by J. D. Monroe
SWEET CHERRY PIE Copyright 2015 by J.D. Monroe.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Editing by Rhonda Helms
Cover Design by Steve Novak
Book Design and Ebook Formatting by J.D. Monroe
Publisher: Mighty Fine Books, LLC
ISBN: 978-1-944142-01-8
First Edition: October 2015
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For all the girls who like to bend the rules...
1. FROM BAD TO WORSE
IT’S ONLY WHEN SHE’S IN FREEFALL, somewhere between the rust-eaten RV roof and a patch of muddy gravel, that she realizes the shotgun was a terrible idea. Her daddy—God rest his soul—had warned her from day one about the recoil. It kicks like a sonofabitch, Charity Lee, so put your shoulder into it, girl.
Then her ass meets ground, skull to dirt, and her jaws clack together. Air puffs out of her flattened lungs. Her head lolls in the gravel, bringing the worn, clay-caked treads of her truck tires into sharp focus. Firefly spots swim in her vision as she watches the revenant peer over the edge of the roof. She can’t remember how to breathe.
The walking corpse lurches forward and stumbles off the RV. It lands flat-footed and staggers, milky eyes gleaming as it examines the shot-out shoulder of its suit. A dandelion cloud of fine white hair stands out around its face. Dark fault lines appear in its furrowed brow, spreading under a disintegrating layer of thick funeral makeup.
The revenant’s left arm hangs by one stubborn navy blue seam and a finger-thick tangle of tendon and sinew. The rest of its sleeve is shredded by buckshot. A handful of the flattened pellets shimmer against the dark fabric. The revenant tests its injured arm, dirty fingers twitching faintly. It growls with a low, wet sound. Then it looks up at her, dead white eyes narrowing at the sight of the delivery snack that just landed at its feet.
She would curse, but she’s missing a step somewhere between the inspiration and the satisfying taste of profanity spilling over her tongue.
Inhale, dammit.
Her back arches up as she sucks in a cold breath that reeks so badly of putrefied meat that she can actually taste it, oily and foul like curdled milk in her mouth. She coughs violently, fingers fumbling at the machete hanging from her belt. The folding blade is still stuck when the revenant lunges for her, uninjured arm clawed and swinging wildly. “Oh, shit,” she wheezes. She pistons her feet out to catch it. Battered leather boots sink into its bloated gut, leaking greenish-yellow under the ragged white shirt. “Get off!”
The revenant roars as she kicks it hard, trying to shove it away from her. It barely budges and comes back with a vengeance, swiping at her with its bloodied hand. Ruined fingers dig painfully into her left thigh, and her legs tremble as she strains to hold it back.
Her shotgun is lying five feet away, which might as well be a mile. Her daddy’s antique Colt Commander, holstered at her back, digs into her spine painfully. With the revenant doing its best to climb onto her like a frisky prom date on a mission, it ain’t doing her one bit of good.
This is reason number fifty-seven that hunting alone is stupid. There should be someone watching her back, squeezing a trigger right about now to blow this thing off her.
The revenant’s jaws snap at her, teeth and lips stained with a brown crust of dried blood. Its tongue is shriveled and wormy in the foul-smelling mouth. And Jesus, the smell.
Her legs scream with exhaustion as they buckle, bringing the revenant close enough to swipe at her face. She cranes her neck to dodge the blow, rocks grinding into her scalp. Its gun-shot arm dangles over her uselessly, and she seizes the wrist. The skin is cold and loose in her grip. With a grunt of effort, she yanks it free, like pulling a drumstick off a rotisserie chicken. It even has the same gristly feel as it snaps free of the decayed tendons.
The revenant reels backward, and she slings the arm around like a meaty bat. The ball of the shoulder joint glances off the revenant’s chin. The creature catches it at the elbow, looking puzzled at the sight of its own arm. She crows a manic laugh. I just beat a zombie with its own severed arm. New personal best.
With the weight lifted, she twists, draws the Colt, then fires a single shot directly into the revenant’s face. One cheek blows out in a crater of gray-green flesh, and the revenant darts away, disappearing into the shadows between RVs.
“Dammit!”
She clambers to her feet, kicking up loose gravel under her boots. An inch higher and that thing would be dead. Again. Her aim is shit these days.
The night is eerily quiet. The only noise is the drone of crickets in the scraggly grass that lines the highway near the camper yard. Carl’s RV Wonderland is a hospice where old campers go to die. The old clunkers are age-yellowed and crooked like a mouthful of smoker’s teeth. The FOR SALE signs in the windows are sun-faded and barely visible under a veil of dusty yellow pollen.
A whining creak breaks the quiet behind her. Her heart does a one-two tap dance as she whirls to see a fifth-wheel camper rocking on its dry-rotted tires. It jolts one last time, then settles. The camper behind it starts rocking, and she watches as the revenant leaps from roof to roof. Its hulking shadow is a black pool against the deep purple-blue of the night sky. Then it pauses, and she hears only crickets again.
It waits, silent and still as a corpse ought to be, on the roof of a camper with a faded wolf mural painted on its side. The damn thing had to be a revenant. Strong as hell, hard to kill, and smart enough to look out for its own survival. It crawled out of the grave with a long-dormant predatory instinct alive and sharp. She can feel the weight of its stare on her. It’s never fun to be demoted on the food chain.
Shooting at it isn’t going to do shit unless she manages to put one in its brain stem, and even then she’s still got to take its head off. No way she’ll make that shot blind from here. Running after it is equally stupid.
She presses one hand to her ear like she’s talking on the phone. As she inches backward toward the truck, she says, “Couldn’t find the damn thing. Guess I’m gonna head back.” She doesn’t know if it understands her. Certainly can’t hurt.
Sure enough, she hears the creak and pause as it jumps to the next camper to follow her. Creak and pause. Creak and pause. She can barely make out the occasional glint of light in its cloudy eyes.
Her left hand unlatches the folding machete dangling from her waistband. The silver blade is a World War II relic and still sharp as the devil’s front teeth. She flicks it open and lets it hang by her leg. Her shadow is long and menacing in the yellow glow of the truck’s headlights. Come on, she thinks, twitching her finger on the Colt’s trigger guard. I’m mighty tasty.
There’s a creak of springs, then a crunch as something heavy grinds into the gravel. Her body tenses, fingers clammy around the oiled wooden handle of the machete. It moves closer.
A piercing alarm shrieks and deafens her. The truck’s headlights strobe, leaving her half blind as it goes from bright to dark in a rapid cycle. She should have disconnected the stupid alarm years ago. The truck sinks into the gravel as the revenant launches itself off the hood. She brings up the Colt, trying to track the fast-moving shadow.
“Oh no, you did not,” she shouts. Her first shot goes wild, missing the revenant by at least a yard. It lurches for her with a low growl, and she dives at its legs in an impressive tac
kle. It stumbles and topples over her, digging sharp claws into her calf. She shouts in pain and kicks it in the face. Bone crunches under her boot.
The revenant roars in pain, but it clings to her leg with the ferocity of a toddler mid-tantrum. She twists and fires another shot into its face. This one pierces its right eye, leaving a blackened crater. The head lolls, but its feet still kick. She finally wrenches her leg free and swings the machete down on the revenant. The blade sinks into its jowly throat and wedges into vertebrae. She props her boot on its shoulder and yanks it free, then goes for a second swing. The blade goes clean through, and the revenant finally goes limp.
She sighs and flops back into the gravel. Her leg stings, and she gingerly turns it to see a dark stain spreading on her calf. “Oh come on, I just bought these.”
Her leg trembles but supports her as she shuffles back to her truck and unlocks the toolbox in the bed. She tucks a bottle of lighter fluid under one arm and grabs a half-used matchbook from a dive bar in Charleston.
By the time she gets back, the revenant’s remains are already deflating, flattening into a lumpy mess inside the filthy funeral clothes. Gleaming lighter fluid beads on the cheap polyester suit as she douses the corpse.
“Lord, take this poor soul into heaven and let him have the rest he couldn’t have here,” Charity murmurs. She makes the sign of the cross, leaving dusty fingerprints on the shoulders of her heavy canvas jacket, then reaches into her shirt for the cross that had belonged to her father. Made of two flat nails, it’s dark gray and oily-smooth from decades of absent fiddling and silent prayers. She kisses it, then strikes a match and flicks it onto the revenant’s remains.
Flames lick up from the lapels of its suit coat. This is one of the few times when she can, with absolutely no humor or derision, acknowledge that this had once been a living, breathing, non-flesh-eating person. Late some nights, when the bottles are empty and her head is a scary place to be, she wonders if the soul lingers, trapped in a reanimated corpse. Was Grandpa here conscious as his body rotted and decayed, only to die a violent second death at the hands of someone like Charity?
That’s why she curbs her sharp tongue long enough to pray for his soul. She’s about as far from a saint as you can get, but she’s better than nothing. After all, she’s the only one to see him go for the second time, watching him return to dust. From ashes he came, and to ashes he goes, for good this time.
Minutes later, the corpse is blanketed in low orange flames. She hobbles over to retrieve her shotgun, cleaning up her toys, when she notices the distinct lack of flames on the corpse’s outstretched right hand. She prods the hand with the barrel of the shotgun, forcing it close to the burning remains. The sleeve ignites, burning right down to the shredded cuffs, but the pale hand is still untouched. Flames glint off a massive ring on the corpse’s middle finger.
“Son of a…” she mutters. A knot of anxiety twists into her gut as she watches the flames. They pull away from the hand, like the faintest breeze is blowing them away. Her night is about to get longer, and she just wants a good nap before hitting the road again. Apparently, a regular old reanimated corpse was too much to hope for.
She kneels and carefully reaches for the ring. Heat blooms against her bare hand, tightening the skin like a too-full balloon. She grabs the gold ring and yanks it off the corpse’s finger. The flames immediately rush down the hand, singing the tips of her fingers.
“Son of a bitch!” Charity swears, pressing her fingers to her lips. With her other hand, she holds the ring to the light. Despite its proximity to the flames, it’s cool to the touch. The stone is deep blue, almost black at its center.
As she gazes into it, the world falls away beneath her. Her mind fills with the image of it on her finger, glittering beautifully against her lingering summer tan. It’s not like she’s getting married any time soon. This is a tough, unrewarding life, so doesn’t she deserve something pretty once in a while?
The thick smoke drifting off the burning revenant dries her eyes, and she finally blinks hard. The world slams back into focus. If there was someone else crazy enough to be here at two in the morning to take her bet, she’d put money on that ring being responsible for Grandpa turning into the walking dead.
She lets it rest in her palm, ignoring the persistent itch to try it on, and shuffles back to the truck. There’s work to be done, but she just wants to sit in the air conditioning and rest her bleary eyes for a minute. She lays the ring on top of the truck-bed toolbox. As soon as it’s out of her hand, it’s like a weight lifts from her shoulders.
Without looking, she climbs up, sinks into the leather seat and feels the unmistakable sensation of—
“No, no, no,” she says as she grabs the steering wheel and pulls herself clear of the seat. A blanket of shattered safety glass covers both of the worn leather seats. One big chunk of glass still hangs from the frame like the lone tooth left to a lifelong meth-head. That explains where her first shot at the flying revenant went.
This is really not her night.
2. NO REST FOR THE WEARY
WHAT CHARITY WANTS TO DO is drive straight back to her shitty motel, collapse face-first into the lumpy mattress, and pretend she doesn’t know what unspeakable acts people have committed in that bed. However, what she needs to do is handle the cursed ring sitting there on her toolbox like Gollum’s little wet dream.
Two in the morning is the absolute opposite of the right time to handle the ring, but she sure as hell isn’t taking it back to her room and sleeping through the night with it doing its best to slip onto her finger. And burying it here at Carl’s isn’t even an option. Sooner or later, someone’s bound to find it sticking out of a tire rut, dig it up, and then they’re back to square one.
So she peels off her sweaty jacket, ties her hair up in a messy ponytail, and climbs into the bed of her poor, abused truck. She hauls out a battery-powered work lamp and a big black-and-yellow toolbox full of supplies. The last item is a roughly trimmed black tarp, which she shakes out in the pool of white light cast by her headlights.
Patience used to give her shit about all of the “religious bullshit.” Her sister was sharp as a stiletto and hell on heels, but she wasn’t much for ritual and faith. She laughed her skinny ass off the first time she ever saw Charity fumble her way through a Catholic rite to consecrate a pile of salt. “Are you serious? The Ten Commandments are basically your bucket list,” she said between guffaws. “You’ve broken, what, seven out of ten?”
It probably didn’t help her case when she told her sister to go “eat a super-sized dick” immediately after blessing a milk jug full of holy water. So she wasn’t a saint. Who was? But that very same water had held off a trio of ghouls with a refined palate for Patience, and her sister had no choice but to shut up about it.
The toolbox holds the basics: thick leather work gloves, Tupperware full of consecrated salt, a couple of bottles of holy water, and baggies of purifying herbs that can pass for weed when she gets particularly desperate for cash. For Grandpa’s ring, she’ll need some of the heavier stuff. She takes out a graphite crucible the size of a coffee cup and plunks it down on the tarp.
Much as she doesn’t want to admit it, she hates doing this job alone. As good choices go, it’s on the level of taking a late-night swim or heading down a dark alley alone.
She’d like to think it’s a sign of maturity that she occasionally does listen to her better instincts. She digs out her phone and scrolls down until Christina B is highlighted. Her thumb hovers over Call when it hits her. If she calls Christina, she’s going to have to own up to a lot she’s not ready to admit, and accept the verbal ass-whipping that’s guaranteed to follow.
And frankly, she doesn’t trust many people. Her sister was wrong about a whole lot, but she was right on one thing. People always fall back on their survival instincts, Charity, she’d say. Family’s about the only thing you can count on when Shit Creek starts rising.
Well, it seems even family can’t b
e trusted.
She can handle this. Against her better judgment, she’s done it before. The longer she leaves that nasty little gem alone, the more it worms into her brain, a sinister little song she can’t stop humming.
She stands over the open toolbox for a few minutes, staring at the gold ring before she finally picks it up. Its blue stone is almost black in the light from the worklamp. It feels too heavy for its size, resting in her palm. The gold band is painfully cold, like squeezing a handful of ice.
There’s no inscription in the metal, no symbols to tell what made it turn someone’s dear old Gramps into a flesh-eating monster. The size is about right for Charity’s thumb. And blue is a lovely color on her, isn’t it?
“No,” she tells it. Even so, the thought of putting it on, sliding it gently over her knuckles to fit tight around her finger, squeezing just so, sends an electric shiver down her spine. It’s the same delicious feeling when someone brushes work-callused fingers across the base of her throat, trailing downward on a mission. Her cheeks flush hot, and she scowls at the ring. “Not a chance. I can take care of that my own self without a cursed ring, thank you very much. The Lord gave me two hands and a decent imagination.”
She grabs a handful of the consecrated salt, relishing the soft scratch of the silvery granules against her skin. Purifying the ring takes physical contact; no protection allowed here. She sprinkles it over the ring in her palm, and there’s a faint tingle as the dark energy in the ring clashes with the purifying power of the salt.
“Father in heaven, I ask you to cast away the evil in this ring,” she prays, making the sign of the cross over the gold ring.
She reaches for the bottle of holy water. It’s the real deal, picked up from an actual church in Alabama. She saves it for special occasions, like keeping a good Scotch for company. When she dashes it over the ring, the metal goes molten hot against her bare skin. She dimly thinks that’s hot a split second before the searing pain lances up her arm. The water sizzles off the metal, and she flings her hand upward involuntarily.