Occupant #3

Kevin Moccia

Description

War veteran Clarence Clay ventures out from his Sullivan County farm into a voluntary experiment hosted by Big Pharma in a sixty story Petri dish. The exploratory environment was constructed to track the spread of an induced contagion where 10,000 recipients are exposed. Clarence’s journey to escape the encroaching virus and return home to his son is aided by a band of juvenile recipients caught in the crosshairs of vaccination fortunes.

Sujets

• Science Fiction
• Reino de Kush
• Pharmaceutical lobby
• Kush
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 10 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663241283
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

OCCUPANT #3
 
 
 
 
 
KEVIN MOCCIA
 

 
 
OCCUPANT #3
 
 
Copyright © 2022 Kevin Moccia.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
 
 
iUniverse
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.iuniverse.com
844-349-9409
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Cover Art: Keno McCloskey
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4129-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4130-6 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4128-3 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022911474
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 11/04/2022
 
 
 
 
 
 
This book is dedicated to my father,
Vito Moccia
Korean War Veteran and Founder of V.M. Modern
Fort Street, Barber
Wyandotte, Michigan
&
Edith Lee,
Longmeadow’s maternal sun
Edited by
Regina Marie Gallagher
The pirate queen of words
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 The Map Handler
Chapter 2 Flying Imposters
Chapter 3 Occupant #3
Chapter 4 Cage Keepers
Chapter 5 Animal Rescue
Chapter 6 The Acorn Whistler
Chapter 7 Covenant of the Eye
Chapter 8 Gerba
Chapter 9 The Pedophile Tribe
Chapter 10 Into the Dark
Chapter 11 Traded Child
Chapter 12 Desert Sack
Chapter 13 Magazine Mountain
Chapter 14 The Indigenous Scholars
Chapter 15 Fallen Eagle’s Visit
Chapter 16 Oxy Creek
Chapter 17 The Plastic Bag Forest
Chapter 18 Shin Yen’s Respite
Chapter 19 Somersaulting the Tickling Carp Pond
Chapter 20 Kitty Hawk
Chapter 21 Yuma U-Turn
Chapter 22 Porch Chops
Chapter 23 Romeo Falls
Chapter 24 Kush Thief
Chapter 25 Snakes in a Quarry
Chapter 26 Bootprints
Chapter 27 Kismet Sit Down
Chapter 28 The Sphere Painters
 
 

CHAPTER 1
The Map Handler
C larence entered the pawn shop which was equipped with a single lift garage bay attached to a bodega that hung off the side of the main structure like the molted shell of a harvest fly. Competing scents of machine oil and bacon assailed Clarence’s nostrils as he parted the faded curtain strips that separated the bodega from the garage. The strips were interlaced with long strands of twisted deer intestines, attached to cow bells, their clappers replaced by M-16 ammo casings, which chimed forth their warning welcome.
“Zero eight hundred hours,” Clarence called aloud into the store. “Sun’s up, big cheese! Time to walk some iron!” Clarence’s eyes locked onto the immense frame of the man who appeared to be circling him, frigate-like, amid aisles of convenience goods stacked into estate sale furniture buys, repurposed as grocery racks.
The diversity of the furniture collection in the bodega straddled a fine line between clutter and chaos. Auto and truck parts hung from the ceiling amid sports helmets, cleats, skates, skis and snowshoes. Clarence walked down a library aisle of barrister bookshelves organized case by case with trinkets and timepieces, bracelets, brooches, rings sold at the end of their shine slipped from banded fingers, chains darkened from sweat or dulled from the trace of a civet cat. The pawned jewelry section opened onto a long marble countertop, salvaged from a sideboard, mounted on pickle barrels and bookended by two Vernor’s beverage coolers; its perishable contents consumed by a small community of pharmaceutical abuse survivors relying on government assistance, drop box shoes and warehouse running gigs.
Clarence studied the contents of a doorless armoire and a heavily provisioned china cabinet that served as the canned meat and vegetable sections of Buck’s Piggly Wiggly Auto Plex. “Did you buy this place because of the bulk rate on Slim Jims?”
A mountain of flesh appeared in front of Clarence Clay. The last person one would wish to see on a stormy night, tapping at your car window holding a tire iron. Large clumps of hair scattered the man’s head, reed like, with wide hair plug holes visible as a scalped doll. The sunken right half of the shopkeeper’s face, extending down to his chin, had been surgically replaced with skin grafted from his thighs and stretched over a titanium plate. Except for a welcoming ember, burning outwards from the shopkeeper’s good eye, the rest of the man’s face resembled an embossed battle shield, mounted on a swampwater stump of a neck; squared between the athletic remnants of two mammoth shoulders. The shopkeeper’s decorative eye was surgically positioned off the natural plumb line of his face, distorting the Golden Ratio.
“You had both legs when you shipped out? What did you do? Lose one, betting the pot on two pair?” Clarence shared his sense of humor openly with the one man whom he knew he could not offend.
“Diabetes. Still no getting used to it.” The shopkeeper offered sparingly, his thoughts damming up against his three remaining teeth, swiping at the air with his prosthetic leg.
The shopkeeper was offline, verbally, since most of his clientele were awaiting their end of the month checks and those that had money were living off stockpiles, avoiding the others that didn’t. The result levied a three day, silent pall over Buck’s Piggly Wiggly Auto Plex and Pawn Shop, where all supplemental nutrition paper was accepted, but hard luck monologues concerning any extension of non-existent credit were strictly forbidden. Loitering by way of preparing to ask for credit, making inane weather proclamations based on aching body parts, was also frowned upon.
“Pray tell? What brings my savior north?” The shopkeeper propped himself up in front of Clarence, blocking his path, so much so that whatever light was coming in from behind him, was eclipsed by the immense wall of the man’s girth.
“I’ve got an ear stud, bathed in diamonds, with a ruby in it. Anybody out there…you might know…looking for a thing like that?”
“It would have been worth more…had you brought it in…with the bleeding piece of ear the owner left attached to it.” Buck’s good eye sparkled, knowing the value of the ear stud, speaking in his customary rifle shot delivery, supported by huge krill gathering intakes of breath.
Clarence followed the shopkeeper to a large barnyard door, opening onto a trucking access area where weathered prep tables were visible as well as heaps of cabbage scraps and mustard greens swept into enormous piles.
“Holy Moses, fish meat! You still don’t bother to pick up piles? There’s two kinds of men in this world, private…those who sweep piles…and those that expect someone else to sweep up after them…every marine in this company, keeps a dustpan clipped to the end of his rifle… ” Clarence fell into his imitation of their platoon sargent, his spirit lifting out of himself as he transformed into the caricature.
“Didn’t Banjo Dave put that speech to song?”
“Last night of Cody’s life…dust rifle blues!”
The shopkeeper rolled the barnyard door closed and locked it, effortlessly.
“ Silent National Manufacturing…” Clarence thought, addressing the rolling door hardware on the ancient barn door; knowing Buck was obsessed with products that remained operational for generations.
“That man out there, with three-fourths of an ear, looking for that stud, he’s a hybrid pot grower—mar-i-g-ju-ana. I’m sure a guy, gourmet money like that, he ain’t Holyfielding it around, with three-fourths of an ear, no more. Man like that…with a reward out…most likely put his ear back together. The lobule…at the flap of an ear…is easier to reconstruct than the sacred placement of a man’s glance. Is that stud…shape of a C?” Buck asked, his smile stretching across his face as a ladder spanning a moat, knowing that the right answer was a jackpot jewelry hit, however it waltzed through the door.
“It is.”
“The reward’s fifteen K. I can give you…thirty-eight hundred now…split the balance from the fifteen K…when the money hits my account.”
“Fair enough.” Clarence offered.
It had been almost a decade since the two men had stood face to whatever face Buck had left. In the passing seasons, Clarence had gone through his savings planting crops that draped his land with a fragrant bouquet, temporarily staving off the emptiness he felt from the loss of his beloved wife, Clara. During the same collection of days, Buck found his way to the end of an iron rail, six stories off the ground, unwilling to step his mangled body off the I-beam underfoot and add another statistic to the ranks of self-annihilating war veterans. Buck greeted the sun and the arriving iron working crew that morning, with a ritual salutation of the day’s welcome, swearing to meet the world as more than a discarded heap of military flesh. The stars and stripes unseen beneath Buck’s skin, ran true, much truer than his military scars, which were the outermost strip of his human veneer. Whatever the connection these two men forged it