Necrosis

The grease on the floor of the bay took three buckets of sawdust to soak up, and Carl’s lower back was already stiff from leaning over the intake manifolds all afternoon.

It was ten past five. The radio hanging by the tool cage had been playing static since two o’clock. Every few minutes, a blast of white noise cut through the garage, loud enough to make Travis swear from beneath the lift.

Travis slid out on his creeper, wiping his forearms with an orange rag that was black with sludge.

“You taking the bridge home?” Travis asked. He tossed the rag onto an oil drum.

“Route 6,” Carl said, hanging the impact wrench back on the pegboard. “Why?”

“It’s blocked.”

Carl paused, looking back over his shoulder. “Route 6 isn’t blocked. They paved it last month.”

“Not construction, man. County cruisers.” Travis pulled a pack of crushed menthols out of his shirt pocket, tapped one out, and clicked a plastic lighter. “My sister tried to drive through the crossing by the water plant around noon to pick up her kid. Said they got two fire engines parked nose-to-nose across the blacktop. State guys in yellow vests turning everybody right back around.”

“Probably a gas leak,” Carl said. He reached for his jacket on the hook behind the breakroom door. It smelled like cold sweat and old coffee.

“With state troopers?” Travis blew smoke toward the bay door, which was cracked about a foot off the gravel lot. “Since when does the gas company call in troopers to shut down three miles of highway? She said they weren’t even letting folks walk their dogs past the old bait shop. Said the cop who waved her off wouldn’t roll his window down more than two inches.”

Carl pulled his keys out of his pocket. “People talk too much. She probably hit a DUI checkpoint.”

“At noon on a Tuesday?” Travis gave him a look. “Besides, try your phone.”

Carl pulled his phone out. No bars. Just a small searching icon spinning in the corner.

“Been like that since lunch,” Travis said. “Shop landline’s dead, too. Miller tried to call the parts warehouse in Miller’s Creek and just got a high-pitched tone. Like a fax machine screaming. He took off early to go check on his mother.”

“Miller always takes off early if he finds an excuse.”

“Yeah, well, his mother lives two streets down from the lake run-off,” Travis muttered. He tapped the ash into an empty coffee can. “He said the ditch water smelled like dead fish this morning on his way in. Not normal dead fish, either. Like something crawled into a culvert and rotted in the sun.”

Carl zipped his jacket. His stomach felt hollow. He hadn’t eaten since a sleeve of crackers at ten, and he knew how his father got if dinner was sitting on the table going cold while the front door stayed shut. Jason didn’t like waiting, and he didn’t like excuses about traffic or roadblocks.

“I’ll take the dirt road around the east ridge,” Carl said. “Takes an extra twenty minutes, but it drops right out behind our pasture.”

“If you can get through,” Travis said, tossing the cigarette butt out the bay gap. “Just watch the turns. Lot of fog rolling off the water today. Weird, heavy stuff. Smells like sulfur.”

“See you tomorrow, Trav.”

“Yeah. If Miller opens up,” Travis said, not sounding too sure of it.

Carl stepped out into the gravel lot. The sky was a flat, milky grey, the kind of dusk that made everything look bleached out. The wind was coming from the north, straight off the lake, and for the first time all day, Carl caught it—a faint, sour reek, like wet leaves left in a plastic bag over the summer.

He got into his truck, shoved the key into the ignition, and backed out onto the empty county road.