Jon Fore - Black Water

He looked down at the scanner again and after considering it for some time, clicked it on. It began racing through the preprogrammed channels again, searching for a signal stronger than the white noise. He watched it go through the sequence over and again before stretching out on the wall mounted rack.

All of his precautions and preparations had proven effective enough to keep him alive. He was now safe from the dangerous intent of the people above and could sustain himself for many months. He was used to being alone, and the solitude would not get to him; he had a large collection of movies and books and other distractions.

“You're not alone, Stan,” the radio whispered. “We can wait for you, wait until you decide to come out and join us.” The voice was barely more than static shaped in some unnatural way. In the background was the sound of droning machinery and grating metal.

“Leave me alone!” Stan screamed unreasonably at the radio.

The machine noise hissed and hummed in the background for some time. “We can wait for a long time…” the voice promised.

Stanly switched the radio off and returned to his bed, defeated. He curled up like a fetus, and feeling utterly alone, began to weep his end.

She eased up, her eyes fixed on the thickly overcast sky. The length of her body ached with pain, the pain of assault and rape. It had started with the screeching, the horrible screeching from Black Water Mountain. The town had gone mad, stark raving mad. People running this way and that, killing and dismembering each other, adult and child alike. She had hoped it was a nightmare, but the raging ache and skin-cracking sting in her crotch told her it was not.

Her memory was like a velvet curtain, heavy and thick. All she could recall was the repeated rapes, the blood covered men climbing on her as she pretended to be dead. Some murdered as they took her, others just before or after. Bodies lay within an arm’s reach of her, all around her, and her skin stuck to the road by all the dried blood. Past this was a haze of darkness, soft but relentless, that hid from her even her own name.

During some point of the repeated violations, she had lost consciousness and slipped to a place where their penises could not harm her. It was from there she had come, to find the bodies, to see her own, forced nude and battered in such horrible ways. It was not her fault, she did not ask for this, and so she refused to loath herself because of it.

She was cold, dangerously cold in the early morning light. She had to seek shelter, find clothing, and get herself warm.

Tearing herself from the street-wide scab, she stumbled to the closest shop, now a mostly destroyed building. The front window that had once read “Mary’s Fashion Boutique” was now in shards, both inside and outside the store; the doors were now missing, pieces of glass and metal their only remains.

Inside, the racks and shelves had been overturned and tossed about. Clothing of all types lay scattered everywhere. She grabbed a particularly gaudy plaid coat from the floor and wrapped her nakedness within. Her body shivered against the aches and bruises, and she knew that she had to find more clothing quickly. She found a pair of black button-fly jeans and a tight little t-shirt that quoted, “Don’t expect a gift, I shop for me!” on the front. Atop this, she pulled on a rather woolly sweater with long sleeves and again the plaid coat.

None of the shoes here were functional for much more than clubbing, but she found some thick tube socks, which she put on in triplicate. She would have to find better footwear, and somewhere in her mind, she knew there was a Coach's Corner store a few shops down where they sold running shoes.

As she turned, she caught sight of herself in a fragment of a hanging mirror. Her face was bruised on one side from temple to the end of her jaw, and her other eye was swollen almost closed. Under that, she could see at one point she was a pretty woman, slender and petite with curly blond hair…and a squinted, swollen eye and purple cheek. She scrubbed some dried blood from her face with the sleeve of the coat, but still could not recognize the face.

She could feel the strangeness of not knowing herself pushing emotion to the top of her throat, and she turned away before crying. She had to find shoes, then her car, then a cop or a hospital. Whatever had come down from Black Water Mountain had not killed her, and she did not intend to give it a second chance.

She found the Coach’s Corner, and it was in much the same condition as the other store. The difference here was the bodies inside. Some seven or eight corpses lay twisted and broken throughout the small shop; they were shot, cleaved, or smashed in some sickening way. Overhead, some football game played out over a hidden radio as if nothing had gone wrong the night before. She held her stomach as she found shoes and left the shop quickly.

In the street again, she was shocked at how revolting the town had become. Even in the hazy gray light from the overcast sky, she could tell it had aged decades in a night, rust and corrosion taking its toll on the metal things, while the wooden ones looked weathered and dry. The streets were crowded with broken glass and trash, loose papers and tatters of clothing all amongst the randomly felled corpses.

From the darkness of her mind, Shakespeare recited, “Something wicked this way comes,” in an author like voice, to which she said, “This way came is more like it.” The sound of her own voice frightened her, broke through the silence of the streets and disturbed the death of it all.

She allowed her feet to pick a direction; she had to find her car even if she could not recall what it looked like, the make or model or even the color. However, they chose to lead her to the right and around the side of the boutique. As she reached the corner of the building, she found a purse there, splayed across the sidewalk, trampled and blood-spattered.

She squatted down next to it, and withdrew a dark faux calfskin wallet. Inside, she found a license with her picture on it. The face was pretty, petite, and lacking the damage it bore now. Just underneath her picture was the name Shannon Clemens. The name sparked like an empty lighter, a flash without a flame. Irritation drove a wedge through her; it was infuriating she could not remember who she was.

Still, she collected what she could of her things and continued. Subconsciously, she pulled out a cigarette and lit it before she even realized that she smoked. It would not have mattered if she did or not; the cigarette tasted good and brought calm to her nerves. She drew deeply again, had a sudden urge for Scotch, and continued on her way around the corner of the building.

The parking lot was empty. Not a single car was there, not even in ruin. What she found were six empty spots and a fifteen-foot tall chain link fence, bluish gray fog oozing through the diamond shaped holes. Far in the distance, she heard what she was sure was a single gunshot, and her nerves began to fray once more. She returned to the street, made another right, and continued into the deepening fog. Shannon hoped there was a gun store nearby, some place where she could pick up a weapon or something to protect herself; she had suddenly resolved not to become a victim again.

The fog was wet, cold, and heavy and allowed for only a few yards of visibility. It put her on edge even more, and she drew deeply on the cigarette again. No matter how hard she thought on it, she could not reason how she came to be in a place like this, in a situation like this. The only sign of life she had encountered was a gun shot from far off, a sign of not only life but the dealing of death as well.

In only a few shops, she found a sporting goods store with rifles visible on the back wall. She stepped over the broken glass and around the heavy camouflage coats. The counter had been smashed, but it still held a number of handguns. They were large and unyielding and Shannon had no idea what it was she was looking for. She knew it had to be small enough to fit her hand but have a big enough bullet; this was something her brother had taught her after her first break-in.