“That’s why I brought over some people,” she whispered in his ear, then roared, “And they JUST CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU!”
Sugar was first, her charbroiled face cracked open in a blackened grin. Her eyes bubbled and ran down her cheeks, but he could still feel her looking right through him.
Frankie was next. He looked like a sandblasted side of beef jerky. Even his ghost could not recover all the layers of flesh he’d left on the pavement Gray’s car dragged him down, or his pretty-boy bleach-blond scalp, which a vulture had carried away as Gray dug his grave.
Gray screamed.
There were more, many more, lining up behind. Sugar’s mother. His own father. The first little boy he’d killed. Dozens of victims, from a lifetime of violence, all gathered here together to celebrate his doom.
He couldn’t even count the whores.
And somewhere toward the back of the laughing crowd, he swore he saw that fucking patrulero, ready for a little Mexican payback at last.
“Are we bugging you? Are we bugging you?” Crissy howled out loud. “We’re not TOUCHING YOU!”
But she lied. They were going to touch him plenty.
Gray’s hell was just getting warmed up.
In Jake’s bedroom, Emmy’s body lay splayed across the bed with her hands across her bosom, and her chin tucked down over the gaping trench in her throat.
Jasper and Evangeline had lifted her off the broken glass and left her to awaken, but she slept on: her features composed and sedate, her bruised and battered body empty and unmoving.
And in the living room, the wreckage remained.
But the fire had finally gone out.
The dirt parking lot in the front yard was empty, but for Mathias’s sedan. Esther’s car, Jasper’s truck, and LeGrange’s cruiser were long gone. Only the fleeting dust devils whipped up by the rising heat stirred outside the Connaway house. Not even the decaying swing set creaked.
High above, a halo of circling vultures seemed to echo and mock the symphony of screams and terrible laughter that came from the studio.
Or maybe they just cried out in pity for the world they had inherited, where the dead would no longer lie still to be eaten.
The cruiser tooled down an empty, dusty desert road, past open land that seemed to spread forever.
In the distance stood the ever-popular billboard that invited all comers to answer the question: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
Beyond it, there seemed to be one hell of a pileup. Hard to tell how many, at this point. But certainly not less than a dozen.
The radio continued to squawk, a panicked voice at the other end drowning out the automated 911 operator.
“…come in! For God’s sake, somebody, please…!”
Deputy Peet turned down the volume, not ready to respond quite yet.
She was pale, her chest held together by the bulletproof vest she’d found in the trunk—now that the horse was out of the barn, so to speak—and half a roll of duct tape.
Even with the A/C blasting, the vanilla-scented crucifix air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror couldn’t quite overcome the sickly sweet scent of decay, already wafting off her in the quickening daylight.
Be that as it may, she had a job to do. She wasn’t quite sure what that meant anymore, but she figured she was about to find out.
If there was any order left to be preserved, she would do what she could to help that happen. That was what she’d signed on for. What she believed in.
And none of that had changed.
The closer Peet got to the wreckage, the more the dead became apparent. Mostly unrecognizable human slushies, up front, though even the severed limbs and skid marks kept twitching or crawling, like they had somewhere to go.
She slowed the cruiser to a crawl as she came up on the first wave of destruction, then pulled off the shoulder, half into the sand.
Now the moaning and screaming grew louder.
As the wreckage got vaster and deeper.
Past the twelve vehicles that had actually collided—in stages, evidently, based on the progressive ripeness of the smoke—past that, there were another fifteen cars, trucks, and vans that were merely skewed all over the road like tailgate partiers in a parking lot free-for-all.
Most of them with doors wide open.
Most of them with many bullet holes in the doors.
This was where the still-walking, still-brawling, blood-spattered dead slammed into each other and yammered and screamed, unable to let go of the nonsense that had brought them all here in the first place.
It was tragic, but there was nothing to be done. At least nothing that she could do alone. There were too many. Too many of them armed. And dead as she was, things could always get worse.
The scrawny corpse in the white snakeskin cowboy boots took a .45 shot at her head. Thank God his eyes were missing, or it might have actually hit. Then three mangled metalheads took him down by hand. Some high notes ululated, went on and on and on.
Peet looked up just in time to see the shadowed silhouette of the burned girl before her: shivering transparent on the gravel shoulder, holding up her cindered hands as she begged facelessly for mercy.
But the cruiser passed through her like the vapor that she was.
Nothing to be done about that, either.
And then—as if even God recognized the urgent need for comic relief—a huge, smoldering sasquatch of a man stumbled past and ran off into the desert, clapping his hands and whooping with glee as he chased after a blind tortoiseshell cat.
Peet shook her head, rolled her eyes, and laughed, watching his tattered army shirt flap in the breeze. It was the first laugh of her afterlife, and it felt fucking fantastic.
She didn’t feel the need to radio in a report on this. The poor desperate dispatcher had enough on his plate.
But it was definitely time to check in.
“Peet here,” she husked into the handset. “Hit me.”
The cruiser kicked up a rooster tail of dust as it fired up its lights and sped off for the highway. There was, unsurprisingly, plenty left to do, for both the living and the dead.
And it was always nice to be needed.
In the desert, you can lose anything. Make it disappear, never to be seen again.
Maybe that was why so many of the world’s great and not-so-great religions had been born there. It was more than the scorching sun, the chilling moon, the visionary madness and blinding rage that seemed to thrive in such merciless places.
The desert was full of secrets—God’s, Nature’s, and Man’s—only some of which would ever be found.
That was certainly the idea this morning.
On a barren hill overlooking a vast expanse of sand, a lonesome hanging tree stood barren and defiant. From a distance, it looked like a hand rising up from a grave.
At its foot, a handful of survivors both living and dead stood before a small hole in the sand. There were a dozen such holes that had been recently dug and filled, over a quarter-mile spread with no pattern to link them.
But this one was the last.
Jake’s severed head stared up at them from the bottom of the hole, mutely pleading with tearful, flyblown eyes. He looked so scared it was almost heartbreaking, till you remembered who he was, and what he’d done.
There was no fucking way on earth that Evangeline was going to kneel before this grave. Not even to piss in it. And she’d seen more than enough of his sniveling, now that he was down, to last her the rest of her days.
The good news was, he’d finally learned how to say basic phrases like I’m sorry, and I love you, and please.
The bad news was, that didn’t quite qualify as redemption, no matter how many times you wrapped your ugly mouth around the words.
So she stood back, holding the shovel, and waited for Esther to do what ever she had to do.
But Esther had Eddie beside her; and even dead, he still played the heart to her head.
Give him to God, Eddie said to her with
his soundless, throatless, bloodied lips. There is no one more lost than him. Or more needing of God’s healing grace.
And though she could barely bring herself to look at his mutilations, it was impossible to argue with that.
One thing was for certain: his love was true.
So she knelt before the grave, and said the first prayer she’d learned in childhood: not from her parents, but from a fellow student and friend who’d actually believed in God and the angels.
“Our Father,” she said, “who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done—” She choked. “On earth, as it is in heaven.”
Jake stared up at her—at Eddie beside her—and though he did not pray along, he did begin to cry. And that was also something.
“Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses—” Taking deep, hitching breaths. “As we forgive those who trespass against us.
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
“Amen,” she concluded.
“Amen,” said the rest.
Then they filled in the hole, and Jake was gone. Another secret for the desert to hold. Whatever else he might have to discuss would be done in the dark, through a mouthful of dirt, with the demons who shared his tomb with him.
Alone together. Forever and ever.
In an intimate, infinite hell.
Up above, it was magic hour: that brief slice of sunrise when the sky seems to glow like a jewel from within. The most beautiful, multicolored moment of the day, replicated only once again, at dusk.
Evangeline wanted a cigarette. Jasper handed her one. Christian gave her a light. He had all the lighters now.
“Hey, you guys,” she murmured as Jasper nuzzled her wild red hair.
“Hey, yourself,” they said as one. Happily united once again.
“Oh, that’s nice…”
The leading edge of the sun emerged from behind the purple mountains at the far end of the valley. The soft violet light of predawn turned to gold, lifting their gazes, as well as their hearts. And making them smile.
Not everything was broken.
Together, they soaked in the dawn for a long peaceful moment, while the desert awakened all around them to a life that only looked like death.
Sharing a little glimpse of heaven.
In the brave new world that had just begun.
And Jasper thought about his body. How heavy, how useless it seemed to him now. He thought about Jake, lumbering around in a place that had clearly outlived him. What was the fucking point in that?
Then he thought about the little Bible girl, and why it was that she alone had not come back in the flesh.
He contemplated Evangeline’s description of her death. How she’d lifted her arms, as if to fly.
When it’s time to go, you go, he thought.
Blowing life a little kiss.
And just like that, he went.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Because Jake’s Wake started out as a motion picture, and it takes a shitload of people to make those things, John Skipp would like to effusively thank: the very brilliant Laura Bahr (for working on the screenplay with me from the very beginning, embodying Emmy on both the page and the screen, and in the process, giving kisses to the missus); Steve Walter (production partner, prime mover, and villainous muse extraordinaire); Damon Packard (editor, sound designer, visual fx whiz, and one-man encyclopedia of film); my wonderful stars Alisha Seaton (Evangeline), A. K. Raymond (Esther), Peter Pano (Eddie), Kerr Seth Lordygan (Christian), Garrett Liggett (Mathias), Steve Stone (proto-Jasper), John McLaughlin (Jasper), Dierdre Lyons (Lorna), Ursula Vari (Natalya), Cyanne McClairian (Crissy), Cheryl Lyone (Sugar), Frank “Fuk’n Frankie” Pestello (as, you guessed it, Frankie), and that Goodfellow guy (for whom Gray was created), all vastly enriching our sense of who these characters might truly be; production partner and line producer Ed Polgardy, who pulled and held the team together; Laurence Avenet-Bradley, who shot it beautifully; Rob Winfield, who sprinkled CG magick; Marianne Walter, who made up both the living and the dead; and Mike Gaglio, Chris Garcia, Lou Garcia, Annette Garcia, Jesse Anderson, Tim Keegan, Isabel Ferrer, Paul Gebeau, Michael Su, Dan Martone, Laura Martone, and Dani Cahn, for making it happen behind the scenes. I’d also like to thank my beautiful family; the short-lived tribe at Brilliant Drive; Scott Bradley, who bailed me out when the floor caved in; my friends at JR Media; our agent, Lori Perkins; Don D’Auria and the Leisure machine; the dearly loved and lost Ms. T; everyone else I love; and finally, Jane Hamilton and Max Cirigliano, for giving me a home at last.
Because it takes a village to raise a village idiot, Cody Goodfellow would like to thank: Adam Barnes (if I had to fight for my own work as vigorously as he has done, I would have quit before I got started); the Punk Horror family, David Agranoff, Paul Stuart and Gabriel Llanas; our webmaster and Furry Community liaison, Travis “Funky Trunk” Hoecker; our digital witchdoctor, Rob Winfield; Darius Shahmir, Benji Gillespie and Ian Hannin, for putting sex in the Champagne Room; Ryan C. Thomas, for putting the raunch in Ranch & Coast; Green Party candidate Peter Shenouda; my first, favorite and most feverish fan, Eunice Magill; Jeromy and Claudia Cox; Curt Benedetto and Kristen Tinderholt of Frock You Vintage, for dressing me like a grown-up; my funky Dutch unclefucker, Ron McPhee; my brother, Matt Carter; my brother by another mother, Aaron Costello; my brother in excess (and ex-wives), Steve “Tweak” Cordova; tech support guru and Honky Propulsion Systems CEO, Chris “The Stormin’ Mormon” Frandsen; Del and Sue Howison at Dark Delicacies; Alan Beatts and the alluring, enduring staff of Borderlands; Ed “Big Daddy” Bove, Cathy Down, Nancy Dietermeyer, Jeff Gelb and the Mediabase Militia; the inestimably awesome Ray at Copy Hub (because if you live in the 818 and get your copies anywhere else, I will fight you); and most of all, my lovely and vivacious wife Victoria, for copyediting with benefits, and everything else.
PRAISE FOR HORROR’S NEWESET LITERARY
SUPERGROUP, JOHN SKIPP AND CODY
GOODFELLOW!
“Skipp and Goodfellow get inside your brain, and they know just where to detonate the explosives for maximum effect.”
—Christopher Golden, author of
The Boys are Back in Town
“Don’t call the nurse, call the hearse. Here come Skipp and Goodfellow with a pair of sharpened undertaker’s shovels and a new novel called Jake’s Wake. You want some fire and even more brimstone, step right up…but watch out. These boys are about bad business and bad intentions. No one’s going to rest in peace around here.”
—Norman Partridge, author of Dark Harvest
“Like thunder and lightning, Skipp and Goodfellow are two singularly powerful forces that make one dynamic, masterful combination.”
—Brian Keene, author of Castaways
PRAISE FOR NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING
AUTHOR JOHN SKIPP
AND THE LONG LAST CALL!
“Readers with a taste for…blood and guts…will enjoy Skipp’s latest excursion into ‘Splatterpunk,’ the horror subgenre he confounded.…Think Stephen King’s Needful Things meets From Dusk to Dawn—but such a synopsis doesn’t do [it] justice.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A mind-boggling jolt to the brain…. Unforgettable and addictive.”
—Stuart Gordon, director of Re-Animator
“Welcome back, John…. One thing is for certain: John Skipp ain’t lost his touch. One of the founding fathers of Splatterpunk has produced a gruesome, zippy little number that does anything but ratchet things down…. The book hurtles along at a bullet train’s pace, and Skipp has that golden ability to draw the reader further along in the story than he or she may wish.”
—Fangoria
“Just try to put this frenetic novel down, we dare you.”
—Rue Morgue
“John Skipp is a badass.”
—Dread Central
CRITICS PRAISE CODY GOODFELLOW!
“A new and original author. G
oodfellow’s descriptive passages leap off the page, his dialogue snaps and crackles.”
—Jack Olsen, author of
Son: A Psychopath and His Victims
“Goodfellow is one of those writers whose voice sweeps you away like the undertow of a tsunami, and once you’re in, he’s got you pinned.”
—Michael A. Arnzen, author of Grave Markings
Other Leisure books by John Skipp:
THE LONG LAST CALL
Copyright
A LEISURE BOOK®
January 2009
Published by
Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
Copyright © 2009 by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-0591-9
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