D7, p.1
D7, page 1
D7
PHILIP FRACASSI
SHORTWAVE
D7 is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are creations of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2025 by Philip Fracassi
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used to train AI or Large Language Models, nor reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover and interior design by Alan Lastufka.
First Edition published May 2025.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 978-1-959565-62-8 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-959565-63-5 (eBook)
For Chris and Menaka
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
About the Author
Also by Philip Fracassi
A Note from Shortwave Publishing
“Nightcap?”
Dinner had been wildly unsatisfying for them both, and while they weren’t exactly in the middle of nowhere, they were far from anything familiar. And yet, here they were, stuck between two pinpoints of the United States—one on the West Coast and one on the East—a muddled middle-of-nowhere piece of the country where your late-night options were a diner with slippery floors and greasy tables (and greasier cheeseburgers, as they’d discovered), or nothing at all.
The hotel they’d booked for the night was fine, but they were both eager to get back on the open road come morning and leave this funky little patch of mid-south in the rearview mirror. If everything went to plan, in two days they’d be pulling into the driveway of their new home in western Pennsylvania, leaving behind the smog and traffic and overpopulation of Los Angeles for three acres of woodland and a house big enough to hold a family of four (which was the long-term plan, after all).
Sitting in the passenger seat, however, Diane is unnerved.
Driving back to the hotel through the same twisting, unfamiliar roads at night feels a lot different than driving them a couple hours ago. At least then the sun was still setting and you could see land all around, giving you a sense of where you were at and where you were headed. Now she feels as if they’re driving through outer space, the night around them so dense it seems to douse the headlight beams, the darkness itself eagerly pressing against the car windows, wanting inside.
“Did the hotel have a bar? I didn’t notice.”
Paul shrugs. “Doubtful. Looked like the only employee in the evenings was the kid who checked us in. But maybe we can find a bar out here. . . what’s the GPS say?”
“I don’t want to start driving around blindly,” she says, feeling sluggish and full after the diner meal. “This area is weird.”
“Yeah. . . maybe we’ll just raid the mini bar.”
“I don’t recall seeing a mini bar either,” she says with a chuckle. “But I do think I want to get back.”
“Agreed,” Paul says. “Is this the turn?”
“Uh. . .” Diane taps the car’s touchscreen, opens the GPS map. “Shit, it doesn’t even show this as a road.”
“Well, that can’t be good.”
“No, it’s not. I think you better turn around and go back. . . here, see?” She points to the GPS screen, where the curvy black line of known road is slowly receding behind the blue dot of their vehicle, which seems to have come untethered from reality and now floats freely in an obscene sea of green.
“I could have sworn this was the turn. . .”
“Paul, it’s pitch black out there. I can’t see any landmarks at all.” Diane scans the surrounding darkness, but sees nothing but dense forest encroaching the narrow road, a blank black sky hovering above.
“At least it’s not raining?”
“Paul, I’m—”
“Hey, look.”
Paul points at something ahead. Diane leans forward, notices a soft white light coming from the side of the road a little ways off, just past a wall of tall trees. As they drive closer, the shoulders of the road widen, the forest retreats, and the source of light comes into view.
“That’s not the hotel.”
“Duh,” he says, sitting up eagerly. “But it might be a bar.”
“A biker bar, maybe.”
“Even cooler!”
“Paul. . .”
“Let’s just. . . let’s just see.”
As the building comes into full view, Diane realizes (with a mixture of relief and misgivings) that it is indeed a bar. By the looks of it a honkytonk. The exterior is all dark, wide wood board and batten siding, neon-splashed tinted windows, and honest-to-God wagon wheels on either side of the porch entrance.
Surprisingly, there’s a large gravel parking lot near capacity.
Above the porch roof, painted in bold (if weathered) white letters that span the entire length of the building, are the words: HAPPY’S BAR & GRILL.
“Look at this!” Paul says, obviously thrilled with the discovery. “And not a single motorcycle in the lot. Just good ole folks having a good ole time. Hell, I bet there’s even a band playing.”
“Paul. . .”
“Bar and grill? Honey, we could have eaten here. I bet the burgers are the best in the state.”
“Paul, I’m tired.”
“One drink,” he says, parking the hybrid crossover between two mud-spattered pickup trucks. “One drink, and we go back to the hotel. I just want to, you know, experience different stuff. Take in some of the local color.”
Diane sighs. “Fine. One drink. But listen, band or no band. . .” she says as she pops the door open and steps into the cold night.
“What?”
“No dancing.”
The couple step up onto the broad, wood-planked porch, then pause in front of the closed front door to study a sign tacked to its face:
NO GUNS
NO KNIVES
NO FIGHTING
Diane gives Paul a sidelong glance, which he matches.
“Darn it, honey,” she says sweetly, “we better leave the AR-15 in the trunk.”
“Like hell I am,” Paul says gruffly, hands on hips. “This is America, dammit.”
Diane laughs, but neither of them lifts a hand toward the door, as if there was an invisible barrier between them and whatever waited inside, a vibrating membrane of resistance that would take a concerted effort to pass through.
“They’re open, right?”
Paul nods. “I hear music. And the cars. . .” he adds lamely, motioning to the full lot of vehicles behind them.
“Sure, of course.”
Abruptly, as if pulling off a Band-Aid, Diane steps forward, reaches for the large handle, and pulls.
The door opens without resistance. Warm light spills over their bodies and onto the surrounding porch. Something soulful and rhythmic—old electric blues in the vein of Stevie Ray Vaughan or Jeff Beck—vibrates the air around them, beckons them inside.
Paul and Diane share one more—one last—quick look.
This is okay, right?
Then Paul shrugs, puts his hand on the small of his wife’s back, and together they walk into the bar, into the light, into the music.
Behind them, the door swings silently closed. . . and locks.
For better or worse, the interior of Happy’s Bar and Grill is almost, to a tee, what Diane had expected. There’s a long, scuffed oak bar running along one side, a main dining area scattered with four-top tables, and a row of dark booths along the opposite wall. Just beyond all that is a generous dance floor—good enough for some two-steppin’, she thinks—that includes a small stage shoved into one corner. To the left of the dance floor is a darkened hallway that leads deeper into the building, most likely to guys and gals restrooms. The entire place is a hodgepodge of different shades and patterns of wood: the weathered barn plank floors (coffee brown—likely from years of being trod upon), the long oak bar (a bright maple color, at least where it isn’t stained), and the shellacked-to-hell pine four tops (walnut). Old-timey chandeliers litter the ceiling, swayed gently by the current modern black ceiling fans—all of which spin lazily, just enough to keep the air from getting overly stuffy.
Not too shabby, Diane thinks, pleased not to be disappointed by the place. Hell, this might even be fun.
The place, as they had already figured out based on the cars in the lot, is indeed full.
Nearly every booth and table taken.
So why’s it so damn quiet?
There’s no laughing or yelling. No drunken hoots. No conversation. . .
Just. . . quiet.
Except for that music, Diane thinks, looking around for the source.
And that’s when she sees it.
Hunched along the rear wall of the dance floor, and facing the rest of the restaurant like a watchful eye—glowing in bright, pulsing reds, greens, and yellows, and playing that old electric bluesy rock ‘n roll, as if it was force-feeding the goddamn place a bellyful of good times—is a jukebox.
Diane feels a tug at her elbow and turns to see Paul staring straight ahead, his mouth clamped into a frown.
“What?”
He looks at her, then leans close and whispers. “I think we’re intruding.”
Diane’s brief, brewing joy goes from boil to simmer, and she tur
Everyone is looking at them.
Everyone.
Every table, every chair, every barstool, every booth. Even the bartender is staring, his mouth slightly open in surprise, as if two aliens from outer space, green-skinned and tentacle-armed, had just strolled into the place.
Diane also notices there are no bustling waitresses carrying trays of food, no bussers clearing tables, and no fresh drinks being served at the bar.
The dance floor is empty.
Everyone—every single person—is sitting at a table, stool, or booth, and simply. . .
Staring at them.
Diane leans toward her husband, eyes locked on the strange crowd. “Should we leave?”
Paul nods. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”
They both take a small step backward. Paul lifts a hand, waves. “Sorry to have bothered you,” he says, his voice easily carrying over the sound of the jukebox.
Diane, feeling sick with anxiety, turns around and presses her hands against the door’s push-handle. It drops a few inches, but the door doesn’t release.
She pushes again, harder.
“Shit.”
Paul is next to her. “Let me. . .”
He slams his hands into the handle. Nothing. He throws a hip into the door. . .
“That won’t open,” a man’s deep voice rumbles from somewhere behind them. “Not now, anyway,” he adds, and a quiet, rippling murmur spreads across the room.
Folks nod in agreement.
“We shoulda made a run for it!” another man yells angrily. “I told you someone else would come.”
“Oh, shut your trap, Harold,” a woman snaps back.
Paul spins around, eyes the crowd warily. “Hey. . . I don’t know what’s. . .”
He holds up his hands, as if warding off an invisible threat.
But no one has so much as shifted a chair. No one has stood, or approached them. If anything, Diane thinks, the bartender has taken a step further away.
“Once it’s locked, it’s locked,” a woman from a nearby booth says, disappointment, or perhaps sadness, in her voice.
“And don’t bother with the windows, or the kitchen door, or the emergency exit by the johns,” a third, much younger, man says. He’s seated at a table with a pretty girl; both wearing shorts and T-shirts, as if they’d arrived in the middle of a hot afternoon instead of the dead of a brittle, cold night. “None of it opens,” he adds with a heavy sigh and a slow shake of his head. “No matter what you do.”
He says this last part with such resigned despair that Diane feels the urge to go to the young man and give him a hug.
Paul, meanwhile, takes a couple steps forward, scrutinizing all the faces that are watching them. Finally, he settles on the bartender, a round-bellied man in jeans and a flannel, with a scraggly beard and a mop of black hair above wide brown eyes.
Everyone in this place could use a razor, Diane thinks, not meaning to be unkind, but unable to help noticing the facial hair on nearly all the men; the scraggly, messy hair of many of the women.
“Look, what’s this all about?” Paul asks the bartender, singling him out. “Come on, man. We want to leave now.”
“You and everyone else,” a young woman yells from a far corner of the room, and there’s a loud murmur among the crowd—this time the general response sounds less like simple agreement and more like bitter amusement.
A few people even chuckle.
Someone else weeps.
“Here ya go, folks!” a thin, long-faced man near the middle of the room says, gesturing toward Paul and Diane. “I got a table for ya.” He cackles a bit and wipes theatrically at a nearby table and its adjacent chair seats with a bare hand. “Last one, I think, so better get it before it’s taken!”
“Jesus, John,” the woman next to the long-faced man says. “Don’t be cruel.”
He spins toward her—presumably his wife, or his date—and she shrinks back. “I ain’t being mean!” he nearly screams. “I’m being motherfucking helpful!”
“Okay. . .” she says, eyes filling with tears.
“Take it easy, fella,” another man says from a couple tables over, arms thick as pythons beneath a tight black T-shirt. “No need to make things worse.”
The big man stands, faces Paul and Diane, and nods toward the empty table. “But he’s right. You should take a seat if you can. We’re nearly out of chairs, and the floor. . . well, I think a chair is better.”
Paul nods slowly. “Sure. . . anything is better than the floor, of course.” He gives Diane a what the hell is this look, but she only shakes her head.
As they walk toward the lone empty table, skirting between the backs and shoulders of the other patrons, Diane notices a few odd things—well, odder things—in regards to the people seated all around them.
For one, she notes that no one has food. There are no half-eaten steaks, bowls of melting ice cream; no cheeseburgers with French fries. . . no plates at all.
Even stranger, there are no drinks. Well, there’re drinks, but not. . . drinks.
At every table, every person seated has a glass of water in front of them. A few sip from their glasses as Paul and Diane pass by. But there are no beers, no cocktails, no whiskeys or gin and tonics. Just. . . water.
As Paul pulls out her chair, it’s only then she realizes the one other thing that’s been bothering her, something she hadn’t been able to fully put her finger on until she got close enough.
Everyone in this room looks completely, undeniably. . . exhausted.
Even more? They stink. The whole room smells of unwashed bodies, as if she and her husband had stumbled into a locker room filled with hockey players straight after a double-overtime game.
After they sit down, Diane has to fight the urge to tuck her chin and give her own pits a quick sniff, but then sees the bartender walking toward them, looking haggard and tired, carrying two pint glasses filled with water.
He sets one down in front of each of them, wipes his hands on his red flannel shirt. “All we got left is tap, but it’s okay to drink,” he says. “I’ll show you where the sink is, back behind the bar. When those glasses are empty, you’ll have to refill your own.” Sheepishly, he adds: “I have a little pride left, so I always bring the first round myself. It’s still my place, damn it, and well. . . I. . .” He trails off, as if not knowing what it means that it’s his place, or if such a thing even matters in the scheme of things.
“You’re Happy?” Diane asks, feeling a wave of sympathy for these people.
“Yeah,” he answers. “Welcome, I guess.”
“Can we get a couple beers?” Paul asks. “Budweiser is fine.”
Happy squints at Paul strangely, as if he was speaking a foreign language. “You, uh. . . you don’t want beer, friend. Drink that water.” He leans in close, so close that Paul fights not to pull back from the stench of the man’s body, his breath. “But if you want something hard, just help yourself. On the house.”
“What about food?” Diane asks. She isn’t hungry, but wants to understand what’s happening here, why everything is so strange.
“Rationing,” he says matter-of-factly, as if it almost went without saying. “You’ll get your portion. . .”
“Less food for us,” someone says from the far end of the bar, interrupting their conversation.
Happy turns, hands wringing. “It ain’t their fault!” he snaps. He looks around the room. “And I’ll treat them the same as any one of you.”
Many folks nod, others only stare, blank-eyed, uncaring.
“Anyway,” he says, turning his attention back to Paul and Diane. “It’ll likely be starting up again soon, so I better go rest my feet.”
As Happy walks away, Paul turns in his chair, calling after him. “Starting?”
But Happy doesn’t answer. He shuffles further back behind the long oak bar and sits himself down on a stool, head bowed, as if taking a nap.
