A boys hammer, p.1
A Boy's Hammer, page 1
This book is dedicated to my father, Roger Grass.
* * *
He is a man who has failed enough to know victory’s worth, sinned enough to know what is right, and lost enough to know the things that are really worth something.
* * *
He is a remarkable man. And I am proud to be his son.
Copyright © 2022 by Alex Grass
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
A Boy’s Hammer
Alex Grass
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Alan’s Time Away
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
From Calm into Chaos
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Bolts of powerful lightning cracked. The plane dipped a hundred feet, shuddering from tip to tail.
The boy huddled close to his mother, receding into his younger self. He instinctively grabbed her forearm and pulled it to his chest, clinging to the fiercest keeper of his safety and trust. Mother and son—the sole passengers of the aircraft—could hear nothing aside from the voices of the pilot and copilot who shouted over blaring alarms.
“Alan, sweetheart, it’s going to be okay.”
Lena held onto her son as closely as she could. They sat on the same side of a leather-clad bench. The plane dropped again. They gripped the parquet table before them, scarring it with fingernail imprints. It was all they could do to steady themselves. Alan, all of fifteen years old, started to vomit. With a mother’s instinct, Lena caught the mess in her hands. The pilot screamed for them to get back to their passenger seats and strap themselves in.
The boy continued vomiting. Violently. The mother hooked one arm under his armpit, and with adrenaline-infused ferocity, chucked Alan into his seat. She did this all while holding an airsick bag in the other hand to catch any spillover.
Lena threw the bag. Puke spillover didn’t matter in desperate times. She thought of her son, drenched in puke, but alive.
“Strap in!” she screamed at Alan—out of character for her, but not for a panicked mother. She sat in the seat next to her son. Alan was in shock and couldn’t break through his panic to fasten his own belt.
The plane’s nose listed into a full groundward tilt. Were the pilot and copilot still yelling? She couldn’t tell; the strange thunder drowned out every noise except the horrible sound of metal stretching into deformity—which was constant.
Lena tugged at her son’s seat belt. Get it buckled.
That’s when the steely shriek and the vacuum-powered boom rang loud enough to pop her eardrums. One of the turbines had been hit by lightning and a shrapnel spray shattered one of the windows. Alan still did not have his belt buckled. And Lena hadn’t seen the stewardess. That realization eclipsed her reasonable worries. As if in response, a clatter of silver trays flew past the two of them, followed by a blood-drenched woman tumbling down the carpeted aisle. The stewardess’s body lifted and spun mid-air before smashing against the door to the cockpit.
Lena watched champagne glasses, her spectacles, a book—all fly toward the openings in the windows and along the hull. She was deaf. All Lena could make out was a mono-rhythmic tone pulsing high and loud in her brain. This sound was not coming from the Learjet. She leaned forward and finally buckled her son’s belt just as the plane lurched and plummeted.
Alan emerged from his state of shock, now in a panting, gasping state of fear. He looked around and started crying. His mother, contorted under her own belt, slid halfway to her knees. She looked up at him and took his hands into hers. She tried, so very hard, to tell her son I love you, but the words did not come out.
The plane hit the water.
One
Philadelphia Energy Refineries
“So, what’re you gonna do when this is all shut down?”
It was around midnight during the guard’s graveyard shift. He took a pull on his cigarette and shrugged. “Not sure. I prolly can get work at the Linc. Maybe go work at my cousin’s bar in Roxborough. What about you?”
The structural engineer sucked in air through his teeth. “It’s gonna to be a bit of a struggle, man. Petroleum refineries aren’t really interested in hiring a guy who let a chunk of concrete fly across a river in an explosion. Size of a pickup truck, that mother.”
“Huh. Well, I s’pose that’s true.”
“The upside, though, my good man, is that I no longer have anything here makin’ me behave. So…”
“So?”
“So, let’s do it.”
The guard smiled broadly as he stubbed out his cigarette. “You gonna blaze?”
“Yeah. Why the hell not?”
“Distillation tower? Low lights since the explosion. No one’ll see us.”
“Yeah, okay, but there’s the—”
“Let’s just go up in the guard tower, man. I got Pringles.”
A pause. “I love Pringles,” the engineer said.
The two near-friends walked alongside a chain-link fence that was topped with barbed wire. The night guard held out his Maglite and let it scrape against the links as they walked.
“Do you want me to put in?” the engineer asked.
“Nah. You all right. If it makes you happy, youse can order pizza.”
“They deliver here?”
“How you think I’m so fuckin’ fat? All I do is sit in that fuckin’ tower, smoke weed, and eat pizza.”
The engineer let out a genuine laugh. “Sheeyit.”
“What’s funny ’bout that?”
“I don’t know, man. It’s just funny. Something about the way you say stuff.”
The guard smiled as he hitched up his wide-waisted navy Dickies by the belt loops. “I did the open mic at Philly Comedy Club once.”
“No shit—or should I say, no sheeyit?”
The guard pulled a jangly set of keys from his belt loop. He chuckled and replied, “No residue of defecation, sir.”
Both erupted into laughter.
The oversized pants and the weight of the keyring once again brought the guard’s Dickies down a bit beyond his crack, revealing an impressive amount of ass cleavage. He stopped to readjust his pants before they climbed up the spiral that led to the guard tower above. The air was cool and there was a breeze, but the night guard was puffing and sweating before he was halfway up the steps.
“You alright?”
“Yeah. I got the ’itis, son. Ate too many wings. Ma brought me—”
A massive boom sounded and shockwaves rattled the tower. The guard lost his footing on the stairs and tumbled on top of the engineer, who yelled, “Aw shit. I’m fucked again! Two explosions’ll make a double-shit resume!”
The engineer strained to escape from under the guard. Once he managed that, he got to his feet. His elbows and the back of his head were scraped bloody by the stainless-steel steps. The duo rushed toward the source of the boom. Not too far away, they discovered a freshly blackened crater.
The air smelled strongly of sulfur laced with a honey-like fragrance. The potent aroma was more than the guard could handle; he heaved up everything he’d eaten that day. The engineer’s guts remained intact as he stared into the gaping hole.
The center of the crater shifted. It oozed.
The air around it distorted like a desert mirage. Like pavement shimmering in the horizon on a hot summer day. Small bursts of static discharge zipped from point to point inside the crater, dancing blue and brilliant as they leapfrogged in a radiant discord of crackling energy. The blue bursts of electricity became frenzied—a chaos of bright lights. The glowing bolts grew larger and thicker as they cut into smaller strikes of lightning inside the black hole. After a white flash came a lone violet beam. This beam extended to a height taller than a man and became cylindrical as it formed at the center of the crater. That odd purple luminescence continued to grow while the blue clusters of miniaturized lightning convulsed with frightening rapidity around it. The sight was so distracting that sound only entered the equation when it was disruptive enough to catch
The guard was still vomiting. He was down on his hands and knees, his shoulders heaving in rotating muscular fits that would leave his body sore.
The engineer tapped the guard’s shoulder and pointed toward the electrical storm inside the crater. “You might wanna check this out.”
The guard’s belly hung over the rim of his pants, unleashed—swaying like a baby in a hammock. Still on his knees, he raised his eyes to the blue lightning forming into small triangles.
The lightning-triangles raced around the leviathan purple light that seemed to extend from the center of the earth up through the smoggy gray clouds obscuring the Philadelphia skyline.
“What—what the… what the fuck is that?” the guard yelled.
The engineer shook his head.
A wave of yellow vaporous static rolled out from the sides of the beam along a horizontal plane. An otherworldly orchestra swelled—it was the sound of many different instruments tuning themselves to different keys all at once. The multi-sensory cacophony gathered and grew louder in a terrific swell as the wave rippled forward, threatening to engulf them.
Just as the volume and brightness of the discharging field of radiation became unbearable; just as both men threw up their hands to protect themselves from the torrential electrical storm; just as the violet light thrummed and expanded on the brink of a nuclear flash…
It stopped. Vanished. Only a sizzling spiral of smoke remained.
The guard returned to his hands and knees and threw up again. The engineer waved his hand in front of his face, parting the smoke and steam to get a clearer look at what was in the crater.
Finally, the fat man wiped his face and rolled back with an ungraceful plop into a seated and splayed position on the pavement.
“What the motherfuck? What the fuck?”
The engineer didn’t answer him directly. Instead, he held his index finger up to his face in a shh motion. “Light.”
The guard shakily handed his Maglite over to the engineer, who proceeded to hesitantly shuffle forward. He reached the crater’s edge and sat, preparing to descend into the hole. He started coughing as the smoke surrounded him.
“You see anything?”
“Nah. Can’t even see right in front of me, man.”
Bemoaning his temporary blindness, the engineer watched as the smoke dissipated outward in a fluid motion, like tired waves lapping the shore and dying into the sand. He pointed the Maglite at the clearest point, the developing smokeless translucence at the mist’s eye. As the vaporous mass cleared, the yellow-white light found a point of fixation.
A man.
There was a very nude man in the very center-bottom of the crater. He was covered head to toe in primitive tattoos of something T-shaped. Hundreds of little… crucifixes? No, it was something else, those tattoos. They looked like dozens and dozens of hammers. Some were expertly done, others looked like childish scrawl. Well fuck me. Look at this jawn right here.
Scared sheeyit-less, the guard called out behind him. “Yo! What’s up?”
The engineer drew his eyes from the massive, inked savage. “There’s a guy down here.”
“What do you mean there’s a guy down there?”
“Yeah. There’s a ripped, buff-as-shit dude here laying buck-ass naked.”
“Like Terminator?”
“Pretty much exactly like Terminator.” The engineer leaned farther over the edge of the chasm. “Hey! Yo! You okay, man?” he yelled.
The beastly man stood on wobbly legs. He looked up, his eyes wide, like one of those feral kids that was raised out in the sticks, possibly by wolves. He was shivering, but it wasn’t that cold. Couldn’t be that cold down there, anyway. The man just stared at the engineer. His tattooed body trembled.
“I… I… where? Where am I? Where’s my—” the man screamed, then started scrambling around the pit, pulling up piles of dirt.
“He’s diggin’ for something in there,” the engineer reported to the guard.
“Digging? Like dog diggin’? Like for a bone—what?”
“Uh, yeah… somethin’ like it,” the engineer watched a moment, waiting for the man to stop freaking out. The man did not stop freaking out.
“Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo! Chill. Come on, man. Youse buggin’ out? I get it—no, I don’t get it. Can you tell me who you are? Your name, dude. Name? Nombre? Tu nombre? Uh... uh… vous appelez-vous?”
“You speak French?” the security guard asked.
“Yeah, man. I’m basically fluent.” The engineer continued his inquiry. “Bonjour jolie fille. Avez-vous besoin d’un repas épicé?”
The man’s chest heaved as he swiveled his head to look back up. “Are… are you a man?”
The engineer felt strangely insecure. “Uh, yeah. I’m a man. You are too. I think. So we’ve established that. Which means we’re on the same page. How can—can I help you?”
The man hugged himself, tucking his hands cross-wise under opposite armpits, and sat down. He stared for a while at the blasted crater wall, then up to the night sky. His eyes roved, roved across the stars, vision hunting for an object forgotten in the roving. “Am I… is this Earth?”
“Yes. This is Earth. Do you, like, come from somewhere else?”
“No. I’m from Earth,” he said simply, his breath sharp.
“I don’t know about that, son. But you look mostly human to me. You got someone you want us to call?” The engineer didn’t want to get too close. That man could snap him apart one-handed. The big man didn’t say anything else for a long time.
The guard stayed away, not willing to get as close to the situation. “Did he just ask if he was on Earth?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, shit, son. What do we do? Should we take pictures of his naked body to look at later?”
“What? Why would we do that?”
“For science, man. Or TMZ. Whatever pays more.”
“Science doesn’t work that way.”
“TMZ does.”
The engineer shook his head. “I say call the cops, probably. Right? I mean, I think this is a situation I’m unequipped to deal with. Are you?”
The security guard sighed. “I’ll call it in.”
Two
Hurry up and wait. That saying resonated with Christian Henneman.
For the last three weeks he’d eaten nothing but a foul-tasting fish soup. In preparation.
He went to the banya every three days and sat in the hot-stone room until he was dizzy, then jumped straight into the cold pool; a jarring jolt to his nervous system every single time. It was preparation.
He didn’t drink any pure liquid—other than the fish soup—and was only permitted shredded ice in a glass, which he quickly chewed and swallowed before it liquified, as preparation.
He slept every night in a tightly wrapped cloth. In preparation.
The regimen had been difficult and bizarre, but Christian considered himself a man of discipline. He followed the directives to a T.
Today might be the day. His gut knotted tightly. Some kind of Boy Scout knot—tied by one of Eagle rank, considering how masterfully the abdominal anxiety slithered down through the intestinal tract, crissing and crossing until it reached the deepest part of his bowels.
Christian resumed his walk to work after a short pause to let the worst of the cramp pass. He got off the sidewalk, attaché case in hand, and climbed the cement steps leading into a plain brick building. The only marking on the outside—aside from the alley graffiti—was the address in dull typeface above the two glass doors.
