by Nick Younker
“Just stay there and turn away if gets to be too much.”
Derri just nodded her head and stood lightly on one of her legs, taking the pressure of her right side, which hurt her the most.
Stark slung Bret over on his back and lifted him with his shirt just high enough to beat him over the head a few times. Bret was conscious now and he rolled over, spitting out blood. Stark took his handcuffs out of his back holster, wrapped Bret’s arms around a downed tree and handcuffed him.
As Bret became more lucid, he exclaimed, “What the fuck!” His pants were still down below his knees and now, he was to be the receiver.
Stark unstrapped his belt and lowered his pants. He was hard as steel, with an overdue lava load lying in wait.
Bret started wrangling with the handcuffs, and then violently jumping around on his knees trying to free himself. Stark easily beat him a few times with his gloved fists and Bret became immobile.
“Fuck you, man! Fuck you, you faggot-assed queer! You touch me with that thing and I’ll fucking kill you!” Bret said.
Stark beat him a few more times, until he was barely on the verge of consciousness. Before he could go out, Derri walked in front of him, smiled, and then spat in his face.
“It’s your turn, you bastard!”
Stark lowered down and violently raped Bret Holder. It lasted less than a minute, but it was long enough for the frothy mix of blood and semen to leak slowly down his badly discolored legs and pelvis.
“Every time I see you, this is gonna happen again,” Stark said when he was done. He then beat him unconscious again and removed the cuffs.
Bret just lay there, his breath making cloudy puffs in the cold night air. Stark took Bret’s shoes and socks off and threw them in the creek. Frogs chirped in the water under the bright moonlight. A breeze blew a cold chill on them and leaves blew around the small gully, hidden from the view of Squaw Creek.
Stark and Derri left him there. Stark dropped her off at home and told her to call him if she needed him again. As Derri watched him walk off, she smiled and knew that her romance with him was one in a million, if at all. He was her hero. She was lucky to have him in her life, even if he was gay. She had no doubt she would never have to worry about Bret Holder again. She would keep Stark’s secret for the rest of her life, and he knew it.
***
9
It was getting close to midnight and Arn was wiping down the last of the tables inside the Stow. Harry, Perry and Erin stayed behind to help him. They sat down at a table beside the stage and drank a few beers before they locked up for the night.
“My God! I am pooped!” Arn said as he tipped his can of beer back and rubbed his calf muscles.
“I hear that,” Erin said as she drank the last of her beer and stood up. “You ready to go, old man?”
Perry drained his beer and stood, too. “Yes, ma’am.”
Harry also rose and Arn threw the cans in the trash as they made their way to the exit. The wind was blowing outside. Normally, dust would be swirling everywhere from the gravel parking lot, but the rain had weighed it down.
“Jesus, what is wrong with this weather today?” Harry said.
Erin was just about to answer him when the wind suddenly stopped. It surprised her.
They were standing on the east side of the building on the outside patio when they saw it. The wall of fog was rolling in from the channel. It was traveling fast, and they all felt that same sense of dreadful, unknown terror that Cam Wright had felt when he saw it emerge from the river and chase the Bucky Cole downstream. The fog danced on the sides of the bluff walls and billowed as it drew near, as if it was expanding to swallow them.
They all headed to the north side of the building toward their cars, trying not to let on that they were bothered by it, but walking fast nonetheless. The cloud enveloped the building and as it moved past, they could no longer see the Stow, but they saw the fog quickly closing in on them.
Erin took two more steps and was trying to fish the keys out of her purse when the cloud swallowed her and Perry whole. At first, for only a moment, it was inconsequential.
Their anxiety shot through the roof when it first reached them. A second passed, and then it hit them. It was pain, pure pain. They felt the sensation of hot fire boiling through the pores of their skin, as if they had been submerged in liquid nitrogen and reheated with steam. Parts of their body felt the burn, other parts felt like needles. It poured through them like their skin was ripping apart.
They all screamed in agony as the fog swallowed them whole and continued to move north toward Squaw Creek. The cloud was a quarter mile long and kept coming and coming, merciless. They felt stuck in a flow of lava, running against gravity. It hurt so badly they could not even continue screaming and they all fell to the rocky surface in agony. The cloud just kept moving through them, digesting their bodies with its agonizing torment.
Mickey and Jason opened their van to see what was happening. The fog quickly rolled in and engulfed them as well. They felt the same agonizing torment as Erin, Harry, Arn and Perry. It just kept coming and coming.
* * *
Sandra Stamps and Kurt Peters were both naked in the back of Sandra’s Chevy Caprice, which she’d gotten as part of the divorce settlement with Bob. Sandra was on top of Kurt, straddling him like a rodeo diva. Kurt’s head was rolled back as he enjoyed the sex, trying to forget the fact that Candy Odair was in the front seat watching them, occasionally reaching down to tickle his balls as if she were trying to make him ejaculate quicker.
“A little harder, honey. You want to make sure that he unloads like a dump truck,” Candy said, which made Kurt quiver a little.
Kurt would’ve been doing just fine if Candy had not insisted on being there with them. He’d agreed to leave the condom off because Sandra said she liked sex better without it. He even let her rub her nasty snatch, which smelled and tasted like a lasagna that had been left in the smoldering sun for a week, across his lips.
Kurt could see Candy in the front seat playing with herself, masturbating while she watched them fuck. My God! That is one fucked up bitch! Kurt wanted to get the hell out of the car but he could not find a reason to, and Sandra had already gotten him so hard that he would have a month-long case of blue balls if he quit now.
“Call me Mommy,” Sandra said to Kurt.
“What?” Kurt said as he fought back the urge to blow his load. She was humping him so hard that it was getting harder and harder to hold it back.
Sandra reared back and smacked his face.
“I said to call me Mommy, you little bastard! You ungrateful little shit!”
Kurt was hesitant. The slap stung and he had unexpectedly gotten harder each time she had said it.
“I, uh . . .” Kurt said, and Sandra started to reach her hand back again for a slap. “Mommy! Mommy! I love you, Mommy!”
Sandra pulled her hand back down and kept riding him, her sloopy breasts waving back and forth, the nipples barely catching his nose with each thrust.
“That’s it, baby. Do you like what Mommy gives you? Do you like it when Mommy puts your winky inside of her?” Sandra said, pulling her feet forward and sitting them on the bench seat beside him to straddle him with more force.
“Uh-huh.” Kurt wasn’t sure what else to say. Candy was again reaching down and tickling his balls with the same fingers she had inside her vagina. He could smell the stench coming from those fingers.
Sandra was now starting to moan louder, and she was reaching a screaming point.
“Oh baby! Mommy’s about to come. Can you come for Mommy, too!”
“Uh-Huh!” Kurt said, and quickly released. It came out in a splintering stream. Sandra could feel it, so she slowed and then stopped.
She kissed his forehead as she put on her bra and condescendingly said, “Good boy.”
Candy smiled in an evil way and turned around to face the front dash. Sandra opened the back door and stepped out behind the Marine supply store, b
eside the Stow. The fog cloud quickly surrounded her and filled the car, afflicting everyone inside with the same fate as it had everyone in the Stow parking lot.
* * *
Bret Holder awoke next to the log where he’d been raped. His thighs ached and his anus was leaking blood down his legs. He was freezing and his shoes and socks were gone. The cold air bit at his skin and the woods offered very little cover. He could not make out which way would take him back to town, and he could barely see.
He felt like every part of his body had been violated to the point of no redemption. He could never look anyone in the face again. If his father found out what happened to him, he’d be kicked to the curb and left with nothing. He found himself wishing he had left with his mother ten years ago, when she moved to Illinois and started a new life. She was the one who really cared for him, but he had wanted to stay with his dad. His dad was a strong man who didn’t take shit from anyone. Everywhere he went, he was the boss, and people listened to everything he said.
Right now, though, he wanted his mother. He wanted her because she cared about him and she would tell him everything would be all right. The last thing on his mind was making it with young girls or getting stoned . . . or drunk. He just wanted to be safe.
He had finally made his way out of the woods into a residential area of Squaw Creek when the fog clouded came barraging over the district. He could hear screams. The cloud surrounded him and danced around every corner of his body. The pain he had felt before was no comparison to what this felt like.
* * *
The fog passed through for another forty-five seconds before the end finally reached the Stow and rolled on past. Everyone in the original Fogstow district of Squaw Creek got the same surprise as it rolled in and squeezed through windows, doorjambs and chimneys. Some with weatherproofed homes were spared, but not many.
Everyone left at the Stow could hear the screams, including Arn and Harry, who stood up despite the residual pains they were feeling. It had mostly calmed down on their skin but now they could sit in their guts. Stomach tensions, colon pain, bladder pain.
It seemed so preposterous that they could have been painfully swept by something so powerful, yet so simple as a cloud. But it had come from the Ohio River, and that thought occupied the back of their minds.
Harry knew that they couldn’t go through something like that and not feel the aftereffects. His time at the Indiana University Medical Center and as a medical examiner for the Marion County police department had given him enough experience to know that those kinds of symptoms came with a price.
That’s when it happened. Their bodies started releasing their wastes. It first came out as uncontrollable urine, then defecation and vomit. Harry thought it would lead to relief so he pulled his pants halfway down to let it come out unrestricted. But it wasn’t just a little; it was everything. It just all kept coming and coming until every last drop, every last ounce of toxicity and waste had been eliminated. When it was over, all they could do was lie there under the bright lamppost. The cloud cover had cleared out and a few stars accompanied the bright moonlight. They all looked up at the stars and then fell unconscious.
A strong breeze blew cold droplets of water from puddles across the parking lot. There were no more chirping crickets or croaking frogs. Residents of the Squaw Creek district were reeling from the cloud, and just as had happened to everyone on the old Weyerbacher docks, their bodies purged themselves. Agonizing moans could be heard echoing throughout the area for several more minutes, then silence.
Everyone affected by the cloud had lost consciousness just like the Stow crew and all was quiet, except for the breeze. The wild brush that grew alongside the bluff rasped with the wind, but even the wind eventually died down and silence creeped over the town, awaiting the new Hoosier dawn.
Chapter 4
The New Hoosier Dawn
***
1
The moon had begun to dim as dawn crept on the horizon in Fogstow. The wind was still blowing and most of the area had dried out, with a few puddles left standing in the parking lot at the docks.
The sky had returned to a grey overcast and the sun barely breached the tree line, still low at the base of the rolling hills and forest, on the morning of October 2, 1993.
A possum sniffed around the tires outside the Chevy Caprice behind the Marine supply shop, where Sandra lay naked on top of Kurt, both asleep in the back seat, with Candy in the front, her dark stained underwear pulled down to her knees. Their mouths were crusted with vomit and their bowels had broken loose inside the car.
Kurt laid immersed in Sandra’s waste and the smell of piss lingered heavily in the car as Sandra’s eyes slowly opened, wincing at the small amount of light that was breaching the surface. She lifted herself off Kurt. Her whole body hurt. It felt like she’d taken on an orgy with 20 men the night before, but she was quickly realizing that Kurt was her only score. She remembered that she and Candy were due to blackmail his father soon, and the first thing that crawled through her mind, besides the intense hunger she felt, was the idea that she needed to get him out of the car and get home.
She tried to pull him out of the car by his legs with what little strength she had, but it hurt too much. Candy started to come awake as well, feeling the same pains and waking in the same pile of waste. She was hungry as hell and severely weakened. She opened the front door and saw Sandra struggling with Kurt. She immediately saw what they had to do and she started to help Sandra, but soon stopped, exhausted.
They both sat on the ground; they could hardly move. Sandra was still naked except for her bra. She reached over Kurt’s shit-stained body and pulled her clothes out to get dressed.
Kurt woke up at the same moment and jerked in surprise. Sandra pulled back out of the car and started dressing as Kurt looked at his naked body, covered in Sandra’s piss and shit. He was thoroughly disgusted, and he noticed that he himself had let out the loads underneath him. He rose slowly (and painfully) as he became more aware of where he was and started to recall what happened the night before. He felt disgusted with himself and tried to get dressed as quickly as possible, despite the pain that was rolling over his body. He didn’t even care that he was putting his shirt on top of the mess glued to his chest and legs.
He crawled out of the car and looked around, disturbed. He didn't say a word as he walked away as fast as he could, although his weakened body, wracked with hunger, would not allow him to move too fast.
He could smell something appealing wafting off the docks from the river channel. It reminded him of smelling his neighbors’ grill when they cooked steaks or hamburgers, mixed with the simmer of Worcestershire sauce.
But this smell was different. It wasn’t a steak, but it was appealing like a steak on a grill. He wanted to make his way over to the docks, but he hesitated as he looked back at Sandra and Candy sitting beside their car and decided to get the hell out of there.
He walked across the bridge to Alcatraz Beach and was out of sight by the time Candy realized it.
“I thought you said he lived in the TC,” Candy said as Sandra got dressed.
“How the fuck should I know? What’s the fucking difference anyway?” Sandra replied.
Candy walked up to Sandra and viciously pulled her hair back and grabbed her throat, although it physically hurt her to do so.
“The difference is he’s from a poor working-class family and we will have little to no leverage to get his daddy’s money, you stupid little bitch!” Candy said and then let go of her hair.
“Whatever, mother! We’ll just find another horny little fucker! They’re crawling all over this place.”
Candy crossed her arms and looked doubtfully at Sandra. “Also, what the fuck was with that ‘call me mommy’ shit last night? Did you get off on that or something?”
Sandra pulled her pants up and closed the back door, then got in the driver’s side. “Let’s just get the fuck out of here, can we, please?” she begged.
&
nbsp; Candy got in the passenger seat and dismissed the idea outright. She was more interested in finding the source of the smell. It had her stomach rumbling with hunger. The memory of the fog weighed heavily on her. Candy had been through a lot of shit in her 56 years, but nothing like that. She’d been pulling these scams with her daughter for a long time now and never had they encountered anything that matched the strangeness of that fog.
Maybe it was a bad idea, after all, when they decided to scam that dimwit Bob Stamps eight years ago. Although they had really cashed in on him, and it had given them a base of operations. But this town is a real shithole, and look what happened to us last night. It’s been ravaged by coal mines and pollution and there’s no telling what was in that fog that made them piss and shit themselves. On the other hand, they didn’t live out of motels or random apartments anymore.
They once lived in the house of a man whom they’d accidentally killed during a routine scam in the backwoods outside Louisville. It had played out pretty much like the night before with Kurt, except things went wrong and the man chased Sandra naked around the outside of the car. Candy had no other choice but to put the car in gear, and it rolled over him killing him. They put him back into his cheap tuxedo, which looked like one of those old tuxes that men wore to weddings and proms back in the ’70s. Then they dumped him in the river, and they saw him sinking as the current caught him.
It was supposed to have been simple, but Sandra couldn’t get his penis hard and she finally ended up calling him a faggot. Candy knew that it was probably because he was drunk, considering they met him at a bar and heard his life story over shot glasses.
They stayed at his house because they knew he had no family and no one checking in on him. He had lived in a secluded area, so they just holed up for a bit, biding their time. That is, until they ran into that dipshit Bob Stamps and Linton Derr at a nightclub one night.