Dark Avenues

by Brian J Smith

  "Did you ever think that Tara isn't the only one who feels like the walls are closing in?"

  “No. And it’s not just you and Tara. It’s everybody.” She reminded him.

  He saw the pained expression on her face and felt the weight of his guilt grow heavier by the second. He looked away, grabbed the two-step footstool out from the bottom of the nearest shelf beside the back door and used it to pull the retractable wooden ladder down from the ceiling. She braced her hips with both hands and watched him sling the strap of his rifle back over his shoulder before gazing down at her feet.

  "Where are—"

  "I'm going to get some fresh air."

  He climbed up and onto the roof, glanced morosely down at his little sister and shut the trap door.

  *****

  A thin-black cloud drifted across the round alabaster moon, reducing to a sickly-white glow. The town of Hudson, Ohio was a barren black wasteland of silence, imbued by the lingering smell of death. More zombies continued to stumble around, groaning as if giving off a mating call that only they could understand.

  Matt sat quietly on the roof, his rifle lying across his lap and thought about his family. He’d missed them terribly, although Jessica was still alive, but the memories they shared before the local cemetery opened up for business would always be up for questioning.

  How would things would’ve turned out had they survived?

  They wouldn’t be here, that was sure.

  The memories came flooding back to him, one at a time. He and his mother Agnes would spend the day browsing thrift stores and going out to lunch (his treat, of course). He'd sit down with his father Steve on the weekends and watch football, go fishing and scope out the entries in this year's car show that the city had put out every year; like all families there were bad times in between the good ones.

  They'd meant everything to him and he’d do whatever it took to have them back today. He was wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his right hand when he heard a sound from behind him. He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand and did his best to straighten himself as quickly as he could.

  "Are you okay?" Kyra asked, sitting down beside of him.

  "I'm fine"

  He hoped she didn’t notice his eyes were red from crying.

  “You went a little—"

  "I know." He said. "I'm not used to the walking dead thing."

  "I don't think we’ll ever get used to it." She said in a grave voice. "It doesn't hurt to have someone else take up the slack."

  "I've been taking these things out since they first showed up. I'm twenty-seven years old." He stated. "I've got plenty of years ahead of me before I have anyone looking out for me."

  "And how are you going to feel twenty-seven years later?"

  "A lonely old man."

  "Maybe not." She said, sliding her hand inside of his.

  They inched closer to each other, the magnetic gleam of their eyes pulling them together, and kissed. He ran his fingers through her long blonde hair as her cool pale hands slid softly across his right wrist; their tongues coiled inside of their mouths like dueling snakes. He slid the rifle off of his lap and onto the roof as she straddled his waist, pressing her teacup-bosom against his flat muscular chest.

  They fell back onto the roof, their hands sliding under their tee-shirts and pawing their bodies with shaky apprehensive hands. When they broke the kiss, Kyra rolled onto her back and eased her zipper down, revealing a soft V of silky blue underwear. He unfastened his belt, slid between her legs, eased down his own zipper and slipped inside her soft pliable warmth.

  When she felt him slide inside of her, she arched her back and gave a long breathless moan; the air grazed its smooth and electric fingers across their skin. After they were finished, they collected themselves and gazed up at the star-studded sky.

  It was then that he understood, even in this doomed universe, there was always light at the end of the tunnel. Kyra was more than just a light; she was everything to him.

  With friends like these, he thought maybe life wouldn't be so bad after all.

  BIG DADDY

  There’s just something about fishing I can’t shy away from. I still go fishing in the summer before and after football season (Go Buckeyes!) or writing on the weekends to help clear my head from the work week.

  The first literary novel I’ve ever read was Hemingway’s “The Old Man And The Sea” because of the old man’s undying determination; my other two favorite man-versus-monster stories are Robert McCammon’s “The Deep End” and the classic “Lizardman”. The one thing I loved about all three of those stories is its central theme: the determination and the thrill of the hunt. Two rewrites later, it was picked up by David Wilson for Deadlights Magazine, Vol. 1.

  ROBERSON slid his green Chevy pickup into the third slot beside the boathouse, swept his headlights across the black uncanny forest for a split second and killed the engine. He climbed out, grunted at the ache in his joints and heard the wind sighing in the treetops. He shut the door behind him, heard its rusted hinges give a painful screech followed by the rattling fall of rust flakes falling off the rocker panels and stretched until his joints popped.

  He walked around to the back of his truck, collected his dark-green nylon gym bag, slid the strap up and over his head and across his chest and padded across the parking lot. He descended the small flight of concrete steps streaked with thin jagged cracks (the city would never pay to have those goddamn things repaired) and stepped down onto the long wooden dock. The pontoon boats that were still docked here floated gently under the downward glare of the milky white moon.

  He gazed at the mirrored-black surface of the lake, his shoulders tight with tension, and drew its sweet brackish scent deep into his lungs. He could feel Big Daddy’s presence pressing down on the back of his neck between the wind sighing in the treetops and the waves slapping against the dock. Tonight was the last night; no more sleepless nights knowing He was still lurking through the murky black waters of The Buckeye State, peering invisibly amongst its briny surface in search of His next victim.

  He’d always admired the silence that lingered around the lake at this time of the night, but this wasn’t just a casual fishing trip like all the others before it. A scene like this could give a man time to reflect on the decisions he’d made earlier in his life and wished he’d done the opposite. He sighed.

  After he passed the first four boats on the left side, he found his (the word CHAD painted across the bow on both sides in blood-red paint) and heaved a pleasing sigh like he couldn’t have been more happier to see it. He stepped over the metal railing onto the boat, tossed the bag onto the bench seat and zipped it open. Inside, he found a fireman’s axe, two halogen flashlights, a machete with a short black-rubber grip and a Colt .45 with four fully-loaded clips; big bore bullets he’d purchased through an old Army buddy.

  He lifted the bench seat to make sure he’d brought plenty of provisions–life preservers, charts and a few snacks in case he ran out of fuel–and closed it. He left the bag lying open on the floor next to the bench seat, pulled-up anchor, jerked the rope from the dock and let the water’s slow-moving current take him only so far before he started the engine.

  He spun the wheel to the right, aimed the bow toward the thick unforgiving darkness and headed northeast, cleaving a small trail of frothy white waves in his wake. The wind rushed him from all sides, ruffling his clothes and teasing his clean-shaven head; it wiped the beads of sweat from the V of his thick bushy salt-and-pepper beard.

  At six-foot-two, he had the tall muscular build of a farm hand from the days before selfies and social media became so addictive. His deep-set green eyes sat inside of a wide craggy face scarred by a mix of harsh sunlight and years of hard labor. Before he left home, his thoughts shifting back to his devastated wife Bonnie, he slapped on a sleeveless cotton-tee under an unbuttoned blue shirt, denim jeans and a pair of Gore-Tex hiking boots.

  He checked his chart
s, counted to ten and then cut the engine. Once the boat came to a complete stop, he dropped anchor, and chucked it into the water loud enough to make his presence known. Thick dark forests rose along the horizon of the lake like the backdrop from a movie lot, their thick shaggy heads jutting toward the heavens in an addictive attempt to peer inside of them.

  Maybe that was where the thing had come from to begin with, he thought, maybe someone had wished for it and just forgot to put it back on its leash before it got out of hand.

  Whatever the hell it was, it didn’t matter.

  It was going down come Hell or High Water.

  A loud splashing sound kicked up somewhere on his far left. He drew back a sharp breath, snatched the Maglite from the gym bag, thumbed the button and swept the cone of light across the lake’s murky brown surface. He sighed and mumbled under his breath when he saw a smallmouth bass kicking up a racket amongst a tangle of tall brownish-green weeds.

  He was surprised to have seen any fish still around since he heard that Big had chased all of the good fish–and the fishermen–away. As a young’un, he and Billy Olson would sneak down here after sundown on the weekends and do some night fishing maybe catch a few croppies or a bass that they could brag about until the other one usurped the other; but as with most friendships, those days were out of reach.

  The mayor had thought Big Daddy was just a figment of every fisherman’s alcohol-fueled imagination until he’d got a visit from The Big Man himself one day. According to the local grapevine, he was hunting alongside Lake Michelle with his good Mossberg when he came across an eight-point buck lying along the river’s edge and assumed that it’d tripped over his own feet. Upon close inspection, he’d watched the deer struggle when he saw Big pulling the downed animal into the lake’s murky brown surface; the whole incident had sucked all the joy out of hunting altogether.

  The town grapevine (and what a long goddamn grapevine it was) had said that the mayor and the sheriff had put their every red cent together to post a reward for anyone who could capture it but neither one of them would back it up. Now that Roberson thought about it, he had his reasons for being out here but they were personal and not financial.

  Before he decided to hunt the big bastard, Roberson had done more research about it than he cared to. If you wanted to kill a beast such as this, it was better to have both your wits and your intellect in your pocket. If not, he might as well have walked into third-period Math class and pulled his own pants down around his ankles.

  According to the articles he’d read, the ravenous fucker had cleaved a path from one corner of The Red, White And Blue long before tonight when Greek coliseums were drenched in the blood of other dead Greeks and witchcraft was just a paranoid thought that made you accountable for murder. The first current sighting was in Oregon in two-thousand-ten when He wandered through a golf course and snatched some snooty bitch’s Shi Tzu before she could reach for her next martini; he cut a path of mayhem and violence down through Texas and up through Tennessee whilst wiping His big hungry mouth with The American Flag that guys like him had fought to protect in Nam.

  From where he stood, the town of Megan’s Grove winked in the distance like tiny trinkets on black velvet. With his right hand on the wheel, he yawned and rubbed his eyes with the edge of his left palm. His days and nights were slowly catching with him and, although he wasn’t old by any standards, it was just added more wear and tear.

  Now all he had to do was wait.

  Don’t worry, Big Daddy.

  The moon is full and the night is young and I’ll wait here for as long as it takes.

  He killed the flashlight, sank down onto the bench seat and laced his arms together when he felt something inside of his shirt pocket prodding at his right wrist. He reached inside, his fingers groping for several prolonged seconds and slipped out half a pack of rainbow-colored Life Savers.

  A deep ache struck him square in the chest and his cheeks grew hot and red. He held the pack of candy between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, bit down on his bottom lip to hold back the sadness solidifying inside of his chest. He slumped forward in his seat and wiped a river of tears from his eyes with the back of his hand.

  How could he have forgotten about the last time he’d worn this shirt? The very question had plagued him as much as the nightmares he’d had over those grueling months when he felt like he was only half a man, the kind of nightmares that would make most men shed enough tears to fill a claw-foot tub or see things that weren’t there.

  He saw the smile beaming across Chad’s face as he slid a red Life Saver from the pack and tuck it past his lips; Chad’s cheeks beamed with love as a wide satisfying grin spread across his face. He looked away from his grandson in time to see his neon-orange bobber disappear under the water. He hurried across the shore, energized by his grandson’s eager mantra of “you got something Grandpa you got something” and snatched his pole out of the ground but when he looked back at Chad to get another reaction from the boy all he saw was a mask of stark-white terror folding across the boy’s face. He glanced over in time to see the long black tentacle slip out from between the weeds and wrap around the boy’s stomach like a lifeline. Cold fear churning in his stomach, he dropped his fishing pole and ran toward him as fast as he could before losing his balance and falling to the ground, begging for him to run just run to me as he lost his balance and stumbled just long enough for him to regain his balance and leap across the bank with one outstretched arm; his fingertips grazed across the scaly black tentacle as it jerked his helpless grandson out of sight and through the thin pocket of high weeds, replacing the boy’s gut-wrenching cries with a chorus of incoherent gurgling. Through the tears he shed and the screams he bellowed, he pounded his fists against the ground as Chad’s dark-blue Cleveland Indians’ ball cap floated across the surface of the lake, spreading great concentric ripples across the water.

  A week after Chad’s death, Roberson’s wife Bonnie had crumbled under the weight of grief and refused to speak anyone–especially him. When the news of Chad’s death spread through the town like influenza, everyone called him a drunk, said it was just a figment of his own imagination and that he’d made up the creature just to cover up the fact that he’d killed his grandson. No one believed him, not even his family.

  He knew he couldn’t tell her the truth because she wouldn’t believe him, either. He’d kept this from Bonnie because he knew she’d try to talk him out of it; call him a “crazy old coot” while she hid inside of their bedroom so she could cry herself to sleep at all hours of the day and night while deciding how to kill him in between the last alcoholic drink and the one after that.

  Something drummed against the bottom of the boat, knocking him out of his sad reverie. Startled, he tucked the pack of candy back into its rightful place, leaped out of his seat and ran across the boat. He leaned over the port side, stared down at the glossy black water and eased over to the starboard side when the boat wobbled to the left.

  He seized the railing in both hands and bent his knees to keep from losing his balance, his mind humming with vertigo. In the veins of moonlight glowing across the surface, an odd-looking shadow slithered out from under the boat, floated north in the direction of Wilson Dam, spun around and came back.

  “Okay, you big sombitch.” He babbled, his thick-knuckled hands grasping the railing. “Let’s dance.”

  He released his grip, ran toward the open gym bag and reached for the Colt when something struck the lake like a fat kid doing a cannonball. A large geyser of water erupted from beside of the boat, splashed along the starboard side and back down. After wiping the sweat beads from his face with the back of his hand, he swept the flashlight across the boat, drew a large gulp of air into his lungs and saw a large black tentacle grasping the second rung of the railing.

  He gasped, snatched the fire axe from the duffel bag and swung it in a whistling arc. The blade gave a hacking cough as it sliced the tentacle in half and released its grip from the ra
iling. It leaped across the boat in a wild spasmodic dance, spraying giant drops of thick black blood across the legs of his jeans before sliding off the edge of the boat and into the water.

  He hissed between his teeth, ran back to the railing and watched with parental anger as the shadow glided across the water in front of him. He pulled the Colt from the gym bag, ran to the other side and squeezed the trigger in four rapid-fire successions. The recoil rocked against his shoulder as each shot kicked smaller plumes of water into the air only for them to rain back down.

  He felt the boat bow toward the water for a split second before righting itself, spreading a radar map of ripples across the surface. His heart stammering, he swung the flashlight toward the port side and snatched a quick breath, his arms prickling with fear. Two thick reptilian palms gripped the sleek metallic railing and pulled down on the edge of the boat like a jock doing a pull up; its curved black talons glinting under the film of water sliding away from its thick scaly hide.

  He drew back a breath, aimed and fired, tearing a small chunk from its left hand. A loud inhuman roar rumbled across the lake, sending a fresh carpet of gooseflesh crawling across his arms and a second wind whipping through the trees. The hands reared back from the railing and slid out of sight; a loud splashed kicked up alongside the boat. Grunting, he ran back to the railing, swept the Maglite’s harsh halogen light across the surface of the water hoping to get another shot.

  The boat jostled, kicking up a third radar map of ripples and spun around in the opposite direction. He teetered back, his right leg and left arm flailing, and plopped down onto the bench seat. The boat jerked forward a few times before it kicked off across the water like a rocket, spewing a small contrail of frothy white waves onto the front of the boat.

  His eyes lit with mad regard, a wide sardonic smile spread across Roberson’s face.

  “You found the anchor, huh?” He bellowed maniacally. “Now you’re working with Phonics, motherfucker.”