Shard



  Other Books By John Richmond

  Sins of the Fathers

  Empathy

  Available in print and for download at most online retailers and at www.JohnRichmondBooks.com

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  SHARD

  John Richmond

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  Published By

  John R. Richmond

  [email protected]

  First Published 2011

  Copyright John Richmond, 2007. All rights reserved

  SmashWords Edition

  Any attempt to imitate the contents of this book in any form will be considered breach of copyright law and subject to lawsuit.

  Any resemblance to the lives of any persons, either living, dead, or undead is coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  About the Author

  Contact the Author

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  For Bob:

  Who taught me to commune with the dragons in my basement...

  and anything else lurking down there.

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  Chapter 1

  Will Two-Bears McFarlan shook his head and sighed, “Damn, that’s a great line.” He scanned the first sentence of his favorite novel again, flicking over ant letters: The man in black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed. Clean, clean, squeaky clean. He knew every character as well as his own family, every plot twist as well the planes of his own face, but his breath still caught at the end of that sentence. Any further and Will would amble the blasted alkali with Stephen King’s brave and terrible Gunslinger until they were done. One more word and he would plunge again into the shifting deep of imagination. And, here there be dragons.

  He closed his eyes, let his breath out and—

  “Hey! Sheriff!” Sheriff sounded more like shurf.

  Will’s head lolled back, mouth slack. He called over his shoulder, “Whaddaya need, George?”

  Silence from the holding cell in the back. There was just the one cell—a relic with bars instead of chicken wire and plexiglas. Will tended to think of it as George Rhodes’ Weekend Retreat. He’d considered having a plaque made.

  Will cocked an eyebrow and a lock of too-long hair slipped from under his Kentucky Wildcats cap. “George?”

  Silence.

  Will gave The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger a long look and put it down on the scored surface of a desk twice his age. He swung a pair of red Chuck Taylor All Stars tennis shoes down from the corner of said desk and thought about strapping on his .375. Not because he would ever need a weapon of any sort when dealing with George Rhodes—even on one of his bad benders, George always greeted Will with a sloppy hug—but more for effect. It wasn’t one of Roland of Gilead’s infamous sandalwood revolvers, but it was the right shape and size. Will liked to think of the big six gun as his pet cybernetic dragon. He’d even named it Smaug after Tolkien’s famous scaly horror. Instead of strapping on the iron, Will clunked it down into the top drawer and slammed it shut. He squeaked down the short hall and stood in front of the cell. The door, of course, was open.

  George Rhodes had been first in his class at Blue Ridge High, quarterback for the Blue Ridge Razorbacks and captain of the chess team. By the age of twenty-four, alcohol had stroked the shine out of his eyes like a child pets the fur off its favorite teddy bear. It had been a long, treacherous affair, but booze loved George and George loved booze. The only problem, according to George, was that it was a dysfunctional relationship. The love was real though, and that was worth fighting for. George’s six foot-three frame used to run two-thirty of solid muscle. Will stood looking down at a broad-built skeleton draped in gin-soaked rags. It smiled at him and cleaved another chip off his heart.

  George’s brow tented over sunken eyes. “Sheriff?”

  “You rang, George?”

  “I did? Did I?”

  Will walked into the cell and leaned back against the bars, cool through his Jane’s Addiction t-shirt. “You did, buddy-roo. Need something?”

  George slurred through a bad British lilt. “A Bombay Sapphire and Tonic would be the tops, my dear Sheriff.”

  “I’ll bet,” Will said. “And you know it’s Constable, Georgie. I hate it when you call me Sheriff. Tommy Ward and his deputy dawgs are up at the County Courthouse. You know it as well I do.”

  “Sorry, dude.”

  “What’s up?”

  George belched. Really it was more of a poison sigh. “Hmm?”

  Will waved his hand in front of his face. “Last chance, Georgie. I have a tower to run down, a man in black to climb.”

  “You readin’ that fuckin’ thing again?” George held his hand up—gnarled blue branches under the loose skin—and examined it. Was this his? Oh, yeah, fingers were for counting. “How many times?”

  Will waved him off. “Like four or five.”

  “You’d think there were only a hunnert books in the world, Constable.”

  “That’s not true, man. I read all the time.”

  “I’m sayin’. What I’m saying is that I know you read all the time. It’s just that you been reading the same damn books since we was kids.” For a moment, the gin glaze swapped for the glaze of memory as George first came upon little William Two-Bears McFarlan leaning up against an oak with his nose in a dog-eared copy of The Once and Future King. He chortled and muttered, “Threw my football at you.”

  “Huh?”

  George squinted up at Will, a suspicious buccaneer. “Wass’ the last thing you read?”

  “Today’s New York Times on-line edition. Apparently, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting fatter.”

  “Yeah, yeah. What’s the last book, novel, you read?”

  Will pivoted an ankle so he could look at the five-pointed star on the side of his shoe. He favored Chucks because of those stars. Reminded him of a badge. “Fine,” he said. “It was Fantastic Voyage.”

  “How many times you read that one already?”

  Will smiled, triumphant. “Only twice, so bite me.”

  “Including this last time?”

  “Okay, three times.”

  “You suck, Sheriff.”

  Will splayed his hands. “What do you want from me, Georgie? I like what I like.”

  “You always order the same thing when you get Chinese, doncha’?” He jabbed a finger at Will. “Never get something new.”

  Will crossed his arms. “Chinese restaurant. Shard don’t even have a McDonalds.”

  “Always getting’
the General Tso’s Chicken.” George shook his head; long, greasy blonde hair, already fading to gray at the temples, hung over his brow. “Never takin’ your shot on the Hunan Beef.”

  “You sound like a drunk, Georgie.”

  “Truly? Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Gimme’ a break, man.” Will sighed and dropped down on the bunk next to his oldest friend. Old springs screeched in protest, metal snakes that would one night eat through their cotton cocoon and bite. Will made a mental note to order a new one before he had to get George another tetanus shot. “Nothing’s happened in this town since The Fire. There’s like, what? A population of thirty-three now?”

  “Peterson and his girl packed up a couple days ago.”

  Will started. “Greg Peterson took lil’ Shell? They’re gone? Shit, man, see? That’s what I’m talking about. There’s nothing here. You gotta’ at least let me read what I like.” He looked at the star on his other shoe. “Doing what makes us happy is the only thing to keep out the bats.”

  “You gonna get me that gin tonic, then?”

  “The Fire” was the result of the Shard Mine explosion of 1994. A build-up of volatile gases (and a company looking to save a few thousand dollars a year by ignoring a safety measure or twenty) had doomed the once booming town of Shard, Kentucky. The cough and roar from the earth had been bad enough, eating five miners alive—men who lived and loved in Shard. The aftermath had been worse: the main coal seam took to smolder. Sulfurous smoke seeped non-stop from cracks in the earth. Any pore from underground to the surface bled stinking devil’s breath.

  The mine shut down, the chains scraped over the tunnel head-caps and the town began to die. Within a month of the accident half of Shard had moved on, rolling out over roads that split like melon skin in hot sun. After a year, the fire slipped along the fuse of coal seam, poisoning one acre after another. One night you could go to bed, hoping the seam might zig instead of zag under your lot, only to wake with smoke drooling up through your bathroom sink. An idyllic Appalachian mountain village with an unemployment rate of less than one percent and a steady growth rate fell back into the emerald forest, sighing its last smoky exhale.

  Every now and then the ground would shudder and thud as a new mouth opened to sing the earth’s dirty song. Sinkholes pocked the town, glowing weak orange at night and gurgling pale, gray-yellow vapor by day. In spring and summer, creeper vines found purchase and dragged down while they decorated. In fall and winter mildew bloomed between boards, painting white siding black then freezing in coagulated colonies.

  Twelve years gone now. Twelve hundred citizens. Some thirty-three left. Greg Peterson and his daughter, Shelby Grace, gone. Thirty-one. Tooley’s Grocery, the elementary school, the town hall and jail all huddled in the last unburned corner of town. The rest was row after row of empty, smoking streets—eddies of ash in the gutters. The mine offices loomed over the asphalt grid, a brick sore on the side of the mountain. Red, angry flesh of the world beneath it all. Shard.

  A cough.

  Will and George looked up at a compact young woman with electric blueberry hair. Her arms were bare to the shoulder save for the tattooed sleeves, writhing in faded color and mysterious symbol. She wore torn black jeans and motorcycle boots scraped to the steel on the toes. Neither of them had ever seen her before in their lives.

  “Which one of you’s the prisoner?” she said.

  Chapter 2

  Erica Mendez Stood in her most comfortable underwear, a black sports bra and matching thong, and surveyed the clothes laid out on her bed. On the left, three pairs of designer jeans, four custom blazers, and underthings boiling in a pile of lace and spaghetti straps. On the right, blouses for a week along with her oldest Armani suit. Nearly everything was custom-made, tailored, altered. Her body was a collection of custom-made, tailored and altered musculature. Her hair was long, deep chestnut with highlights labored over by talented brushes.

  Looking at Erica was like looking at a computer simulation of an attractive young woman. At first sight men were sometimes puzzled but inevitably began to circle. Their approaches were seldom direct—afraid to get cut on those honed edges. For the brave few who offered to slay a twenty-dollar martini in her honor, she served them back to themselves in shreds, often without a word. The deep black of her eyes and the intelligence that crackled within them was more than enough to do the wet work. For those foolish enough to continue pursuit, Erica might employ her extensive verbal arsenal (she wasn’t the youngest female litigator at Miller, Seay and Summerstein for nothing). The eviscerations were surgical and deadly. She only told the truth.

  A car horn blared in the street ten stories below her apartment on 98th and West Park. In the winter, the reservoir shone cobalt through the bare trees in Central Park. It wasn’t as big as her loft in the Village had been, but she was a grown-up now and she was never going to make partner unless she worked, played and lived like a grown-up. Miller, Seay, Summerstein…and Mendez. The green of the park foamed in through the window and into her mind. Yes, this had been the right choice. Smaller, but it wasn’t like she used the apartment for much more than a place to catch a few hours of sleep between billable hours and networking.

  Erica padded across the hand-carved Persian rug, placing her feet so the ridges in the carpet filled the space between the pads of her toes and the ball of her foot. She trailed her hand along the Chinese armoire, hand-lacquered, and slid into the bathroom. The lights sensed her body heat and bloomed. She leaned into the mirror. Her father’s face overlay her mother’s—second gen Puerto Rican beat cop over fifth gen Irish Public Defender. A collection of ambitions and expectations, a duality of over and under through which Erica herself emerged. She blinked long lashes, chemically darkened, and tried to see herself. Erica grabbed her bone-handled brush and began to stroke her hair into submission.

  She stopped and twisted her left arm down and in. Her triceps were just the tiniest bit watery. Time to switch protein shakes. The one with which she’d been breakfast dosing for the past week had been an experiment and it wasn’t working. She’d go back to the old formula. She flexed and twisted, checked her tummy, reminded herself not to frown lest the stress tattoo her brow. Her own fault. The old protein shake was more expensive and Dad always taught her that you got what you paid for. Mom’s voice rose up and admonished that only a horse’s ass paid full price for anything.

  Erica looked into her own eyes and restrained the urge to Tae-bo the shit out of the mirror. She imagined herself a moment into that future: bleeding and staring at an Erica Mendez caught in a web of shattered glass.

  The phone rang. That would be the cab for the airport—seven and one half minutes early.

  “Fuck,” she said.

  One hour after checking her bag and claiming her ticket (and that was with the security fast-track option—fucking JFK) Erica slotted into a business class seat and opened her laptop. Provided the glorified bus drivers in the cockpit were able to get wheels up on time, she would touch down in Lexington in one hour and fifteen minutes. Provided the Morlocks who toiled under the airport got her bags to her on time and the rental car trogs didn’t fuck up her reservation, Erica would arrive at her final destination just in time to tuck into what would most certainly be a horrific excuse for restaurant food so laden with trans fats a coronary would not be unexpected.

  “Coffee, miss?”

  Erica looked into the red-rimmed eyes of a woman twenty years older and ten pounds heavier than she. Her skin was orange tan, her hair crackled with CVS-brand blondness, and pink lipstick flowed into the cracks around her mouth. It moved. “Miss?”

  Erica restrained a wince. Her mother’s mouth had done that in her fifties, wrinkling into itself like an anus. Erica threw a brilliant smile and raised her voice an octave. “I’d love a glass of Oregon pinot noir.”

  The attendant’s lips quivered around her own smile, but held it, held it. “I’m not sure we have that. Would a merlot do? Dear?”

 
Erica knew five people—three through her work, two through her father—who would throw acid in this woman’s face for a hand job. If she used her mouth, they’d probably ruin the stew’s credit rating as a bonus. Ugly and poor… Shit, the woman was a stewardess in her late forties, she was already there. Erica sighed. “Bourbon. No ice.”

  She opened a folder on her computer desktop labeled “vacation”, exposing several sub-folders. She hovered her mouse arrow over the one titled Blackstone Energy & Mineral, opened the file titled “Background¬_Location_Mine_1”. Her computer thought about it for an instant longer than Erica would have liked before opening a graphics reader. A satellite photo resolved. Erica leaned in and squinted. It looked like a kelly green quilt thrown over a bed full of bodies. In the middle, the circuit board of a small town: angled street wires and red, tin roof microchips. The bedspread ate away at the edges of the circuit board, a foliage acid bath. And everywhere the blurry lens of smoke.

  Erica had volunteered to research this stamp of waste in the Appalachian Mountains. Sure, she would just parachute right in, check out the town’s infrastructure, the political environment, and assess the ramifications of scraping it off the face of the earth. There were no corpses under that rolling green blanket but lumps of anthracite and pockets of natural gas. Not bodies, money. Hordes of treasure piled high. Never mind the smolder. With full-on mountaintop removal you didn’t worry about things like collapse and explosive firedamps. You blasted off the upper layers, stubbed out the seam and pulled in the revenue. It was what was left of the little town that really demanded her expertise. Sure, she’d go in and check it out. Sure, she’d get a feel for the place and see what it took to relo the denizens. It’d be fun to get out of the city for a while. She’d even use her vacation time.