The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine Read Online Free PDF

fingers of blue-white smoke trailed out of his
nostrils and the corners of his mouth, drifting in the stale dead air of the
living room and into the cone of light emanating from the television. It was
the History Channel showing a documentary called The Battle for Felujah .
    “They drug test?” I told him
they didn’t, and he agreed to meet up with us at four-thirty in the morning.
    He was on time. Everyone was;
the money Snodgrass had promised was too good. I left the house at four; the
stars were bright and cold, as I warmed up the truck and my breath fogged
heavily in the pre-dawn November air. Aberdeen grocery was a ten minute drive
from the house, but I planned on getting a sausage biscuit down while I was
there and buying a bologna sandwich for lunch. Aberdeen grocery would slice off
the bologna as thick as three slices at other places, and they steadfastly used
real mayonnaise. I came into the grocery and immediately found the crew.
Surrounded by the haze of a dozen cigarettes, twelve men sat around the picnic
table that occupied the middle of the fishing tackle room. I sat down beside a
bleary eyed Zan and ordered a coffee while we waited for Snodgrass to arrive.
It was a good crew. I knew three of them well. The rest I knew fairly well. I
had played ball with Curtis Ward; he would be a mechanic. Owen Kelley and B.J.
Smith would be on equipment. Eric Ingram and his brother, Jay, would be running
the trucks. We were all about the same age. Only Johnny Lindsey had experience
from the days before the ‘79 bust and, as Johnny was a mute, he wouldn’t be
telling any stories. He would be another mechanic.
    Our small talk ran in short
rounds, punctuated by yawns as the low, wet gurgle of the minnow tank aerators
lulled us all to sleep. Occasionally, one of the group would fall into light
slumber only to be jolted awake as the table shifted on the ancient and uneven planks
of the floor, sending coffee spilling everywhere. Then Snodgrass arrived and we
were caravanning north on Highway 70 to the wide open ridge-top fields of the
county’s fourth district. Zan rode with me in the old Chevy truck I had
resurrected from my yard the summer before. Its front wheels had been scavenged
from a smaller truck, causing it to ride at a pitched-forward angle that made
your butt want to slide off the cracked vinyl bench seat.
    “I can’t believe I’m doing this
shit again.” Zan said, as we whipped along the dark, cold, ridge road.
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “Dozer work. I mean,
Christ-sake, dude. I wasn’t meant for this. I can do so much. Remember all
those ferns and fossil fish your dad used to get from the shale? You know I
learned the name and age of every single species of those things. I was only
eight! I should be a scientist or something.”
    “Yeah,” I replied. “You
remember that trip to the Kentucky Museum in the sixth grade? That tour guide
was showing off those worm fossils and you told him they belonged to some other
species and he tried to say you were wrong, but when we went back in the
seventh grade they had changed all the tags on them to what you had said.”
    “They were called nautoloids.
Yeah, I remember.” We rode along in silence, then Zan continued, more subdued,
“When I was in Iraq, we had this job where we were looking for hiding places in
some rock outcrops. While I was running some equipment I uncovered some caves.
At the end of the day I got down off the dozer and all of a sudden all these
towel heads who lived nearby came running up to me screaming and waving their
arms and shit. The infantry guys who were with us almost popped ‘em right then
and there. One of them spoke some English and managed to convince the guards to
come and get me. Turns out they wanted me to cover the cave back up. They said
they wouldn’t sleep until the cave was closed. I was shit tired, but they were
practically in tears. Kept saying the Djinni will come out.”
    “The gin?”
    “No, Djinni ,