Eric smiled at me. Only Eric would have started making jokes when he knew he was about to be murdered. Only I would have gone along with it. “That’s really thoughtful of you, Dietrich. You would definitely be my kind of guy if I were gay.”
“Any guy that buys you beer would be your kind of guy.”
Eric thought about that. “Hm, maybe, but you’d still be my favorite.”
“What the hell are they doing?” Perry asked Willis. It was a good question. Eric was just being Eric, and I was just trying to enjoy the last moments I had with my best friend before these fuckers killed him. But after everything we’d been through together, we could joke about some really weird shit. Willis just shook his head. “Let’s just hope his personality and memories aren’t restorable.”
And that’s what finally pissed me off. They could have beaten the shit out of us and it wouldn’t have pissed me off as much as Willis McGrath – cocksucker extraordinaire – putting down my best friend; the man who had recognized talent and potential in me at only 18 and led me to a career in something that paid well and I thought would be exciting; who had saved my life and whose life I had saved; who had never once judged me for being a little weird or asocial; who could joke with me about dying; who had kept me company in my Hell of an afterlife after Lottie had died. I glowered at Willis. “He would be lucky to become even half the man Eric is.” Whatever tiny spark of amusement I had found bantering with Eric had been extinguished. I was cold, filled with ice, unfeeling and I wanted them dead.
“Hey Dietrich, remember your question?” Eric asked. Of course I remembered. I never forgot anything.
“Two part answer. One, I sort of meant it. I mean, I care about Lydia, but I did it for you and Lottie, because you’ve both been through more shit than anyone should ever have to live through … or die through … Christ, I don’t even know, this whole thing still fucks with my head. But I want y’all to be happy. And I can’t imagine Lottie getting over the death of Lydia, not entirely, not ever.”
I wished I hadn’t asked. There was no way I was ever getting over the guilt of my best friend being willing to die for my happiness.
“And two, do you remember that time we were in Damascus?”
Maybe it hadn’t been such a stupid question after all. “Yes,” I took my time answering, trying to figure out what about that trip was so significant right now. The most memorable part of that trip to me was that it was in Damascus that I had witnessed a man being tortured with those thin, sharp, flat metal rods. And then I knew. I concentrated on keeping my breathing steady, my heart rate down, to keep myself from perspiring. Given their size, those rods were relatively easy to hide from someone like David, someone who didn’t have professional training like us to look for those kinds of things. And wherever Eric had it hidden, it was accessible behind his back. He was cutting through the zip tie around his wrists. I realized I needed to say something though. These men weren’t professionals, neither of them had had the forethought to sit behind us. I didn’t want either of them to move.
“Damascus was a mess. Hot as Hell. And it took us two weeks to find our target.” I was actually just making shit up. I should have watched more spy movies then I would have known what kind of spy-sounding-words to use to make my story sound more plausible to them. “I remember you hooking up with some journalist.” That part was true. “Shit, Eric, you didn’t get her pregnant, did you? This is kind of extreme to get out of child support.”
“Nah, at least I don’t think so.” We needed to keep the attention on me.
“I tried dates. Found out I don’t like dates. I’m talking about the fruit, obviously.” Also true. Apparently, I’m kind of a picky eater. “We spent a lot of time following people around. And taking turns napping because it is really fucking hot in Syria.” Not true. Except for the part about it being really fucking hot in Syria. “Oh, and I ran into someone from Germany, which kinda pissed you off because you don’t speak much German and couldn’t keep up with our conversation even though we were just BS’ing about politics and shit.” That was sort of true. It had happened but not in Damascus; we had been in Cairo.
“You do have a good memory,” Eric said. Smartass. “But I also figured you wouldn’t let me go off to my death without coming with me, and you’re forgetting one of the most significant things that happened there.” I didn’t look down to see if he had finished cutting through the zip tie, but I didn’t have to. Eric’s hands were free. “I learned how to use these.” He lunged across the table and stabbed Judge Willis McGrath in the throat. Perry Dennison still had a gun, and neither of us had forgotten. My hands were still bound behind my back but my legs were free. I jumped up from the chair I had been sitting in and kicked the gun out of Perry Dennison’s trembling hands, his eyes wide with shock. From behind me, I could feel Eric sawing at the zip tie around my wrists, then felt the snap of the plastic as it came loose. Eric and I were both free.
Eric was on the ground again on top of Willis McGrath, his severed carotid artery wasn’t killing him quickly enough, and Perry was watching me, wide eyed, and the strong odor of urine filled the cabin space around us. Perry Dennison had just pissed himself. I threw myself at him, the force of my elbow shattering into the side of his face, and felt the familiar sensation of bone and cartilage crushing beneath my arm, under the weight of a man who knew how to use his entire body to throw as much force as possible into these blows. That’s why using our fists was avoided when we could; we had far too high a risk of breaking the bones in our own hands.
Blood splattered across the tan-white walls of the interior of the yacht, leaving drops of red dots all the way to the ceiling. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Eric heading toward the stairs. I wanted to call out to him, tell him to wait for me, but I didn’t expect to be much longer. After all, we were in control now, able to work together in that way of ours without speaking, as we so often did, knowing what needed to be done without having to give voice to it or decide who would do what. Eric was going to find David and I would be right behind him.
I turned my full attention back to Perry himself who had just had half of his face broken, shattered, unrecognizable underneath the blood and exposed bone and muscle and tattered skin. He was trying to talk to me. Beg me. He had been willing to kill my best friend so he could sell his body – I could only assume two different payments would have been made, one on both sides - and he thought I was going to have pity on him? Maybe if I had rescued a stranger; maybe if he hadn’t bartered the life of the only person I had ever known that I honestly, truly, idolized. So many maybes. But he had evaluated Eric like a head of cattle, a prized breed and put a price on him, was willing to deprive this world of a man that had helped me learn how to become a man myself. I had never had that in my life before. He wasn’t just my best friend; he was family. The only family I’d had after Lottie died, and these fuckers mocked him. For Perry Dennison, there was no saving himself now.
I stepped over the lifeless body of Willis McGrath and pulled a limp Perry to his feet, slammed him against the wall of the cabin and heard the back of his head hit the wall with a sickening crack. Then just like Jackson, Perry Dennison died of a broken neck.
The motor of the yacht was still running, so I moved cautiously up stairs. I couldn’t hear anything except the motor and the waves hitting the side of the yacht as it continued cruising farther out into the lake. I stepped a little higher, and saw David, his gun pointing at Eric, and Eric, holding a gun pointed back at David. Shit. I was unarmed. Eric had taken the gun Perry had been holding. I held my breath. Eric was a better shot, better able to anticipate any movement of David’s, anything David might be planning or thinking just by watching his eyes. Both of us had been in similar situations before. Eric could get out of this.
But we had never been in this situation on a moving boat before. And no one was driving this yacht anymore. I crept onto the deck as noiselessly as I could, staying as hidden as possible, wondering if I could get to
the controls of the boat without getting myself killed. But I never had a chance to find out. Whether it was something in the water we hadn’t seen because no one was watching the water, or a wave or the universe just fucking with me again, the yacht suddenly jerked, a violent jolt that sent all of us sliding across the deck. David, by pure luck, had been closest to the starboard railing and had something to grab onto. Eric had fallen.
There are so many things that I could have done then, but life is like that I guess. We are cursed with hindsight and forced to examine our mistakes, to wonder what would have happened if we had made different decisions. But sometimes, we don’t have time to think. We don’t have the luxury of examining all of the potential consequences of our actions or even what alternatives we have. We see someone we love in danger, someone we love about to die, and we act. Eric, my best friend, my brother, who was trying to pull his arm around him with the pistol he still held to reach back toward David, was about to die. And so I acted.
He was closer to me than David, so I sprang at him, knocking him out of the way just in time to hear the unmistakable sound of a bullet discharging, feel the searing hot pain ripping into my body, and I was stumbling backward. I only vaguely registered Eric charging David, tackling him to the ground as another shot went off. I don’t know where it went. I was in so much pain. There was so much blood. My hands were covered. I had a flashback to being a three year old child, hurt with a bleeding hand, and going to my mother for comfort, for assurance that everything would be all right. She wouldn’t give it to me then. There was no one to give it to me now.
I was leaning against the port side of the yacht, leaving bloody handprints as I held onto it, trying to stay upright, knowing that if I fell down, if I closed my eyes, I would never open them again. But the blood on the railing made it slippery and I leaned over, I don’t know why; I had the crazy thought that the water would wash away the pain, a baptism, a new beginning, a rebirth. I let myself fall into the water.
Around me, a red cloud began forming, and for a brief moment, I wondered, what is this? It was eerily beautiful, this crimson red mixing with the mud brown water of the lake, swirling around me like I had been trapped in a vortex of colors. Then I remembered. It was me. It was my blood. I was dying. I closed my eyes. Lottie. My love. My world. I had promised her I would come home. I should have never made a promise I couldn’t keep. I was sinking. The pain. So penetrating, so encompassing. Come on, Death. I’ve been waiting for you. For over two years, I’ve been waiting for you. My afterlife is over now. I have been reborn.
EPILOGUE
Lottie collapsed next to me on the living room floor of our new apartment in the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood of Berlin. Her cheeks were flushed and she had strands of wavy brown hair that had escaped from her ponytail framing her face. God, she was so beautiful. We were surrounded by unopened boxes, and I swear, half of them were bookshelves we still had to put together. We had just carried the last of our boxes up four flights of stairs. Lottie put an arm around me and kissed my cheek, my forehead, my lips. She was glowing. “You ok?” She asked me that a lot now.
“I’m fine,” I assured her.
Her hand reached down and lifted my shirt, feeling the smooth white scar where the bullet had entered my abdomen. I think she still expected to wake up and find me bleeding, to find this scar a new wound, to find me dead. I took her hand and brought it to my lips. “Lottie,” I said softly, “I’m fine. Really.” And somehow, I was. I don’t remember anything after passing out in the water of Lake Charles. Nothing: no memories or feelings or sensations, not until I woke up, several days later, in a hospital. St. Elizabeth’s of all places. Eric and Lottie were both with me. Eric had told me if I ever scared him like that again, he was going to kill me himself. Lottie had threatened to disembowel him on the spot if he ever even tried it. And as confused and disoriented as I was, as much pain as I was in trying to recover from a gunshot wound that had nearly killed me, I knew right away that I had survived; that I was still me and just me; that Lottie wasn’t the only one who had been given a second chance.
There were some things I knew without having to be told: Eric had jumped in the water to find me, to save me; Lottie had insisted on being brought to Lake Charles immediately to be with me. And neither of them would have left me. Eric told me it was a pretty dramatic rescue – I was airlifted and everything. I got a lot of blood transfusions, surgery to clean out the wound, but I had apparently been quite lucky. No major organ damage. No sepsis. I mean, I did fall into a lake that’s known for being polluted and all.
They had found Lydia easily by tracking the car. She had been to the hospital several times to check on me but she was anxious to leave Louisiana once and for all; Don had offered to sell his store and move with her. I knew better than to think it was a sexual interest – he thought of Lydia like a daughter and wanted to make sure nothing like this ever happened to her again. And Lottie told me Lydia was overjoyed about the idea of moving out of here with Don to look after her. I’m sure Mark wouldn’t be deterred by distance; wherever they moved, he would find a way to keep seeing her.
And there was one other thing I absolutely knew when I woke up in the hospital several days after being shot and thinking I had died: I could tell by the look on Lottie’s face, that look of such absolute sorrow and heartache and pain, that I was done. I would never work this job again. I would never do this to my Lottie again.
So once I was released from the hospital, we went back to Baton Rouge, and I asked Lottie to move to Berlin with me. This time, it wasn’t an impulsive decision, but one I had been thinking about ever since I woke up in the hospital, realizing I was still alive, I had another chance at life with the woman I had always loved. We had lost each other – twice – and yet, we were still here. I wouldn’t fuck it up again. I would go back to where my story began, back to the city where I had been rejected, where no one had loved me or wanted me, with the woman who had always loved and wanted me since the night we met.
Lottie thought it was one of the best ideas I’d ever had. She didn’t care if I sold used cars or taught physics at a local gymnasium. I had actually decided to go to graduate school. She thought that was the second best idea I’d ever had. So we lay in our new apartment together in Berlin, ready to start our new lives together. I was trying to be judicious with our money now, so while the neighborhood was an upscale one, because I wanted Lottie somewhere safe, the apartment itself was small. But we were together. And God, were we happy. There was actually only one other thing that could have made me any happier.
It wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t much of a gesture at all, actually. But I rolled onto my side to look at her, smoothing those curly strands away from her face, those big hazel eyes so full of love and peace. “Lottie,” I said tenderly, “you told me I would know and I know.” I had her ring in my pocket. “I have always known since the night that I met you that I want you to be my wife. And I knew that night in Baton Rouge when I had to leave you that I wanted it more than ever.” A tear escaped her eye, but I knew what it was for. “Charlotte Theriot Martin, will you marry me?”
Lottie smiled and wrapped her arms around my neck. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Resurrected Series
Book 2: Insurrection, S. M. Schmitz
Book 3: Final Sacrifice, S.M. Schmitz
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Excerpt from Insurrection, book 2 of the Resurrected series
PROLOGUE
Let me tell you an incredible story about my best friend, Dietrich, and his dead fiancée. I know it sounds really morbid and depressing, but she doesn’t stay dead, and that’s why it’s such an incredible story. I met Dietrich and Lottie when they were 18 and those two were always so crazy in love with each other. But when she was 25, she and her best friend were killed in a car accident. Now, let me just say, Dietrich’s like a brother to me – the brother I always wanted beca
use I have three sisters – and the next two years were an absolute Hell for him. I hated seeing him like that. But what I could do? I couldn’t bring her back to life.
So I spent those two years just trying to keep him alive. The first year, there were nights I would refuse to leave his apartment and slept on his couch because I was worried about what he’d do. But most of the time, he threw himself into his job and worked too hard which meant I was working too hard since we were partners. But if it kept him alive, I wasn’t complaining.
Anyway, one day, Dietrich tells me he saw Lottie – two years after she died – and she claimed she was like some kind of fucking alien energy life force or something that had resurrected her body. But wait: it gets weirder. We tracked her down, and it turns out, there was something unique about Lottie’s body that allowed her memories and personality and everything that made her her to be resurrected, too, so she was both Lottie and this other alien woman.
This wasn’t supposed to happen though, and the assholes who run this show – sending these guys over from their planet – are really freaked out by Lottie’s resurrection because they’re worried it’s going to damage their reputation back home. I mean, who wants to wake up as both yourself and someone else? So they wanted her dead.
As long as we were around, these guys couldn’t touch her though, so they did the only other thing they could: they kidnapped her best friend, who had resurrected Lottie’s dead friend’s body. Shit, this is complicated. Dietrich could probably tell this story better than me. So Lydia – the resurrected best friend – was kidnapped and Dietrich and I led a pretty damn heroic rescue, if you ask me. Except Dietrich was shot saving my life. Bastard.
It wasn’t the first time he’d saved my life, but it was the first time he almost died because of it. Do you have any idea what it’s like to see someone you love so much bleeding like that? We were on a yacht on Lake Charles and, goddamn, his blood was everywhere and then he fell over the side and honest to God, I thought I had lost him. I killed the fucker who shot him and jumped in after him, but he was sinking so quickly and that water wasn’t exactly clear. I still don’t know how I found him. Maybe it was luck, or maybe it was God – Dietrich would say luck, he doesn’t believe in God and after everything we’ve been through, I think he’s just being a stubborn ass about it – but somehow, as I was swimming down into that dark brown water, my fingers brushed against him and I was able to pull him up. He barely survived. But he did. He’s one tough son of a bitch.
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