First Thrills

by Lee Child

I didn’t believe what I saw.

  Something. Something like a man.

  I could hear him. I could hear him eating, hear him drinking, human flesh, for he had torn open one of the dock workers, and another lay at his feet, and a woman was torn in half just a few feet away. The creature, the thing on the docks had picked up human beings and ripped into them like a man might tear into ribs at a barbecue.

  I was frozen. Then I came to life. Screaming, I headed for the thing, my father’s very trusty Colt raised high.

  I started shooting.

  It didn’t fall. It did stop eating. The horrible, frenzied slurping sound stopped.

  The thing turned toward me and was staring. Then, with uncanny speed and agility, it was running at me, and running hard.

  I was dead. Worse, I was about to be gnawed to death, ripped in half, my flesh consumed before my heart ceased to beat. I was so horrified that I was barely aware of the sound of the horse’s hoof beats behind me, and I couldn’t even scream when I was swept up off the street, and thrown over the neck of a horse.

  It was then that I heard Brent, who had rescued me from the road, shouting above the sound of screams and terror. “Get into your houses. Get your swords, you have to remove the head . . . swords, people, swords, bullets do nothing, aim to decapitate!”

  He whirled his horse around, and still, so casually rescued and tossed, I could see little. People came to the streets then bearing their infantry and cavalry swords. One fellow had his machete; he had once worked in the sugarcane fields.

  I was righted at last. And I thought he was going to set me upon the ground. He looked at me and then did not. “Sit tight,” he said. He drew his sword and we road hard down the docks, leaping to bit of poor shoreline at the end. I screamed as I saw something rise from the water; Brent did not. He swept his sword out in a mighty arc; the head of the thing went flying, and the body crashed down to the water, lifeless.

  I heard screams of triumph, and knew that the island folk were now holding their own.

  And then, it was over. Brent called out orders, and people started a bonfire, and the stench in the night air grew sickening. As the body parts were collected for the fire—those killed as well as those who had done the killing—I saw that some of the things had been Federal navy. Men from the schooner.

  Daylight came. Exhausted, Brent sat back at the table outside the tavern again. I took the bench opposite him. He looked up at me miserably. “I think it was a girl in Richmond. Johnny was Johnny then. Soldiers on the street were harassing her, calling her a monster. Johnny stopped them, but the next morning, he looked like hell. He told me that she had been a monster.”

  “You still say Johnny did this? The men from schooner did this. I saw their bodies, Brent.”

  “And how do you think they became what they are?” he asked me wearily. “I found a doctor, a surgeon, a man with the Union. That’s when I was captured. He’d seen it before; he was trying to find a cure. I prayed that Johnny would die, or that this man would find the cure. But . . .”

  “I don’t believe you,” I told him. “Johnny didn’t do this.”

  Brent started when we heard shouting again. He jumped to his feet. We ran back to the place where the smell of burning flesh was so terrible now, where the bonfire burned.

  I heard Brent cry out and fall to his knees and I knew why.

  He had found Janey Sue. Her throat had been ripped out; her left cheek was gone entirely.

  I watched as Brent sobbed, and I was too numb to find tears myself for the girl who had been my best friend throughout the long years of the war.

  Brent stood, ordering that she be burned like the rest. I set my hand on his shoulder. “Brent, you can bury her—”

  He swung on me. “No, don’t you understand yet? Johnny is—he’s a zombie. And everyone he touches becomes the same.”

  I pushed away from him, still refusing to believe. “Stop it, Brent, stop it! Johnny would never, ever, in a thousand years, have hurt his sister.”

  It was daylight. I could no longer bear the horrid odor that rose to the fresh summer sky, or the sight of the bodies. I ran back to my house.

  A few hours later, I decided that I was leaving. I would find my father. I would take one of the little sailboats, and if there was no wind that day, I would row. I was going in to Charleston.

  The sun was falling; it was the perfect time to start the long journey. Night would save me from the heat, and the light house would guide me. At first, my plan was perfect. I caught a bit of a breeze, and the darkness fell, but the air was balmy and I was fine. Then, I felt the first thump against the boat. Then another.

  And, in that balmy breeze, with the sea so gentle and the stars blazing in the sky above, the thing crawled aboard. It was Johnny. For a moment, his eyes were dull and dead. He came toward me and I scrambled swiftly, ready to leap overboard. He caught my shoulders, his strength incredible. He opened his mouth, aiming for my throat.

  Then he paused. To my astonishment, tears came to his dead eyes. “I don’t want to, I don’t want to, oh, God, I remember you . . .”

  “Johnny, let me go, for the love of God, Johnny,” I begged.

  I felt the boat bump again.

  Rescue, I thought, somehow, rescue.

  Johnny jerked around. I looked past him.

  It was another of the things.

  I looked hard. My heart sank. It was one of them.

  And it was my father.

  He leaped at Johnny, rocking the small boat precariously, and I thought he had come to save me. But he wrenched Johnny from me, and then, I saw his eyes.

  Dead eyes. Once, a dancing brown shade. Now, dead.

  “Father, no!” I screamed in terror and misery. But he would have bitten down upon me, ripping and tearing, if Johnny hadn’t pulled him away. Johnny was still crying, and suddenly, my father was crying, too. But still, they weren’t battling to save me.

  They were fighting over their prey.

  I was desperate. I leaped off the small boat, though I knew that they could swim. I tried freeing myself from my cumbersome skirt and boots while they fought, unaware that I was gone. Then I set out for the island. I was a good swimmer, but still, I had come far from shore.

  I was crying myself, gulping too much water, fighting the numbness of terror. I had left the island, and I had done so with the Colt, but little good that did me now. I’d never had a sword, nor had my father. I had to pray that I could swim hard enough, fast enough.

  My exhausted limbs could barely continue moving, but I began to believe that I might make it.

  Then, I felt the tug upon my ankle. And gasping for air, I went down. In the dark, murky seawater, I could barely see. But it was Johnny. Dead eyes blank, wide open, blank. No more tears. No sign of life or memory.

  He took my shoulders. I was done in. I closed my eyes; he would rip out my throat. It wouldn’t last long.

  But I was ripped away from him. No matter; hope didn’t even float in my soul. It would be my father, claiming his portion of the kill.

  But I wasn’t ripped to shreds. I was tossed back. I fell hard and realized I was almost on the little patch of beach south of the harbor area. I could stand, and I staggered to my feet. Then I saw Brent. He swung his sword, and Johnny’s head was swiftly severed from his body, and lost to the waves. The headless body stood for a minute, then fell. Brent turned to me. He shouted, and lifted his sword. I thought he meant to kill me; that he believed that I had been bitten, infected, and that he meant to kill me, as well. But he strode past me.

  “Don’t look, Jules, don’t look!” he shouted.

  I didn’t. I winced. I heard the plop of the head, and then the splash of the body, and I knew that my father was at peace as well.

  Soaking, Brent and I staggered from the water together.

  “I told you,” he said sadly. “Something wasn’t right with Johnny.”

  Federal troops came the next day; the incident was quickly over. At that point in histor
y, none of us had the energy to argue much when the murders on Douglas Island were blamed upon the horror and stress of war.

  Brent and I left soon after. We are a strange couple, but we do well enough. We manage in life, and like other couples, we sleep together at night.

  Unlike other couples, we both sleep with swords at our sides. Johnny is at rest. But God knows who else might come marching home.

  *

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author HEATHER GRAHAM was born somewhere in Europe and kidnapped by gypsies when she was a small child. She went on to join the Romanian circus as a trapeze artist and lion tamer. When the circus came to South Florida, she stayed, discovering that she preferred to be a shark-and gator-trainer.

  Not really.

  Heather is the child of Scottish and Irish immigrants who met and married in Chicago, and moved to South Florida, where she has spent her life. She majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. After a stint of several years in dinner theater, backup vocals, and bartending, she stayed home after the birth of her third child and began to write. She has written over 150 novels and novellas, including category, suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult, horror, and Christmas family fare.

  She is pleased to have been published in approximately twenty-five languages, and has had over seventy-five million books in print, and is grateful every day of her life that she writes for a living.

  REBECCA CANTRELL

  Joachim Rosen shifted on the wooden bench. He was lucky to have a seat at all. Most prisoners had to lean against the sides of the train car or sit on the floor.

  He pulled his tattered striped jacket closer around himself, folding his arms over the bright yellow triangle. Despite the afternoon sun, he shivered, but the presence of the man leaning against the side of the car next to him weighed more heavily on his mind than the cold. He looked familiar, and he did not want to meet anyone from his old life.

  Out of the corner of his eye Joachim noticed the man’s pink triangle. The familiar face belonged to a homosexual. He avoided the man’s gaze.

  “I know you from before.” The man pursed his lips.

  Joachim tensed, but ignored him.

  The man inhaled slowly. “I’m Herman Schmidt. We met at El Dorado on the Motz Strasse, in Berlin. Ernst Vogel was scheduled to sing. Remember?”

  “No.” Joachim watched the white puff of air that accompanied the word. “Never been to Berlin, except to get to Oranienburg.” He glanced around the car. Had he told anyone of his shop in Berlin?

  Herman stared at Joachim’s yellow triangle. “I didn’t realize you were Jewish.”

  He straightened on the bench. “Always was.”

  “Being different didn’t used to be so difficult.”

  Both sat silently. Joachim listened to the clatter of the train’s wheels and the high scream of the wind. The metal door clanked against the side of the car. Perhaps it had fallen off once and been refastened too loosely. Through the high window fragile black limbs of bare winter trees appeared and disappeared, each tree a sign that they were one step closer to their final destination.

  “My name was in someone’s address book.” Herman’s voice cut through the wind. “Some imbeciles didn’t even know enough to throw them away.”

  Joachim flinched. If informers heard Herman, it could cost Joachim his life. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m certain you don’t,” Herman said sarcastically. “Where are we going?”

  He lied. “Don’t know. Another camp. They’re all the same.”

  Herman picked at his ragged cuticles. “I’ve never been to a camp. What are they like?”

  Joachim looked at him for the first time. Herman suddenly seemed plump and healthy in the clear, cold afternoon light stabbing through the window. “Bad. For you, even worse.”

  Herman pointed to his pink triangle. “Because of this?”

  “It’s the worst kind to have.” Joachim glanced involuntarily down the car at the bowed, bald heads of the other prisoners. No one paid them attention.

  “You’ve been very careful, I see.” Herman twisted the right corner of his mouth into a smile.

  “I’m here because I’m Jewish.”

  Herman studied his face. “We could jump the guards when they stop the train. I’m still strong.”

  The man on Joachim’s right shifted on the bench. Joachim froze. What if he overheard them?

  “They have guns,” Joachim whispered. “I’ve never seen anyone escape like that. But I’ve seen men die trying. It’s reckless.”

  Herman sighed. “I was never very good at being careful.”

  Joachim stared blankly at the sliding door in front of him. Rust had bled deep lines into the metal. Loneliness howled through him like the wind through the open door. “I’ve always been good at it.”

  Herman ran his palms along his cheeks, as if he just woke. “Good at what?”

  “Being careful.”

  Herman slid to a sitting position with his back to the door and wrinkled his nose. The smell of so many unwashed men crowded into the car obviously bothered him.

  “It’s not a simple thing to do,” Joachim said.

  Herman embraced his round knees. “I should be in Berlin. Studying for my degree in engineering or reading the paper and thanking the Führer for ridding the country of vermin like you. Of vermin like me.”

  Joachim scratched a flea bite on his shrunken calf. It itched, but he tried not to think about it.

  “Then I’d have dinner with my landlady, Frau Biedekin. She’s an exquisite cook. We’d have potatoes, smothered with butter. We’d have sauerbraten, since today is Sunday. For dessert, let’s see—”

  Joachim’s stomach clamped into a tight knot. “Stop it!”

  Herman snorted. “Is it more than you can stomach?”

  Joachim glared at him until Herman stopped laughing.

  “That’s the only way you’ll get it,” Herman said. “By dreaming.”

  “Dreaming is not,” Joachim hesitated, searching for the right word, “careful.”

  “I believe I mentioned that I was no good at being careful.”

  Joachim shrugged, the coarse material of his jacket scraping across his shoulders. “Dream, then. Just quietly.”

  “If you can’t escape from them in dreams, they’ve defeated you.”

  “What do you know? You’ve never even been to a camp,” Joachim said. “Tell me about dreams in a month, friend.”

  “If I can’t tell you about dreams then, I hope to have the sense to end it.”

  Joachim drew in a sharp breath.

  “Life,” Herman said as he stood, “is more than mere survival.”

  Joachim shook his head. “Not right now.”

  “No!” Herman’s voice echoed off the sides of the car. Several prisoners swiveled their heads toward him. No one spoke.

  Joachim pretended to be asleep. He sat with his chin against his chest, swaying with the movement of the train, listening to the wind whine, and watching shadows cast inside the car by passing trees.

  “You know it’s about more than simple survival,” Herman finally whispered at Joachim. “You were in Berlin with us. You remember good food and love and music and dance.”

  Joachim gripped his bony knees, knuckles whitening. “I wasn’t there.”

  Herman studied Joachim. “Do you want to know what became of the rest of the group? Francis? Ernst? Kurt?”

  Joachim inhaled. One, two, three times. “I don’t know any Francis or Ernst or Kurt.”

  Herman stared at his own soft hands. “Not even Kurt? Everyone knows Kurt, even the Gestapo. They got my name from his address book. I’m surprised yours wasn’t in there, too.”

  A hot pain stabbed Joachim’s neck. Relax, he ordered himself.

  “I saw you together.” Herman pointed a pudgy finger at him. “Everyone was together with Kurt.”

  He concentrated on relaxing his muscles, despite the col
d and Herman’s voice.

  “Remember how graceful Kurt was?” Herman’s hands sketched arcs in the air. “He should have been a dancer, not a soldier. He flowed when he moved, like a cat.”

  Joachim clenched his right fist, the one that Herman could not see. “I don’t know any Kurt,” he answered in a level voice.

  “That wasn’t you holding his hand at El Dorado that February? Or was it Silhouette? One of those clubs. Weren’t they wonderful? And the pianos. I love piano music, although I never learned to play myself.”

  Joachim said nothing. His mother had forced him to practice two hours a day.

  “It’s a wonderful thing to make beautiful sounds with your fingers.”

  Joachim shifted his gaze to the floor; the slats were coated with about a centimeter of freezing mud and crisscrossed with ridges created by his shoes. “It would do you no good now.”

  “Just knowing would be enough.” Herman scratched his back against the door. “I could play the songs in my head and beat time on the ground.”

  Joachim wanted to warn him. “Will that help when you’re hungry? Or tired? Or cold?”

  Herman nodded. “If I can feel the music, I won’t think about my stomach, or my body.”

  Joachim pulled his arms tighter around himself. His elbows cut into his hands, almost numbing them. “You will.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You’ve never been there.” Joachim crossed his legs, savoring the thin ribbon of warmth where his right leg lay on top of his left. “You can’t know.”

  “I don’t need to know what it’s like there to know myself.”

  “You won’t last long. Your kind never does.”

  “Is that why you’re afraid that the people here will recognize you? Are you afraid they’ll realize your triangle should be as pink as mine?”

  Joachim prayed that the man on his right slept. That everyone in his end of the car slept. “No, it shouldn’t. I’m Jewish, but I’m no fag.” He stressed “fag,” trying to make it sound hard and ugly.

  “Wasn’t Kurt the most exquisite fag?” Herman’s voice caressed the word. “But not after the Gestapo was through with him.”