The Big Bad II
Edited by
John G. Hartness
& Emily Lavin Leverett
The Big Bad II
Copyright © 2014 John G. Hartness & Emily Lavin Leverett
Cover design by Allan Gilbreath
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, duplicated, copied, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express written consent and permission of the editor and publisher.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any person or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Published by
Kerlak Enterprises, Inc.
Dark Oak Press
Memphis, TN
www.darkoakpress.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-941754-44-3
E-Book
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015932385
First Printing: 2015
This book is printed on acid free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Copyright Acknowledgments
Mercy’s Armistice © 2014 J. T. Glover
A Family Affair © 2014 Selah Janel
Old Nonna © 2014 Gail Z. Martin
Letters to Logroth © 2014 Jason Corner
Skippin’ Stones © 2014 S. H. Roddey
The Sea Witch © 2014 Kasidy Manisco
A Day in the Life © 2014 James R. Tuck
Overkill © 2014 Sara Taylor Woods
Voodooesque © 2014 Eden Royce
A Fitter Subject for Study © 2014 Sarah Joy Adams
Ghosts and Sands © 2014 Jay Requard
Teacher of the Year © 2014 Riley Miller
Feels Like Justice to Me © 2014 Edmund R. Schubert
Portrait of the Artist as a Psychopathic Man © 2014 Stuart Jaffe
The House on Cherry Hill © 2014 Emily Lavin Leverett
Sticks and Stones © 2014 Bobby Nash
Sweet Tooth © 2014 Nicole Givens Kurtz
Just Pretending © 2014 Linden Flynn
Phone Home © 2014 E. D. Guy
I Think of Snow © 2014 J. Matthew Saunders
Little Gods © 2014 Neal F. Litherland
Drawing Flame © 2014 Misty Massey
The Witch Hunter © 2014 M. B. Weston
The Cully © 2014 D. B. Jackson
Dedication:
To Oliver, Suzy, Sarah, and Bonnie - Our lights in the darkness.
With thanks to Allison Ketchell Campbell for proofing.
Thanks for everything,
John & Emily
Table of Contents
Mercy’s Armistice
A Family Affair
Old Nonna
Letters to Logroth
Skippin’ Stones
The Sea Witch
A Day in the Life
Overkill
Voodooesque
A Fitter Subject for Study
Ghosts and Sands
Teacher of the Year
Feels Like Justice to Me
Portrait of the Artist as a Psychopathic Man
The House on Cherry Hill
Sticks and Stones
Sweet Tooth
Just Pretending
Phone Home
I Think of Snow
Little Gods
Drawing Flame
The Witch Hunter
The Cully
Mercy’s Armistice
J. T. Glover
The hallway’s worn linoleum gleamed more brightly than he’d expected at this time of night. Sting of alcohol in the air, and from everywhere discordant beeping. Soft, mechanical whoosh from across the hall. No one else around, and he was glad to save energy on concealing his true face.
“Mr. Oldenburg? Jason?”
He turned around to see Dr. Malik coming out of the room, gently pulling the door shut. Greenish-brown splotches on the young doctor’s otherwise impeccably white coat, a tentative kindness in her face, and no hurry in her movements. It was enough.
“What is it?” Jason asked.
Her face scrunched up, and she looked around, as if for backup—a nurse—a closet.
I could burn you, he thought. Make something special of it, something lasting. You’re just meat.
“We have a room nearby for conversations,” she said, collecting herself. “Are there other family members here?”
“Only my sister, and she’s getting hammered right now down at the Camel. She’s not dealing with this well. We lost our parents young.”
“Hmm,” the doctor said. She looked at him appraisingly, her eyes traveling from his worn Chucks to his scarred hands, and then to his pale, unfleshy face. “Mr. Oldenburg, it’s up to you. Quiet room?”
“The door’s closed. Just say it.”
“Your brother has lung cancer. We have to run cultures to be sure of the stage, and there are some unusual—“
“How long does he have? I know you can’t say exactly.”
“Not long. We sedated him so he could get a good night’s sleep. That coughing was tearing him.”
She kept talking, but Jason wasn’t listening. His heart pounded in his ears. Rage surged through him like blood as he wondered how long Mark had been out, what his unfettered mind had summoned.
What did you think would happen? Fucking moron. Of course the doctors put him under. Of course they did what they do.
That made it obscurely easier. She kept talking right up until the point where he did what he did.
The floor was silent again.
Jason checked the time on his phone. Hours before dawn, and they had to be on their way before the hounds came with their wings like silver swords.
He went to retrieve his brother, cursing cruel luck, wondering if there would be time for tears. If he even knew how to cry anymore.
***
A growling bass solo was filling up the corners of the Camel when Jason walked in. A blue haze filled the room, the lights glowing like something from the other side of the universe. It was the kind of place where you could wallow in misery, lapping up curdled hatreds like wine. His sister’s kind of place. Another night, he would have wanted to savor it for himself, but Mark was out in the car, and they were hunted.
His eyes adjusted quickly enough, one of the many gifts for which he thanked the Dark Fathers. Their business was forever bloody, but at least it wasn’t undertaken without help.
If only I could save lives as easily as take them.
Then he saw Sandra, throwing back a shot of something brown and gritty at the bar. She was stark as anything he remembered from paintings in school, a bright light making her all the more haggard. The bartender was keeping busy, but Jason could tell from the set of his shoulders where his attention was, and he didn’t blame him.
“Time to go,” he said, walking up behind her.
She upended the shot glass on the peeling wood in front of her, but she didn’t turn around.
“He’s still in the hospital,” she said, not a question.
“No. Out in the car.”
Her spine stiffened, and she grabbed onto the railing. He found himself thinking of the night in Jakarta when they’d finally found that chemist-turned-missionary. He’d shivered like a clubbed fish when Sandra grabbed his throat, her nails slicing through his skin like tissue paper and flicking nerve clusters like guitar strings.
Jason wanted to give her time to process, to figure out how to ask what she had to ask, but already
something felt different. He could taste the something else that had slipped into the world. He grabbed her by the hair and yanked hard.
Shocked sounds somewhere nearby. Sandra wasn’t looking at his face, even in his direction, but he could feel the cold coming off of her hand that was near to his stomach, poised to slide between layers of fat and muscle to scramble his guts.
“We don’t have the luxury,” he said.
As every time he’d ever had to do this in public, it was a woman who stepped in—short, with wavy black hair and the kind of knuckle calluses that came from years of punching things very hard. He could feel the fire inside her, and he longed to drink the woman like a snifter of liqueur.
“Get your hands off her, you—”
He reached out and put his hand over her face, whispering in a language that no one in the room except Sandra had ever heard. The woman fell silent and slipped bonelessly to the floor. He let go of Sandra’s hair, and she turned to look at him, not moving her hand an inch. His insides quaked.
Another time, sister, he thought.
“Jason, one day—”
“Goddammit. Didn’t you feel that, a moment ago?”
She stopped and closed her eyes, leaned her head to one side. Something flashed past him, unseen but not unfelt.
Damn. Only when she’s really pissed can she move like that. Maybe one day she is going to fuck me up.
He looked around the room, and it was bad. The bartender was on the phone. There was a pack of bros at the other end of the bar, looking like they were about to try something.
Too many to hex or slip. If he had a machine gun, it wouldn’t be enough.
“Oh well,” he muttered, “we weren’t going to be around here anytime soon anyway.”
A jolt by his side, and then Sandra was looking at him. There was fear in her eyes, and anger.
“It’s not just one,” she said. “It’s a pack. And they’re homing in on Mark. I can feel it. He doesn’t fucking deserve this.”
She shook him off, more powerfully. Not the first time today he’d been reminded of her power, but it was a comfort this time. If the hounds came for them tonight, they wouldn’t find them easy prey, and Mark would have...
...a chance for what? He asked himself. The fire or the ice? I don’t know about the other places they go, people.
“Coming, brother?” Sandra asked, and she was grinning at him unpleasantly.
The rest of the drinkers had ostensibly gone back to what they were doing, from the pickup artists barking up the wrong tree to the limp, fleshy couple trying to tango near the jukebox. All of them were looking at each other, but outside the sirens were getting closer. Had it served a purpose, he would have burned them all.
***
The city was an hour behind them now, and the interstate unfolded just beyond the headlights’ reach. Mark groaned occasionally from the filthy, cluttered back seat, but he was conscious enough that Jason no longer worried about him leaving a psychic trail. It was as if they were alone on the highway, but the prickling under his skin said otherwise.
“I wonder how it came to this,” Sandra said, almost conversationally. “Why did the Dark Fathers choose us, and not Mark?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” he said.
She looked into the back, reaching out as if to touch him, and hesitated. He worried, at least a little bit, that she might be thinking something rash.
The shape of a shadowed outcropping appeared and vanished just as quickly on the right. Even distracted, he remembered the heat on the July afternoon that they staked a politician out on the plain beyond. Summertime vacationers had been passing on one side of the mound, their engines droning a counterpoint to his cries as they’d flayed him.
Why were we set on him, again?
It was hard to remember. Over the years, there had been so many—
“Fuck,” Sandra said, her voice all tight and humorless. She pointed toward the horizon.
Nothing he could see, just darkness, but she was straining towards something. Another groan from the back seat, and he flicked a look over his shoulder. His brother’s breathing was no more labored, but the sheen at his temples had spread, and he looked like putty.
Seventeen, dammit. Too young. Too much heart.
It was easy, he thought, to say that. Jason had never had the opportunity to be anything good, not looking out for the three of them on the streets. His sister, now... She might have had a chance. He’d been the one to make the deal that night, in the basement of the abandoned building, drinking blood as the candles flickered. She could have walked away.
But it was too late to worry now about who had been right to do what. Somewhere in the darkness, their hunters came on, coursing as hard as the justice of the god they served.
Mark, though, for him it wasn’t too late. And that—
“Hey, jackoff, what do you think you’re doing?”
Sandra’s eyes were bright, tears and sibling hatred melting together. It was nothing like the love of normal people, but it was what they had.
“Nothing. Just thinking.”
“Think about the road.”
***
Two hours later, Jason dreamed. He sits surrounded by small children. He should easily be able to tell if he’s a child, too, but sizes are difficult. Light spray of disinfectant in the air, peonies on the teacher’s desk. When was he ever in a classroom like this?
Dimly he can see that he’s not just in a classroom. Crosses on the wall. An ark. Men with halos. Sunday school, and fuck him if he isn’t in a church. No fire or damnation raining down, and he’s in a church.
“Jason,” a voice says from behind him, “what are you thinking?”
“Justice,” he says. “The salvation of the burned.”
Slow, soft hiss.
“If you’re burned,” she continued, “then does everyone have to burn?”
“Bitch.”
Jingle jangle, went her voice.
“Slake-take-fire-higher,” he whispered.
Jingle-jangle.
What? he thought. They think that they’re the good guys. They should at least sound like it.
The other children have begun whispering. He looks around, and they are teeth, and they are eyes.
It’s a pleasure when they finally eat him, because he no longer has to worry when it’s going to happen.
***
“You feel better now? Get enough beauty sleep?”
Her voice was a susurrus as he opened his eyes. He turned to look at her. It wasn’t so much that she looked dead, or like a demon, but out here neither of them had to keep in their faces.
To either side, there was saguaro, dust, tumbleweeds. Or so he guessed, given the ongoing darkness. For all he knew, they’d left the world while he dreamed. Perhaps they were sailing a black sea.
“Jason, enough with the reverie.”
“What’s it to you, sis? We’re rolling.”
Jason closed his eyes. He inhaled and stretched. The feel of it was like nothing he remembered from before they were forsworn. It was also nothing like how his sister described it. There was a tightening, and then everything was smaller, closer...
Bats flew through the night. Rabbits lay unrestful in their burrows. Scorpions crawled, and ants twitched. Up ahead, some distance, a semi rolled toward them. They would meet it in two minutes. Behind them, nothing for miles.
He came back to himself.
“Clear,” he said.
She didn’t even turn, and he could feel the sneer.
“All right, then,” he said. “Tell me: what am I missing?”
“They didn’t just give up. They’re still here, somewhere.”
***
Sunlight speared into his eyes, a lance as red as the blood that boiled in their wake. The clouds above were thin, fragile things. No pro
tection to be had from roaming eyes, but then again, that was nothing they’d ever asked. Protection was what they had never had, back in the days when their parents were dying and God did not step in. He remembered the moment when he knew that he’d be trying his luck elsewhere—the blood on his mother’s upper lip, too much to stanch.
And now, he thought, my God lives inside me. Just like the fucking movies.
A stirring inside his chest, like a large eel circumnavigating his rib cage, winding around guts and bones and organs more obscure.
She started awake at his side. She looked at him, and her face was already old. Cigarettes, lovers, the agony of others: all had taken their toll.
“The fuck are you looking at?”
“Goddamn dog’s breakfast, that’s what.”
She sneered and laughed, and he felt the same old love that he did whenever they fell into old routines. Routine was what they needed, if they were going to get through this. Not the battle, but what had drawn the hounds.
Oh little brother, oh sweet Mark. Why did you have to be so sweet? A mind like yours, we could have used you.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Not even to Houghton yet,” he said. “Too many cops out.”
She sighed, twisting around in her seat.
“I gotta go. Hate to say it, but...”
“Fine, fine.”
He started looking, smiled wryly. Out here they’d see the rest stop a long time before they hit it. As if reading his mind she spoke. “Just pull off, I’ll go behind a rock.”
He checked the mirror behind them, and then started looking for a wide spot ahead.
“You ever wonder what it would’ve been like to have a normal life? Be like all the cube farmers? Must be nice to, you know, sit down in a cushy bathroom.”
“I don’t think about it,” she said. “It’s not worth thinking about. You saved us. You saved me, and I’ll never forget that, but it had a price. We take our pleasures, and they’re like no other pleasures on earth.”
Grit and swish of sand under the tires, and then they were rolling to a stop. Creaking as the car door opened and she stepped out. Her spine crackled, and he watched her walk into the desert. There was no rock. She looked left, right, and apparently saw nothing. She crouched, dropped her pants, and began to shit.
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