He tossed Fred a toothy grin, which he immediately choked back, then wrestled the huge parka from the rigid corpse and pulled it on over his tattered Navy pea-coat.
Fred knew that no matter how many sweaters his son wore beneath his old pea-coat, his shivering never stopped. But now he was wearing a real winter parka, a good one, a rich man’s coat: down-filled, heavy-duty zippers with big leather pulls, huge pockets, and a fur-lined retractable hood, adjustable in every way that mattered. Max opened his arms to show Fred how well it fit, dancing a tight circle, his face aglow in the shared hope of his never suffering from the cold again.
Fred’s misgivings vanished as he cast a measuring look at Max, and thought of her. The boy’s gray-blue eyes, her eyes, beaming out from a halo of fur, simply clobbered him. His friendly face, crisscrossed with scars and wrinkles as coarse as the Sahara, hid a wounded heart. Max’s mother had been drafted into the Marines in 2044 and hadn’t been seen in eight years, since Max was nine. Fred, himself a war veteran and reverent man of no particular faith, simple and pragmatic, knew that robbing the dead was wrong, but allowing her son to suffer needlessly wasn’t just wrong — it was stupid. She would have said yes. He saw her in everything Max did, on good days.
Max checked the inside pockets and discovered the zip-out lining. “Man-oh-man,” he said. “This is a really good one. Good as it gets.”
“How would you know?” said Fred, trying to jump-start a round of insulting banter.
Max aimed a silly grin at Fred, stretched his neck in a theatrical arc, and said in his best ham-actor voice, “That’s sad, old man. Just plain sad. I only know what you taught me. What’d you expect?”
Any good fortune that came to Max pai
d Fred double. This boy and a lost love were all that mattered to him, but it was his turn to say something inappropriate. “I expect absolutely nothing. That’s the truly sad part . . . and the key to good parenting. Low expectations.” He turned to look for the midday sun. It was just a bright smudge low in the inky clouds at this altitude. He glanced back at Max, then up the spectacular twin spires. “This place was hit by a meteor — I’d bet anything. How else could it get shaped like this?”
Max had agreed to Fred’s hypothesis a thousand times, but made a display of sincere agreement. He recoiled as Fred clapped both meaty hands on his shoulders, tugged at the sleeves, shook him mercilessly, pointed out a rip in the elbow, then dusted him off with a few harsh slaps about the head and shoulders. Fred was old, but he was big and could out-work most men half his age. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit in a tin brassiere.”
Max sneered. “Poetic.”
Fred embraced Max’s sarcastic review. “We should at least find this guy’s people,” he said, and headed home, to the Village of Lily. Max stuffed his fur hat, which seemed so inelegant now, into a huge pocket, adjusted his new hood, and tagged along, trying not to make too much of his good fortune at a dead man’s expense. However anonymous.
As the coat warmed, the faint scent of bay rum and lime drifted into the pure mountain air — just when Max thought it couldn’t get any better. He’d never smelled anything so delicious. This was as close to the world within the Walled Cities as he’d ever been. The sophisticated red coat enveloped him in something entirely new and mysterious. The questions it posed were tantalizing, its untold story dark and alluring. But despite this great good fortune, Max’s zeal was dampened by a wooly apprehension – this coat was going to cost him something.
He just knew it.
2
Representative Al Thomka sucked in a breath of the crisp winter air blowing off the East River as he stepped from his limo in front of the old United Nations Complex. Thomka was a tall, middle-aged man with old-world good looks, a very expensive suit, and a developing sense of his own absurdity. An armed guard nodded for him to follow and they dashed across the Quad and on toward the Trustee Council Chamber.
In 2046, the U.S. had evicted every international mission from the UN and shut the last global institution down, fulfilling that year’s best-polling campaign promise. A few weeks later, two million homeless war veterans marched on Washington D.C. to press their grievances, but accidentally burned the city to the ground. The UN Complex was unoccupied and seemed the perfect seat for a provisional government. A temporary sort of management group. And Manhattan Island was simply the most defensible place in America, surrounded by a natural moat. No veterans there. They couldn’t afford it.
The majority of those elected representatives who had not been dispatched in the D.C. Revolt went into hiding, and an ad hoc Senate was formed at the UN Complex. This one-and-only governing body was composed of ninety-nine prominent persons capable of paying for the privilege to serve, wealth being the indisputable indicator of divine favor. Unfortunately, their privilege made them unfit to serve and absolutely nothing ever got done, which was great for them. Everyone else had for the last ten years simply ignored them.
Representative Thomka entered the cavernous Trustee Council Chamber, sidestepping a throng of over-dressed politicians, looking for his friend, Representative Mahesh Murthy. They always sat together, which kept their constant bickering somewhat muted. The walls were covered in an ash wood paneling that gave off a subtle, earthy fragrance he loved. A quick look found Murthy down near the stage, chatting up a pretty female aide holding a water pitcher.
Thomka waved to his friend, who always wore the Bollywood smile and slicked-back swagger of a chronic womanizer. Murthy caught sight of Thomka, kissed the young woman’s hand, and headed toward their seats.
Thomka sat pondering how Murthy had survived the cost-cutting mergers he had himself engineered. That was Murthy’s genius, his one and only product. Engineered mergers and consolidations. Thomka often joked that Murthy’s real job was doing under-the-table favors for people in this room, then holding them hostage into the bargain. No one ever laughed at that.
Thomka scowled at the congregation with an acrid grin. He despised the fashion-obsessed Manhattanites and their ridiculous costumes. He held a venomous disdain for the current craze, colonial-nostalgic: puffy knee-length pants, leggings, waistcoats and buckled shoes, in monochrome black or gray, topped with elaborate hairdos, and when necessary — wigs. Men did not wear hats. “How ridiculous,” he muttered under his breath. “They’re expressing their individuality as a group.”
The hat had been commandeered by the women of polite society. He could easily spot the few here, as the only fashion faux pas when it came to hats was restraint. Amongst those ladies of a certain prominence, a look was only desirable if it was indescribable. Extravagance ruled. Why not? he thought. Manhattan Island was an economic fortress now, and it was up to the women to make it as festive as they might. Heaven knew these men were far too dull for the task.
Thomka was here for the Sunday in America broadcast, if only to show his face, knowing full well that families without televisions were gathering at their local The Church to watch the combined Senate Session and Sunday Sermon on giant screen TVs. Ordained clerics who’d once been neighborhood padres now simply passed the hat and presided over a Sunday morning TV show, more usher than shepherd. He’d helped shape The Church’s business plan for his friends Petey and Virginia Hendrix, who owned it.
The Church was a for-profit religious franchise with a very salable base package: TV and radio, spiritual merchandise, Bible-based financial instruments, internet access, cyber security, print media, event planning, political guidance, marriage counseling, et al. No upfront cost for anyone who held claim to a defunct church, of which there were thousands. It was a split-the-pot deal. An irresistible opportunity for any ambitious person with a religious temperament and an empty church.
Thomka looked around suspiciously, then whispered out of the sides of his mouth, “Did you find him?”
Murthy rolled a scathing eye at Thomka, then turned to the smiling girl with the water pitcher. “Beauty holds joy found but nowhere else.”
“Did you find him?”
“You’re an absolute fucking peasant, Al. Relax. You look like hell.”
“Unlike you, I have a sense of emergency.”
“Why worry? You’re a good swimmer, aren’t you?”
“Don’t think for a minute we’re safe because we’re on an island. There could be a suicide bomber in this room right now. People hate us.”
Two waffling grins creased their lips in rare agreement.
3
Max and Fred followed the Little Conemaugh River to the railroad tracks that led down to the Village of Lily. They were eager to find the mysterious rich man’s family. That was the least they could do, since they’d stolen his coat.
Lily’s population had shrunk from its 1949 peak of seventeen hundred to eighty-one, a number that included twenty-six adopted war veterans who’d wandered in over the years. Back when there were marauders, everyone who could had moved to the nearby Walled Cities like Pittsburgh, and even New York; when you could still go to New York. When the U.S. declared bankruptcy, day-to-day existence turned into a smash and grab free-for-all. Except for people like Fred who wouldn’t put up with that.
Fred was one of the lucky few who made it home after three Arabian Sea deployments. His wife was not so fortunate. She had been sent to Iran, and was assumed to be one of The Abandoned. These things were not talked about — silence leaves room for hope. Fred wished only to remember her as the beauty she was, take care of their precious Max, and live out his days here in the little mountain village where they were once happy. That was it.
Fred’s heartbroken wish became the Village of Lily’s greatest asset.
Lily sat on a tight bend in the Little Conemaugh River, traced out by a ribbon of asphalt and r
ailroad tracks that ended at a stone bridge that crossed a gorge filled with waterfalls and rapids. Lily’s version of The Church sat off by itself at the far edge of the bend. An old steam-powered passenger train, The Booby Duck, sat beside The Church. Its elaborate cowcatcher was shaped like a duck’s bill and painted bright yellow. Behind The Church, across the Little Conemaugh, stood a forest of maples, pin oaks, hawthorn, hickory and other hardwoods, plus millions of fruit trees. This vast forest held the possibility of sheltering a sacred spot where no human foot had ever trod. That hope sustained all Lilians.
A powerful sense of propriety divided its citizens along historical lines. Some claimed Lily had been named for a world-famous flower once cultivated there. Others advanced the more plausible notion that the town owed its name to an upscale gentlemen’s club, named for its Madame Owner.
There was only one phone and one computer in Lily and they were both in The Church. Fred was heading there with the news, but Max, in his suspiciously new red coat, didn’t want to risk a confession that might cost him this treasure. Pastor Scott was sure to ask.
When they came to the street that ran up a cobblestone hill to their house, Max stopped. “Dad? Dad!”
Fred turned to see Max poking his thumb up the hill with a querulous grin wavering on his lips. Whatever it is that makes a dad a dad was on fire in Fred. He was downright giddy from the joy that red coat had brought Max. He smiled at the boy and nodded.
Max sprinted up the hill for home, while the old man slowly moved on toward The Church.
Representative Thomka stood with little enthusiasm as a round of cheers greeted a spunky announcer jogging across the Trustee Council Chamber’s wide stage. “Ladies and Gentleman! Please rise for Arch Bishop, Virginiaaa McWilliams Hendrix, C.E.O. of Theee Church!” Murthy dragged himself to his feet.