The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine by Jason Sizemore Read Free Book Online Page B

boy?”
    “Fine, Mr. Snodgrass. I’m a
whole lot better.”
    “Good, that’s real good. I got
some bad news for you. Seems Owen and B.J. had an accident. Well, they um,
they’re dead. Ain’t no mincing words here. I ain’t got any operators worth a
damn and Monday we are going to be hitting the seam hard. I know Zan was your
friend, but the kid’s gone AWOL and I need all the help I can get. What are the
odds of getting you onsite Monday morning? You ain’t got to operate, just keep
an eye on the new ones, make sure they ain’t screwing around.”
    I didn’t know what to say. I
had known Owen and B.J. half my life and on top of everything else, it was just
too much. “Mr. Snodgrass, I’m going to need more time than this.”
    “How’s Wednesday then?” he
replied, not taking my meaning.
    “I’ll call you next week and
we’ll figure something out.” A thought occurred to me then, and I asked the
question, “You’re not planning on digging out the crater are you?”
    “That’s where we are going to
be digging. I hired a dirt crew to come in and they’ve already got it cleaned
out. It was a big mud hole when they started, and now it’s dry. Just a big oily
pool at the bottom, but we’ll get that drained out Monday, I guess.”
    “Did you notice anything weird
down there when they were cleaning it out?”
    “Well, that’s odd. B.J. found a
frog he’d run over with the track hoe. Thing was big around as a dinner plate
and had five eyes. Damnest thing I ever saw.” He paused, then added, “how did
you know that?”
    I gave no reason and got off
the phone. It was a five-minute drive to the county impound lot where the truck
B.J. and Owen had been killed in was being kept. The big red Ford diesel was
still on the back of a long flat bed hauler, chained down to the deck. It was
obvious that the truck had rolled several times. The cab was crushed down to
the level of the dash and the whole body appeared twisted. That those two had
wrecked didn’t surprise me; hardly a day ended that they hadn’t consumed a case
of beer apiece before heading home from the job. What was unaccountable was
that both doors were missing, and along the crushed holes where they should
have been hanging were deep gouges in the red body that left jagged rents in
the metal. I turned to leave, noticing off in the distance, thirty miles or so
to the west, a vast black cloud drifting up from the ground. Paradise. The old
coal plant had its environmental scrubbers off. They never ran them unless the
EPA was going to do a fly through, and the smoke was as dark as the coal they
burned, our coal, full of heat, full of something else. I thought about all the
millions of tiny particles of the bones and black glass that must be rising up
in that midnight plume, drifting up and up to rain steadily back down across
the earth.
    I raced home and started
looking up numbers. Curtis Ward, no answer. Jay and Eric Ingram, answering
machine. I called what cell phones I had numbers for, but nobody picked up.
Finally I even called Johnny Lindsey, why the mute had a phone had always been
a point of humor for all of us at the mine, but as he answered with his back
throat squeal. I was glad of the fact.
    “Johnny, listen. It’s Tom
Phelps. Listen to me now. I think something’s wrong with Zan. I think, well, it
doesn’t matter. You get yourself out of the house and come over to my place.
Bring a gun with you and you don’t stop.”
    He started to make the
affirmative squeal, then, halfway through, cut off. I heard a loud banging in
the background, like someone beating a door down. Johnny made a low, suspicious
moan.
    “Johnny, Johnny! Don’t answer
it! Get your gun.” I screamed into the receiver. In answer I heard the sliding
clunk of a shotgun pump. There was another sound then as Johnny’s door must
have exploded, followed by a shotgun blast.
    I have to ask you if you’ve
ever heard a mute scream. I think it was worse than normal screams.