The Valley of the Shadow Part II: Maturity

N.W. Inc. Manning

Description

In the second installment of The Valley of the Shadow trilogy the stakes grow increasingly higher. As a fascist government tightens its stranglehold on its people the valley of Fairpoint becomes more brutal. Drug addicts roam with impunity. A serial killer is targeting children. The indigenous animal life have grown aggressive. A mysterious, lethal pill is steadily ravishing all foolish enough to consume it. No one can be trusted.

Follow Nero as he documents the chaos in the hellish landscape he inhabits, all the while trying to come to grips with the ghost of the dead girl persistently haunting him.

Sujets

• Alternative History
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456610449
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
 
a novel
 
 
by
 
N. W. MANNING
 


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
 
All passages from The King James Version of The Holy Bible, first published in 1611, included herein are Public Domain.
 
Excerpt from The Aeneid by Virgil, written between 29 and 19 BC, included herein is Public Domain.
 
Lines from The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, written between 1308 and 1321, included herein are Public Domain.
 
Excerpt from Paradise Lost by John Milton, originally published in 1667, included herein is Public Domain.
 
Excerpt from The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion by Sir James George Frazer, first published in 1890, included herein is Public Domain.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Copyright 2012 N.W. Manning.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1044-9
 
 

 
 
PART II
 
 
MATURITY
 
IV — Subjection: January, 2007
 

January 8, 2007, Monday
Abiona,
 
Last night in my dream I opened the door to my flat and was blinded by a terrible white inferno. Stepping back from the doorway I recoiled in horror. I stood frozen with fear as my eyes adjusted to the cool blaze. Upon the white canvass was one point of color – a brush stroke of pink. The blurred stain moved. As I strained my eyes to focus, the small form who haunts me became manifest and clear.
“You’re not Zoe,” I could hear myself saying in a languid dream voice. “Zoe’s dead. Who are ya?”
“I am everything she ever was and will be again. I am her essence; a soul dispatched by Providence; a Guider from the garden where I bide this brief time.”
The impish shade entered the room. Fear mingled with sorrow had infested my being so thoroughly I could not budge one fraction of an inch as the diaphanous figure moved ever closer until it was right upon me. From here it passed through the very pores of my flesh, floating into my body.
“Nero,” I clearly heard my name being called from inside of myself, but it was not my thoughts speaking. No. It was the small invader within. It was Zoe. Inhabiting my very soul she said, “Remember it again, dear Nero, should you forget all else. Let it be the impetus which drives you, just as Providence is the force which guides memory before Lastday. Remember everything, Nero. Remember…”
I remembered.
It happened in the summer of 2005 on the seventh day of July.
The precious child stood up on tiptoes, her tiny white hand put to scale against a fist full of green bills. “Dis is foo Mommy’s gas,” the creature said.
I could not help but smile at the absolute purity of her unassuming innocence. “Hold up a sec, little sister. Here’s a present for ya.” I handed the wee figure a small black and green toy turtle that had been sitting beside the register for several days. Perhaps lost by another child, it had been found on one of the shelves by Josef where it was then put aside and forgotten. It rested suspiciously out of place between the stapler and a cup full of rubber bands. I can not explain why, Abiona, but seeing it there on the counter as I worked somehow unnerved me.
The golden child was immediately enthralled by the new plaything. “Fank oo, Nemo,” she absently said. I had to laugh at the charm of it all. With tears of joy welling in my eyes at the unexpected fortunes life will sometimes invoke, I watched the babe walk out the open glass door where The Indian was entering.
“How ya doin’ today, Tuba?” I greeted him as I composed myself. The old man’s eyes sparked with electricity as he moved towards the counter, intently eyeballing me. His steps were not steps at all. They were…they were…I don’t know.
An addict with greasy hair and numerous pus filled pimples blighting his face was standing before me. He was digging lethargically through his coat pocket for money to pay for the bottle of beer he held in his trembling hand. When he pulled out his hand his palm was littered with a few coins, but mostly what he held were various tablets of differing sizes and colors.
The Indian stepped in front of the repulsive sick man without saying a word.
“Wut gives, pops?!” the lost soul uttered, contemptuously eyeing the ancient Native American from out of two swollen slits.
Tuba paid the junkie no mind. Instead his attention was focused solely upon me. “Outside,” was all he said, addressing me in his vibrating baritone voice. His white head gave a nod in the direction of the gas island on the other side of the glass.
What prompted my heart to feel as if would stop beating I can not say. I sensed something terribly wrong with the moment. Pinpricks of electricity needled me from the inside. The essence of fresh air…MORE like...like...ozone!…overwhelmed me. I felt suddenly lightheaded and nauseous. My head swam as I raced to the glass partition above the lotto machine which separated one side from the other, letting drop the nickels and pennies the junkie at the front of the line had slung onto the counter in a gesture of disrespect.
Upon looking out of the window I watched as little Zoe was bound for the pumps. She was inspecting the trifle I had given her, devoting all her attentions to the object in question and nothing else. Her miniature dress, blushing pink and trimmed with lace, freely blew this way and that as the zooming cars on the strip whizzed by. Obliviously the child bypassed the gas island altogether, where she had wandered across the painted line and into the Red Zone a few feet from the strip.
I was still drunk with the alien air. There was no time to fight the maddening crowd to reach the exit and I knew it. I came completely unraveled then, slamming my fists against the tough glass and screaming as loudly as I could.
In the distance I could see one of the monster trucks barreling down the long runway. It rose above every car ahead of it in line, sporting the slogan ‘INSATIABLE’ in menacing crimson print. Because it was a scout truck, a laborer of odd tasks usually assigned to the newly initiated, this particular machine generally runs separately from the rest of the pack. The monster truck’s grill was custom made, sporting four jagged chrome fangs, one apiece at each corner of its artificial jaw. Plowing upstream along the metal river The Truck Boy must have spied the beckoning pink garment trailing in the breeze like a bull’s-eye. For no other reason than simply spying a straggler separated from the safety of its numbers, the mechanical abomination yielded to temptation and chomped down upon its prey.
I walked away from my post in a daze. All the contemptuous creatures standing in line – who at one time were all unaffected people – cursed and swore at me as I passed by them, but their words did not fully register with me. And when I stepped outside the chaotic world moved as it always does, with the exception of one less soul in its numbers. People were arguing with other people; people were bent inside their automobiles, sniffing mysterious powders into their nasal passages; people were whooping at nothing in their vulgar, uncivilized customs; people were breathing in the noxious fumes all around them emitted from the merciless strip. People were dying. No one gave notice to the hawk which had deftly swooped down from on high and plucked off one of the flock.
Things became different for me after that.
Things changed.
 
-N
 
January 9, 2007, Tuesday
Abiona,
 
The prostitute pulled the blouse over her head, folded it neatly and draped it across the back of the desk chair beside the bed. In her thick, unmistakable French accent she asked, “You ’ave protection, no? I ’ave plenty of rubbers een my ’andbag.”
“Yes. No. I mean, that’s not what I brought ya here for.”
“Do you not vant to fuck me, Nero? Do you not zeenk I am pretty?”
“I think you’re very pretty, Ursa.”
With the roar of a brief succession of trucks making a pass outside the flat I parted the blinds to see the dragons plowing along the strip through the snow. Ursa flinched at the grating noise. The blinds snapped shut as I turned back to her.
“I think you’re beautiful. I just...” my mind briefly pondered her question. “I just didn’t want to be alone tonight, I guess.”
Ursa sat on the edge of the bed shedding her skirt and stockings. My hand explored the smooth exposed flesh of her back. As delicately as she had done with the blouse she performed the same ritual with the skirt, laying it neatly on the seat of the chair. I unsnapped her bra and she slid underneath the sheets next to me.
“I like zees music, Nero. I ’ave never ’eard anyzeeng like zees before. Vhat ees eet named?”
“Jazz.”
“Jazz. I like eet very much. Eet ees nice and soft…like you!”
“How old are ya, Ursa?” I questioned the sensual being as she began kissing my chest.
“Seventeen. You know, you are not like zuh others, Nero. Zey get too rough. Some of zuh other girls talk nice about you, seence vhat you did for Paula. Zey say you are a decent man. Vous etes un ange descendu sur terre. Je suis sur que les femmes vous adorent.
“Are you sure you vould not like to fuck me now?”
“How many like ya are left?”
“Filles de joie?”
“Yeah.”
“Je ne sais pas. Ten, fifteen maybe. Most vent over zuh mountain to Oxyana seence Zuh Truck Boys started ’unting us. I vill leave as vell in a veek or so, vhen I get enough money saved. Zuh ’ouse ve stay een ees so old, so run down. Too much rats. Too much roaches. Berk!”
Ursa's arms went around my waist an