Peseverance (Short Stories)

By Steve Stroble

Collection of short stories:

What Smells? -- Little girl's fascination with garbage trucks takes her on a wild ride.

Revenge of the Undead -- Promoting and marketing self-published books turns out to be harder than it seems for an author and her book's marketer.

Riding the Bullet -- Casual conversation on a high speed train escalates into unexpected consequences.

The Case of the Missing Sophomore -- Frantic mother hires P.I. Bobbi Heck to locate her missing daughter.

OFFAL's Last Stand -- Changes intrude on a fraternal organization's longtime members, threatening their number one source of fun and fellowship.

Why Do You Look So Strange (All of a Sudden) -- Life in a nursing home goes from mundane to bizarre for two of its residents.

Porthole in the Fog -- Small opening in a dense fog opens up some long repressed memories for a jogger.

EMP Code Blue -- The Mother of all solar activity leaves Earth's nations scrambling for cover.

Battling the Big CA in Sunny CA -- Cancer in any form can be deadly, especially when it moves from one's body to soul.

Perseverance (Short Stories) is Book 1 in the Short Stories Series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Stroble
• Release date: Jul 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370707980

Steve Stroble

Steve Stroble grew up as a military brat, which took him from South Dakota to South Carolina to Germany to Ohio to Southern California to Alabama to the Philippines to Northern California. Drafted into the Army, he returned to Germany.His stories classified as historical fiction often weave historical events, people, and data into them.His science fiction stories try to present feasible even if not yet known technology.His dystopian and futuristic stories feature ordinary heroes and heroines placed into extraordinary situations and ordinary villains who drain the life out of others' souls (their minds, wills, and emotions) by any means available.

Book preview

What Smells?

Curbside garbage pickup happened every Wednesday for residents on South Pinedale Avenue in Banderville.

It was also the day Cara Husky had to babysit her little sister while their mother worked her shift as a nurse at Banderville Memorial Hospital. Cara was glad her mom last month had cut back to part time work hours. But that still meant two twelve-hour shifts, one during daytime on Wednesday and the other on Saturdays, Sundays, or holidays, when Dad had to assume the role of babysitter.

On this Wednesday morning, Cara wished summer vacation would hurry up and end so she could return to a routine of high school while an aunt or grandparent took over Wednesday babysitting of Hope.

Not that Cara minded watching Hope.

But she often wished three year olds came with a switch to shut off or at least power down what Cara called an infinite supply of energy. All this morning Hope had toddled around both floors of the dwelling. After she had reached into cabinets, drawers, and bookcases, the house appeared as if a flood had washed through its interior and removed items from their intended places and left them strewn about the floor after the waters had receded.

It had taken two snacks, three children’s TV programs, and five stories before Cara could coax Hope into her room and sing her to sleep for a nap by humming lullabies. Her little sister tucked away in bed, Cara cleared a path from the bedroom she shared with Hope to the kitchen. There, a pile of dirty breakfast dishes and utensils waited.

Ugh. Why does Dad have to always have his bacon fried to a crisp? Cara wondered out loud as she rubbed a scouring pad on the bits of meat and fat that seemed to have melded onto a greasy cast iron skillet. Scrubbing it and the stainless steel pan in which half a dozen eggs had been fried in canola oil distracted Cara enough so she did not hear Hope awake and wander toward the front door of their split level home. Because of the summer heat, Cara had left the solid core wooden front door open, with only a screen door keeping out the flies looking for an opening to a supply of food and the buzzing mosquitos hungry and hunting for humans’ fresh warm blood.

The screen door sat ajar enough for tiny hands to open it as Hope pushed on its aluminum frame.

Once outside, Hope lifted her arms toward the fluffy gray and white cumulus clouds hiding the sun. Then she walked across the lawn to her favorite ball and kicked and rolled it until it became wedged underneath a row of bushes dividing her front yard from a neighbor’s. As she crawled under the green shrubs to retrieve her toy, Hope heard a familiar sound, one of her favorite ones, a gigantic green and white garbage truck bouncing and lurching toward the curb thirty feet from her. Its hissing air brakes widened her hazel eyes.

Every week it performed the same trick, its magical illusion amazing Hope without fail. Down toward Earth would descend a huge metallic claw to clutch the 60-gallon plastic container full of stinky trash, anything that could not be recycled into new plastic or metallic containers or paper products or converted into reusable mulch. Up, up, up, the claw always lifted the container, no matter how full or heavy, before upending it, shaking it, and making its contents somehow disappear.

Hope was certain of the before and after condition of the garbage can because more than once she had climbed onto an overturned bucket next to where it sat on days other than Wednesdays and peered down into it to survey its contents. Every Thursday, it sat either empty or contained only a trifling of trash, the only confirmation necessary to assure her the truck’s performance yesterday had once again succeeded. Every other week, either the recyclables’ bin or yard and garden waste bin would also be empty.

Sometimes the magic truck rushed its pickup and a plastic bin would fall on its side as it returned from its journey toward the sky back to planet Earth. Even from her bedroom window, Hope had seen it had been empty as it rested sideways on the sidewalk. Often, Hope had tried to convince her parents and siblings to watch the weekly magic show with her, but they had all ignored her pointing finger.

Only her eleven-year old brother pretended to care enough to share her excitement. In response to her pointing and shouts of look, look, look! he had lifted her into a freshly emptied can and given her a ride inside of it to the side of their house. Then Cara had screamed at him until Hope came to his defense by beginning to wail, her preferred tactic to distract her older brother and sister whenever they fought.

* * *

After washing the dishes, Cara flipped on the television set and found a movie she thought adequate for her sophisticated tastes, maybe one good enough for her to review on her reviewer page at Amazon’s website.

Tired from a date the night before and not getting home until midnight, her father’s imposed curfew, Cara drifted off to sleep. While Cara dreamed about what August and being a sophomore might bring her way, outside on the front lawn Hope watched her favorite Wednesday entertainment.

After squeezing the overflowing trash can, the iron claw hoisted it skyward. Three quarters of the way up the truck’s side, the mechanism jammed. Hope’s mouth opened as the truck’s cursing operator exited his right side driver’s seat. Because he held a tire iron and his face resembled her daddy’s whenever he grasped such a tool, Hope scooted backward until her head touched the hedge.

The sanitary engineer climbed a ladder made of three-quarter inch thick rebar welded to the side of his truck until his face was level with the lid of the garbage bin. Then he banged on the metal chain that picked up and dumped the twenty-five to thirty dozen cans his truck lifted every shift.

You better work now, he said as his feet touched the concrete and he shook the tire iron at the part of his trucks always requiring the most repairs. He climbed back into the truck’s cab and pushed the control to activate the chain. When he heard the kind of groaning sound mechanical things make when their human operators expect the impossible, he leaped back onto the sidewalk and looked heavenward.

Come on, God. Why do I always have to get stuck with the truck that is so messed up that it can’t even finish a single shift?

He rolled the bin containing yard waste underneath the one dangling above hm. Next, he grabbed a seven-foot long one-inch thick piece of oak from behind the driver’s seat. Standing as close to the cans as possible, he thrust his long pointer to press a control in the cab to release the metal claw.

As the freed can dropped two feet toward the top of the plastic bin under it, the driver leapt next to them and squeezed the falling can in a bear hug as the one under it tottered from side to side. He stopped the lower can’s movement by letting it bump against his hip until it stood motionless. Then he lowered the can he held to the ground.

His orange coveralls and face drenched with sweat, the driver walked to the rear of his truck and pulled a two-liter plastic bottle of root beer from his protective clothing’s largest pocket. In between gulps, he dialed his cell phone. As he waved traffic around his vehicle and explained the breakdown to his dispatcher, Hope walked to the truck and touched the bottom rung of the ladder. It looked no longer than the ones she loved to climb at the playgrounds her family took her to visit.

Her leg and arm muscles were firm from the hours spent climbing monkey bars and ladders to their tallest slides. Soon, her feet rested on the next to last steel rung of the ladder. This allowed her to bend at the waist, her pelvis resting on the ladder’s top step.

Hope was surprised by the stinky assortment of fresh garbage assaulting her eyes and nose because she had assumed the garbage she had so often seen tumble from the cans somehow disappeared. After all, her big brother had said the trucks ate the garbage to give them fuel to rumble around town and out to the dump, where they spit out anything that gave them indigestion and next went potty if need be.

A sad looking doll, dumped from her next door neighbors’ can, looked to be reaching up to Hope, so she stretched down to rescue it. Her motion propelled her into a somersault, landing her atop 138 houses’ worth of weekly trash.

Having convinced his dispatcher by saying, I can’t pick up another can because the chain’s jammed beyond me being able to fix it, the driver threw his empty soda bottle high into the air and yelled, Three points, he wins the game, as it disappeared into the truck’s storage compartment for trash. He whistled as he headed toward the dump to jettison his not quite full truck. Then, it would be back to the maintenance shop to pick up another truck to finish his route.

Looks like a little bit of overtime, he sang. OT for me, how sweet can that be?

His song and the rumbling diesel engine next to him drowned out Hope’s alternating wails and sobs, which had begun when the truck lurched forward into gear. She wondered if the truck had already decided which of the three scenarios detailed by her brother would happen to her: consumed along with the garbage all around her to power the monstrous truck, burped out by the truck at the dump, or worst of all, becoming part of what came out of the truck when it went potty.

* * *

Ten minutes later, the increased volume of the television as a commercial break played woke up Cara.

She stumbled to the bathroom. After splashing three cupped handfuls of cool water onto her face, she went to check on Hope. Seeing only a rumpled blanket where she had tucked Hope in, Cara began calling her name, starting with one call in a normal voice every ten seconds. After a search of her home’s every room, Cara’s voice rose in volume and her calm calls escalated from Hope?…Hope?…Hope?… to demanding shrieks of Hope! Hope! Hope!

During her second search of the house, Cara noticed the front screen door was ajar. She dashed through the front entryway using enough force to pull the top hinge of the screen door from its aluminum alloy frame. As Cara’s feet touched the concrete steps leading from the front porch to the yard, scenarios flashed through her mind, all of them starring Hope as innocent victim because of a neglectful sibling: frightened and lost, kidnapped, run over by a car, molested, murdered. The images flashing through Cara’s mind stoked the two emotions controlling her – fear and guilt.

After quick searches of front and back yards showed no sign of her little sister, Cara did what many of her age had grown up doing: she pulled out her phone from her jeans pocket and sent a tweet:

Help. My three year old sister Hope is lost. I think she is still in the neighborhood. Help me. And don’t tell my mom or she’ll kill me.

Her tweet landed on 117 phones. Within three minutes it had been forwarded to another 538 phones. Ten minutes later, the message sat in the memories of 2,639 phones. Fifty-six volunteers descended on the Husky’s home. Their frantic knocks on doors within a two-block radius produced nothing, not even a report of a sighting of Hope.

Hearing the negative results, Matthew Hennessy took charge as GIC, Geek in Charge.

First, he posted on his Facebook page:

Missing: Hope Husky, age three. Last seen on the 1800 block of South Pinedale Avenue in Banderville. If you have any information, call….

Not sure whether his army of 1,351 Facebook friends, ninety-six percent of whom lived outside of Banderville, would prove adequate for the task, Matthew next posted on What’s Happening in Banderville?, a page where local residents chatted, complained, cursed, gossiped, and too often raged about politics, religion or life in general.

Matthew smiled as he watched the genesis of what he thought would be a case of one of his posts going viral. The first comments to it appeared on Facebook within seconds and did not cease until weeks later. Two minutes later, nineteen others had shared the post to their Facebook pages. The first comments were dramatic and short:

OMG. I hope u find her.

I started searching over here on the south side of town.

Have u found her yet?

Let me know if the searchers need any sandwiches.

On the way there with my dog Roscoe, best damn tracker in the state.

Have you called 911 yet?

The last comment sent Matthew to Cara to ask her the same question.

* * *

It had been a routine shift for LVN Tonya Husky, caring for patients suffering from pneumonia or the flu strain she thought never fully exited the older ones it invaded until they died. Patients of all ages, who had endured the uncertainties of surgery, had tested Tonya’s patience since her shift began. At least the number born at Banderville Memorial Hospital today outnumbered those who had died in its wards – so far. She was returning to her ward after lunch in the cafeteria when her phone rang.

This is Tonya.

Hi, Tonya. I just heard the news. Is there anything I can do to help?

Because I’m almost seven hours into my shift I’m not too good at recognizing voices right about now, Tonya thought. It would help quite a bit to tell me who you are. Who is this? she asked, in a voice she hoped carried enough irritation to keep this intrusion as short as possible.

Racheal.

Oh, hi Racheal. What do you want to help me out with? She hoped her friend had heard how Tonya had been drafted to serve as chairwoman of her church’s craft fair. As she listened to the answer, Tonya’s expression went from bored to hysterical. "Oh, my God! My baby? I have to get home right