Killercon

by William Ollie

  Might’ve been a good thing.

  Sure could have kept them from going on that little joy ride into the trashiest-looking slum Bryan had ever laid eyes on. Damn sure would have been a lot easier on his nerves. The intruder most certainly would have been hauled off to jail.

  Maybe Larry, too, after the cops got a load of what he’d done to the guy.

  No maybe to it.

  Definitely a good thing she didn’t wake up.

  Bryan finally made his way back to the couch, where he sat with his eyes closed, his mind racing through everything he’d been through. If he hadn’t run into Larry this morning, he wouldn’t have found himself in that pool hall, scribbling his name across a hot little chick’s naked breast, would not have been racing the wrong way up the exit ramp. He wouldn’t have felt the bullet pound his headrest, would not have experienced the mind-altering rush of the split-second flip and upside-down bounce of the car, or the exhilaration of knowing they had made it through unscathed. Hell, even the tingle racing up his spine at the whup whup whupping of the helicopter was an experience worth remembering. Who knows, if he hadn’t hooked up with Larry, maybe Carrie wouldn’t have come home ready to fuck his brains out. It might not have been such a snap convincing her that he needed to go to Orlando—she sure seemed all right with it now. He wouldn’t have had that harrowing episode with Larry and the prowler. As horrifying as it had been watching Larry sucker-punch the guy, something deep inside of Bryan liked seeing him crumple to the ground. And make no mistake about it: once Bryan was safe and sound on I-77, he enjoyed the hell out of knowing he had pounded the shit out of that muscle-bound guy back at the intersection.

  No doubt about it, if he hadn’t run into Larry this morning, he would’ve missed out on… the most exciting day of his life.

  Who knows, maybe after everything had died down, he could turn it into a book, a hair-raising, action/suspense yarn, a day-in-the-life tale of explosive situations littered with sudden violence. All he had to do was change the names and figure out an ending.

  Bryan hadn’t been far off the mark. He didn’t get much sleep after dropping Larry at his house. He finally left the couch and crawled into bed about four-thirty in the morning. His head hit the pillow, his eyes drifted shut, and sleep found him. The next thing he knew the alarm went off and Carrie popped up out of bed. While Carrie showered, Bryan stayed put. His eyes were burning. He wanted to close them and keep them closed, but he always got up and saw Carrie off to work, so he forced himself out of bed. He was standing bleary-eyed in the kitchen, pouring cups of coffee when Carrie came whistling into the room. His coffee stayed on the kitchen counter while Carrie sipped hers, and filched a breakfast bar from the pantry. Then it was their regular morning routine of a kiss at the front door, Bryan following her across the yard and grabbing the morning paper; Carrie waving goodbye while Bryan headed back inside.

  He slid the plastic sleeve off the Charlotte Observer. Tossing the paper onto the coffee table on his way to the bedroom, he didn’t even notice the aerial shot of yesterday’s wreckage on I-77.

  But he sure noticed it after he climbed out of bed and showered and dressed—four hours later. He noticed something else when he scooped up the front section of the paper and looked out his living room window, too: a news van parked in Larry’s driveway.

  “What the hell,” he muttered, one hand on the paper, the other pulling the slightly parted curtain a little wider, Bryan staring across at the WCNC logo decorating the rear of the van parked alongside the hedges by Larry’s porch.

  What are they doing there?

  He looked back at the paper, and sure enough, there was the Z-car and a mangled Toyota, flat as a pancake upside down in the ditch. Big as life was the burning G.T.O. and the front of the eighteen-wheeler it had played chicken with. He looked closer at the shadowed outlines behind the Z-car’s cracked, spider-webbed windshield, at Snake lying a few yards in front of the vehicle. At the inch-high bold black lettering heralding the accident.

  Bryan rolled the pages into a tight cone, tapping them against his thigh as he looked out the window. There it was. Of course. They had run the tags and registration, tracked Larry down via his car. And now what was he doing? Surely to God he wasn’t stupid enough to talk to them, not after what they had done last night. But there they were, plain as day. And deep down inside, Bryan knew that Larry was crazy enough to do anything, to say anything. Because if he had a lick of sense he wouldn’t have let them in the house to begin with.

  Larry’s front door swung open and a bearded man with shoulder-length black hair stepped out onto the porch. Dressed in a grey polo shirt, jeans and a tan jacket, he was smiling and nodding his head, walking in front of a woman, carrying a small handheld camera by his side. The woman had on a dark sweater, a matching skirt and black shoes. Chestnut brown hair fell in waves across her shoulders as the door shut and they both looked across at Bryan’s house.

  “Aw, shit,” Bryan said, and took a step back. The curtains fell closed, but he could still see them through a small crack where the fabric came together. They were walking toward the van, but they didn’t stop there. They kept going, to the end of the driveway, where they paused for a moment. The telephone rang, and rang again. Bryan hurried to the end table, snatching up the receiver in the middle of the third ring.

  As soon as the receiver touched his ear, he heard, “Dude, look out the living room window!”

  “Larry, the fuck are you doing?”

  “Look out the window!”

  “I’ve been looking. The hell’re you doing? Are you crazy?”

  “They wanta interview you, Dude. They almost shit when I told ‘em who you are.”

  “God damn it, Larry. We should be lying low after what we did last night—”

  “What? What’d we do?”

  “—not drawing attention to ourselves. Definitely not plastering our faces all over the fucking television!”

  “Dude, calm down before you bust a nut.”

  “You know what, Larry. You’re the only person I know who can be a dumbass and a smartass all at the same time.”

  “Would you relax? Nobody but you and me and that beat-to-hell piece of shit prowler knows what happened last night, and he’s not likely to tell anybody. Dude, what’s wrong with a little free publicity? You should’ve seen them when I showed ‘em your book.”

  Bryan smiled.

  The doorbell rang and he froze.

  “Look, I told ‘em the same thing I told the cops: we were cruising down the road, minding our own business when the Goat cut us off. One thing led to another and that crazy bunch of hoodlums sideswiped us and chased us up I-77.”

  “Hoodlums? You actually said hoodlums?”

  Larry laughed. “Yeah, nice touch, huh?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  He laughed again. “Yeah, so you keep telling me. Look, just stick with the party line and enjoy yourself. And don’t forget to tell them about the busted beer bottle, ‘cause I already mentioned it.”

  The doorbell rang again, and Bryan said, “Bye.”

  “Hey, feel free to make up some shit to make us look good. After all, you are a writer.”

  “Bye,” Bryan said.

  “Dude, you’re a celebrity, now. Every book store in North Carolina’ll sell outa your shit off this deal.”

  “Bye,” he said again, and then hung up the phone and headed for the front door.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  He would never understand it, not if he lived to be a hundred years old would he understand where the hell he had gone wrong, how he could have written over forty novels and still be living in abject poverty. If it wasn’t for his beloved wife, he’d probably be living under an overpass somewhere—would be living under an overpass, with the bums and the crazies and all the other misfortunate souls of the world. And what a sad and depressing story that would be.

  It had all started out so promising for Rick, who had penned a novel at the ripe young age of nine
teen. Penned and sold a novel. To Bantam books. Hit the jackpot, cleared the bases with a horror author’s equivalent of a grand slam homer his first time up to bat. He went on to write the most talked about vampire book of the last twenty years, more popular amongst the hardcore horror crowd than even Salem’s Lot. Everything was falling into place for the young author who had staked out his own piece of the literary world. But then out of nowhere that real estate became his own little corner of Hell, where budding geniuses become flash-in-the-pan-has-beens nobody would touch with a ten-foot pole. It wasn’t Rick’s fault some pencil pusher at Bantam had made a colossal gaffe, a clerical error that resulted in barely enough copies of Chained being printed to cover Rick’s five-thousand dollar advance, much less to make a profit. It wasn’t Rick’s fault some pinhead at the top of that high and mighty conglomerate said ‘Fuck it, cut our losses’, and jettisoned Rick out on the flat of his ass, never to reach those lofty heights again. None of it was his fault. Sure, he’d screamed and cussed, pointed fingers and shaken an angry fist in his editor’s face. But none of that mattered, not really. They would have canned his ass anyway, to cover their asses. Big deal, he’d thought. So what? Plenty of fish in the sea for Rick Greaton, boy-wonder of the dark and dismal world of horror fiction. He was the one who had set the genre on its ear. He was the one nominated for Stoker awards two years running. All he had to do was cross the street and offer his talents to someone who would appreciate them.

  But no one would touch him. It was as if he had been tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail, blackballed for something he had absolutely no control over. Through no fault of his own, Rick had become a despised pariah, doomed to wander the outskirts of big-time publishing houses, his grimy nose pressed against those polished glass windows like a poor unfortunate street urchin begging for crusts of bread. While others came and went—anonymous one-hit wonders who found mass market exposure in brick and mortar bookstores across the land, and just as quickly disappeared from the scene—Rick plied his trade in the small presses of the world. Because he was a writer, and writing was the only thing he had ever done, the only thing he knew how to do, he piled up manuscript after manuscript, his writing growing like a living being, singing and soaring across the page.

  He was second to none and he knew it, and the knowing of it sent him spiraling into a deep depression, where the only solace to be found was at the liquor store, or in a handful of pills. During the day, Rick would sit at the computer, staring at a blank page with a bottle wrapped in his fist. Often times he would gaze at the monitor, mindlessly surfing the Web while the afternoon passed him by. At his lowest points, he would ramble on in chat rooms about how it had all unraveled for him. He drugged and he drank. Late at night while his wife slept, he crawled out of his bottle to write—because no matter what he did to himself, he was still a writer, and that skill never left him. Years went by, and Rick spent his time churning out novel after novel. He jumped genres, cranking out an action and suspense tale that would put him back on the map. It was his best work by far, and he sat back and waited for his invitation to rejoin the party. But no one read it. No one bought his masterpiece, and Rick was reduced to hawking it in chat rooms and message boards across the Internet. And now, twenty years after the boy-genius had exploded onto the scene, he was still waiting—hat in trembling hand—for someone from on high to bring him back into the fold, for one more chance at the big time he so richly deserved.

  Rick fingered an empty envelope. It had arrived in the mail two days ago holding a round trip ticket to Orlando, Florida inside it, six one-hundred-dollar bills, and a note that read Come to Horrorcon…your talent demands it. Your fans demand it! See you there!

  No signature. No return address.

  Rick had felt like a colossal ass for the entry he’d posted on the Horrorfan message board, but he was only being truthful when he replied to Scary Mary asking if he was coming to the convention, that the only way he would make it was if a ticket and hotel reservations showed up in the mail. He never dreamed it would happen, but there it was, staring him right in the face.

  Rick smiled, because things were looking up. He had a manuscript being considered at a mass market publishing house, had just received an invitation to submit another to a small press publisher. A fan had sent him the means to attend a horror convention being held on Halloween weekend, and God knew that was just what he needed to lift him out of the doldrums he’d been swimming in lately. It was a long way from the coastal range of northern California, and Rick had all but decided to cash in the ticket and pocket the money—they sure as hell could have used it. But Helen, as wonderfully supportive as she was, would not allow it. Dismissing the idea as idiotic, and a slap in the face of whoever had sent it along in the first place, she demanded that he make good use of the ticket. And that was exactly what Rick planned on doing.

  He tossed the envelope onto the coffee table, beside the ticket and cash. It would be good to see old friends—rivals, too: like that pompous-assed Greystone, who didn’t seem capable of a misstep, despite the fact that he kept writing the same goddamn ghost story over and over and over again. Too bad that whining hack didn’t just drop dead and make room for somebody else.

  Too bad Rick couldn’t help him along.

  Aw, hell. Who knows? Rick thought. Maybe the prick has something there. Give ‘em what they want and cash the check. Sure as hell seemed to be working for Greystone, whose fat face could be found at every Books A Million and Barnes and Noble Rick had ever been in. But the great ones never stooped to that level, and neither would Rick.

  At his desk in the bedroom he had long ago claimed for his writing room, Rick started a message on the Horrorfan board: I’m in! he typed into the message header. Hope to see you in Orlando! he typed in the body. After completing the posting process, he scanned through previous entries and saw one from Graham Greystone: Orlando or bust! Rick scrolled down to Scary Mary’s post and clicked through his reply, which didn’t seem quite so embarrassing now that the ticket was in hand. It wasn’t like he had gone begging, no matter what some snarky bastard had implied lower in the thread. Rick had simply stated a fact. By the time he stood up, he had actually convinced himself that he deserved the ticket. He made his way to the hall closet, opened the door and retrieved his suitcase. The luggage, which fit snug in his hand, felt good, because it gave substance to the idea that he was actually going somewhere. When he walked down the hallway to his bedroom, and packed some clothes inside it, he felt even better.

  Rick closed the suitcase, zippered it shut and walked the length of the house. In the kitchen, he started a pot of coffee brewing.

  The plane would be leaving Sacramento at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.

  And Rick could hardly wait to get on it.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The interview turned out much better than Bryan had anticipated. After allowing Pamela Martin and her cameraman into the house, Bryan gathered up a few of his novels and placed them on the coffee table. Pamela, courteous and attentive, had an air of professionalism about her that did not wane the whole time she was with him. Her smile was pleasant and friendly, her face impeccably made up. She started the interview by looking into the camera, and saying, ‘Horror author involved in real life nightmare on I-77.’

  Once the meeting was concluded, she packed away her smile and her microphone, and followed the cameraman back through the front door.

  “Well?” Larry said, moments later when he showed up on Bryan’s porch, grinning from ear to ear while Bryan led him into the living room.

  “Pretty damned cool. I was kind of worried about slipping up or something, but she didn’t even ask how it started, or any of that stuff.”

  “Yeah, she got all she needed about that from me. Don’t worry, I laid it on thick.”

  Larry flopped onto the couch, and Bryan sat in the chair opposite him.

  “I was surprised,” Bryan said. “She seemed more interested in playing up the ho
liday angle. Asked about my books, how I got started. What I was doing for Halloween. Wanted to know if I’d be available for the channel 6 Saturday morning show this weekend.”

  “Holy shit, Dude.”

  “Well, we’ll be in Orlando, Saturday, but it’s still pretty damned awesome. I mean, I can’t be there this weekend, so she gave me a card and told me to call her when I got back. Said she’d get me on later in the year.”

  Grinning, nodding his head, Larry said, “I told you. Didn’t I tell you? Bet you’re glad you listened, now, huh?”

  “I gotta give it to you, man. You were right. It was a good move, publicity-wise.”

  “Pretty good move, pussy-wise, too.”

  Bryan huffed out a laugh. “You’re nuts,” he said.

  “And to think, you didn’t even want that fine lookin’ babe coming over.”

  “Boy, she’s hot, isn’t she?”

  “Hot ain’t the word for it. That’s Playboy material there, son. Penthouse. I’d give my left nut to see her spread out in a Hustler centerfold. Give my right one to be the guy snapping the pictures.”

  Bryan laughed.

  Larry picked up the newspaper from where Bryan had left it on the coffee table, tossed a couple of sections onto the couch, and said, “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Draw these hot chicks your way?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m serious, Dude. Carrie, Bree, and now the hottest looking babe on TV. I’ve heard about guys like you, but I’ve never seen one up close and personal-like.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re a fucking babe magnet.”