This is my first submission on steemit.
Below is part one of Creepers a novel.
I will be posting this book one chapter at a time approximately one chapter per week.
I live and work on a cruise ship: sometimes Internet is slow or not available so my posts may not be on the same day every week. But the entire novel will be posted.
I would appreciate anyone's comments or questions, positive or critical.
CHAPTER 1
The Dump Site
Newl Hogue bounced down rural route Eighty-Two in his ninety-two, Ford F150, belching a cloud of oily smoke. Nervous, he checked his rear-view mirror for the fourth time in as many minutes. No other cars were in sight. Fortunately, Eighty-Two was lightly traveled after dark.
The road shot southeast out of Fort Myers, meandered past Lehigh Acres and dead-ended at the gates of the new prison, just the other side of Immokalee.
Newl fished a mashed pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket tapped out a crooked smoke punched in the lighter and drummed his fingers impatiently on the dash. Splat! a finch sized Gypsy moth smashed into his windshield. Heart pounding, Newl blotted sweat from his brow with a dirty bandanna, blew his nose, then flicked on his wipers to scrape away the mess but only smeared yellow bug guts across his field of vision.
Warm swamp air stinking of sulfur and rotting vegetation wafted through the cab, doing little to cool him.
At last the lighter popped out. He reached for it, took his eyes off the road and drifted left of center. As the truck’s balding tires rolled over the yellow cat’s eyes studding the highway’s center, a loud thumpety-thump reverberated through the cab. Unconcerned, he focused on his shaking hand, trying to insert the bent cigarette into the glowing red coil. He successfully managed the maneuver took a deep drag and began drifting back to his side of the road. Suddenly he was blinded by a set of headlights. “Shit!” He swerved right and felt the driver’s side of his truck lift off the asphalt. The tires screeched as he banked off the shoulder he just managed to regain control.
A bus flew by, horn blasting. He’d narrowly avoided a head on collision with a Church bus full of Baptists rolling home from a late night revival at eighty-plus miles an hour, the driver flashed his lights and flipped him off.
Rattled by the near calamity, Newl pressed back against the worn out seat until the springs creaked and his spine popped. He relinquished his death grip on the steering wheel, took a deep drag of his Marlboro and tried to stop shaking.
Sputtering passed the exit to Leigh Acres, Newl ceremoniously extracted a quart of Colt-45 Malt Liquor from a crumpled brown paper bag, clamped the bottle between his bony legs and twisted it open, warm beer sprayed over the front of his grimy tee shirt. “Shit!” He slurped the erupting foam from the rim of the bottle then wiped his hands on his jeans. After a couple of satisfying gulps he wedged the bottle between his thighs, inhaled the last drag out of his cigarette and flicked the butt out the window. The malt liquor quelled his anxiety, he leaned back sighed with relief and exhaled a cloud of smoke.
Past experience had taught him that Sheriff Musser rarely ventured out this far, unless he was on a domestic violence call: usually Beauford Strunk and his old lady beating the shit out of each other.
Newl was praying that tonight Musser would be back in his office where he belonged, size thirteen’s propped up on his desk, thumbing through the Wall Street Journal or some other high-brained publication.
The gas pedal squeaked like a rusty pump handle as Newl tried to coax the old truck into breaking fifty, but it was pointless with a full load. Gulping his malt liquor he tried not to fret over being caught driving drunk again or being cited for going too slow.
On Eighty-two, most folks considered the posted speed limit of 65 a silly suggestion. He’d be dead meat if Musser caught him drinking and driving again. He’d knocked down a couple cans of Colt back at his trailer before setting off. Those plus the quart he was nursing would surely tip him over the limit, which he felt was very unreasonable. But the real trouble would start if Musser got round to checking out what he was hauling at two in the morning. So far no one had noticed the smelly cargo concealed beneath a tattered blue tarp.
What would he say if Musser pulled him over and asked why the rear end of his truck was sagging?
Aside from crossing paths with the sheriff again, Newl’s other worry was being run into by a car full of kids out joy riding, racing down the deserted highway at ninety plus and plowing into him. From a distance the taillights on his old Ford were little more then dim points of red light, barely visible from ten yards. He had an awfully close call in May, back when he was making only one run a month. That was the day Charlie Weevil had told him, “Newly, I’ve got good news for ya. I’m increasing your runs to every other week. That’s another two-hundred bucks a month in your pocket, ought to be enough to keep you pickled and puffing.”
Newl had responded defensively, “Damn it, Charlie. I don’t drink or smoke no more than you do, and you know it. If I’m running a smelly load down to Immokalee every other week Sheriff Musser’s bound to get suspicious. When he saw me last week in town parked outside Harvey’s Tavern, he kept giving me hard looks. That man gives me the jitters. Ain’t no secret Musser hates me.”
Charlie had laughed at that. “He don’t like you cause his niece got busted up in that wreck out on old eighty-two. Hit by a drunk just like you Newly.” Charlie’s hog head bobbed on his flabby neck like a freak show barker, whenever he got worked up.
“I ain’t no drunk Charlie. And I ain’t wrecked my truck once, since I owned it, except for hitting old man Jensen’s cow. And that weren’t my fault.”
Charlie enjoyed winding Newly up. He lit up a Salem 100, the thin cigarette looked oddly feminine pinched between his chubby ringed fingers. “I ain’t paying you any more per load Newly, if that’s what your getting at . . . a hundred bucks a load is plenty. If you don’t want the job I’ll get me someone that does. Homer says his nephew’d do it for seventy-five.”
Newl hated it when Charlie called him Newly. He’d told him flat out. “I want the job Charlie, I ain’t saying I don’t. It’s just . . . I just don’t want to get caught that’s all.”
Newl had gone on to warn Charlie, in as intimidating a tone as he could muster. “If I get busted, you’re going down with me. A hundred bucks a load gets rid of your stinking barrels, but it don’t get rid of me Charlie. It don’t get rid of me! Every other week is too damn risky and you know it.”
Of course, Charlie Weevil won out in the end, he knew damn well Newly needed the money. After all, it was his only source of income: three weeks earlier, Bart Sanderson, Newl’s foreman, had fired him for downing a couple cans of Colt during his lunch hour.
Still pondering his sorry situation, Newl turned off onto a sandy track that skirted past a swamp bordering the Everglades. It had taken months of searching to find such an isolated spot. It was perfect for dumping. As he drove another injustice occurred to him, Charlie never paid me for finding this dumpsite neither!
The road cut through eye high elephant grass, grass that would slice your fingers like a fist full of daggers if you made the mistake of trying to yank it up by the roots. The grass was one of thousands of persistent weeds that had taken root in the balmy Florida clime. The grass was sweeping unchecked and virtually unnoticed across the middle of the state at an alarming rate. A hundred years ago it was used in Vietnam and Thailand to thatch huts. The stuff was sprouting up everywhere, crowding out native plants, robbing orange groves, tomato fields, and vegetable crops of precious moisture and nutrients. The only weed that survived in its shadow was a tenacious variety of poison sumac.
It was a mystery how the alien weeds arrived in Florida. Botanists assumed they came across stowed away in the holds of cargo ships, the seeds, mixed in with grain or produce. The practice of fumigating the holds of ships bound for U.S. ports with organic cargo, killed off creatures like Rats, snakes and most insects, not to mention the occasional stow-away, but the chemicals were useless against seeds. If anything it kept rats, mice and insects from devouring them.
One thing was certain: no one was thatching roofs with the stuff down in Lehigh.
Most deer in the area had long since been driven out by starvation or moved south towards the Everglades in search of edible foliage, the few that remained, or wandered into the area from the north, were eventually gobbled up by ravenous gators, big twelve foot monsters, prowling the muddy banks of the swamp as if they were still in the fat days of the Cretaceous period.
The only animals able to tolerate the current conditions in the area, were snapping turtles, rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, boa constrictors and Anacondas and schools of piranha (released by aquarium buffs who got tired of buying goldfish to feed them.)There were also a dwindling population of raccoons and opossums. Walking catfish (another unwanted import) were thriving. There were also swarms of vicious Asian Tiger mosquitoes, biting flies, leeches and a dozen species of ants to contend with.
The seamless sea of inedible green covered thousands of acres, even swarms of locusts passed it over. The only good thing about the stuff, as far as Newl was concerned, was that no one had any reason to drive out in the middle of this emerald wasteland.
Newl’s secret dumpsite was a sinkhole, a massive hole in the Earth, hidden within acres of useless greenery. Lately Florida was riddled with them: a result of the state’s unquenchable thirst for potable water. Once, huge underground rivers surged beneath the sandy soil but over the years they had been pumped dry, the hollow limestone caverns that remained eventually collapsed like a dead man’s arteries from the weight of the earth above. Sometimes sinkholes swallowed up entire houses. As if the Earth had bitten out a chunk of civilization in self-defense.
Newl assumed no one but he came here, especially in the middle of the night. And he didn’t care if they did: if someone else dumped trash, an old refrigerator or even a body, into his hole. That was fine with him, as long as they didn’t do it while he was making his drop.
Newl’s sinkhole was big enough for all of Charlie Weevil’s barrels of toxic roe and just about anything else a man wanted to get rid of. Fact was it was just about big enough and deep enough to swallow almost anything.
Last night he’d dreamt he was a suicidal Engineer piloting a freight train over the edge. In his nightmare the train fell endlessly, as he screamed jerking back on the break handle as the caboose trailed over the edge.
Newl backed the old Ford up as close as he dared and mashed the parking brake to the floor. He hopped out, peered over the edge, flicked his cigarette butt into the ink-black void and watched the orange ember tumble and fade from sight. When he looked up he noticed an unusual mass of flowering ivy covering the far rim of the hole. It hadn’t been there last week. The plant had leaves the size of Roman shields, beneath them hung ivory blossoms the size of a babies’ heads. The vines, thick as fire hoses were armed with curved red thorns. He couldn’t see the bottom of the pit, even with a flashlight. If he could he would have seen vines platted together into a trunk bigger in diameter than a thousand year-old redwood.
The plants roots had bored into side of the sinkhole to stabilize itself and used sticky pads the size of Frisbees, to scale the wall. Once outside of its’ toxic womb, it grew in all directions, plowing unhindered through the eye high, Elephant grass.
Newl scratched his head puzzling over the damn thing. All this, grown, in what . . . two weeks?
A Tiger Mosquito alighted on his neck with the dexterity of a micro Harrier jet and jabbed its proboscis into him. “Ouch!” He swatted, “Got ya, bastard!” He wiped the spot of blood on the sleeve of his tee shirt
As if avenging the murder of their scout, an angry cloud of voracious winged invaders began launching relentless Kamikaze attacks. Newl shuddered and began frantically waving his hands through the buzzing black swarm. Unable to drive the hungry horde away, he jumped into the bed of his truck, and began snapping his bandanna at them without effect. “God damn it get away from me!” He shouted as if they had tiny ears to hear him and tiny minds that cared. Deciding that the sooner he got on with the job at hand, the sooner he could escape these blood-sucking pests. He got out and pulled two eight foot, two-by-sixes from between six, fifty-gallon drums and laid them down, forming a crude ramp from the truck bed to the ground. A few yards away the sinkhole loomed like a yawning mouth, the enormous plant its sticky tongue. Trying to tolerate the mosquitoes’ bites he climbed back up into the bed and quickly checked the lid of each drum, making sure they were on tight. Suddenly he was over come by a sneezing fit. His eyes began to burn and water and his sinuses felt like he’d snorted a line of chili pepper. The swarm, sensing weakness, turned even more vicious. Waving one arm erratically Newl thumped the top of the first drum. Once a lid had popped off, spilling a gooey blue chemical concoction all over his feet, the stuff turned boot leather into rotting flesh; months later he still had a persistent, itchy rash between his toes. Grunting at the effort he tried to ease the first drum onto its side, but it slipped and fell with a thud that shook the bed of the truck. Stepping back just in time to save his toes from being crushed he gave the barrel a shove with his boot and watched it roll down the ramp. The three hundred pound drum bowed the boards of his makeshift ramp, hit the ground, rolled a few yards, and stopped short of the hole. Newl hopped down, bent over and gave the drum a final shove. He stood back as it slowly rolled off the edge and plummeted into the pit. Seconds passed before a dull thud echoed up from the depths below.
Newl went round to the cab, chugged the rest of his beer - now warm, and back-handed the empty bottle into the hole. Then he clambered back into the truck bed, still trying to drive off the persistent pack of mosquitoes with erratic swipes of his hands.
When he tried to rock the next drum into position he couldn’t budge it. “Shit it’s stuck. Another rotten one . . . damn it!” He put his back against it and braced his scrawny legs against the bed wall, but the rusty drum wouldn’t budge. The corrosive concoction had eaten through the bottom of the barrel and bonded it to the rusted truck bed.
He was in a real mess now: if he couldn’t move this drum then the two behind it would be impossible to get to. If he went back to the plant with half a load there was no way Charlie would pay him for the run. The drum had a welded lid, whatever the blue-goo was inside it had been pumped into a three inch sealed port on top. Fuming and frustrated, Newl was getting edgy. Rivulets of sweat ran down inside his soiled tee shirt, tickling his back like a whore’s fingers. By now he was covered with angry red bites, bites that felt like ants crawling under his skin. The mysterious chemicals were eating away at the bed of his truck and the mosquitoes were eating away at him. Noxious fumes drifted up from the drums making the air appear fluid, burning his eyes and nostrils and obliterating brain cells by the millions with every whiff. The mosquitoes took advantage of his confusion, alighting on every square inch of exposed skin, covering him like black hairs and sucking his blood until their abdomens swelled into bright, red beads. The heat, stress, and fumes caused him to get muddle brained, the way he felt after drinking a six pack of Colt and smoking a joint.
He gave up, lit another Marlboro, climbed into his truck, slammed the door and rolled up the windows. He blew smoke into the swarm that had followed him into the cab. Suddenly an idea manifested in his muddled mind. He jumped out, heaved the boards off the tailgate and started up the engine of the old Ford and drove forward a dozen yards.
Craning his scrawny neck he looked out the filthy rear window. He rested his arm on the back of the tattered seat and dropped the transmission into reverse. “Fuck it!” He stomped on the gas and floored the accelerator, the old truck’s bald back tires spun, kicking up a cloud of white smoke and dust, when they finally bit into the crushed shell beneath the truck lurched backwards, toward the sinkhole, picking up speed faster than he’d anticipated.
Unable to see through the dust, his view obstructed by the drums in the card-sized rearview mirror and his reflexes dulled he hesitated a second too long before stomping on the brake. Gripping the cracked steering wheel with both hands, his butt lifted a full six inches off the seat as he put all of his one-hundred and twenty pounds onto the peddle, mashing it to the floor with both feet. It worked, the troublesome drum, chock full of blue goo, broke loose, flew off the back of the truck, smashed to the ground and burst open spewing its sticky, caustic contents to the ground where it sizzled like spilt bacon grease.
Newl slammed the stick into first and popped the clutch, but it was no use, the truck continued its deadly backwards slide. Reality seemed to roll in slow motion as if God was giving him time to savor his final moment of stupidity. Frantically he spun the wheel to the right in a bold effort to tip the truck over and stop its momentum. But there was a jaw-jamming bump as the left back wheel struck the jettisoned drum, smashing it and blowing the tire. A split-second later the rear end dropped off the edge jolting Newl’s head back and then mercifully the truck came to a stop. His heart was revving like a two-cycle engine and every inch of his scrawny body trembled.
Empty minutes passed then the radiator blew, Newl clenched the wheel with a white knuckled death-grip as steam spewed from beneath the hood.
Five minutes later there was silence, the truck tipped skyward and he felt doomed, as if trapped in a rocket about to blast off to the crystalline sphere of moon that dominated the star strewn sky. The rusty frame of the worn out Ford creaked as the truck teetered precariously on the edge of the pit. When he tried scooting his butt towards the door the truck groaned and tilted back a degree. He froze.
The left front tire was covered with sticky sand and blue goo, it spun slowly as the remaining drums continued to defy gravity. Glimpsing their shadowy outline in his rearview mirror he thought, If one of them barrels would just slide out . . . maybe I’d tilt back down. But the damned drums didn’t budge. Newl realized his neck was in the noose. The Grim Reaper had his bony hand on the trap-door lever to Hell. It could be weeks, maybe even months before anyone wandered out here. If I stay put and no one comes along, I’ll be baked alive by the sun come mid-day by the time I’m found. Remembering there was no food or water in the truck, his mouth turned sticky. To make matters worse, he was building up a pony-sized need to pee. His only option was to leap from the truck, but that would surely cause it to topple backwards. Can I make it? He wondered.
The air inside the cab was hot and stale. Moving like an arthritic senior, Newl eased his left hand off the steering wheel, flexed it, then trembling he reached for the door handle . . . Boom! He jumped back from the door as if it’d been booby-trapped. The hood of the truck tipped two degrees towards heaven. After several tense moments he realized the explosion had only been the front tire: the goop had eaten through the thin tread and popped it. His heart dropped back into his chest, but continued pounding for several seconds before finding its normal cadence.
Minutes past like days. No longer able to stand the stifling air in the cab he gingerly rolled down the driver’s side window and inhaled the warm swamp air. Seconds later the mosquitoes buzzed in, defiantly swarming around his face and brazenly crawling into his ears, causing him to twitch. He screwed a greasy finger in crushing them.
Newl’s mind became a bent matchstick, unable to take it any longer he snapped, grabbed the door handle and jerked it down, it made a dull metallic squeak, but the door wouldn’t open. “Damn, it’s stuck!” He drove his bony shoulder into it, but the door only creaked.
A sick groan floated up from beneath the truck, Newl felt gravity pull him back ever so slightly. “Jesus!” Panicked he jerked the handle repeatedly, slamming his shoulder against the door, damning the consequences, but it was hopelessly jammed.
He was prevented from escaping through the passenger door because it was perched over the edge.
Panic took over, he had to get out, he fell across the seat and kicked frantically at the door with his battered cowboy boots until one of the heels broke off.
The truck began to teeter-totter. Realizing the suicidal stupidity of his tantrum he stopped and sprawled out panting on the soiled seat, staring out through the grimy windshield speckled with the bodies of impacted bugs.
Then an idea clicked inside his rattled brain like an old safe’s tumblers. He eased himself up. There was another groan from beneath the truck. He realized his only chance was to squeeze out of the window, climb onto the hood and attempt to make the six-foot jump to safety. He reached out and gripped the side mirror with his sweaty left hand. The truck rocked back a fraction, determined not to die he shimmied out of the window and stood on the rusting running board and tried not to stare into the black chasm below. If he could have glimpsed beneath the truck he would have jumped without hesitation: the sandy edge of the pit was crumbling like piecrust. Newel made his way out onto the still hot, dull red hood. As he mustered up enough nerve to leap, a chunk of sandy earth sloughed off beneath the truck and it suddenly flipped over backwards. Newl clawed at the hood like a startled cat as he fell back against the windshield and his stomach floated up into his gullet. He free fell in silence too terrified to scream or flail his arms. The plunge seemed to last an eternity, everything moved in slow motion as he fell away from the stars and the impassive moon.
The truck hit bottom with a mushy thud, the impact drove him through the windshield. He ended up sprawled on the smashed bench seat, covered with tiny cubes of broken glass, bloodied, unconscious but miraculously alive.
Dozens of discarded drums of toxic waste had spewed their noxious contents onto the sandy bottom of the pit, which was covered by a thick tangle of roots sunk deep into multi-colored goop.
Newl didn’t regain consciousness until midday. The sun was directly overhead. Its rays penetrated into the cool depths of his cavernous crypt for only a couple of hours per day. When he tried to get up a sharp stitch of pain jabbed his side. Rolling a bloodshot eyeball south he saw a broken rib poking out of his tee shirt like a slat of yellow cordwood. He let out a feeble cry for help that went unanswered, forgetting where he was he continued to shout. His pleas echoed back to him.
When he recovered control of his senses and what was left of his mind, Newl carefully pulled himself up from the twisted seat enough to assess his situation, as he did so bits of glass fell from his hair and clattered to the floor like a handful of dropped diamonds. He spit a few more from his bloodied mouth.
Somehow over the next hour he managed to climb back out onto the hood. He lay there coughing up blood and wheezing from the toxic fumes wafting up from the soggy bottom below. Each hacking convulsion of his lungs caused his broken rib to twitch. His face was swollen and itched terribly. He rolled onto his back certain he was dying. Flecks of pollen had begun to fall from the blossoms above like fluffy flakes of warm snow. The beautiful huge white flowers hung limply from thick vines clinging to the sheer east face of the pit. Peering up through the fading light he guessed he was over two-hundred-feet down. So why ain’t I dead? He wondered.
Desperate with thirst and fear he slid off the hood to search his tomb for water. He realized too late that the truck was not resting on the floor of the pit at all, but was caught on a springy web of roots suspended fifteen feet or so above the barrel littered bottom. Drums that had broken through were partially submerged in chemicals and mud. The roots of the giant, flowering vine were anchored in it, apparently drawing some potent nourishment from the toxic bog.
Coughing and sneezing in agony he eased himself onto the web. He picked his way over to the creepers platted together into a massive trunk that grew from the foul depths of the pit up towards the warmth of the Florida sun.
The thorns that covered the plant were ominous. Realizing his only chance at escape was to scale the wall using the vines, he reached up and grasped the slick gray bark between two thorns and tried to hoist himself up. He managed to climb a eight feet until his protruding rib snagged in the loop of a tendril. Newl screamed, stopped, freed himself and quivering continued his climb up through the jumble of razor sharp leaves, thorns and blossoms. Sweat dripped from his nose. He wheezed with each breath and moaned with every move. The plant’s serrated leaves slashed his jeans and bloodied his hands as he clambered up towards the sun. The itching became unbearable, clouding his concentration, causing him to tremble. The springy limbs bent, dusting his face with more pollen and causing him to cough even more. Soon he was unable to see. His rheumy eyes felt full of ground pepper. Still he managed to climb twenty-three feet. After pausing to rest he reached for a limb, unable to see through the yellow crust that sealed his eyes he impaled his left hand on a thorn. It felt like a white-hot nail had been driven through his hand, he shrieked, released his hold on the vine and fell backwards screaming. His body plunged through the tangle of vegetation, hooked thorns raking his skin like tiger claws as he fell.
He landed hard on the web of roots, bounced once then slipped between them, he dangled helplessly caught by his left leg. He hung suspended several feet above the bubbling toxic goo, mercifully, the fumes caused him to lose consciousness.
Newl came too hours later when the cool night air sunk into the pit and filled his lungs enough to jump-start his rattled brain one last time.
The first thing he realized was that his left arm was tightly bound to his side. He tried to lift his head and saw that his body was coiled in cable-sized creepers. He hung suspended like a spider’s prize. Something bobbed near his left eye: it was a pencil-sized tendril, swaying before him, its tiny, translucent thorns looked to be made of spun glass and it’s delicate, luminescent leaves appeared sculpted from bone china. In shock and dripping blood he was transfixed by the small botanical life form swaying before him. The leaves moved like miniature flippers. The head-like bud on its tip bowed towards him as if acknowledging his presence. Suddenly fearful, he spat at it, trying to keep the thing from growing nearer, trying to keep it from touching him. He blew as hard as he could but it was like blowing at a strand of barbed wire. He watched in horror as it grew closer, so close he could smell its lily sweet fragrance. It was crowned by a bud with a point that resembled a miniature World War I German helmet. It sought warmth, moisture and nourishment. It dipped towards his nostril. Millimeter by millimeter it grew up his nose. He tried to shake his head but the vines restrained him. String like creepers wove themselves between his fingers. The slightest movement became impossible. He screamed as the bud screwed itself in, using flipper like leaves to pull itself deeper and deeper into his sinus cavity. The pain drove him mad. He sneezed, blood dripped from the tip of is nose but the thing crept in further. As he screamed two other creepers bowed their helmeted heads into his mouth. In a fit of terror he tried to bite them off, chew em’ up and spit em’ out but they were wire tough and their taste was caustic and burned his tongue like a mouth full of Chinese mustard. Newl gagged, as creepers grew unhindered down his throat and into his stomach. His final agony was a wisp of green screwing itself into his ear, puncturing his eardrum and worming its way into his brain.
Within an hour, dozens of tendrils had bored their way into his body and absorbed its meager nutrients.
As time, passed gravity won out and Newl Hogue’s skull and bones fell into the muck below to be dissolved into calcium phosphate by the chemical pond, fertilizing the taproot of the creeper, helping it to grow. In nature, nothing goes t
excellent post
Thank you!
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