Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

Beyond the hot coals was a table set up with gauze, bandages and ointment. Barbara Culver sat in the hayloft on a bale of hay. She played a fiddle and sang, her sweet voice drifting over us like a soft kiss.

Iron rods protruded from the coals.

The nearer we got, the quieter my students became.

I watched Bertrand pull a rod out from the coals and show the hot end to one of the last of Ms. Durphy’s students, a red-haired boy with wide brown eyes.

“See,” Culver explained, “how the brand is cooling to that ash gray color?”

The boy barely nodded.

“That’s just the right temperature.” He winked at the boy, friendly as could be. “You ready?”

Again, a slight nod.

Culver tilted his head back to two of the cowhands standing at the ready. They wore facemasks to protect them from the smell. One grabbed the boy’s arms, while the other held the boy’s legs steady. Culver pulled up the boy’s shirt.

I put my hand on Jennifer Bately’s shoulder.

At the end of the iron were the initials L.E. Lincoln Elementary. Beneath that was a small set of numbers identifying our city, state and school district.

The hot iron neared the boy’s skin.

I winked at Jennifer.

“Just a sting,” I assured her. “Just a sting.”

5:37 pm

“Hello?”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“Yes?”

“How are you this evening?”

“Uh, geez — look, I just sat down to dinner.”

“When’s a more convenient time?”

“How about never?”

click

6:30 pm

“Hello?”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“Yeah?”

“How was dinner?”

“What? Oh. Hey, let’s be honest here. I can’t stand you people, always interrupting meals, T.V., time with my family. Whatever you’re selling, I’m not interested.”

“I apologize, but — “

click

7:15 pm

ring…

click

7:45 pm

“Hello?”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“I thought I told you—”

“Did you listen to the message I left?”

“You mean when you called, what, twenty, thirty minutes ago?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a persistent little prick aren’t you? Calling from a different number so I wouldn’t recognize it on the caller I.D.—”

“Did you listen to the message?”

“No!”

click

9:45 pm

“Hello?”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“Ssshhhit…”

“If I could just take a few minutes of your time.”

“Do the words ‘Do Not Call List’ mean anything to you?”

“Please. It will only take a minute.”

“No. N. O. No. No, no, no!”

click

11:30 pm

“What?”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“Aw, gee-ZUZ!”

click

11:33 pm

11:36 pm

11:39 pm

11:45 pm

11:48 pm

“Listen, you idiot, I’m calling the cops. I’m giving them all the numbers you’ve called from. Then I’m suing your ass, your company’s ass, and if your mother’s still alive, I’ll sue her ass, too. You got that?”

“Got it, but Mr. Arnold, just let me say three words.”

“You’re digging a deeper hole, buddy.”

“Kraaken Zum Tweenz.”

“Excuse you?”

“Kraaken Zum Tweenz.”

“Uh…”

“Do you understand?”

“…”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“…”

“Hello?”

“Shit.”

“Do you understand?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Yes. Yes, I understand. Sir.”

“Be ready in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes?”

“You should’ve listened to me earlier. Give your mate and spawn a kiss goodbye, then prepare for transport. Our time has come.”

“Sir?”

“Nine minutes. Midnight.”

“Yes, sir.”

click

11:52 pm

“Honey? Who was that?”

“Nobody, dear. Just another phone solicitor. Go back to sleep.”

“…”

“…”

“You haven’t kissed me like that in a long time.”

“I love you. Now go back to sleep.”

It was dark and hot, and the smells were those of rot and perspiration. Clay moved with a mechanical precision through the tunnel, the light on his hard hat moving from the bottom of the wall to the top in a sweeping zigzag pattern. If a chunk of glass or metal winked at him, he’d take his dulled pick and dislodge it as best he could. Sometimes, if he was careful, he could remove an entire glass bottle that way without it shattering. He’d place it, along with the plastic containers, aluminum cans, bullets, and other items of value, in his cart. He thought it was best to have a method, best to focus on one’s work. It made it all the easier to get through the day that way. Made it possible not to lose his sanity and try digging his way out to the top like others had. He’d come across more than one miner who tried desperately to dig their way out, all the old bones and debris crushing them in a suffocating avalanche.

He had spent his first fourteen years on the surface. The waters had receded, but what good had that been? There was still not enough room. And the Game had been going on for the last fifty years.

The Game.

The rules were simple. You’re placed deep in the mines, and you have to find your way out. This could take years, and you had to work for your food. You had to mine the precious remnants of past generations. Aluminum. Plastic. Steel.

They called it a game, but it really wasn’t a game at all. How many people had Clay known to make it out alive when he had been above? Had he known any? Even his father never made it out. His father had been a strong man, levelheaded — if anyone could make it out, he could.

Yet he hadn’t. Clay had not seen his father in five years.

Sometimes, when the oxygen was low, Clay imagined his father down there next to him, watching him work. Was it possible he was still alive? Could he have survived all these years in the tunnels? Did he make it out in the year and a half that Clay had been down here?

He remembered watching his father being hauled into the tunnel’s entrance on a mining cart, arms and legs manacled. His father looked up at him and smiled just before the entrance of the tunnel swallowed him in one pitch-black gulp.

Maybe that was the worst — the fact that he remembered the surface. Remembered feeling the fresh air on his skin, the sun like a kiss on his face. Fresh water, the sound it made lapping at the shores of old crushed rock and bone.

Best not to think too much. Best not to let fading memories instill too much hope.

Some of the men sang to keep from thinking too much. But Clay didn’t believe in that. To him, their voices sounded pitiful and lonely ricocheting through the tunnels, and whenever he tried to sing, his voice returning to him unheeded in diminishing echoes, it reminded him of how much of his life had been wasted in the mines.

No. It was best to concentrate on the swing of the pick, the connection of metal to bone. Keep the senses tuned to the rhythm, the *chink* an accent to every fourth beat of the heart. Even though it made a crude clock, a cruel reminder of the glacial passage of time below the surface — at least it denoted progress. Momentum. At least each strike at a tunnel wall was a strike toward freedom.

Clay struck.

Two cubic meters of compacted bone and dirt loosened and tumbled around his work boots. He held his breath a moment, listening for signs of instability, the telltale rumblings of a potential cave-in. But the debris settled around his ankles and the tunnel’s walls held tight. He leaned over, kicking apart the remnants of a not-too-distant past. There was a femur. A jaw-bone. Half of a skull. A set of ribs.