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EXILES 100: #001
"Reflections"
by Adrian J. Watts
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It has been said, from time-to-time, that there can be 'no rest for the wicked'. That never held more true than for Joe Smithers - one-time big-shot, current petty thief. If you were unfortunate enough to ever meet Joe Smithers, it would have to be in the middle of the night, behind a dilapidated building or amidst some thick trees, because Joe wasn't a big fan of being seen.
Joe's story is hardly a remarkable one; remarkable to US, at least. To Joe, however, it was the only story worth telling... and that is why we find him tonight, in a nearly-empty Outback bar, telling a story the bar's other patrons had never heard BEFORE... and would never hear AGAIN.
"I seen him!" Joe said loudly, halfway through his eighth drink for the night. "That is to say, I SAW him!"
"Saw who, Joe?"
Billy Cushing stood behind the bar, polishing a glass. It was hardly clean; very little in the dusty, ramshackle building ever was - but when you had as few customers as Billy, it helped to be doing SOMETHING to fill the time.
"I tell ya, Bill - it was as big as I am! Bigger! And it's SKIN... it was green, and hanging from its face. Its eyes were rolled back in his head and it just wouldn't stop - !"
Billy rolled his eyes.
"So you're telling us that the Abbos are out there making ZOMBIES now, that it?"
"I dunno WHAT it was, Bill... but it sure as hell wasn't HUMAN."
"Where did you see it?"
"Out by the old pond, by the Tanner Station."
Billy laughed sharply.
"The old pond? What, was the Zombie SWIMMING, Joe?"
The bar erupted with uproarious laughter, more than Joe would have expected from such a sparsely-filled dwelling. He finished his eighth drink and slammed his glass back down onto the counter and asked Billy for another.
"You c'n laugh all y'want," Joe said. "I know what I saw."
"Just like you SAW the guy that killed your wife and kid, right, Joe?"
Joe turned on his stool to get a good look at the man who had challenged him. He recognised the voice immediately - it belonged to Jared Sinclair, a former American Navy officer who had retired and come to Australia as a cattle farmer with his OWN wife a few years earlier. He was NOT a fan of Joe... and he was NOT afraid to admit it.
"Screw you, Sinclair."
"Watch your mouth," Sinclair replied. Although he was younger, he was also bigger than Joe - MUCH bigger - and was not afraid to pick a fight. "The only monster around here is you, you murdering son-of-a- !"
"Finish that sentence and you're banned," Billy interrupted. "Joe was acquitted, Jared. You know that."
"I know courts sometimes get it wrong, too."
Suddenly, Joe rose from his seat.
"Fine. You don't wanna believe me? I'll show you. Maybe he's still there," Joe said.
"Fine by me," Sinclair replied. "You in, Cushing?"
Billy nodded.
"Just give me a minute to close up." He put down the glass he had been cleaning and made his way to the door. "Okay, everyone - closing time. Get out."
His words were met with loud groans, but the few customers remaining in the bar were too drunk to argue. Slowly, they made their way out the door, most into cars they were in no state to drive; but here, in the middle of the Outback, the odds of hitting someone - or someTHING - were slim.
"Come on, then," Joe said. He made his way past both Billy and Sinclair and led the way out into the warm night. He still felt a CHILL at his back, one he did not fail to realise seemed to go UNNOTICED by his two companions.
It was a short walk to the old pond; the Tanner Station bordered the bar on three sides, the fourth marked by an unpaved road frequently used by cattle drivers to move their stock to the pond for watering.
As the three men made their own way along the road, Joe could not help but think about Sinclair's accusations - and not for the first time. It was true that six months ago, Joe Smithers HAD been accused of murdering his own family. He had come home one night to find them both hanged, the skin stripped from their legs, but no blood to be seen. It tooks several weeks, but after a thorough investigation into Joe's alibi, a court ordered his release... even though no-one else had even been identified as a SUSPECT in the murders.
That had been the beginning of Joe's downfall; the well-to-do stockbroker stopped going to work, lost his house... and began to rob his friends. It wasn't a difficult task to accomplish - most of the men in the area got drunk at Cushing's bar on a nightly basis, and fights were common and oft-forgotten. It was easy to wait for drunks as they stumbled home, bash and rob them... and watch them come back the next night, claiming a fight with a much larger man who they, at least by their own accounts, vanquished easily.
He was not PROUD of what he did, but it was just too difficult to do anything else without his family by his side.
"So, we're here, Joe," Sinclair said. "Where's this ZOMBIE of yours?"
Joe walked slowly over to the pond's edge and peered into the dank, dark and still water. With a cautiousness that undermined his incredulity, Sinclair made his way beside Joe and followed his gaze.
He saw nothing; only his own reflection, and that of Joe Smithers.
"Hah!" Sinclair laughed. "I knew you were full of - " Jared Sinclair turned his back to the pond and took a single step away from the unmoving water, the lifeless reflections... and found himself face-to-face with a man his own height, but with green, dessicated flesh and eyes that seemed to lack pupils. " - shit."
Joe whirled quickly to see what had caused Sinclair to become silent. The man had fallen to his knees before the monster. He shook violently, and dampness was visible on his face, as tears gushed from his eyes, as well as on his pants, where terror made its true mark.
"Please don't kill me please don't kill me please don't kill me plea - !"
The ZOMBIE raised its left hand, quickly silencing Sinclair. It gently placed one hand, its muscles taut, on the side of Sinclair's trembling neck. Then its other hand, hard with the loss of muscle fibre and soft flesh, was placed on the other side of the coward's neck.
The ZOMBIE's face displayed no emotion as it gently turned Sinclair's head to the side, so the man could more easily see the thick-booted foot before it connected with his face.
Sinclair coughed loudly, spilling both blood and teeth onto the dry, dusty earth. The ZOMBIE held his head firmly in place as Joe Smithers' heavy fist struck Sinclair's nose, and the side of his foot found Sinclair's back.
"Argh!" Sinclair yelped. Blood gushed across his face, mixing with the salty tears. Sinclair reached up and wrapped his fingers around the ZOMBIE's forearms, but two further kicks from Joe caused the man's arms to drop limply to his sides.
"You wanna fuck with me, Sinclair?" Joe yelled. He bent down and spat on Sinclair's cheek. "Call me a murderer? I'll show you a murderer!"
With one strong pull, Joe yanked Sinclair free from the ZOMBIE's grasp and dragged him back to the water's edge. Barely conscious, suffering from the pain, Sinclair found himself entirely unable to resist. As the cool water surrounded his face; his head; his chest; his legs... he did nothing to save himself. Nothing to return to the surface.
The ZOMBIE began to laugh. To Sinclair, it was a familiar laugh. The laugh of what he thought was a friend.
He slowly, painfully tilted his head up to look through the murky water at the face of his attackers and saw that where the ZOMBIE once was, now stood the form of Billy Cushing. Billy Cushing, being helped out of a thick plastic and rubber costume by Joe Smithers. Billy Cushing, laughing loudly.
As his body sank to the bottom of the pond, only one thought crossed Jared Sinclair's mind - Joe Smithers was RIGHT. There HAD been a monster by the old pond that night; two, in fact... and there had also been a ZOMBIE - a heartless, soulless and cruel force of evil, but it was NOT identified by make-up and a costume; rather, its existence would be marked only by its slowly rotting corpse at the bottom of an old pond, and a WIFE who would never miss him... a WIFE who would soon find solace in the arms of Joe Smithers, the man whose family she had helped murder, the man for whom she had provided a false alibi, the man she had asked to kill her hated husband.
There were monsters in the Outback and a ZOMBIE in the old pond by the Tanner Station... but in the still water, all a passerby would ever see was their own, unmoving reflection... which, in such a place, should be MORE terrifying than any tall tales told by a drunk in Cushing's bar.
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Thursday, April 17, 2008