Double Threat
Page 35
Not sure.
(“I detected an instant of hesitation before he shook his head.”)
I have to sit before I pass out.
Trying for as normal a gait as possible, she walked to her idling car and collapsed behind the steering wheel.
Pard appeared in the passenger seat.
(“I’m very impressed. I don’t know if you managed to ‘scare the shit out of him,’ but you most definitely scared the piss out of him.”)
I need to lie down.
(“Well, your bedroom is occupied by a corpse at the moment. And I’d like to remove that four-inch knife blade from your heart as soon as possible.”)
Where do we do that?
(“Get back on the road, then pull off into the desert. After you lie back, we’ll get it done.”)
In the car?
(“We don’t need an operating room.”)
Daley got her car rolling, then pulled off the road and took it very slowly into the desert. She did not want to bounce. When her headlights picked out a flat spot a few hundred feet in, she stopped the car and sat, shaking. She lowered the windows.
I need air.
(“I understand.”)
You want me to lie flat?
(“As flat as possible. That way I can lower your blood pressure before you pull out the blade.”)
She began lowering the seat back. As it reached max recline, she said, “I’m scared.”
(“Not to worry. I’ve got it all under control.”)
“Famous last words. Right up there with, ‘Hold my beer and watch this.’”
Pard leaned over her. (“Hey, whatever happens to you happens to me as well.”)
“Remember that.”
(“Okay, quiet now and just follow my instructions. I want you to grasp the handle with your left hand but don’t do anything else until I’m ready.”)
He disappeared.
(“Okay. I want you to pull it out slowly, and pull it straight up toward the ceiling.”)
“Ohhhhhh, I don’t know…”
(“Do it. I’ll make sure you don’t feel a thing.”)
Clenching her teeth, Daley did as instructed, slowly pulling straight up. Pard had been right about not feeling anything.
(“That’s it. Keep pulling. The point is free of the myocardium and I’m starting to clot the wound.”)
Daley kept pulling and soon enough the point came free of her chest. She tossed it through the open window and into the desert.
Good riddance.
Can you start my heart now?
(“Almost ready. I can seal the myocardium with minimal loss of blood now because the heart wall isn’t moving.”)
Daley touched the slit in her chest and jumped a little because her hands were so cold. The cut pierced straight through the upper part of her left breast. Her finger came away bloody.
My boob is bleeding.
(“I’ll stop that as soon as I finish here.”)
I’m scarred for life. My beauty is ruined. There goes my nude modeling career.
(“Yes. But at least you’ll be able to talk about the time you were stabbed to death.”)
Can’t wait.
She lay still and trembled. Finally …
(“Okay, I’m ready to restart your heart.”)
Stop talking and do it.
And just then she felt a thump in her chest like something inside had kicked her, and slowly she became suffused with warmth, her fingers tingling with renewed circulation. She gave it a few seconds, then sat up with no dizziness.
And suddenly, without warning, she began to cry, huge wracking sobs quaked through her.
And just as suddenly, Pard was beside her with his arm around her.
(“I was wondering when it would hit you. Cry it out.”)
She shook her head, not knowing why, simply an automatic response. He put his other arm around her and hugged her tight.
(“No shame. You’ve just gone through a terrible ordeal, one you shouldn’t have survived. Your home was invaded, your body violated, and all for no reason beyond you being you. Let it out.”)
And she did let it out. Not only fear and hurt, but helpless rage as well. She’d been murdered. And if not for Pard eliminating Benny, she would have been raped and then murdered.
Finally the sobs abated. As she got control again, she realized something …
“Hey, I can feel your arms.”
(“Well, it just feels like you feel them. I’m fooling certain of your nerve endings into thinking they have pressure against them.”)
“Okay, you can let go now.” The sensation eased. “But … thanks.”
(“What’s good for you is good for me, so you know I’m always here for you.”)
“What do we do now?”
(“Drive a little deeper into the desert and find a spot to watch a spectacular sunrise, then go home.”)
“Good plan.”
She drove but it didn’t take long for exhaustion to land on her like a falling safe. So she stopped, leaned back, and closed her eyes.
“Wake me when the show starts.”
4
The moon had set and the sun was rising as Karma stood over Benny’s open grave. He’d dug down in the same spot he’d used before and laid him on top of the Light reporter. He wasn’t taking no chances of another dead one coming for him. He hadn’t killed Benny, so he wasn’t worried about him. But the reporter … who knew?
He stood there, vibrating. Man, he’d never been so scared in his entire life as when he opened his door and saw the dead bitch standing there in the moonlight with her eyes all sunk in and the fucking knife sticking out of her bloody chest.
If she’d just been standing there, no knife, he coulda told himself he’d been wrong and only thought he’d left her dead back in the apartment. After all, he hadn’t checked her for a pulse or nothing ’cause, like, what the fuck he know about taking a pulse?
But the knife, man, the knife! She had the same fucking knife he’d used on her still buried up to the handle in her heart. And then she’d shown him hell … horrors beyond anything he’d ever imagined. He thought for sure she was going to drag him kicking and screaming into the down-below to keep those horrors company for all eternity.
But no, she’d let him go … gave him a second chance.
Well, he wasn’t gonna fuck this up. He had Pendry’s five grand, which he deserved to keep for not ratting him out—he’d never ratted on anyone and wasn’t gonna start now. He had nowhere to go, so he guessed that after he filled up this hole he’d just get in his truck and start driving, and keep on driving till he was as far from here as he could get.
He pulled the chip out of Benny’s phone, pocketed it, and tossed the phone into the grave. Did the same with his burner phone. Later on he’d hold the chips over a flame and melt them a little, like he’d already done with that reporter’s phone.
He pulled the knife from his back pocket and held it up in the dawn light and watched it shake in his hand. He’d been heading to her place to get Benny like she’d told him to when he’d spotted her car stopped off in the desert. He’d pulled over, killed his lights and engine, and watched from a distance—a safe distance.
Nothing happened, except he thought he saw something catch the moonlight as it flew out the driver’s window. After a while she drove away. When she was gone he checked out the area and found the knife on the sand, still sticky with her blood.
The knife he’d killed her with. She must have known he was watching. She meant for him to have it. Why? He had a feeling he’d find out.
He couldn’t get it out of his head that she was some sort of goddess. He didn’t know her goddess name but had no doubt she’d risen from some sort of hell and he’d gone and pissed her off. Maybe the fact he was still alive and walking this earth was a sign. He’d always believed in signs. He was forty-six years old next month and hadn’t done nothing with his life. Well, nothing good, anyways. Maybe this goddess or whatever she was was telling h
im to finally get his shit together.
5
Daley stepped inside her back door and stared at the spot on the kitchen floor where she’d died.
Okay, not officially dead. Pard had told her she hadn’t truly died, he’d only made her look dead to fool Karma. Yes, her heart had stopped but he’d maintained enough blood circulating to keep her brain alive.
Pard appeared beside her.
She said, “I wish I could send you into the bedroom to see if Karma did as he was told.”
(“I’d love to do that for you, but unfortunately—”)
“—you can only see what I see. Right. Okay, let’s go.”
Taking a deep breath, she marched around the corner, through the front room, and into the bedroom and … no body.
“Well,” she said, “if he did that, he probably did the disappearing act too.”
(“He looked scared enough to do anything you told him.”)
She stared at the bed. The predawn nap in the car hadn’t been restorative. Emotional and physical exhaustion still weighed on her, but somehow, getting back into the bed where someone had choked her …
(“If it will help, I’ll lie down with you.”)
“I thought you couldn’t read my thoughts.”
(“I can’t except when you think at me. But I can sense your feelings and—”)
“Okay, okay. Lay with me.”
(“I can’t lay with you but can lie with you.”)
Normally his grammar fixation torqued her, but right now, as far as she was concerned, he could be as anal as he needed.
She flopped onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Pard lay down beside her. Not so bad here with company. She’d get over this.
“Tell me, Pard: Is there any injury to me you couldn’t fix?”
(“I can think of zillions. Can’t do much about catastrophic injuries, I’m afraid. A hollow-point slug through your heart would cause hemorrhaging from multiple tears I couldn’t stop. Same with a torn aorta. Or a serious brain stem injury. I could go on…”)
“That’s plenty, thank you. You’re saying I can take a lot of punishment but I’m not invincible. So, if I’m reasonably careful, I can expect a long life?”
(“A very long life. In fact I don’t see any reason for you to die at all. Or even get old, for that matter.”)
She bolted upright. “Whoa-whoa-whoa! What? You’re saying I’m immortal?”
(“I’d prefer a different pronoun: We are immortal—as immortal as we want to be.”)
“I don’t believe it.”
(“What you believe is irrelevant. I’m going to keep you alive for a long, long time, Daley.”)
“But how?”
(“Maintenance—constant maintenance. Remember: I’m conscious down to the subcellular level. I keep an eye on things. I keep your arteries clean, maintain the organs and tissues, replace damaged or dying cells. I’m in the process of lengthening all your telomeres to keep your cells from aging.”)
Daley was still having trouble buying into this.
“Where’s the catch?
(“No catch. While you live, I live, and I’ve grown rather fond of living.”)
“Still…”
(“Juana told you the old Cahuilla saying about alarets’ victims: ‘Of a thousand struck down, nine hundred and ninety-nine will die.’ You might take that to mean that one won’t die. Ever. You’re that one.”)
Daley flopped back to stare at the ceiling again. Her life seemed to be coming apart at the seams. Everything had seemed so much simpler when she’d gone to bed last night. Now …
“This is going to take some getting used to.”
(“Take your time. You have plenty of it.”)
“Ha. Ha. But if you’re right, I guess there’s no hurry to do anything. Except maybe find out if someone sent Karma after me.”
(“I don’t see any love lost between you and Elis Pendry.”)
“Well, yeah, he’s not a warm cuddly type, but what motive could he have?”
(“His son has a crush on you.”)
“You think he kills every non-clan woman Rhys takes a shine to?”
(“Well, no. But if someone was indeed behind the attack, we have to stay on alert. Or…”)
“Or what?”
(“Get outa Dodge, as they say.”)
That didn’t sit right with Daley. She was getting to like Nespodee Springs.
“That might be good advice if I’d been working a game here, but I’ve been a straight arrow. Not ready to turn tail and run.”
(“Good for you.”)
“And don’t you get the feeling that something’s going on in this town, something bubbling under the surface? Maybe it’s got something to do with that Pendry film. I want to see the rest of it. I mean, what’s on the second disk that needs to be kept secret?”
(“And I’d like to get another look inside a horrors patient. Something going on there too.”)
“Good. We have an agenda.” She closed her eyes. “Now let’s get some sleep. Looks like we’ve got a big week ahead of us.”
THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WORLD
The preponderance of my work deals with a history of the world that remains undiscovered, unexplored, and unknown to most of humanity. Some of this secret history has been revealed in the Adversary Cycle, some in the Repairman Jack novels, and bits and pieces in other, seemingly unconnected works. Taken together, even these millions of words barely scratch the surface of what has been going on behind the scenes, hidden from the workaday world. I’ve listed them below in chronological order. (NB: “Year Zero” is the end of civilization as we know it; “Year Zero Minus One” is the year preceding it, etc.)
Scenes from the Secret History is FREE on Smashwords.
The Past
“Demonsong” (prehistory)*
“The Compendium of Srem” (1498)
“Wardenclyffe” (1903–1906)
“Aryans and Absinthe”* (1923–1924)
Black Wind (1926–1945)
The Keep (1941)
Reborn (February–March 1968)
“Dat Tay Vao”* (March 1968)
Jack: Secret Histories (1983)
Jack: Secret Circles (1983)
Jack: Secret Vengeance (1983)
“Faces”* (1988)
Cold City (1990)
Dark City (1991)
Fear City (1993)
“Fix”** (2004) with Joe Konrath and Ann Voss Peterson
Year Zero Minus Three
Sibs (February)
The Tomb (summer)
“The Barrens”* (ends in September)
“A Day in the Life”+ (October)
“The Long Way Home”+
Legacies (December)
Year Zero Minus Two
“Interlude at Duane’s”+ (April)
Conspiracies (April) (includes “Home Repairs”+)
All the Rage (May) (includes “The Last Rakosh”+)
Hosts (June)
The Haunted Air (August)
Scar-Lip Redux (August)
Gateways (September)
Crisscross (November)
Infernal (December)
Year Zero Minus One
Harbingers (January)
“Infernal Night”** (with Heather Graham)
Bloodline (April)
The Fifth Harmonic (April)
Panacea (April)
The God Gene (May)
By the Sword (May)
Ground Zero (July)
The Touch (ends in August)
The Void Protocol (September)
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium (ends in September)
“Tenants”*
The Last Christmas (December)
Year Zero
“Pelts”*
Reprisal (ends in February)
Fatal Error (February) (includes “The Wringer”+)
Double Threat (February–March)
The Dark at the End (March)
Signalz (
May)
Nightworld (May)
* available in Secret Stories
** available in Other Sandboxes
+ available in Quick Fixes—Tales of Repairman Jack
ALSO BY F. PAUL WILSON
Repairman Jack*
The Tomb
Legacies
Conspiracies
All the Rage
Hosts
The Haunted Air
Scar-Lip Redux (graphic novel)
Gateways
Crisscross
Infernal
Harbingers
Bloodline
By the Sword
Ground Zero
The Last Christmas
Fatal Error
The Dark at the End
Nightworld
Quick Fixes—Tales of Repairman Jack
The Teen Trilogy*
Jack: Secret Histories
Jack: Secret Circles
Jack: Secret Vengeance
The Early Years Trilogy*
Cold City
Dark City
Fear City
The Adversary Cycle*
The Keep
Reborn
The Tomb
The Touch
Reprisal
Signalz
Nightworld
The ICE Trilogy*
Panacea
The God Gene
The Void Protocol
Graphic Novels
The Keep
Scar-Lip Redux
The LaNague Federation
Healer
Wheels within Wheels
An Enemy of the State
Dydeetown World
The Tery
Other Novels
Black Wind*
Sibs*
The Select
Virgin
Implant
Deep as the Marrow
Sims
The Fifth Harmonic*
Midnight Mass
Double Threat
Short Fiction
“The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium”*
“Wardenclyffe”*
Collaborations
Mirage (with Matthew J. Costello)
Nightkill (with Steven Spruill)
Masque (with Matthew J. Costello)
Draculas (with Blake Crouch, J. A. Konrath, & Jeff Strand)
The Proteus Cure (with Tracy L. Carbone)
A Necessary End (with Sarah Pinborough)
“Fix”* (with J. A. Konrath & Ann V. Peterson)
Three Films and a Play (with Matthew J. Costello)