Adventures of Jacko the Conjurer by Jamie Ott (love books to read txt) 📕

Back in the living room, the quilt that lined the couch was still there. Jacko pulled it off, shaking all the dirt and rubble away, and then went back into the kitchen where he fell through the ceiling and leapt up into his father’s room.

Trying desperately to stay focused, so as not to go through the floor again, he covered his father’s body with the quilt and lifted him onto his shoulder.

With a blink of his eyes, he disappeared from the house and reappeared in the city graveyard where the majority of his father’s family was buried. Jacko commanded the dirt to clear itself into a pile next to his grandfather’s grave. He gently laid the body of his father in and commanded the dirt back into the hole.

He stood there, looking down at the grave for a long time. Even of himself, he couldn’t understand why he felt the need to do his father justice. He was cruel and abusive.

He sighed long and loud, and looked up at the sky. No longer could he see beams of antimatter and lightning bolts zooming across the sky. Maybe the gods were taking a break from pre war? Or the sky was so severely polluted.

Once, he thought Mariton was a terribly dreary place. Never had he imagined that it could be worse. He just hoped his uncle was okay.

Wait a minute, he thought. He had one other family member in town, and he was actually good to him; better than his father ever was.

Only problem was Jacko didn’t want to use his new powers to get there. He needed to be careful of the exposure risk. But how was he to travel?

And then the answer came to him. Jacko imagined he had a bike again, so he could ride around the neighborhood.

A blue scooter appeared there on the grass. Jacko kicked up the stand and got on.

He rode into what used to be the town center. Along the way, he saw more of the same: leveled houses and buildings with not a sign of a human being anywhere. In the very center of town, the mall looked as if Thor, himself, split it; half was in rubble and the other still stood. An overwhelming smell of grease, sort of like French fries, permeated the air. Looking around, he noticed the Mac Donald’s across the street had also been leveled.

Past the town center, he went until he approached the stretch of strawberry fields, and beyond that, spinach. The fields were completely destroyed. Any remaining fruit and vegetables were shriveled up due to lack of sunlight.

He continued along for another mile or so before turning onto a long dirt road.

His uncle had a typical redneck home with lots of cars on the front lawn.

Jacko pulled up to the front door and parked his bike.

“Uncle Bally,” he called out.

It was better not to sneak up on him, or else a person might get shot.

He banged on the door of his double wide trailer. When he got no answer, he tried to open the door but it was locked.

“Damn it!” he cursed under his breath. “Uncle Bally!”

Jacko peered through the glass window. All was still inside.

He jogged to the back of the trailer-house and tried the kitchen door. When it wouldn’t open either, he decided to break in. He looked down at the knob and told it to unlock, and with a little pop-click, it did.

Jacko pushed open the door and jumped to the side of the wall. When after a minute nothing happened, he craned his neck over and looked around the room.

Bally was notorious for setting trip traps.

The living room was just as he remembered it, with its ugly dirty brown couch and tiny little windows. Inside, the air was dank and smelling of cigarette smoke.

He walked down the hall, calling out.

He almost walked past the room where he normally slept. Spotting the lumpy old bed reminded him that he hadn’t slept in days.

Fatigue propelled him forward. He sat at the foot of the bed, took off his shoes and crawled up towards the pillow.

Ancient Nobility

Chapter 3

“Jacko.”

Someone was grabbing at his cunnan. “No, let go!” Jacko said.

“Jacko, wake up.”

The hand shook him harder.

He fought to open his eyes.

“Uncle Bally!”

“Yeah, boy,” he said. “I thought you were dead! Some dream you were having, kept shouting at me to let go!”

“I dreamt someone was trying to steal my cunnan, only I have no clue what a cunnan is.”

“Must’a dreamt you was a marksman.”

“Huh?”

“Bows and arrows, ya know, a cunnan, a bag.”

“Oh.” He rubbed his eyes. “So how’s everyone?”

“I really can’t say, kid. I need to get out and skin these.” He wiggled a handful of Squirrels he held by their tails. “Follow me outside and we’ll talk.”

Groggily, Jacko pulled himself out of the sunken bed.

“Why are you hunting? Isn’t it early in the season?”

“It’s all about resources now, and it won’t be long before winter is here. We’ll need enough food to last.”

Jacko watched as his uncle pulled back the skin of a squirrel, like pulling off a glove.

“I came by a few weeks ago and found dad and Sissy dead. I couldn’t stay because…” Jacko paused, trying to think of a good excuse. He couldn’t tell him he’d totally lost his mind and murdered a bunch of demons on a snowy mountain peak, and then found himself dining with immortals in heaven. “Um, there was another storm coming. I’ve only just got back and their bodies are gone.”

“Could be they came around and got ‘em. Government came and gathered and burned a bunch of bodies.”

He emptied out the guts into some aluminum foil he’d spread out on the table.

“Shouldn’t you bury that?”

“I know what I’m doing, Jacko, okay? Been doing this since I was a kid!”

Bally’d always had sort of a short temper.

He propped the gutted squirrel on a clothing line to cool, and then started another.

“The town’s been ghostly a while, now. The storms kept coming. I could’ve gone with them, but I figure if this is the end, then I’m not gonna survive it. Even if the government has a safe place for us, why would they want a stinking old fart like me? So I hunkered down here. After they’d all gone, I went into town and gathered all the leftover supplies and hid them.”

“It’s gotta be lonely, for you, out here.”

“I never was a people person, Jacko, you know that.”

“What about the news? Television? Radio?”

“Most everything is working, but the most I can gather is no one knows what’s going on. No one knows why the storms keep coming, or why the sky has changed. Scientists say it doesn’t make sense; that there isn’t anything wrong with the Earth, moon or sun. Global warming just wouldn’t act this way, and not this soon or without any indications. They all got theories though.”

“What kind of theories?”

“Uh, some predict that something big is happening in the universe – something that we can’t see, like a universe or a planet passing, maybe a black hole. Most think this will end and the sky will return to normal. But people are acting like it’s the end anyway: looting and shooting, killing. I, myself, have a hiding place in case people come to take what I got.

By the way,” he said, looking him directly in the eyes and pointing his gloved finger. “I’d be careful, if I were you. Walk on the right side of the dirt road. There are some tricky bombs and trip wire in the grass. I buried ignitions all over the place. Only I know exactly where each igniter is, so only walk on the right.”

This didn’t faze Jacko. Everyone in the family knew Uncle Bally was a militia-survivalist type. Probably a good thing, too; if anyone could survive the war that was coming, it was him.

“Have you heard from any family?”

“Yeah, the cell phones and electricity is working, but most phone lines aren’t. Electricity was down a bit but it came back on. Not a problem, though, I got five generators and I cleaned out enough propane to last a couple years. Then I went to the thrift store and found an old wood stove and wood heater. So we’re set, if you want to stay that is. Just need to worry about food. You can help me with that.”

He dropped the last bunch of guts into the foil and wrapped it up. Then he set the last squirrel to cool.

“I get text messages every so often,” he said, pulling off his glove. “Aunt Maggie is playing host to Lily and Michael and their four kids, so she’s got her hands full, plus I heard Grandpapa was gonna go stay, too.”

He pulled out a cigarette and lit up. “I guess I got off lucky. Grandpapa always drove me crazy, and he’s getting worse as he gets on in age. And all the screaming kids…”

He took a deep inhale and said, “So anyway, now it’s my turn.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s my turn to ask questions, like where ya been? Last I heard, you’d run off.”

“I couldn’t take it anymore, Uncle Bally. I went to Sissy’s. She moved to New Hampshire to live with our real family. Did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That John wasn’t really my father?”

“Did Sissy tell you that?” he said around a mouthful of smoke.

His eyebrows furrowed up into his forehead. He took a long drag off his cigarette.

“Well, Jacko, it’s like this: your mama was too good for John. She helped him even though he was a no good junk head. I think she needed something from him, and I don’t think it was money. We knew something was up with that arrangement because it just didn’t make sense. John was my brother but he was screw up, and your mother was different. Why deny it? John was a junk head.”

He tossed his cigarette on the ground and said, “Well, come on, boy. Let me show you about the property because there’ve been some changes, and then we’ll get some lunch and watch a movie. I ransacked that movie place, downtown. Damn sure cleaned them out!”

Uncle Bally grabbed the foil containing the squirrel guts and led Jacko down into the basement he built to fit the trailer home. That part of the basement looked like any other, with lots of food on the shelf, and dried meats hanging from the ceiling. Then he showed him his underground storage, which Jacko would have never noticed. Since the basement was built into the ground, and Bally’d never gotten around to laying down flooring, the ground appeared to be nothing more than a foot of dirt.

Now, he understood why he’d never taken care of the floor. Over in the furthest corner of the basement, Bally swiped at the dirt a couple times, pushing it to the sides and revealing a door that was made with the same igneous rock that made up most of the ground in that area.

Jacko followed him down a set of aluminum steps into the underground room.

Unlike the basement, the lower room was extremely clean. Uncle Bally had turned it into a tiny bomb shelter complete with basic camping essentials, and jam packed it full of supplies.

“Don’t get excited, though, Jacko. If the world should end, none of this will matter. It’s just in case, for some reason, we should survive or get attacked by lunatics. There’s enough food and water to keep a person for a year or so. I’d only just started building it, thinking I’d retire here since the government was planning to foreclose on my property. So, make no mistake, we got work to do, just in case we survive.”

After showing him the storage, he led him upstairs and back outside to a hole he was digging in the ground, some 150 feet away.

“This