Damnation Road Show. James Axler

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      Prologue

      Evening hung dead still and oppressively humid over the shallow, five-acre, seep-fed lake, the lavender dome of sky perfectly reflected in its mercury-smooth surface. Encircling the muddy bank was a fringe of stripped, bleached skeletons of trees. The intense quiet was neither peaceful nor serene; the very air seemed to vibrate in anticipation and dread. Terrible forces of nature were about to make themselves known.

      Swish-swish.

      Swish-swish.

      From the north end of the lake came a rhythmic sound.

      Not a bird, not an insect. Sensing the impending hell show, the birds and insects had gone to ground.

      A tall human figure stood on the bank in hip boots, waving a nine-foot-long, flexible rod back and forth. And as he did so, he sailed a bright-yellow line through the air, forward and back, forward and back, in a tight loop, out over the purple mirror of sky. The man wore a long, pointy, black goatee and his black hair was loosely tied in a ponytail, which hung to the middle of his back. On his head was a tatter-brimmed straw cowboy hat. His eyes were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses.

      What face was visible was long, gaunt, perhaps tragic, certainly suffering, certainly world weary.

      As the man cast, the water in front of him swirled and gurgled. The head of a huge mutie lungfish appeared in the middle of the ripples. The fish looked up at the man, then struggled out of the pool, walking on the bony spikes of its pectoral fins. Greenish-gray on the back with a light cream-colored belly, the mutie was easily five feet long and weighed more than sixty pounds. As it dragged itself from the world of fish into the world of men, its large, rubbery lipped mouth and its gill covers opened and closed, breathing air. Grunting from the effort, the lungfish crawled up beside the man. An odor rose up along with it—the smell of a slaughterhouse in August.

      “You have no fly on the end of your line,” it said in a strange, gravelly voice that was half croak, half belch. “You can’t catch anything that way.”

      “I’m not fishing for anything,” the bearded man said as he continued to cast far out over the smooth water, in the direction of the evening star.

      “You’re fishing for nothing?” the lungfish said.

      “That’s right.”

      “Are you catching any?”

      “I’m catching and releasing nothing,” the man replied.

      As he continued to cast, to his СКАЧАТЬ