Desolate Splendor , livre ebook

Ecw Press - John Jantunen

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169 pages

English

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The collapse of civilisation has left the survivors scattered amongst a few settlements along the wilderness fringe of a land ravaged by war. Preyed upon by roving bands of sadistic ex-soldiers and ever at the mercy of a natural world that has turned against them, a family is facing their final days. Hope appears in the guise of their young son, who is thrust headlong into a battle for the future of humankind after rescuing a girl fleeing a cult. Raw and unflinching, A Desolate Splendor heralds the rise of an exciting new voice in apocalyptic fiction.

Informations

Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	17 novembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781770908994
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0350€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

A Desolate Splendor
a novel
JOHN JANTUNEN

For Tanja

We, while the stars from heaven shall fall, And mountains are on mountains hurl’d, Shall stand unmoved amidst them all, And smile to see a burning world.

“The Great Archangel’s Trump Shall Sound”

contents
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
acknowledgements
about the author
copyright

They came into the glade under a full moon, their shadows tilting against the silvered sheen of the poplars at their backs, their eyes fixed as one on the dark outlines of a house and a barn. It had been written that a child shall lead them and so it was. He carried in his hand a lighted torch and as he led his two younger brothers away from The Twelve, its flicker radiated over their shorn heads and the fine lines of the skeletal imprints graven on their faces. The littlest one cast furtive glances back as if gaining courage from his fathers, the men’s faces likewise marked though they also wore bones pierced through their flesh in cryptic patterns like the runes of some ancient and savage race. Among the three boys prowled four dogs, also adorned with bones woven into the thick mat of their fur so that they rattled when they walked, the clatter of them moving in tandem through the tall grass chasing at the whine of crickets and cicadas. Shortly, even this was drowned out by a dull thrumming as The Twelve raised their voices to the wind. Each was a human scapula or a hollowed-out femur tied to a piece of twisted sinew and as they swung them above their heads, the many voices became one, growing into a thunderous roar.
A light winked on in the house’s upstairs window, lingered a moment then faded, reappearing a moment later in the window below and disappearing again, now emerging onto the porch so that all could see that it was a lantern held aloft by a man, a woman trailing behind, clutching at his hand. From the stark fright painted on their faces, it was clear they’d heard whisperspeak of stories, too terrible to believe, of daemons who came in the night to harvest the souls of the living: dread reapers whom some named Echoes, for all that was known of them was the sound of their voice.
A voice even now fading as the man pulled his wife into a fearful embrace.
Silence once again fell over the field and the eldest boy lifted his torch to lay bare the truth of this night.
Why they’s jus children, the woman said.

The dogs had been restless all morning.
He could hear them whimpering at the barn door while he milked the she-goats and when he came out with the filled pail, they swirled around him, snarling and fighting, their teeth drawn and bloodlust ripe in their red-rimmed eyes. He yelled at them to shoo and when that didn’t put an end to their foolishness, he lashed out at them with the willow switch he kept hitched to his belt. They scurried from his reach and slunk after him, keeping well clear from the maraud of his foot-leathers on their way back to the house, penitent, their heads hung low, almost dragging on the ground. When he slowed at the porch steps, they knocked up against his legs.
Damn near drivin me half-mad, he grumbled as his wife set his breakfast on the table in front of him.
They’s always like this when Belle’s in heat, she reminded him.
The dirty little buggers. And not a one of em more’n three years out of that ol bitch.
He shook his head and dipped a corner of his cornbread into an egg yolk.
What’s bitch? his son asked from under the table.
He was lying beside Blue, the patriarch of their brood of hound dogs and the only one they allowed inside, excepting of course Belle, who was in the barn to keep her from dripping blood all over the floors. The boy was five and without any siblings of his own had taken to acting like he’d been sired by Blue along with the six others that, even now, the man could hear pacing around the porch, growling and snapping, every one more a nuisance than the last.
Git up here and eat yer eggs, he said.
No.
The man looked over his fork at his wife.
Honey, she prodded. It’s time to eat.
No. Then after a moment: What’s bitch?
It’s a girl dog, his mother said. You know that.
Belle’s the only bitch we got.
She is.
Pa drownt the rest.
He did.
Why’n he do that?
You’ll have to ask him.
Why’n ya drown them other bitches, Pa?
The man cut around the perimeter of his egg white, trimming the edge, yellowed and crisp from the pan. He wrapped the golden frill around his fork and fed it into his mouth.
Weren’t no other choice, he said.
Scooping the rest of the egg onto his bread, he stuffed the lot into his mouth then reached for his mug. Bits of charcoal floated on top of the boiled water strained through chicory. He teased one towards the edge with a fingernail, easing it up the side of the tin cup then pressing his thumb pad onto it and holding it up, studying the black dot.
If Ma has a girl, ya goin drown her too?
Tha’s not hardly the same thing.
Why?
The man squished the mote between his thumb and his forefinger and looked to his wife again.
Yer ma ain’t likely to birth a dog.
She birthed me. And I’ma dog.
The man covered his frown by licking his thumb. He took up the mug of chicory and drank it all at once. It was bitter and the heat of it burned his throat. He then stood and picked up his switch from the table and walked to the door. His straw hat hung from a hook beside it. He lifted it off, set it on his head and reached for the door’s latch with a languor that suggested he’d rather be plodding up the stairs towards bed. As he stepped onto the porch there was a sudden clattering as the dogs scurried to get out of reach of his switch.
I’ll be in the shop, he said. Send the boy out when he’s done.

When the boy came out of the house, the six dogs lay bunched in front of the workshop’s door, panting against the heat and casting wary glances at the sun’s advance upon their haven of shade.
Sky, he called from the porch.
The youngest hound didn’t so much as lift his head from his paws.
On the porch’s hewn cedar post, there was a thermometer made from a flat circle of wood cut from the thick end of a birch tree. Numbers lined its perimeter around a tightly coiled strip of metal. A nail was soldered to it and its tip was inching past 30 though the sun had barely risen above the treeline. The boy pried the nail back with his finger, as if he could trick the heat into retreat, and let go. The coil pinged and he strode down the steps. The angry stomp of his foot-leathers would have seemed funny to his mother, though he’d never been more serious.
Goddamnit, Sky, he bellowed in pale imitation of his father, don’t make me whip ya.
As he crossed the yard he could hear faint strains of music. It was coming, he knew, from his father’s gramophone, which he always listened to when he was working in his shop, tinkering, his mother called it in her more generous moods. Drums rolled like thunder and then out of them rose a harmony of strings that reminded him of the first sprinkle of rain before a deluge — violins, the boy thought — and then a deeper sound. A cello maybe.
As he passed into the shade, Sky averted his eyes and then whimpered when the boy grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and tried to drag him to his feet. He was as heavy as a bag of sand.
Well you ain no fun, the boy said and kicked dirt at him.
That you out there, boy? his father called through the open door. Come on in here. I’ll let ya drill one of the holes.
The boy wound through the maze of paws and lolling tongues and stopped at the small door set inside a larger one, the latter big enough to drive a bull moose through. The former was open a crack and he peered in at his father, hunched over at his workbench, fitting a length of dowelled wood into one of the holes he’d drilled along the frame of what was to become a crib.
Whadya waitin on? the man said without looking up.
Ma says I’ma pick slugs.
Tha what she said?
Yeah.
Then best git at it.

His mother’s garden ran kitty-corner to their pasture. It was a quarter acre fenced in by cedar rails and ringed by orange and yellow marigolds, withered from the heat, and crushed eggshells and hair trimmings, but nothing his mother could do would keep the slugs from coming in at night.
The boy herded their chickens into the patch. He stood a moment, watching as they stalked among the sun-wilted plants plucking bugs from the leaves, then stepped to the row of cucumbers. He duck-waddled from one to the next, peering underneath, their leaves pocked with ragged holes and some no more than frames with tattered flaps of green at the fringes. When he found a slug he pried it off with his pocket knife and put it in a small wooden box. Before he’d been born, it’d had pictures of tomatoes on it, bright and red, but was now marked with only a few faded smudges of orange. Smears of black from past slugs stained the bottom. He extracted a half-dozen and made a run at the squash but his legs were tired by then and he told himself that it was best to let the chickens have their fill anyhow.
He walked along the row until he came to the garden’s eastern perimeter where his father had planted his tobacco and aniseed. There was a cherry tree on the far side of the fence. He set the box on the ground within its shade and cut himself a stalk of aniseed with his pocket knife. While he chewed on the liquorice weed he watched the slugs in the box, betting on which would make it to the lip first. He gave odds to one that had tiger stripes but in the end it was a smaller speckled that took the race. He flipped it back with his knife and picked up the box, pressed it thro