PROLOGUE

The important thing wasn’t how Evan got here, shirtless and blood-spattered in an underground bar, nor why he had half a human ear in his pocket, nor why the heavily perspiring bald bouncer proportioned like the Farnese Atlas seemed determined to twist Evan’s head off his torso. The important thing, given the size of the manhunt massing for him on the streets outside, was what he did with the precious next few seconds.

1

Pale Nothingness

Evan stood where the long dirt road gave over to the desolate heat-miraged loam, staring at the double-wide manufactured home where the man who was presumably his biological father lived, the man Evan had never laid eyes on, the man he had reason to believe was currently inside those four dilapidated walls.

He had the taste of dirt in his mouth, sunbaked Texas mountain laurel. A taste of land foreign to him, the taste of another kind of life.

The taste of poverty was familiar, despite the fact that his own childhood indigence had been of the urban variety. He recognized something here in the cracking cement boards that spoke to drafts, the dimpled roof that let in rain, the pink paint faded to pale nothingness that no one would ever bother to patch. It was the kind of broke that looked right back into you, into your worst parts, and told you that what you saw around you was a precise reflection of just how worthless you were and would always be.

The mailbox spoke to drunkenness and disregard, its wooden post snapped by a wayward bumper.

Parked just beyond, at an arbitrary slant where in an alternate universe a front lawn might live, was a Ford F-150 not unlike Evan’s, except this one was dark blue, with rusting wheel wells and a dent in the right rear fender.

The front door was shut against the sandpaper wind. A black trash bag that had replaced a windowpane thrashed back and forth and then fell still in the heavy heat.

Blooming in his stomach was a kind of dread he’d nearly forgotten, a dread of private stakes and private consequences, of opening a door that could never again be shut.

He stepped up onto the porch, the sagging boards rasping against the soles of his boots.

Once he knocked on that door, he could never undo it.

He searched for his breath, lost it, found it again.

He knocked.

A few seconds’ delay spoke to surprise that an unannounced visitor would trek to this edge of civilization.

And then footsteps, approaching.

2

Same Old, Same Old

The surprising thing about compiling weapons was how fucking expensive it was. You’d think from the lamestream media that any inbred mouth-breathing reprobate desirous of a good rampage could just go assemble a personal armory.

But you gotta save up.

Five hundred and change for a pump shotgun purchased in Texas to avoid registration. Seventy-five bucks for a box of rifled slug cartridges times ten for a case of 250 if you’re lucky enough to find it. Seven hundo for a semiauto shotgun bought at an Arizona gun show. Six fifty for a pistol, thirty bucks for each mag, and a hundred a pop per box of fifty hollow-point cartridges. Another fifty for a cleaning kit and one twenty-five for a supply of high-quality springs. Seventeen hundred fifty bucks for a box magazine–fed 5.56 mm NATO carbine, which he’d just picked up in Reno to circumvent California’s restrictive gun laws. Fifty dollars for each magazine and a grand for one thousand practice-ball rounds. Another two K for a case of a thousand hollow-points, which were harder to find by the day, so by the time you’re done gearing up to protect yourself you coulda bought a time-share in Palm Springs.

Hard to plan for when the only gig you can find is working minimum wage in a fucking warehouse twenty-nine hours a week, one shy of what you need to get health and benefits. The working conditions were for shit, too. Last week a foreman literally suggested they wear adult diapers on shift so they wouldn’t waste time taking bathroom breaks.

American born, raised in the prosperous nineties, now forty-three years old, and this was what Martin Quinn had—twenty-nine hours of work a week and Depends. With no prospect to ever get anything more.

The world had stopped making sense to him.

It used to be that if you busted your hump and kept your head down you could make enough to cover rent and the cable bill and maybe take a girl out for dinner and a movie on the weekend. Used to be that a high-school graduate with some credits at community college could land a job that’d keep him above the poverty line. Used to be employers valued folks who spoke English and bothered to pay for car insurance. Used to be an American could keep his head above water even if he wasn’t trained in the latest computing-whatever or hadn’t inherited Daddy’s business or couldn’t cut the line because of what kind of anatomy he came packaged with or how much pigment he had in his skin. Not that it was a right, but it was a way of life the world he’d been raised in had taught him to expect.

He didn’t have that anymore.

Now he just had resentment.

And fear.

It felt like he couldn’t trust anything anymore. The news was all fucked up and screamy, and the internet was driving everyone insane, and as far as Martin was concerned both political parties could go suck a bag of dicks. Everything felt like guilt, guilt, guilt rammed in his face 24/7. When he was younger and dumber he’d done shit he’d never do now—pinched an ass or used a slur—but that wasn’t who he was now and it felt like the world was just waiting to root out an old grudge and flatten him into all the worst parts of himself he’d ever been. When he turned on the TV, he didn’t recognize any of the actors no more, and the movies were all about lecturing people, and it seemed like every last fool in the world was trying to be an influencer, which as far as he understood meant they had good abs or tits and could make arty-farty photos of themselves with kombucha balanced on their heads while doing yoga poses or fronting like a gangsta. Then there were the other types, the freaks demanding to be celebrated for being fat or having some mental illness or coming from a country somewhere no one had ever heard of. And you couldn’t say what you thought anymore in public, and you weren’t allowed to disagree with people, and you couldn’t use words you’d used your whole life, and even the new words got updated every three minutes. The whole thing was confusing as hell, like walking barefoot through a maze of mousetraps, and if he was honest it made him feel like one of those old-ass Eskimos the tribe just shoves off on an ice floe because they’re useless. Part of him deep down suspected that was the whole point. To show him that his time was over.

When the world shifted this far upside down, it meant it was about to break.

And he was gonna be ready for it.

If anyone came for him or pushed him too far, he’d be ready.

He arrived back at his tiny apartment in Panorama City, the only place he could afford, with a broken air conditioner hanging in the window, dumbbells on the ratty carpet, a pull-up bar across his bedroom doorframe, and two whores who lived next door and kept the walls thumping. The sole decoration in the entire shithole was the Sears photo of him and Maryanne from back in happier days with Joshy propped between them on Martin’s knee, all fat and smiley. Martin had tacked it up by the gooseneck lamp set on the floor next to his mattress so it would be the last thing he’d see every night. A comforting reminder that there’d once been a time when the world had made any kind of sense.

Martin nestled the new 5.56 mm NATO carbine between the shotguns in the rack he kept in the closet. The big gun made him feel safe, protected, like he was still worth something after all.

Even if the world didn’t have plans for him, he had plans for the world.

When he stood up to admire his weapons cache, he didn’t see the feminine figure standing behind him, gripping a belt looped into the shape of a noose.

* * *

Martin Quinn dangled from the convenient pull-up bar, the tips of his Carhartt boots stretching to graze the ground. The stool had already been neatly placed, toppled just out of reach beneath him to the side. For the first few seconds he’d tried to hoist himself up to shake his head loose, but she’d greased the metal pole with petroleum jelly, so it hadn’t been long before his arm muscles gave out. Now his weight sagged, the belt torquing his head to the left.

That always interested Karissa, which way the head tilted in a hanging. It abided by some weird natural law like wishbones and that groundhog in Punxsutawney. Her scorecard showed Left 6, Right 7, so she was pleased to even up the score.

Quinn gurgled a bit, his lower lip wet with drool. His face hadn’t purpled yet but the blood was building up, like he was embarrassed, which he should be since she’d loosed his trousers and tugged them down to his shins.

Karissa preferred not to use guns, because guns could be traced, and she liked to choose different methods to obscure the connection between jobs. Just last month, she’d crossed “fell asleep with a lit cigarette and died in a house fire” off her bingo card when dispensing with a perky accountant with a proclivity for embezzlement. This morning’s gig, autoerotic asphyxiation gone awry, would likewise leave no fingerprints.

Especially once she disposed of Quinn’s arsenal and plugged her USB Rubber Ducky drive into his antique laptop, where it would purge his search memory of anything to do with weapon acquisitions and implant a history of perusing vibrant S&M vids.

It had to go slowly, the strangulation, for the forensics to add up. Karissa needed everything to add up, because when the forensics added up that meant that she had never been here.

She stood before him, arms clasped at the small of her back, observing. It was a rarity in the human experience to watch someone die up close, and for her it held endless anthropological interest, like seeing peregrine falcons mate or an octopus crack a crab apart to get at the meat.

Quinn’s bladder released, sheeting yellow down his bare inner thigh. To no avail his fingernails scrabbled at the edge of the leather band, gouging his throat. He strained to thrust his toes into the carpet and pull another sip of air through his constricted windpipe. His eyes pleaded with her. He made squeaking noises.

People said the weirdest shit before they died. Karissa collected dying words. Mostly folks were scared or regretful. Few were angry or defiant; almost everyone begged. The most common refrain was “Wait.” That always amused her. Wait for what?

Quinn choked some more, his bluing lips trying to shape themselves to say something.

She was curious.

She heeled one of the ten-pound dumbbells off the baseboard and rolled it over toward him. His boots scrabbled for purchase and then found it, buying him a few inches’ lift.

The words came so soft she had to step right up to him. At five foot four, she had to tilt her face up near his, close enough that she could feel his breath against her cheeks. She was flat-chested and tapered, gymnast-strong, and her power caught most everyone, Martin Quinn included, off guard.

He wobbled on his precarious perch, the dumbbell rolling beneath his toes. “… Joshy … tell … wish I … more time with … made it … right … him…”

More of the usual.

Karissa sidled a half step in, catching waves of heat from Quinn’s body and the smell of urine. Their lips, almost close enough to kiss.

She placed the ball of her foot on the dumbbell, rolling it slowly out from under Quinn’s toes. His eyes bulged. A blood vessel had given way, a lightning strike bleeding through the sclera. “… wait,” he creaked, his legs straining to hold the dumbbell underfoot. “… wait…”

Same old, same old, and besides, she had another stop today.

With a brisk nudge of her toe, she pushed the dumbbell free.

Copyright © 2024 by Gregg Hurwitz