Martin squatted down so he was eye to eye with Jonah.
“I want...” the boy began, then paused. Hesitated. Came to a conclusion, then restarted. “I want you to tell me what Ben did.”
Jonah blinked. He blinked again.
What?
Martin continued, calmly, coolly, but with increasing ardor. “Tell me what this man did to you. To your family, to your friends, to whoever it was he hurt. Tell me what he did that messed you up so badly that you’re willing to kill living people to protect an undead monster. Tell me what was so awful that you have to keep him undead. Tell me that and I’ll turn you loose right now.”
The old scene immediately replayed itself in Jonah’s mind. It always came too quickly, too easily; at the slightest mention, the slightest memory, the slightest scent, it flooded through him, unbidden. He hated it. He hated Martin for making him think about it. He always strove, and failed, to hold that memory at bay.
It began with Jonah running from a zombie and tripping over a root. A root, of all the stupid, clichéd ways to die.
He was about to be eaten. About to be consumed. Turned into one of the undead himself.
Until Ben pushed Emily and Hannah into the creature’s arms. Just shoved them, without a moment’s thought or hesitation.
“You’re worth more to me than the two of them put together,” Ben had said afterward, as Jonah wept for the last time in his life. “I need you to help keep me alive.”
That was the moment Jonah had vowed to do exactly that. No matter what.
Ben was disgusted by zombies more than he feared them. Every time he so much as looked at one you’d have thought he’d just been force-fed a rotted fish. So holding Ben down while a zombie chewed him into a state of undeath, and then focusing on keeping him that way no matter the cost—that had been had been all Jonah could think to do to bury the guilt he felt for living. For surviving instead of his wife and daughter.
He was alive because they had died, when it was supposed to be the other way around. He was supposed to protect them, defend them with his life.
Just thinking about it hurt more than words could express. Saying it out loud...
Saying it...
Saying it wasn’t going to happen. Not now, not ever.
Jonah said quietly, “I thought you were going to ask me to kill him. Put a bullet in his brain.”
“Oh, I will. Eventually.” Martin was still squatting in front of Jonah.
“What difference does it make what he did?”
“It makes all the difference in the world, because it gets it out of your system. As long as this stays bottled up inside of you, it owns you. You’ll never be free of it until you set it free. Set it free, Jonah.”
Jonah stared dumbly at Martin. He had been right when he first woke up under this bare light bulb and deduced that there must be an exceptionally insightful leader in this camp. He had just had no idea the extent to which it would prove to be true.
Jonah said, “Let me shoot him first. Then I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Martin leaned back on his heels. “Why in the world would I put a gun in your hands?”
Jonah stared, looking beyond the walls and cans and the bare bulb, just to the left of infinity. Then he did the hardest thing he had done in four years: he pictured Emily. He pictured Hannah. Not being torn apart by a zombie. No. He envisioned them smiling, their faces lit from above by golden beams of sunlight. It was beautiful.
He let a tear fall from his eye. Just one. He didn’t want to overdo it.
Then he pushed the image away.
“Killing Ben is the only way I can talk about this. I won’t do it in front of him.” He gestured with his chin to Ben, who had gone quiet in his tiny cage. “Not in front of him.”
Martin rose, looking down on Jonah for a moment. “All right. We’ll try it your way. If I’ve learned nothing else in the past few years, I’ve learned to be flexible. “He fished in his jacket’s outermost pocket and produced a Bowie knife, flicked it twice, and just like that Jonah’s arms were free. Martin knelt down and repeated the process on the ropes around Jonah’s legs.
Jonah waited patiently, moving slowly so as not to startle anyone, especially the guard, who was waiting a few paces away, revolver pointed at Jonah’s chest. His arms and legs tingled as blood flowed back into them.
Martin stepped back and held his hand out to the guard. “Give me the gun,” he ordered.
“I don’t like this,” the guard replied. “No sir.”
Martin turned on him with the speed of a cobra, snapping venomously, “I don’t give a shit what you like. Give me the gun!”
The guard eyed him severely but turned the butt of the revolver around and handed it over.
Martin grabbed it by the black barrel, pivoted, and handed it to Jonah. “One shot,” he said. “No need to waste ammo.” He gave a half-smile and stepped back to the edge of the room, tuna fish peering over his shoulder from the cans stacked behind him.
Jonah nodded, taking the revolver. He laid his finger on the trigger and considered bringing another tear to his eye. He decided against it. He didn’t want this to look contrived.
With the tip of the barrel between the bars, he raised the muzzle of the revolver until it was pointed straight at Ben’s forehead. Ben was strangely silent.
Jonah stared into his eyes—
—and pulled the trigger.
Click.
He pulled the trigger again. Again it clicked.
Click, click, click.
Nothing. It was empty. As he had known all along.
Martin crossed the room, put his hand on the revolver, and eased it down, away from the cage, away from Ben. He moved his hand to Jonah’s shoulder. “It’s empty. I couldn’t take the chance. But now that I know you’re really ready...”
He pulled a bullet out of his pocket and offered it to Jonah—
—which was when Jonah whipped the butt of the revolver around, smashing Martin across the bridge of his nose. The man-boy crumpled to the ground, and even as he fell, Jonah turned and stomped his foot on Martin’s throat. Then he dropped smoothly to one knee, snatched up the boy’s Bowie knife, and threw it at the guard, who was lunging toward him. The knife went into one eye socket and the guard dropped like a leaf in autumn.
It was over in less than ten seconds.
Jonah bent over and picked up the bullet that the man-boy had just offered him, sliding it into the revolver. He put his boot on the boy’s chest and aimed the gun at his head.
“Do you really think I don’t know when my own revolver is unloaded? Are you really stupid enough to bluff me with my own weapon? For a minute there I thought you were smart.”
“I meant every word,” the boy croaked, voice sounding just like his grandfather’s out in the woods. “I need your help. There’s a lot of kids here.”
Jonah was done talking with this buffoon. He was annoying. And to make matters worse, he realized he wasn’t going to get the satisfaction of feeding the guard to Ben. The guard was already dead.
Damn it.
Jonah shot the boy in the pelvis. It was the best way to immobilize without killing. The small room immediately filled with the smell of blood, and from within his cage Ben growled hungrily.
Jonah closed the closet’s metal door and locked it. Then he flicked open the latch that held Ben’s cage shut. Ben could have pushed against it, but he just stood there, watching.
“Why?” came a weak voice from the floor.
Martin had never shouted or screamed when Jonah shot him. He just lay on the floor, legs akimbo, hands clutching the crimson wound.
“Why?” he croaked again, sounding so much like his grandfather.“Why do you hate him so much?”
Jonah eyed him. He cocked his head to one side. The kid’s focus was amazing.
Jonah shook his head, resigned. “I was never getting out of here alive.”
Martin shook his head, rolling it around on the floor. “But we would have accepted you, taken you in. We really do need someone with your skills. All you had to do was tell me what he did.”
Jonah exhaled softly, heavily, longingly, through his nose. “I believe you. I truly do. And I think I could have endured almost anything else. But not that. Not that...”
Jonah looked around at all the cans of food. Through the door came the slapping sounds of running feet. “You’ve got a nice set-up here,” Jonah observed.
Voices shouted from outside the door, demanding that it be opened, calling out, “Robin!”
“It’s not too late for you,” Martin said. “I’ll tell them it was an accident. They’ll believe me. Just tell me what Ben did. I won’t tell another soul, I swear.” He coughed, then repeated, “It’s not too late.”
The boy was bleeding out, getting desperate. But what was killing him wasn’t blood loss; it was not knowing.
If it hadn’t been so tragic, Jonah might have laughed. “Life’s not that tidy. You said so yourself.”
The pounding on the door surged in volume and urgency.
Jonah continued, “Remember earlier, when you told me that you see everything that happens in these woods? Do you hear everything, too? Did you hear me tell your grandfather that I would protect Ben with my last bullet and my last breath? That I would do everything in my power to make sure that Ben’s personal Hell didn’t end one second sooner than absolutely necessary?”
Shots were fired into the metal door. It rang out its old gong song, but it didn’t break.
“It was too late then,” Jonah said. “It was too late for me a long, long time ago.”
The people on the other side of the door changed tactics and began shooting into the wooden frame around the door. Splinters flew throughout the room. That metal door would yield any minute now.
Jonah reached out and swung open the door to Ben’s cage.
“It’s certainly too late now.”
Martin’s hands fell away from his wound, too weak to hold on anymore. There was almost as much blood on the floor as there was left in his body. He said thinly, “You already used your only bullet on me. You’re good, but you won’t last five minutes against them. There are too many.”
Jonah nodded. “Probably. But it’s five more minutes than Ben would have had otherwise. I’ll take it.”
Martin’s fingers clawed at the air, searching for meaning. “I can’t believe you’d rather...die...than...”
Jonah didn’t reply. There was no reply possible.
He moved toward the door.
As he did so, Ben lurched out of the cage. They glanced at each other as they passed, moving in opposite directions, zombie-Ben shambling toward Martin, Jonah striding toward the metal door.
Jonah would hold off the attacking masses as long as he could.
With his last bullet.
With his last breath.
Portrait of the Artist as a Psychopathic Man
Stuart Jaffe
The street behind Max’s Diner reeked of old food and growing up, Father beat me daily because he wanted me to be a great artist. According to him, no great mind, artistic or scientific, ever came from a well-off life. Kids who had no struggles in their lives failed to accomplish anything noteworthy. Not me. Father broke my ribs, burned my skin, starved me for days, locked me in the flooded basement, and forced me to watch him sleep with prostitutes, all in an effort to batter my mind into greatness.
And it worked.
What I'm about to convey to you—the story of my great work—will help you understand my goal in life, and it's important to me that you understand. That way, you won't see me as a babbling lunatic, for which greatness can often be mistaken, nor will you have pity on me. I don't fault Father for what he did and neither should you. His enthusiasm left much to be desired while I endured his training, but the end result cannot be denied—for here I am.
To the story, for that will make things clearer:
His name was Leo, and if truth be told, he looked a little like the famous actor who shared his name. Not that I chose him because of his looks. There's nothing sexual in the work I do. If anything, I chose my subjects because of the way they treated those around them.
Leo was a prick. I had been sitting in a diner for over an hour, nursing my coffee as I searched for the perfect subject. He strutted in with his thin hair hanging over one eye and a cocky grin on his face. Winking at a haggard waitress, Katie, as if all females desired him, he asked for a table and a hot chocolate. I remember that bit well because I nearly coughed up my coffee in a fit of laughter. Hot chocolate? A kid's drink?
Until that day, I had only imagined what this would be like. I have no history of bullying those weaker than me or torturing my pets. I'm not some pathetic victim who perpetrates his disease onto the next generation by abusing and abusing and abusing. No, I understood that if I intended to become the kind of artist I wished to be, the kind I had been raised to be, then it would be foolish to behave as all those before me had. That would be mere imitation. Stars are born by taking the height of an art one step further.
Sitting in that diner, watching Leo burn his tongue on hot chocolate, I worried that he wouldn't measure up. He had promise, yet he seemed to lack the conviction I needed to really make my mark. But I had to start somewhere, and this piece of crap kept begging to be my first.
As fortune would have it, no other qualified candidates entered the diner, so my focus remained on Leo. He snapped his fingers at Katie. When she didn't rush over to him, he tapped his fingers impatiently on the table. And then he made his mark. "I've been waiting ten minutes to place an order."
"I'm sorry, sir. I didn't realize it had been so long."
I checked my watch—only three minutes had passed since she had served him the hot chocolate. It felt like a glorious light from above had singled him out, pointed to him, and said, This is the one. No doubts. I fought down the urge to storm over there and belittle this man, make him see what an ass he had been, make him respect people like Katie—those who spent their days creating the comfortable lives so many take for granted. I had to exercise patience. If I did this right, the world would have one less jerk to deal with.
I'll skip over the next few weeks. While I'm sure you are quite interested in all the careful planning that went into my work, I promise you it isn't nearly as interesting as it sounds. Following this man through his days, noting his patterns of behavior, writing down what he ate for lunch, timing his commute home, was a laborious chore—necessary but monotonous. Frankly, of what use would such information be to you anyway? Unless you harbor a perverted desire to do as I have done. And, if we are to be honest, few exist who have the ability to create like I have.
In the end, I knew Leo's life better than he did. I knew he had no family he kept contact with, he lacked a love life, and he had two good friends—one male, one female. He had a touch of OCD, which helped him in his job as a contract lawyer. Yeah, I was surprised to find out he was a lawyer, too. But that's the way life can be—full of surprises. Point is, I knew the guy.
So, I only had to wait until his Thursday morning jog, which would last twenty-five minutes, to swipe the front door key he kept behind the porcelain frog fountain that no longer spit up water. I unlocked the door, set the key back behind the frog, and entered Leo's home.
The next stage gave me a bit of difficulty in that I wanted to make my entrance into Leo's life memorable. This was the kind of decision I had made many times in my work that separated my art from the drivel so many on Death Row bragged about. It wouldn't be enough t
o simply be sitting at his kitchen table or leap out from behind a door. I needed it to be something that tapped into deep-rooted fear.
I admit I should have chosen this beforehand, but in my defense, I had never been inside Leo's home. While I had options in my mind of what I'd like to do, I couldn't be sure of what would prove most effective until I observed the space in which I would be working.
Leo's house was rather stylish and spacious—hardwood floors, modern furniture, blinding white decor, and a sparse, Japanese approach. The fool probably paid some feng shui guru to come in and act all mystical about where to place a chair. Moron.
A wide staircase with an artsy open side led to the second floor. The bedrooms—all four of them—had thick carpeting and high ceilings. Each room had a queen bed, a dresser, a desk, and a flatscreen television as if they were his personal set of hotel rooms. I wondered what kind of life he lived that he needed so many.
In the weeks I spent following him, I never once got the impression that he lived a strange life. But I had only observed him on the weekdays. Perhaps he threw opulent parties on the weekends that required substantial spare rooms for inebriated guests. That didn't fit with the type of man I had seen so far, but everybody harbors secrets. Perhaps the parties he threw were not the kind one wanted others to know about—deviant sexual extravaganzas that attracted perverted, dysfunctional minds. All the more reason to have chosen Leo as my subject.
I stepped into the master bedroom, an oversized version of the guest rooms, and I knew instantly how I would make my entrance. A short hall connected the bedroom to the private bathroom, and on one side, I saw a sliding, mirrored door leading to a closet. Such a simple idea, yet so perfect. Every child has a fear of what lurks in the closet. People who deny such a thing are liars. Even if you never spent a night cowering under your blanket, peeking over the edge to see what might be looking back at you from the dark recesses between your jackets and shirts, you certainly spent time thinking about it. Besides, Father loved to sneak into my closet while I slept, slip on a hideous Halloween mask, and banshee scream as he jumped out at me. I peed the bed until I was fourteen.
The Big Bad II Page 21