Chapter Omission

It's been brought to my attention that Part 3, Chapter 6 has been missing from the table of contents this whole time. Whoops!

It's been amended. The story is understandable without the chapter, which is why it must have slipped under the radar, but it is one of my favourite scenes -- the climactic action piece for Part 3. If you've been reading with the RSS feed, (or if you bought the ebook) you would have received it because I did post it a while back. Those new readers who've been using the table of contents for navigation will have missed it though.

It's now on the right column: Part 1, Part 2.

Sorry!

Dave

Part 4, Chapter 5

Eleven days between updates is a bit much, and for that I can only apologise, but lo and behold, here is the very final instalment of A Pittsburgh Storm.

If you've enjoyed reading the novel, then please go ahead and buy a copy from Lulu or Smashwords (the links are on the right) and support artists who do kind and noble things like give away their hard work away for free. If you want to give more or less than $1.25, or you want to cut out the middle man, then please feel free to use the donate button, which will direct you to PayPal. If you do any of these three things, you'll be visited by the holy angels of charity in the night, and who knows what they'll do in return!

But really, it's been a nice experience posting my work up here. I've received a lot of nice feedback and many thousands of visitors. Now that the whole work is finally posted, this site isn't going anywhere. It will still house A Pittsburgh Storm, and will be used to provide news on any news, updates, or writings of mine.

Now that the writing's complete, please feel free to send me any comments you may have. It's kind words and thoughtful comments that keep me going (because lord knows there's no money involved). And be sure to tell your friends -- particularly if your friend's a publisher, agent, or magazine editor!

Enjoy the final chapter.

Dave.

-------

5

I wake up. My vision is blurred and my breathing labored. I’m sat upright, resting against something. Martin crouches next to me, looking into my eyes, but falling in and out of focus. Behind him, I can see the loathsome tower of burnt furniture. Martin pulls his face back from mine and says something, but the sound is muffled. I can see the sweat on his face and the worry in his eyes. Then I see a body in the distance behind him: the second life I’ve taken. My jeans are red with blood, my own blood, clotting and sticking to my calf. The pain is terrible – I’ve never been shot before. Whenever I move the muscles in my leg, I stretch and tug at the wound with excruciating pain. I can see the trail carved in the ash where Martin has dragged me from the base of the tower, over to the sidewalk, to prop me against a fire hydrant.

The boy’s crying. “Are you ok?” he asks.

I can’t reply with words, but cough an acknowledgement. This satisfies him and a smile of relief crosses his face.

I stay on the ground for a long time, while Martin, crouching next to me, wipes my face and looks into my eyes, full of concern. We’re both exhausted.

It takes a while, but eventually the world returns to me, tactile and close. I can feel, again, the cold air on my face, and, when I put my hands by my sides, the soot that covers the ground, thick and slippery.

Somehow, I get to my feet, slipping on the ash, with one hand on the hydrant and the other on Martin’s shoulder, and I try to keep the weight off my injured leg. The wound doesn’t feel as bad as I expected it to. Maybe the shot just grazed me.

With Martin’s help, I stagger over to the stranger’s body, which still lays face down in the ash. Imprints of his final footsteps recede behind him and turn into Third Avenue. The man's dead face is turned to his left and blood pools beneath him, dripping from his mouth. This mixes with the ash and soot on the ground, turning it into a dark red paste. I nudge the body over with my left foot, half-afraid that the man could get up again and resume his assault. The moment I see his face I know this fear will never transpire because the right corner of his forehead is missing. His right eye has popped out, but I don’t know where it is. It may still be in there, but is now indistinguishable from the mess of pulp. The sight doesn’t disgust me. The sight is too alien to have any effect like disgust. I expect to hear crying from Martin, but he stands by my side, watching the body, as emotionless as myself.

I look to what was once our truck. Yellow flames lick the interior, reaching out of fire-cracked windows to flicker up at the sky.

I’m over stimulated, overworked, and tired. The situation takes on a surreal quality, distorted by waves of fatigue, and then further by waves of adrenaline that the pain pushes through my system. My hands are shaking. Does this mean I’m going into shock? And is there anything I can do about it?

“Let’s take a walk,” I tell Martin, meaning for it to come out as a question, but failing with the intonation and instead issuing a command. He doesn’t respond, so I start moving in a half-hop, south towards the Monongahela River. My butt aches from sitting down and my leg is in obvious agony.

My mind’s a blur and I feel lost. Of course, I know where I am, but I don’t know where I’m going. These days, I rarely know where I’m going.

Martin doesn’t ask any questions. He simply follows.

I keep my eyes on the streets ahead. I can hear the boy kicking a can behind me.

After a few minutes of painful stumbling, I find myself on the Penn Lincoln Parkway. I veer left and stumble eastwards, with the setting sun on my back. My left leg aches from supporting all of my weight and I doubt I can continue walking much further, but my body won’t allow me to stop. Not like this. Not here. Not now that I’ve come so far. Both Martin and I are silent; he knows as much as I do. He knows that we are walking, in a vague manner, towards Oakland, where I’m familiar with the streets and houses and still possess a key to my old apartment and the promise of shelter. Before I can reach these districts, I see the Smithfield Street Bridge, stretching out towards Station Square across a thousand feet of calm dark water. As we approach the bridge, the ashes blanketing downtown thin out. The bridge has been reasonably unaffected by the fire and on a whim I decide I would like to walk out along the pedestrian walkway, to take a seat and watch the river flow.

Martin draws up level beside me. Despite everything that has happened, he seems cheered by the view along the river, which looks out towards the low buildings of the Southside. Behind us, there is the impressive burnt out skyline of Downtown.

After crossing a third of the bridge’s length, Martin and I sit down and take a break. We lean our backs against one of the steel trusses and inhale the refreshing soot-free breeze moving up the river to join the Ohio, maybe a mile behind us.

Everything Martin and I owned was in the truck when it was set on fire. Now we have nothing but the clothes we wear, a machinegun a few blocks to our left, and whatever miscellany is left in my apartment. Moments pass and I search through my pockets for the photograph of Karen Spellman, in a bikini, with her pert breasts, tanned thighs, and firm midriff. I finger the photo in my left hand, and Martin looks over my shoulder in admiration of the girl. The sun shines bright in the picture, down on her browning skin, and a red bikini, skimpy, sexy, and unforgettable. She’s smiling her big smile, with straight white teeth, flirting with the photographer.

“Is that your girlfriend?” Martin asks.

“No,” I laugh.

“Then who is she?”

“Karen Spellman is her name but I’ve never met her. I found the photo and someone else told me about her.”

“Well…” I know the boy wants to say how attractive she is, but he’s only twelve, and most twelve-year-old boys don’t say things like that, since they’ve only begun to realize that girls can be so staggeringly beautiful.

We both know what each other is thinking and we acknowledge the pain we share. Karen Spellman stands in the photo, on a sandy Florida beach, oblivious of what’s to come. Her beauty emphasizes her loss and our loss and everyone’s loss. I’ll never see another woman. Somewhere, I know, is the body of Emily Jacobs, probably unburied. Somewhere else is the body of my mother, but I couldn’t guess where. Somewhere else, you could find the body of my father, perhaps, and my brothers, and my sister.

It occurs to me how much I’ve changed, after only two or three weeks of mind-fucking fuckups. After surprise transvestites, and dogs in grocery stores, and multiple killings, and the biggest funeral pyre in history at the funeral to end history, and smashing windows, and falling snow, and having gun’s pointed at me, and pointing guns at others, and finding a boy living alone in a once diner, now fort, and driving all day, and card games in the rain, and dirty jokes, and realizing that I’m in the last one percent of one percent left, with nothing else to do. And then, realizing that all I need to do in this new life is to look after one boy, and then doing just that, against all the odds.

“Where are we going?”

“I still have to keys to my apartment. It’s only about, well, thirty or forty minutes away.”

“We have all day. Is it nice there?”

“Yeah, you can see the museum from the window, and it’s comfy enough.”

“And there’s food?”

“Yeah, and clothes. And come summer, maybe we can go to the park – it’s not far – and plant some tomatoes, some peppers, zucchini, potatoes, carrots, corn. How’s that sound?”

“Sound’s good. Shall we go?”

“Sure. Let’s get moving.”

Martin gets up first, eager to resume the walk along the river’s edge. As ever, his energy impresses me. After a moment, he turns to me. I’m still on the ground, twenty years older than my age. He too suddenly looks somewhere in that age bracket. He holds out his hand and helps me up from the asphalt.

Part 4, Chapter 4 (Second Half)

4 (Continued...)

I’ve been toying with the idea of going back to James’ old home. Perhaps, if I’m lucky, I may find James has returned there and is willing to team up with Martin and I. James is the only other person, aside from Martin, who I know I can trust. Despite this, I’m worried that James may know about Hank’s death, and I don’t know how he’ll react to me after such an event. In fact, it’s almost certain that James knows about Hank, as James would have crossed the Birmingham Bridge after me. Perhaps there are even witnesses to the event itself. I don’t care so much about punishment – I don’t see who is going to make justice their responsibility – but I’m aware than anybody I do find, like James, will prefer to ostracize me, and perhaps Martin, than to stick with a known killer. That could spell disaster.

Maneuvering the vehicle through the heart of the city’s devastation is laborious and monotonous. Every few yards I have to adjust our direction to avoid hitting various heaps of junk, burned out vehicles, and the contents of stores pulled into the street. I could have driven along the edges of Downtown, of course, by the Strip District, on the fast track to the East Pittsburgh regions, but curiosity pushes me on this awkward and convoluted route. Downtown Pittsburgh is relatively small, so I know this wont take all day. But then, we have all the time in the world.

The sun is high and bright and bakes vivid detail into everything it touches. Under such a glare, the familiar Downtown surroundings seem all the more uncanny. The sunlight beams down, filtering through thin wraiths of black smoke that rise from charred remains of car, building, postbox, and awning. The only sound is the familiar engine of the four-by-four, like a moon buggy on a dusty, dirty, alien planet. The heat of the fire evaporated any snow in the region. Even so, during the journey to Pittsburgh, I’d noticed a distinct thinning of what was once a perpetual blanket of white. In the outskirts of Pittsburgh the snow still lies thick, but with asphalt creeping up from underneath. Here the blanket is one of unrelenting soot and ash.

Maybe the old man, Saul, was right about one thing: maybe Spring really is on its way.

Martin gazes out of the truck window and watches the destroyed city move past. This is the first time he has seen Pittsburgh since the world went to shit. This may be the first time he has seen Pittsburgh in years. I expected a more visible reaction from Martin, perhaps tears, I don’t know. Although, if the truth is told, Martin, like myself, has been so desensitized by the preceding weeks that he doesn’t know hot to react. I have to keep reminding myself that Martin has already witnessed the deaths of each member in his immediate family. He’s had the horrible opportunity to look upon each lifeless corpse and know that it was once an animate and loving individual in his life. Gazing out of the window, the bodies of these strangers, once frozen in the snow and now charred by the fire, are surely the least of the boy’s concerns.

The truck rolls through Downtown and ahead, I can see PPG Place, with the ice rink by its east side. Looming above it is the complex of towering glass – the same towers that Hank and I had watched from a rooftop in the Southside, as a stranger pushed office furniture out from the windows and yelled obscenities into the wind. The high glass buildings that make up the PPG complex are visible from miles around. Now this huge monolith of the capitalist ideal is a warped and melted tower of weeping glass. Behind it, the thirty-one floored granite Highmark building on Fifth Avenue stands charred and wounded. Its huge pyramid roof that once poked defiantly into the sky now stands dirty and purposeless.

As gusts of wind usher ash out of the ice-rink and into the street, curiosity keeps me edging the vehicle forwards through the debris. Martin, of course, is unconcerned and unaware of what this place could represent. However, I can taste the tension in my mouth; a dry, bitter clogging in my throat.

“Martin, you know there’s a gun in my backpack, right?” I ask. I don’t want to concern him, but I’m unnerved and could do with some company in that feeling.

“Sure, yeah I know.” He looks uneasy.

“Will you get it out for me?”

“Why?”

“Just— please, Martin.” He at least needs to be aware of what’s going on. To keep his eyes open.

Martin clambers into the back seats, finds my bag, and tugs at the straps holding the gun. I slow the truck further as we round the corner of Stanwix and Fourth. Aside from the cars, which were already there, now hundreds of filing cabinets, desks, office chairs, wastepaper baskets, photocopiers, fax machines, computers, telephones, and notice boards litter the street. A few of the items have been scattered into separate clumps, perhaps with an attempt at some kind of order, but the majority stand in a huge man-made mountain. I can only guess at what many of these objects once were. Now they are blackened, charred, and crumbled out of existence. They sit in a broken ash pile, bits of steel and scrap poking up here and there amongst solitary surviving pieces of desk-frame and filing cabinet. This monolith must have taken days of non-stop labor to build. It must have been under constant construction since I last saw the plaza, when I was leaving Pittsburgh. Martin climbs back into the front passenger seat, handing the unloaded gun to me and staring at the pile in wonder. “Whoa,” he says as he drops the ammunition clip into my lap. The street is impassible in the truck, but I want to examine this tower of destroyed corporation, on this cold and still day amongst all these other high rises. If I drive away, this moment will stand as another of those many moments in the past few weeks, where witnessing the signature instances of mankind’s decline took a backseat to my own health and stoicism. This moment will stand next to the time I left the Oakland riots when they became too intense, and I returned to my apartment on Craig Street to find Emily worried and waiting. It will stand alongside my decision to hole myself up in my apartment for a week, while all around me the world changed, devoid of my input.

I open the driver-side door and step onto the ash. The sound of the door’s mechanism and the light tap as my foot hits the ground echoes in the otherwise total absence of sound. The fire has even scared the birds away. Every so often, I hear the rustle of a light breeze, like flicking the pages of a book, and see the flitter of drifting ash.

“I’m going to take a closer look,” I tell Martin. “Stay in the car, ok?”

He looks at me and raises his eyebrows; he doesn’t want to be alone. I nod my head and he in turn opens his door, sliding off the seat and placing his feet on the ground.

Completely calm with my heart racing, I load the ammunition magazine into the gun and hold the weapon loose by my side. I’m conscious of the weapon’s misleading weight. Martin comes up a few steps behind me as I approach the blackened tower of office junk in the middle of the street.

In a way, the tower’s beautiful, stood there in all of its sooty haphazard grandeur.

Once I arrive at the edge of the tower, I begin to climb. It’s the only sensible option that faces me. The grime is thick, but enough metalwork is contained within that climbing is much easier than it initially appears. Occasionally, pieces of the furniture shift as the tower accommodates my weight. Then sometimes my foot slips on the thick ash, which covers the tower, and also my torso, legs, arms, hands, and face. Behind me, Martin is following a similar route.

We climb in silence; save for our own ragged breaths. I reach up, landing my hand on a wastepaper bin, which tumbles away beneath me, clattering and bouncing to the ground below. I watch the billows of soot that rise in its wake.

Finally, I attain the summit of the structure, pulling myself up onto the flat edge of a filing cabinet. The manner of its placement makes it look like pedestal. I’m confident that the tower’s builder placed it here (though I couldn’t guess how) so they could survey the surrounding courtyard. This unnerves me because, all along, I’ve known who the builder is. This tower exists because a twisted mind decided to put it here and I’ll never forget seeing, from across the river, the twisted mind in this building’s windows.

Finding my feet upon the filing cabinet’s side, I turn in circles, taking in a panorama of the unbelievable carnage. Moments later Martin joins me. Looking down on the ground below, I can see five other small piles, stacked only a few objects in height, arranged in a ring around this central peak.

Martin has also noticed these stacks. “That’s weird,” he mutters.

I nod in response as I puzzle over their significance. Five of the smaller stacks stand around this central cone. A realization clicks in my mind – an image from the past. I try to explain to Martin what I see, and the possible significance of the pentagram.

“Who put all of these here?”

“I saw someone here, weeks back…”

Martin waits for me to continue.

“He was in one of the PPG buildings, throwing all of this junk out of the windows.” I want to tell Martin that the madman was yelling, swearing to the heavens, and that he sent chills down my spine, which remained there for days, but these aren’t the kinds of things you should tell a kid.

We stand in silence for a moment. Martin stares at the base of the giant tower. I stare down the street, at the eastern corner. This is why Martin is the first to notice the corpse lying a few feet below us, on the far side of the mound. The corpse of a large dog, burnt and charred, destroyed save for its bones: its distinctive skull and a small wiry rib cage.

“What?” Martin says. He’s crying again, with tears running through the soot on his face, leaving streaks like the reverse of mascaraed drunks crying outside of nightclubs and bars on a loud, after hours Southside or Strip District evening. Martin’s appearance would be comical if it weren’t so heartbreakingly tragic to see the boy’s soul crushed.

He looks to me and we simultaneously understand what we stand upon. The dog was a gift and this tower is no pedestal, but a sacrificial altar. And furthermore, the pentagram indicates that this was no innocent ritual.

Martin’s look of panic is contagious. “Time we got out of here, eh?” I ask and usher him ahead of me, down the tower, back in the direction of our truck. Utter fear replaces the sense of uneasiness that has possessed us for the last thirty minutes. Fear of an unknown malevolence that holds too much sway where we stand. I tighten my grip upon the machinegun and hold it at hip level, looking around to the ground far beneath us. Martin is only a few feet lower than me and I’m panicking — fear taking over my better judgment. I need to get off this tower.

We clamber down, our faces into the ashen dirt, missing handholds and footfalls in our rush.

We’re several meters from the ground when the architect of this grand alter makes his appearance. His casual manner makes it seem that he’s been hiding for the past few minutes, aware of our presence, and waiting for us to become scared enough for his theatric entrance to have its full effect. My face whitens beneath its soot covering as I crane my neck at the sound of his approach. He holds a small handgun in one hand and a burning torch in the other. Frozen on the edge of the precarious tower, I feel like a butterfly pinned into a collector’s book.

This new character is too far away to make out details, yet I’m convinced that on his face a smile has spread. He stands by the truck, gun in hand, and looks up at Martin and I. I’m no longer so sure that I want to be off this wretched tower and closer to this gun-wielding madman. A heartbeat passes and he tosses his torch through the vehicle’s open door. He looks back to us, to gauge our reaction, I suppose, and our horror is clear. Then he takes a step away from the truck and towards the tower. “Everything must burn,” he says in the still silence of midday, his voice deep and old. “This is our punishment,” he gestures to our shared surroundings. “This is retribution for mankind’s sins. Now everything must burn. Everything must flicker and burn and die.”

“Don’t go any further,” I say to Martin in a cracked voice. “Stay where you are.” I clamber past the boy. Ash cakes my throat and my breath comes out in ragged gasps.

“The world was supposed to end,” the stranger announces as he observes my descent. “Both of you, it was supposed to end. But some things lingered on. We did, for instance. And that’s not good enough, you see. We’re still here. ”

Standing directly in front of Martin, his hand on my shoulder, I gain enough of a footing to turn my body towards the dark haired stranger.

“You see, it’s not good enough!” He raises his gun and points it at me; the second time I’ve had a gun pointed at me today. “Not good enough. Something went wrong, but I’ll fix it! I’ll fucking fix it as easy as—”

And there’s a crack in the air, and a ping sounds immediately afterwards on the metal frame of an office chair a few feet to my right. The bullet pulls soot behind it and caves a segment of the structure.

Another heartbeat passes, I try to raise my own weapon, but two more cracks ring out. One of the bullets strikes me in the leg, spins me around, heavy and clumsy and with excruciating pain. I lose my balance and look down: a few of meters of jagged burnt scrap. I meet the ground with astonishing swiftness.

The next thing I’m aware of, Martin is an impossible distance above me and I’m rolling from my back onto my stomach. I look ahead and see the anonymous gunman strolling towards me. Then I notice my arm extends out in front of me, along the ground, pointing towards him. A second ticks by like an hour and I notice that the machinegun is still in my hand and still within my control.

So I pull the trigger and swear through my teeth.

A series of cracks rattle through my ears into my skull, and simultaneously along my arm, into my torso. My entire body convulses with the force and shock. The stranger’s body convulses significantly more my own as bullets shred through him. I’m filled with relief because I know he’s dead and that Martin and I are safe. This thought comes as I lose consciousness for the second time.

And the world fades to black.

Part 4, Chapter 4 (First Half)

Well, I'm at my new home, and in a new job. Things have finally settled, so updates should run a bit smoother. This is a small one, the first half of the fourth chapter, working to establish the climax of the novel. I hope you all enjoy it.

There's been a massive surge of visitors these past few weeks or so, which is really satisfying to see, and there's been a big increase in the number of books bought, which is awesome. In case you missed it, you can pick up your own copy of the entire ebook, using the links on the right, for only $1.25. If that feels too measly for such a volume of work, then by all means, please donate through paypal. Or read it all for free, when I manage to get the updates online.

If your one of the many new visitors, don't forget that the whole thing starts right here.

Anyway, I'll post the next update on Thursday, September 10th.

Enjoy your week,

Dave

--------

4

Most of the ride back into Pittsburgh passes without much event. Martin and I make small talk, but we’re both too preoccupied with the concluding drama at Saul’s home to progress much father than that.

And although it’s a touchy subject, Martin asks me again, after a couple of hours on the road, “So what are we going to do in the city?”

It’s only a touchy subject because I don’t know the answer.

I think maybe I once understood my plan, but now, in the face of what’s happened, I’m no longer so sure. If nothing else, the conflict with Saul has served to emphasize how helpless this situation is. I’m no longer actively trying to improve my situation because I feel like nothing I can do will ever help. Ultimately, Martin and I are fucked no matter what. So instead, I simply glide along, wherever the road may lead. I make gestures of action and defiance, but little more. Taking Martin under my wing was all along, perhaps, only a gesture. It’s a gesture to nobody in particular, maybe only to myself, and indicates that I’m progressing somewhere and working towards something – whatever that is. Returning to the burnt out city of Pittsburgh is only another one of these gestures, because it proves to the world that I’m doing something. I’m aware of the futility of it all as I drive the truck south, down frozen, dead, aimless roads, but I don’t know what else to do.

So I don’t reply to the boy’s question and he doesn’t push the subject any further. We both know the answer, so we sit in silence.

Hours pass, and we eventually enter the city boundary again, driving through the northern edge of Pittsburgh, back towards Downtown, and like I said, it’s not because there’s anything there, it’s because this feels like the logical thing to do. Of course, it feels logical that we should head Downtown. If anything were to happen, that’s where it would be, right? But when Pittsburgh was still alive, only weeks ago, Downtown was a pure anomaly. During the daytime, it was busy mainly because of all the offices there. Retail and living in the Downtown area was almost non-existent. In the evenings, most of the area’s life stemmed from the theatres in the cultural district and at the baseball and football stadiums across the Allegheny River. And that was it – all of the life in Pittsburgh centered in the Strip, or the Southside, or Oakland, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill… So I doubt this would be the centre of events at all, but returning there simply feels like the right thing to do.

At this moment, on this clear day next to Martin in this rusting red monster of a vehicle and miles from anywhere, we can see how much fire damage Downtown has suffered. And behind it, swathes of the Hill and Strip District smolder. From miles away, we can see the rising smoke and ash.

It takes hours to make it through the northern end of the city. We have to leave the parkway, because of the abandoned cars that block huge sections of the road, and instead take the smaller roads and intermediary links. As we cross the Fort Duquesne Bridge, the fire damage astounds us. Many of the trademark high rises of Downtown Pittsburgh are now little more than charred, smoking monoliths, gutted on all sides, their contents spewed out onto the streets below. Anonymous debris clutters any spare space on the streets, blackened and destroyed.

I idle the truck on the bridge exit, and we take a moment to catch our breath and digest the surreal vision. I almost expect devils to fly out of the holes in these charred towers. The sight is so bizarre, dark, and hellish, the sight of winged nightmares wouldn’t seem in the slightest bit misplaced. This is straight out of Lovecraft.

Careful to avoid debris on the road, I roll the truck forwards, across the cluttered bridge, and into Downtown.