From Filth & Mud Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by the author, J. Manuel. Associated works available at JManuelWrites.com.

  All rights reserved. E-Book Edition published in the United States by J. Manuel on Amazon.com and its affiliates. Print Edition printed and manufactured in the United States by CreateSpace and its affiliates.

  Made in the U.S.A.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞

  To my wife, Dina, for letting me

  keep my head in the clouds.

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  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

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  November 2011: A laboratory on the outskirts of Syracuse, NY…

  “There she is... ”

  The two scientists―one boyish-faced, beaming with the brilliance of a still unwritten future, the other drawn, his fatigue visible in the waning light of his career―stared at the screen in front of them as those words drifted away, fading to distant echoes in the resonant laboratory chamber. She was the first success. Finally after years of research and toil, the trial and error had paid off, resulting in this magnificent creation, the first of her kind.

  “Lilith.”

  Elegant. Simple. She was long and thin as they had imagined her. Strong. Her long, black arms reaching out beside her, twelve in total, suspended, unmoving yet animated with the halted breath of anticipation. Swirling visions of imagined wonders and those too fanciful to imagine gave way to her still presence.

  “She is capable.”

  “You think?”

  “I do.”

  “Does she… ”

  “I think so… ”

  “Let’s give her a try.”

  Lilith moved.

  CHAPTER 1

  Mornings came and went. Days faded to night, and yet for Jacob everything remained the same. He was static (his counselor's term); his was stuck. He was stuck in his career, stuck in his house, stuck in his unemployment, stuck with the memories of the last decade, stuck with the memories of friends who had left him behind, stuck with the ten year old stories he shared with John, his one remaining brother in arms. No word was better suited than stuck.

  The only thing he did not feel stuck in was his marriage. That was constant, comforting in its simplicity. They had two boys, a dog, and cat. Sarah was the breadwinner, the foundation of their decadal union. They had been happy.

  He had been an electrician's apprentice, a handyman of sorts. He’d gone back to a state school and earned his Bachelors in History, ever fascinating, but limiting in a twenty-first century, e-services world. He had sold insurance the last four years. It was a paycheck. The steadiest and the most he'd ever earned. It was safe. He was safe at least.

  Jacob sat motionless in the parked minivan as he stared at the drab, gray cement façade of the school. He’d dropped off the boys this morning like all mornings. Had he packed their lunches? He must have, otherwise the boys would have let him know. Thank God for PB&J, though Nathan and Luke probably felt just as stuck with him as they were with the instant oatmeal breakfasts and mac & cheese dinners. Unseasoned, quick-grilled, chicken breasts, and white rice found their way twice weekly into the meal plan. From their bowls the boys would dart glances at each other, shake their heads and scoop a few spoonsful just to make dad happy. His heart would drop, a sickening, sinking thud, caustically burning into his gut. He was a sad excuse for a father.

  Jacob’s white-knuckled grip tightened mercilessly around the thin, foam-padded steering wheel as he throttled the underpowered soccer-mom transport to a coughing start. He wasn't good at this. He wasn't good at much of anything anymore. He wouldn't call it drifting because that implied grace. No, his existence dredged along the bottom of a swamp, the kind of swamp that attracts derelict cars, scarred by the unimaginable stories of the sordid circumstances and haphazard sequences of events that had led them to their mucky purgatory, rusting beneath the thick, putrid algal blooms, forever trapped between the world of the living and the dead. He'd tried to smother his purgatory in the bourgeois blankets of suburban life. Carpools, soccer practices, pee-wee football, little-league, PTA meetings, school recitals and chores, forever tumbled between cycles, soiled whenever a volatile outgassing inevitably erupted from his mucky mire.

  Nathan still wet the bed. Sarah worried about that. It wasn’t normal, she'd say. She blamed Jacob’s anger. This too had worsened. He'd been steady and even-keeled in every tempest. His temperament had made him a natural leader and an admired, outstanding Marine. His men would joke that Death itself probably felt its heart beat faster every time it reached for its sickle, but not Jacob. Jacob was as calm in a fight as he was while taking a nap.

  He had always calmed his Marines with his wit. He was tuned to the needs of each individual member of his reconnaissance platoon and knew how to get the best out of each. There were those Marines who responded to false bravado and false motivation. There were others who needed the comforting voice of a senior Marine, who was experienced in combat. And there were those others who cried in quiet corners, who felt the impending danger and were too aware of their own mortality. These were the Marines he'd loved most, his masterpieces. He was their father, their Messiah. Through his words they'd find salvation, a path through which they could navigate the valley of the shadow of death. These were the Marines who'd carry the day in battle and who through their final acts of bravery had earned their rightful place among the garrison of Marines guarding the pearly gates.

  But those memories belonged to someone else, someone who did not cower daily in a darkened den surrounded by tales of heroes and their grand exploits, someone who did not cling desperately to a new King James Bible, someone who did not cast it aside furiously once he’d realized its impotence. His mind invariably rushed to the precipice, toward Private Mendes. Jacob shut his eyes and shook his head, attempting to expel the image as immediately as it came, but it looked back at him, its piercing gaze inescapable. He was terrified. His ability to block it out had been slowly deteriorating over the last couple of years.

  It was an ugly time ten years ago when he'd first returned from his last tour in Iraq. Sarah had borne the brunt of it, and they'd paid the price. He couldn't remember how, but he'd had the willpower back then to get better. Had he fooled himself? Maybe he'd never gotten better. Maybe he had just managed to wall off those memories and emotions from his consciousness until
he'd assumed a different persona and left the old Jacob to die in the desert. He thought the burial would benefit Sarah and their growing family. By the time Luke was born, Jacob was well on his way to earning his Bachelors, and the prospects of a calm, happy, and regular suburban future lay ahead of them. But Jacob had overlooked the simple fact that a Marine never leaves a man behind, and he would never be able to leave Staff Sergeant Jacob Harrington in the desert.

  Jacob pulled slowly out of the elementary school parking lot, the minivan’s bald tires screeched underway like four hoarse harpies carrying him toward his unchanging routine. After dropping off the boys, he’d get his bagel and medium black coffee, and sit for a few minutes at the corner table of the derelict, rusting steel diner located just down the street from the school. When he was done, he’d leave his half-eaten bagel and cold coffee, head home, throw himself bodily into the crudely upholstered corduroy couch and watch the news for as long as he could stomach. Same shit same day. He used to exercise for an hour, but now that was down to a few minutes, whenever he got around to it, which wasn’t that often. Most times he’d sit on the bench in the garage and just stare at the discarded weights. He’d lie back underneath the menacingly, heavy looking bar, palm it slightly, until his arms tingled from the lack of blood, and recoil. He couldn't do what he used to anyway. He was staring down the barrel of forty and with it came pain. He didn't know if the pain worked its way up or down his body, but it was all over. He was stuck in his decrepit body, too.

  Every couple of weeks, Jacob would leave the house and meet John for a late lunch. Outside of Sarah and the boys, John was his only human contact. He and John had been friends for twenty years. The two had been bunkmates on Parris Island and together had survived everything that the Marine Corps could throw at them. John was kinetic, alive, and ever on edge. John lived in a dynamic world. Jacob looked forward to their hour together. John had new stories, though they always revisited the familiar ones. John had done several more tours in Afghanistan, after Jacob had separated, though rumor had it that the unit might have actually been operating in the Taliban controlled regions of Pakistan. These were unconfirmed rumors.

  They’d meet always at 1 p.m. at the same downtown sandwich shop, Eden’s Organic Emporium. It catered to the yuppie crowd with its wide range of organic, vegetarian, and vegan fare. He didn’t particularly care for fancy food and he couldn’t remember John being so picky either, but then again, John continually evolved. John had returned to Silver Spring, Maryland a year ago. He'd found himself a nice, little loft in the trendy section of downtown, though lately he'd been shacking up with a younger twenty-something dime-piece in Georgetown and he was hardly ever around. John was one of those guys who hit the ground running wherever he went. VA counselors were not part of his life. John wasn't stuck, yet.

  The pair sat at their usual booth in the back of Eden’s dining area. The two were a disparate vision of survival. Jacob embattled, grizzled, and guarded, sat with his back rounded to the world. John pillared, bold, threatening the sky to try him. His menacing challenge scantly hid behind the veneer of an easy smile and espresso-toned bedroom eyes. After the usual pleasantries, Jacob inevitably pulled the conversation to the familiar: crude jokes and teary-eyed tales. Lunch would expectedly end too soon. John always left first, interrupted by the beck and call of his unstuck life. He’d bolt out of the diner phone in hand. Jacob would return to his purgatory.

  A decade had passed, and yet that life persisted as present today as it had been yesterday, as it would be tomorrow. Jacob wasn't sure at times that it had even been his life but for the fact that it kept him static. This was also his counselor’s medical opinion. Jacob had not come to term with moving on. He was not used to not being a Marine. He was now a civilian, a nasty civilian!

  Jacob sat for a few minutes while he finished his artisan-blend coffee, which tasted no different than his usual diner-grade, medium-black. He swirled the last gulp, washing the acidic brew against the inside of his eschewed mouth and stood abruptly, almost falling over in the process. The alcohol from the numerous whiskey shots he’d had this morning had not cleared his system. He’d allotted room for a growing number of those in his routine. Jacob steadied himself as best he could and ambled cautiously toward the exit and his unreliable transport. He sat for a moment and wondered if he’d also cut this from his routine. He probably would, but not today, and so he drove the fifty miles toward the state park, seeking the solitude of his daylong hike.

  After an hour, the lone, drab, beige minivan ground to a stop under a bare canopy of large oaks. Jacob walked around to the trunk and removed his usual provisions, a light pack consisting of a CamelBak, protein bars, compass, and a utility knife. He strapped his trusty .45 caliber 1911 around his thigh. The familiar weight of its steel frame comforted him. Its report, like a felled tree, would go unheard in these isolated woods. The thought, persistently stalked the shallows of his consciousness, like a ravenous shark at dusk, waiting for one drop of blood, a moment of weakness, when he’d succumb to the tempting waves. The thought of his boys beckoned him back.

  Jacob slung the well-worn pack around his shoulders and began his ascent. Three miles of grueling terrain awaited him. The thirty-minute climb today took forty-five. Once at the summit, his gaze lingered out over the horizon. He traced the distant meanderings of the Potomac as it joined the sky. He sat, closed his eyes, and rested his head against an old-growth maple. Its bark bit into his bare skin, sturdy in its support, unyielding against his insignificance. His ears pricked and twitched like a spooked horse at the instant rustle of every crunching leaf, blowing wind, calling bird, chattering squirrel, and the myriad of other forest sounds.

  As he pressed against the base of the maple, he could hear the distant cries of a small furry mammal being torn asunder by another one of nature’s creatures. He opened his right eye and peered through the bare maple branches to see a few peregrine falcons riding the updrafts overhead. Death from above, poor critter didn't have a chance, and it suffered for its carelessness in the cruelest of ways, eaten alive, eviscerated by unforgiving razor sharp talons. That was nature, merciless, honest, and alive.

  The hours passed imperceptibly atop his promontory as he leaned against his tree. His therapist had suggested medication to deal with his racing thoughts, but the medication made him sluggish and irritable, at least more irritable than usual. He had found peace, once, in Okinawa, but that was years ago. There, in that jungled vastness, he had learned to lose his anger and sorrow. At first he would cry and scream for hours as if trying to destroy it with all of his dark energy, but the mountain remained unaffected by his existence. He, however, changed. He began to hear the birds, the trees, the wind, and pounding of the raindrops on the thick, tropical canopy. He came to understand that his suffering was insignificant, and he let the rain drops wash it away into the lush green mountain. Now, without a guide, his search was proving to be increasingly difficult, but desperation returned him to his daily climb.

  As the sun continued its march across the sky toward late afternoon, about four o'clock by his estimation, Jacob slung his pack over his shoulders and began the hurried jog back. He had about an hour to get to the boys' after-school daycare. It was a dollar a minute cash if he was late, and he never carried cash.

  “Damn!” He didn't have time to stop at an ATM either.

  By the time he got to his car, he had about forty-five minutes to drive recklessly back to the school. His labored breath reminded him of his empty promise to Sarah that he'd get back into better shape. He checked his pasty complexion in the rearview mirror, sweat streamed from his forehead, nausea incessantly bubbled up his throat. He did not care how he felt now just as long as he didn’t look like an out-of-work loser by the time he got to the school. The minivan coughed to a start after a worrying few seconds, then lurched forward spastically before its grinding transmission found the correct gear.

  Jacob arrived just before six, picked up the boys, headed home, co
oked dinner, and put them to bed. He took a shower then waited for Sarah. Sometimes she did not come home.

  - - - - - - -

  Jacob woke with the expected start. The nightmares were back. Sarah had already made herself coffee. The next thirty minutes or so were always uncomfortable. Sarah would be putting the finishing touches on her hair; briefcase squared-away, pumps were the last things on before rushing out the door. Not a word was spoken until the requisite exchange of ‘love you’.

  Oatmeal was done in a snap. The boys needed a haircut. Peanut butter sandwiches again this morning. He’d forgotten to buy more jelly.

  “Sorry guys.”

  “It’s okay, Dad.” Nathan was quick to forgive. He was his mother’s child, at least the way she used to be.

  “Here’s a couple of my protein bars.” Jacob tossed the questionably-edible nutrient supplements he’d found in his pack at the boys.

  “Protein bars?” Luke was the resident cynic. Two years younger, but in his six years he had proved to be a real handful, quick-witted, a natural leader. Sarah claimed him as well.

  “I’ll make it up to you guys, pizza tonight deal?”

  “Deal,” the response came in chorus.

  Jacob drove them to school, ate half of his usual breakfast, skipped the gym, and drove straight to Eden’s. John had news.

  - - - - - - -

  “So what’s up? What’s the news, John?” Jacob couldn’t hide his desperation.

  “How are your job prospects looking?”