The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy) (6 page)

He moved up to the more expensive booze. "Here
we go," he grabbed a bottle of Dead Ace Whiskey. The label had the ace of
spades with a skull in the middle, winking at him. "Drinkin' the good shit
tonight!"

Marty shook his head. Why anybody in their
right mind drank whiskey of any kind was beyond him. He preferred the sweeter
stuff, such as the apple or raspberry schnapps, or even the sweet wines, he was
quite the man's man.

"Gonna need a cart," Jacky put his
bottle in one and started loading up the rest of the alcohol from the list.
"Probably wondering why I'm buying all this booze," he asked Marty
with a big smile.

"The mystery of it all is killing
me," Marty replied, stuffing more cheese puffs in his mouth.

"Got a party going on back at my place
tonight," Jacky wiggled his eyebrows at Marty.

"Oh yeah?" Marty's interest went up
a notch. "I get off at midnight, maybe I'll swing by."

"Sorry, private party," Jacky's
yellow teeth smiled big. "You understand, don't ya?"

"Sure," Marty replied with a shrug.
Most likely he wouldn't have come by either way. His plans for the night
consisted of a jumbo bottle of table wine and a vintage porno from the 70's
followed up with a Tarintino video he would watch until he passed out in his  parents'
basement, which was where he lived.

"Definitely looks like you got some
females coming over," Marty said as he scanned a twelve pack of Smiley's
Spiked Lemon-Aid.

"Hell ya, I wouldn't drink that girly
shit."

"I hear that," Marty lied, looking
at the label and thinking he might pick up some of Smiley's water-melon
hurricane coolers instead of the wine he was going to buy.

"Gimme two packs a Back Llama
unfiltered," Jacky pointed at the cigarettes behind Marty.

Marty rang up the smokes along with the
twelve pack of Spiked lemon-aid, two cases of beer and the bottle of Dead Ace
Whiskey.

Jacky pointed at a six pack of cheap beer
cans on sale behind Marty. "Gimme one of those sixers, too." He had
almost forgot about the six pack the fat kid in the car had mentioned.
”Would
hate to actually have some change left when I walked outta here."
He
thought to himself.

"You are ready to party for the price of
one hundred and two dollars and three cents."

"Highway robbery," Jacky handed
over his cash.

"The man is stickin' it to all of
us," Marty bagged up the liquor and handed it over along with the change. 
      

"You got no idea kid," Jacky
replied as he walked out, pocketing the money.
"Anything less than five
bucks don't count as change."

They watched Jacky come out of the store with
a cart full of goodies.

"Looks like the bullshit has come to an
end," Jake said.

"Maybe," Drew and Johnny said at
the exact same time.

There was a moment of silence and then Jake
said: "Fucking Twinkies," which made them all chuckle.

Jacky put his bag of whiskey, cigs and his
six pack in the front seat, along with one of the cases of beer. He handed the
rest of the booze to Jake through the back window. "Let's go boys, I'm
thirsty," he said, jumping back into the car.

Drew backed out as Jacky tore into one of the
teenagers' cases of beers and started passing out brews, keeping one for
himself of course. The others let it go.

They pulled up to Jacky's trailer about
fifteen minutes later.

"You boys wanna hang out for a
while?" Jacky asked as he opened up the door.

"Why, so you can drink even more of our
beer?" Johnny asked.

Jacky spun around. "Fuck you,
asshole!"

Drew held out his hand. "Be cool, Jacky.
Johnny is just a prick by nature and doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut.
We appreciate the offer, but we got to get going, we got to hook up with some
chicks."

"Whatever," Jacky replied, grabbing
his booze and smokes and getting out of the car, slamming the door.

"Smooth," Jake said, looking at
Johnny.

"Got him the fuck out of the car, didn't
it?"

Drew started backing up the car. "The
ends always justify the means, right, my man?"

"Exactly," Johnny said with a
smile. "Now hand back the party favors, my cans dry."

"Fucking kids," Jacky said as he
opened up his bottle and took a big swig.

"Hello, Jack," he came out of the
early evening shadows like a black panther.

Jacky looked down at the bottle. "You're
a little early to be comin' around ain't ya?"

He came the rest of the way out of the shade
of the trailer,  briefly looking like a Viet-Cong soldier, but his AK-47
quickly turned into a bottle of booze and his straw hat became a farm
implementation ball cap.

"Thought maybe we'd have an early drink
and you can tell me a little more about those boys in that big, ugly Ford that
just dropped you off."

Jack did his best to hide the fear that
tickled up his neck anytime the beast showed up when he was sober. They were
old friends from back in the war days, in those dark, tight tunnels. The type of
old friend that was a huge part of your life when you were younger, but was
nothing more than a reminder of horrible times now.

"Just a trio of punks, pretty
much," Jack replied, taking a big swig from his bottle.

"They pretty tight?"

"Seem to be."

"Any kinks in their armor?"

"Oh, hell yeah."

"Well, let's hear about that," the
demon's smile seemed to reach all the way back to his ears.

On August the 26th, 1969, in the Vietnam
Jungle, Frank finally got to use the family heirloom. Not by choice so much as
desperation, by this time he didn't even want to touch the damn thing.

The dead of night didn't do much to cool down
the thick heat of the jungle, and the bugs and leeches never stopped. For the
two last surviving soldiers of the 17th infantry squad, the adrenaline that
pumped through their veins put all of the discomforts of the jungle to a
minimum, as they focused on trying to stay alive.

"Fuckin' Cong," Nick whispered. "They're
out there, waiting like spiders."

"Shut up," Frank hissed.
"They'll hear you!"

"We can't sit here any longer, Franky,
they're gonna pin us down!"

Frank let out a sigh. "Lead on then,
tough guy."

Nick sprang like a lion out into the open,
and machine gun fire immediately answered him from the left. Frank saw where it
came from and squeezed the trigger of his M-16, peppering the area with
bullets.

Silence and darkness followed for a long
second.

"Fuck you, Charlie!" Nick yelled
into the night. "You missed me!"

Frank watched and waited for more gunfire but
nothing came.

"You got 'em Franky," Nick said,
standing up.

"Must have," Frank replied.
"Otherwise they would have cut you down by now, Nicky."

Nick chuckled darkly. "I've got more
faith in your marksmanship, than you, pal." 

"Don't fool yourself buddy," Frank
reached his friend. "There is always another snake in the grass."

They ran through the dark jungle, waiting to
be cut down by the Viet-Cong, but knowing they had no choice but to hurry. Their
only chance at survival was getting the hell out of where they were and back
into friendly territory. Their squad had been ambushed less than an hour ago,
and as far as they knew, they were the only ones still alive.

"Haul balls, country boy," Nick
said as they ran.

"Kiss my ass, Boston," Frank
replied as they both giggled away the stress as they ran.

Frank followed Nick, hoping he knew where the
hell he was going. They made it about a click or so before they ran into more
gunfire.

Frank dropped to the jungle floor as Nick
yelled expletives, firing back with his M-60 into the bush.

"That's all you commie bastards'
got?" he asked, standing tall and letting his machine gun spit out
bullets.

The Cong answered with a barrage of bullets
across Nick's face, dropping him like a pile of bricks.  

"Fuck you!" Frank yelled, emptying his
clip into the jungle where the enemy fire had come from.

The Cong answered with a another assault of
return fire, pushing Frank back to the ground as the bullets flew. He quickly
reloaded his rifle, trying to sink into the ground by sheer force of will.
"Nicky
is dead,"
kept chewing at his brain, threatening to make his fingers
tremble.

Movement came from the bush to his right,
close. He aimed his rifle and let loose a quick barrage of bullets. He saw
Charlie buck as he was hit in the brief fire light of his bullets. Half a
second before Frank released the trigger of his weapon it stopped firing on its
own, jammed.

"Damn it!" He spit, as more bullets
flew through the air above him from some new direction, forcing him back to the
ground, trying to get the rifle un-jammed.
”Goddamn finicky M-16's,"
he thought to himself, pulling the charging handle back several times, trying
to get the jam to fly out the ejector port.
 He soon gave up, dropping
the rifle and instead pulling out his father's blade; the switchblade. The
family death jewel.

Crawling through the vegetation like a snake,
he waited for something to get his attention. Something moved off to his left,
he moved off towards it.

Frank was almost on top of him before he even
suspected anything. The Cong soldier pulled in a quick breath right before
Frank pushed the button of the switchblade and stabbed him in the neck. Red
bubbles of blood gurgled out of Charlie's neck as he slowly died.

Frank let go of the blade and grabbed for the
AK-47 in the dying Gook's hand. He squeezed the trigger, doing a full
three-hundred and sixty degree circle, trying to kill everything. He fell to
the ground once again as the clip emptied, expecting return fire, but none
came.

Minutes passed as Frank lay as still as the
dead man beside him, waiting for something, anything, fully expecting to die
along with his friend, but nothing happened.

Death didn't come, so Frank sat up, found a
fresh clip for the AK and moved off into the darkness, leaving his dead friend
and his switchblade in the neck of the dead Cong. He would think of Nick almost
constantly for the next few hours, but the switchblade wouldn't enter his mind
until the dawn. He would always feel bad about leaving his friend behind, but
would actually be glad about leaving the knife. That was one family heirloom he
was glad to lose.

The 32nd Infantry Squad came through the same
location on the afternoon of the next day, finding the dead bodies. They had
been in the area and had been ordered to see if they could locate any survivors
from Squad 17, which was part of a different platoon than the 32nd, so they
knew none of the men they were looking for.

A young private named Jack Young found the
body of a dead Gook with a switchblade sticking out of his neck. He pulled it
out of the dead body, cleaning it off on the shirt of its victim. "I got a
dead Charlie over here, along with one of our boys, probably one of the missing
17th."

Sergeant Roland and Corporal Purnell walked
up beside the private.

"Tag and bag our man, Purnell,"
Sarge commanded.

"Why the hell I gotta do it,
skipper?" Purnell whined. "Jack Rat is the one that found him."

The skipper turned to Purnell. "Cause Santana
just found a tunnel opening, so do you want to do this?" He pointed at the
dead soldier, "or go check out that hole?"

"I got this," Purnell mumbled,
moving up to the body. 

Sarge turned to Jack Rat. "It's totally
your call on going down there soldier, but you never seem to pass up a chance
to do this crazy shit, so I thought I'd let you know about it. You ready to do
some search and destroy?"

Jack looked at the switchblade, his new
friend. "Hell yeah."

Walking up to the hole, Jack stopped, setting
down his M-16 and pulling off his pack. Rummaging through his gear, he found
the .38 revolver he bought on the black market a few weeks back, the .45 army
issue pistols were just too damn loud in the tunnels.

"Ready?" one of his platoon buddies
asked. He didn't know his name, he didn't know any of their names. They just
didn't matter enough to him.

"Yeah," Jack replied, putting the switchblade
in his mouth and grabbing his flashlight as he walked up to the hole, crouching
down a few feet in front of it.

With his light in his left hand and the .38
in his right, he motioned at the group of soldiers that surrounded the tunnel
entrance."Move back, y'all," he mumbled since the hilt of his knife
was still in his mouth.

The others did as he asked, moving off to do
other things. Only three stuck close by. The Sergeant and two others that the
Skipper had told to stay put.

Jack crouched, looking into the darkness of
the hole, slowly drawing a small circle in the dirt with the butt of his
flashlight. The three soldiers watched him, completely silent, knowing this was
the same weird ritual Jack always did before he went into the abyss of the
tunnel. Sometimes this lasted for only a few seconds, other times for several
minutes. The Sarge never questioned him about it though, because he always went
in, but never until he was ready.

It took close to three minutes this time
before he crawled in like a hungry badger chasing a rabbit.

"Jack-Rat is a fucking weirdo," one
of the corporals; named Ford, commented after he disappeared.

"Yeah," the Skipper agreed.
"But he's gone into every hole we've found and came back out in one piece,
so he obviously knows what he's doing."

The other corporal, named Santana nodded his
head. "How many times has he done this? A dozen?"

"Eighteen," Sarge replied.

"That's way past weird, man." Ford
commented. "That's just crazy."

The Skipper just nodded his head, saying
nothing. He was a good sergeant that did his best to keep his boys alive. Most
of his men liked him, and even if they didn't, they still respected him, cause
they knew he wouldn't ask them to do anything that he himself wouldn't do.
Except for Jack.

Sarge would never go down in one of those
death holes, and under no circumstances would he ask any of his men to. He
didn't like all of his men, in fact some were lazy pieces of shit, but he did
value their lives. The only reason he had agreed to Jack's request to
investigate the underground mazes was because it had been the first time he had
seen a spark of interest in his eyes, which were usually dead like and beady at
the same time.

"Gator eyes,"
Skipper thought to himself.
"The
pupils might be round like a person's, but everything else is reptile."

The sergeant was a very good judge of
character as well as being somewhat of a bad-ass. Standing a little over six
feet tall with arms like a gorilla, it took a lot to intimidate him, but Jack
made his steel nerves a little shaky. It's not that the skinny little runt had
ever done anything. He actually followed orders pretty well and seemed immune
to what anyone else said or thought about him, which inherently was the root of
the problem. Other people just didn't matter, Whether it was the VC or one of
his fellow GI's.

"The shadow of death is that boy's only
friend," Sarge said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

The sergeant's assessment was correct, but
today something else intended to become his new best buddy. It crawled past the
soldiers like a small spider and leaked into the tunnel like ethereal darkness,
flowing after Jack.

At five foot four and one hundred and twelve
pounds of nothing but bone and muscle, Jack was the perfect build and size for
a tunnel rat, but his exceptional limberness gave him an almost alien
perfection to crawling the tunnels. If a spotlight was shining on him as he
traveled, he would have the look of a wounded insect moving along on four legs
instead of six, but still quite mobile and quick.

Slowly but surely the tunnel started to
shrink on him, first forcing him on his knees and elbows, and then on his
belly, forcing him to move forward like an earthworm in both pace and
technique, his arms stretched out in front of him . The air got even thinner in
the squeezing confines with the swirling dirt particles.

He forced himself to stop moving, knowing he
wasn't drawing in enough air to expend any energy.
”Stay still, let the air
come to you,"
he told himself.
"The tunnel will open back up
soon, this is just another one of Charlie's tricks. Once I catch my breath,
I'll be back on my way.
"

So there Jack lay, in a tunnel tighter than a
burial plot, slowly catching his breath, fully aware that if the Cong found him
from either direction, he was dead. It had also occurred to him that this tiny
tunnel could be a dead end, never getting any larger as he slowly crawled
forward, till there was no longer any air left. Instead of being one of
Charlie's tricks, it could be one of Charlie's death traps.

"Too late to change direction now,
anyway,"
He said to
himself, feeling better now that he was getting back a little more of his
breath. Jack was truly a freak of nature in this respect, for not only did he
have no fear of death by suffocation, he feared no means of demise down in the
tunnels. If he died, then so be it, no big deal. He'd rather be down here doing
this then be up top, having to listen to all those dip-shits talking about all
the pussy they got back home, how cool of a car they had back home, how much
they missed their wife and kids back home. Hearing that kind of shit was what
really drove him up the wall, listening about shit that didn't have anything to
do with him. Shit that wasn't even real. Not like down here, down here was
where the real was. Whether it was life or death, it was the true thing, not
that fake shit back home.

It was finally time to start moving again,
and sure enough the tunnel did open back up before he was forced to take
another break. By now, the evil that was following him was right up to his
boots.  

Jack's steps were slow and deliberate as he
bear-walked through the much wider tunnel, the flashlight in his left hand,
turned off long ago. In mid-step he stopped cold, hearing something.

Jack's right hand slowly curled towards his
chest, equally near both the .38 revolver in his belt or the switchblade in his
mouth. Whatever it was, near or close, he had the appropriate weapon on the
ready, just waiting for him to use it.

That was when things changed. Instead of
Jack's certainty of the enemy close by him, needing to be killed, he had a
feeling of kinship to whatever was in the dark, as if a fellow wolf had just
howled a silent greeting to him.