Crypt Orchids by David J Schow

Author:David J Schow [Schow, David J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: occult, horror short stories
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2016-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

SCOOP BITES THE DUST

How too-too bloody hysterical, thought Mikey. Har-de-har, ‘tis to larf.

Wentworth, with her iced-snot, highborn Brit accent, had nicknamed Mikey “Scoop Shovel.” Wentworth read only the best English detection thrillers and savored irony.

Savoured, Mikey corrected.

In his brain, the rats of panic scampered, trying to chew their way free.

Cold up here. Mikey spat dirt. He had collected a face full when Wentworth announced the time had arrived for him to make like a “real” scoop shovel. Then Mister Bart’s fat-knuckled fist zoomed to maximum in Mikey’s field of vision, then came the stars and stripes of impact, then the lurching vertigo of his legs folding up, then Mikey really was making like a scoop shovel. His eyes uncrossed to focus on dirt clods close up. His saliva made mud; the mud turned red. When Mister Bart hoisted him to eye-level, Mikey looked to be vomiting lava.

He should have whiffed a rodent when Wentworth proposed, oh-so-innocently, that they rendezvous at the construction site. Boob, said the mind rats, their teeth chipping morsels from the inside curve of his occipital. You entry-level boob; she wants to meet you on-site because she wants you to become a human reinforcing rod for the foundation.

But Mikey was unfortunate enough to also have the Cherub blood-hounding him—which is another tale of woe altogether—and Wentworth was the lesser evil, and lo and behold, here he was, living that scoop shovel life.

In the garment district, bums were nodding off, freezing to the sidewalks, and never getting up. An hour until midnight, and already it was twenty-five degrees. Mikey’s blood was slowing down. Soon it would thicken to peanut butter in his veins. Then clotting, unconsciousness, death as a Mikeysicle. If he was to live, he had to move soon.

His legs were buzzing. He got to his knees within the bowl of the gigantic yellow scoop, hooked his hands between the dirt-clotted teeth, and hauled himself up for a look-see.

Darkness, all around, for one square city block. Darkness, a hundred and ten feet straight down to packed earth and palettes of cinderblocks and ribbed steel rods banded in deadly stacks.

The darkness was cut by a pinpoint of crimson light that raced from jag to jag on the scoop, fast as a spark. Mikey banged his chin ducking. He tasted warm blood; fresh. The cold blood was hardening on his neck.

Mister Bart is down there in the darkness, nagged the brain rats. Mister Bart and his friend Cleo. They had thermoses of hot coffee spiked with Bailey’s, down parkas, and laser-sighted MAC 10s—the lethal weapon of choice for drug dealers across three continents. The MACs tracked with dots of red light. The red light told a helluva lot of bullets what to penetrate and kill. The dot was so miniscule, you could easily miss it.

Or imagine it. Mikey was not feeling reckless.

The city did its middle-of-the-night thing all around him, and did it noisily. He could yell and scream and carry on, shout for the cops, holler for help. One, it would not carry, and two, nobody would give a frozen dog turd anyway.

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