Alabama Zack – Chapter XIII

"Alabama Zack" is a 40-chapter science fiction serial, published in the Scholar and Scribe community once a week on Wednesdays.

You can start the serial from the beginning by visiting the Curated Collection.

Alabama Zack, our hero and a war veteran, found himself standing on a train station platform in another time and dimension. At his feet lay a man in a brown suit. The man was dead, and Zack was arrested and jailed for murder.

Zack can not remember how he had arrived on that platform, let alone whether or not he had anything to do with the man's death.

In last week's chapter, Cork McGraw, the doctor, and Zack prepared to follow the town drunk to the person or persons responsible for the drive-by shooting in front of Cork's office. In Cork's backyard shed, the inquisitors suddenly attempted to pull Zack back to their cave/prison complex, using the green tracking light that identified Zack as a prisoner of the realm. In the melee that ensued, we readers lost sight of the drunk.

The drunk ran away.

He ran out the back door of Cork's shed into a field of loose rock, dust and sparse brown weeds. Across the field stood a line of trees and brush – good cover if he could get to it. Scattered piles of rock blocked his path; the gravel underfoot slid and rolled; his lungs screamed for mercy. It was less than a hundred yards to the trees, but the drunk spent most of his days on a bar stool. He collapsed halfway and scrabbled to hide behind one of the rock piles.

He needed a drink.

He'd never seen the like of it. The green tracking light had totally consumed Alabama Zack before whisking him away. He wiped his sweaty brow. Years ago a doctor had warned him to stop drinking, that something like this would happen, and now, here it was: he was seeing things.

But he was still thirsty. He peered around the rock pile at the shed and town. He supposed, if he was seeing things, there was nothing to be afraid of, except that he might start to see more things. If he was seeing things, it wouldn't matter if he was back in the garage, behind the rock pile, or on his favorite stool down at Jack's. If he was seeing things, what would stop a green monster from crawling out of that rock right in front of his face?

That tore it. He pushed himself up and started walking shakily toward town, keeping a wary eye on the back door of the garage, which he had just run through and which was now blowing in the wind. The doctor appeared in the doorway and he dove to the dirt behind another rock pile. He stared at the gravel – breathing in its pasty dust – and tried not to think about the possibility of green monsters. Finally he peered up over the rock pile toward the garage; the door was closed, and there was no one around.

But now another thought occurred to the drunk that made him look back toward the trees. He was supposed to report on the success or failure of the hit on Alabama Zack. That had been his mission, before he'd been waylaid by the three men, taken captive and made to start seeing things. Dag blast it! What to do? He couldn't really count on a drink in either direction. His credit at Jack's was hit or miss, unless he wanted to work for it. And if he reported that the hit was unsuccessful, he didn't really think the bottle would be in the offing.

Bottles of beer, bottles of liquor, bottles, bottles everywhere but not in his hand. He put his head in his hand and felt his need and his lack. He couldn't sit there empty-handed for long; he would have to move. Finally he hitched himself up on his elbows and started crawling back toward the line of trees. If the men trying to kill Zack needed him to report, they wouldn't know if he told them what they wanted to hear instead of the truth.

The drunk planned to tell them Zack was dead.

Next week in our story

Zack smiled, and as he did so he felt the room shift and slide almost a foot to his left. He dropped the icepack and grabbed onto the chair, hardly noticing the cold in his lap. The walls bowed out and then contracted. The window waved, widening and narrowing from top to bottom. Suddenly the floor dropped, and just like that...

Chapter XIV
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