THE COLLAPSE: Swantown Road Read Online Free Page B

lifeless military wall, listening to the sound of his nervous shipmates pounding away on their keyboards behind him as they pretended to act busy.  Enraged and exasperated, Fish made a pact with himself.  The day after he retired, he was going to beat the living shit out of Chief Worts.

Chapter 4 -  The Great Idea
     
    In addition to the beatdown pact that Fish had made with himself for Chief Worts, he also cooked up an idea to help Connie out with her baby problem.  Fish was pretty sure he could pull it off, but he needed an expert’s help to make it happen, which involved Tarra Alexander. 
    Fish also wanted to get himself in front of a television to continue watching the Chicken Stand-Off.  He was becoming obsessed with the chicken drama down in Memphis, and during the rare moments throughout the day when it was quiet in the office he had secretly peeked at his phone to see if there were any new developments. 
    Fish texted Stephen that he was coming over after work, and as expected, the nervous Stephen immediately replied that there had better not be something wrong with his truck.  There wasn’t.  Fish text-plained that he wanted to talk to Tarra about something and also watch the news over at his house, since his cable was shut off.  Both items seemed bizarre to Stephen, but, after all, it was Fish.   
    Fish needed to watch TV at Stephen’s because he had somehow forgot to pay his cable bill, in his own elucidation ‘only for a few cycles’, and eventually the catch-up payment had ballooned to over six hundred dollars, at which point he simply decided; to hell with Comcast, I can watch TV at the bar .
    Once Fish arrived at the Alexander’s, he parked Stephen’s truck in its traditional resting place parallel with Swantown Road and hustled toward the house.  He was still in uniform, not wanting to waste any time, he had arrived straight from work.  Mickey Kessler, who was Stephen’s oily jerk-of-a-neighbor, was working on one of the four different broken down vehicles on his property while smoking a cigarette.  Once he saw Fish in his blue camouflage, he looked up over the hood and hooted.
    “Whoo-hoo!  Hey sailor, buy me a drink?” Mickey hollered and cackled an evil, rough-sounding smoker’s laugh.
    “Fuck off, Mickey.”  Fish hollered back, not even looking in his direction. He made a beeline for Stephen’s door, and with a couple steps of his long legs, he successfully denied Mickey the satisfaction of another comeback.
    Fish yelled as he loudly burst through the door, “Stevo!  Turn on the news, yo!” 
    “Jesus H. Christ!”  Stephen shouted, arms flailing, as he was two seconds shy of falling asleep for a nap in his recliner, and was now terrorized awake.  Tarra and the Kays had taken the Prius to go shopping, and obviously forgot to lock the door on their way out.  Tarra was a stickler for keeping the door locked, but it was probably one of the little girls that was last out the door, innocently assuming that since daddy was home there was no need to lock the house up.
    Fish flew into the living room and scooped up the remote off the stomach of the still-startled Stephen and plopped down in the recliner that Tarra normally nestled in, and proceeded to bounce from one news channel to another until he found his beloved Tyrone and his posse, large and in charge.
    Fish smiled and excitedly said, “Oh look, there’s Emil Knard!”
    Stephen, now amused, stated, “I guess you didn’t even go home to change.”
    “Nope, I didn’t have time for all that.”
    “Well, did you have time to call your insurance company today?”
    “Yeah, I did it at lunch.”
    Stephen nodded and said, “Good.  I want my truck back soon as possible.”
    “You got it boss, couple days max, might be this weekend.”  Fish said, deeply involved in the news. “Oh, and by the way, your longhair asshole neighbor is outside.”
    “To hell with him.”  Stephen said with disgust.  He was pretty upset