Hell from a well humming.., p.1
Hell from a Well (Hummingbird series), page 1
Hell from a Well
By TR Nowry
Hell from a Well, by TR Nowry
Kindle Edition
Copyright © 2008 by TR Nowry
All Rights Reserved
Published By TR Nowry
All 'Art' By TR Nowry
The characters in this book are entirely fictional and rightly belong in the fiction section. Any resemblance to real people, places, countries or religions is completely unintentional. As with all copyright books, copies (physical and digital) are restricted to what is legally defined as fair use. No other use is expressed or implied and all other uses are reserved. Think of 'fair use' like Tivo. You can Tivo movies, TV shows, and the NFL (that's making a copy!) You can even convert them so you can watch them on your iPod (at work when the boss isn't looking!). But you can't put them on YouTube, sell them on the corner as DVDs, or put stills on T Shirts. These same principles apply to Ebooks. Even the free copies given out from time to time should NOT be redistributed, much like it's improper to distribute copies of 'The Office' just because it was recorded over the 'free' air. Basically, don't hand it out like candy, print dozens of copies, email it to all your friends, post it on servers or web sites and everything will be fine.
Starve the beast and feed the artist. This book is brought to you 100% free from the tyranny of traditional editors and publishers as an independent novel. Future titles depend entirely on your support. Thank you for keeping prices low by not distributing copies! If you received a copy without paying for it, please, do the right thing and purchase a copy (from Smashwords!) and give it to a friend!
The Art of the Houdini Scientist... is a prequel to The Hummingbird Series which includes, Patent Mine, Hell from a Well, The Heredity of Hummingbirds, and Mourning after Dawn. (And the HHOPP Engine, but it's more of a footnote) This series was written/published Mourning, Heredity, Hell, and Patent so they can be read in any order.
The Twisted Timeline Trilogy is Personal Space, Older than Dirt, and The Bottle tossed across the sky.
And if you've got a few hours to kill, be sure to check out my Free short story, The Wandering Island Factory.
Hell from a Well
By TR Nowry
The rage of a lifetime washed through him as he lowered the woman to the ground. His fingers were so soaked in blood that she nearly slipped from his grip. They had escaped. They had made it. He stood over her lifeless form while shots fired in the distance. They had escaped, yet she remained their prisoner.
He clenched his fists by his side.
It needn't have been this way. Her brief life had been so filled with grief that her blood on his hands soaked her sorrow into— He wiped his hands on the tatters of his shirt, but it didn't help. He fell back on his heels, screaming at the cursed sky.
They would know where he was now, but he no longer cared. He pounded his fists into the ground by his sides. He wanted— He longed for a fight. He stared toward the distant gunfire. They had done this to her. Such unspeakable things. They would pay, and pay now.
His single mission had been to free this woman, but he had been thwarted at every turn. He stood with new purpose as sorrow turned to bitter rage in his heart. He ran toward the sounds.
Like a dozen bee stings could never hope to slow the charge of a bull, neither did the puffs from the closest gun. The barrel sizzled in his grip as he ripped it from the man. Man— no, this was no man. He stared into the boy's eyes. Bewildered, terrified, he could see the tears of a frightened child, the body of barely a man. The boy struggled for a breath as he tightened his grip around the boy's neck. Eyes bulging, the boy struggled pointlessly.
"You are but my first, today," he whispered in the boy's ear, "you will have plenty of company." Soon he was swarmed by dozens, downed by the pinch of relentless stings.
One wasn't enough, such a debt cried out for more. Flat on his back, he blinked at the sky. The voices grew louder as he lay. He had been shot, but it wasn't bad. He had been shot before. There was no point in standing, they would be much closer soon. He lay still, not a breath or a blink to give it away.
There was a bird on his palm, he hadn't seen it land. It was the tiniest thing, just out of the corner of his eye. It looked left, then right, then straight above. Its thin beak was nearly the length of its entire body. The white feathers of its belly were smudged in red. Faster than a blink, it was gone.
He stared at his empty palm. How had he— with the sting of so many bullets, he must not have noticed it land. How odd had that been? In the midst of all of this, what was it doing out here to begin with? He wanted to know. It suddenly seemed more important.
He sat up and stared at the palm.
Guns cocked and orders screamed his way, yet he ignored it all.
He tried to remember it, almost weightless on his hand. Lighter than a pebble. Perhaps the lightest thing he had ever held.
A barrel pressed into his back.
"Not now, I'm busy," he said, still staring at his hand. He hadn't time to play right now. A puzzle, a riddle called to be solved. It was on the tip of his tongue, the secret to it all. It had something to do with that—
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
He stood to the stunned amazement of his would-be executioner. "I said, not now!" He ripped the gun from his hands and promptly emptied the clip into everyone within sight, then stared at his empty hand. "Now, where was I?"
Anger washed over him again.
He had had it. It had been on the tip of his tongue.
He clenched his fist and turned. His arm shook by his side as he stared at the nearest corpse. He couldn't contain it anymore. First with kicks, then the punishing blows by hand, he took out his rage on now unrecognizable bodies.
It all turned red. Like a flame that quickly grew from a handful of leaves into a forest fire, his rage quickly consumed everything in sight.
Bullets felt like grains of sand in a windstorm, an annoyance at best, but hardly enough to dissuade.
"Him, the Michelin man!" one said before—
RPG! It had blown off his shoes, most of his pants, and all of his shirt. The hairs of his arm smoldered as he staggered to his feet, glaring at the bewildered boy, fumbling to load another.
He got to the boy first.
"Let's see how you like it," he said, setting the round off in his hand.
It blew him several feet and he lost the rest of his clothes, but unlike the boy, he stood again.
"I am his vengeance!" he screamed, blinking the ash and shards from his eyes. Twenty-six within sight, it wasn't enough. His lust demanded more. A battered Camry sped toward him.
"Do it in God's name!" they shouted as the car wove its way around the debris, toward him.
BOOOMMMMM!!!
He sat, waiting for blinks to clear his vision. He counted 5 fingers, each hand, 4,367,541,967 leaves, 16,765,354 branches, and 1,476 bricks scattered across the ground. Numbers. Everything came down to numbers.
He stood and scanned the horizon. Smoke billowed from the explosion's pit, 531 yards away. He ran his hand across the top of his head. He was bald, except for a spot around his right ear. Burnt nubs of hair rubbed off like sticky sand at the beach.
He looked at his arms.
He was bigger now. The last time he had been shot, they passed through him. Not now. Most of his fingernails were gone, his hair was burnt, but nothing beyond that.
He looked up at the sky. The sun was going down. Far above the cloudless sky were small, blue blotches that had an eerie glow. Flashes flickered between these new fluorescent clouds. He watched a plane struggle to— it listed hard to one side and simply slid from the sky.
A downed plane was nothing unusual in a war zone. This was odd only because it hadn't been hit. No smoke, no sparks, no falling pieces. It just lost control. Odder still it looked like a heavy bomber, but it was too distant to be sure. Bombers ruled far above the battlefield, usually too far above for any ground fire to reach them. He watched it like a leaf tumbling from a tree.
Explosions echoed near the wreckage, distant random pops from smaller shells sounded off in a chaotic wave around him. Like water lapping against the shore, it was followed by two more spats, then fell silent.
Far in the distance, thin threads spun their way down from the sky, bursting into small clouds on the muffled ground. The threads glowed a brilliant blue, then green before fading away. New webs of blue formed in the sky from where these threads had punched through.
He had never been on this side of the weapon before. He blocked the sun with his hand to better watch their destructive dance. He expected to see more smoke, more fire, much bigger explosions. But he didn't. The clouds were smaller than car bombs, and nearly pure white without a hint of black, yellow, or brown. He stood a good hundred or more miles away, yet he felt the thuds under his feet.
Two machineguns riddled the ground beside him. Their aim was worse than usual. Twenty to thirty feet off and showing no signs of improving. For some reason, their inaccuracy infuriated him. The one crouching by a wall was closest. He balled his fist and ran there first.
He scooped up a brick and flung it at the man's masked head, spilling red down the slumped form. He turned the corner.
Jackpot!
Thirty-eight masked, elite soldiers who specialized in the kinds of brutality inflicted on his dead friend. His rage gave way to pure joy as he took great satisfaction in ripping them apart by hand.
No, a quick death like that cr ouching coward was far too good for men of this elite stature. No, these he bludgeoned with great restraint. Leaving them crippled, broken, paralyzed within bags of brutalized flesh. They were trapped down this narrow alley, he simply took his time as distant thuds grew near.
He wiped the drool from his grin as he reveled in their tortured moans and imagined how a choir of hundreds or thousands would sound.
He sought out more.
He needed more!
Guns started to jam as the falling sun was outshined by a night of growing fluorescent blue. He squeezed the boy's masked head to encourage a louder scream.
"AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!" the boy let loose.
"That's right," he whispered, "Bring them to me." He squeezed until bones started to crack beneath his fingertips. "Louder. I want them all."
The boy did. Briefly. Just before he fell silent, discarded to the dirt by his feet.
It was loud enough.
They were coming from every direction. Most guns seemed jammed and were waved overhead in a frantic charge. Those that still fired were so wildly inaccurate that they only did harm to their own side.
Two explosive vests detonated prematurely, causing him no harm while robbing him of a great deal of fun.
The third, however, was the charm.
It hadn't blown him far.
He stumbled quickly to his feet.
A streak thundered from the sky, exploding a few hundred feet above ground into millions of pellets that turned everything within sight into Swiss cheese. Bucket-sized craters dotted the field, now wiped clear of everything. The air blasted him backwards in a white cloud that flashed as lightning slashed the little that remained.
The flash blinded him. He couldn't see— BOOM!!! Fizz ZapZap!!
The rumbles pounded beyond him, moving further away. His eyes slowly started to see. Naked, he was at the bottom of a crater at least ninety feet deep.
Thump!
Thump! Thump Thump!
They were throwing bricks and blocks and stones. They were stoning him! The rim was filled with chanting men hurling everything they could find. He tried to stand but was quickly knocked down. Pinned down, and the weight kept growing. He couldn't move, yet they kept throwing. He let out a breath, but couldn't breathe in. Yet, he didn't die. Crushed, he lived.
The thuds of chunks grew muffled over the next few hours, but didn't end for what he figured had to be an entire day. Distant thuds of exploding bombs acted to pack it all in, like sand around stones.
He couldn't move, yet he seethed with rage. This would not be his fate. How dare they impede his destiny!
Chapter 2
The mother lowered the bucket down the well, then started hefting it back. The sloshy spills echoed up as her girls opened the tops to all their empty containers. A hodgepodge of plastic jugs and gas cans, it made her sad. When she was a little girl, like them, they had never been rich, but they had indoor plumbing. Running water. Electricity, gas, cars. The years of war had taken away all she had taken for granted.
The little girl sat on the dirt, held the funnel, then smiled up at her mother as the water poured from the bucket. She screwed on the cap, then struggled it into the cart while the mother lowered the bucket again.
This little chore easily added two hours worth of frustration to her and her children, as they lived well over a mile away. She looked at the cart as the bucket filled, deep in the well. They traded some fine leather furniture for that cart. It was worth it on days like today. It made it possible to haul home nearly a bathtub's worth of water in a single trip, but it was backbreaking work, and as helpful as the girls tried to be, the three of them only ranged from six to eleven. It helped, it wasn't possible without them, but her two sons could have handled it on their own.
But her husband wouldn't allow her sons to do woman's work. Fourteen and sixteen, they had taken after him and thought nothing of ordering her around too. Her oldest had backhanded her only last week for interrupting his conversation with one of his friends. For speaking.
Life had changed a lot since she was a child.
That smiling look from one of her girls, holding a funnel over a bucket, waiting for a pour, it made her day sometimes. Perhaps that was the saddest turn of all.
"Oh, praise God," her oldest, Tirell, said, grabbing the nearest jug and spilling a good portion of it down his front as he guzzled.
Hihel, her other son, thought it would be fun to fight her eldest over the same jug.
She held her tongue as she hurried the girls and what was left of the water inside. The fight was unfortunate, the wasted water depressing, but their distraction was the tiny spark of goodness she chose to see.
She couldn't blame their spoiled behavior on herself. She wasn't allowed to scold them. The girls unloaded the jugs, passed through the open window directly into the kitchen, then turned the cart on its side and wrestled it through the door. It was ugly, clunky, and old, but very valuable to them. If left outside, it was sure to be stolen or ruined by the sun and rain.
It was valuable because it had no metal parts. All plastic and wood, glue and fiberglass. The wheels were thick rubber and filled with foam. It was clunky, squeaky, and ugly, but it worked well.
She helped the girls wrestle it out of the way and into the far corner. "Thank you, my child," she said, but the cloth of her heavy burqa prevented the kiss she had meant for her child's head.
She hated wearing the thing. It hadn't always been that way either. The girls weren't old enough yet for the law to demand its burden be born by them. But it would, and all too soon.
She remembered her girls, smiling at the well. She had smiled a lot when she was that young. She had stopped now. What was the point, when it was trapped behind the veil?
She looked at the page glued to the bedroom door, an article on the proper way to beat your wife. It listed the conditions the religious officials approved of, and those frowned on. If she failed to please him, some night, he was allowed to reprimand her first, instruct her as though she was an infant, then allow her to try again. It was upon her second failing that the law allowed the blows. She took no comfort in the words that followed, that he wasn't permitted to break her skin, disfigure her face. Such restrictions were meaningless, when she'd be stoned for showing anyone such evidence in public.
The veil hid tears too. But that, along with smiles, was a thing of her past.
She pleased, when required to. She had no choice, really.
She cherished the smiles she could see. She pressed her veiled lips to another forehead. She loved her girls most of all. And felt for them her greatest regrets. Her life, she would not wish on any of them. Perhaps on her boys, but not her girls.
She led them to the kitchen where she started the evening meal. It would be supper soon, mustn't disappoint.
They had been lucky in a way. They hadn't the money for stainless steel sinks, and had settled for a cheap plastic ones. Same with the plumbing. Plastic survived. Metal did not. The walls still held the signs from the wiring being ripped through the plaster. It had nearly burned the house down. The few metal faucets, the stove, and the refrigerator were hauled out onto a heap in the back yard with the rest of the appliances. First thing in the morning, if it was humid enough, the pile would glow with random sparks. It would be pretty, actually, if it wasn't, like so many other things, a constant reminder of how badly life had turned.
She pulled the plug on the sink and watched the water drain away. She was fortunate about that, three of her neighbors had to carry buckets from inside down the streets to the cesspool. As bad as fetching water from the well was, that was worse.
Her girls were tucked in bed, her boys and her husband were out for the night. Business. Soldiers of the faith. God's army.
She found her faith slipping as she stood in the kitchen, looking out at the pile of appliances as they started to sparkle and glow. This wasn't God's hand, he hadn't intervened on her behalf. She liked her stuff, she had enjoyed her freedom. She had gone to school while the unbelievers walked freely on this land. She had learned of many things, of many peoples' ways. Infidels.
