Said Cunning Old Fury

WELP, we did it: Forever Man is done and fully posted, and I hereby release digital versions of the whole damn book for y’all, for free!

Thanks for reading, or at least waiting patiently for this moment when you could read it like a normal book and not wait a week between chapters. I hope it’s worth the journey, either way.

What will show up here on this wee blog in the coming weeks? I don’t know, actually. I mean, no one wants me blogging, for god’s sake. I’ll think of something for you to aggressively ignore, don’t worry. In the mean time: Enjoy this free novel, from my body to your plate.

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Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is FOREVER MAN. Enjoy!

33. This will end badly

This was back before London, when everything was easy.

I wanted so much to surprise her. I’d never been able to. She saw secrets – not always specifics, but she was aware somehow every time I’d tried to keep something from her. In the early goings she’d be moody and unhappy whenever she suspected I was deceiving her, but this changed, and she became more amused by my attempts to keep anything from her.

I’d tried different things. I’d tried thinking of random things while I performed chores and other actions. I’d tried deceiving myself, which was more difficult than I would have expected. But it’s hard to think of other things when buying a ring, some flowers, and making dinner reservations. I thought about nothing else.

When I walked through the door, she was standing in the kitchen, crying, a hand over her mouth.

“Are you sure?” she wailed. “Oh, this will end badly.”

Anna was always saying things like that. She’d lost something in the last year, some element of joy or happiness or hope. She was pretending otherwise, smiling and singing as she used to. But now she always sang the same song, like it was a memorized, perfunctory chore, and she smiled at the wrong times, like it was an automatic, defensive expression. And I was sufficiently pleased with myself to think that asking her to marry me might help.

I fumbled the little box with the ring from my pocket. This was not how I had pictured the proposal, but it felt perfectly natural, as this was the natural rhythm of my relationship with Anna. And I realized I was delighted by this, because I was delighted by her. I was delighted by everything she did, no matter how strange or unexplainable. No matter how infuriating. It was her, and if I didn’t love the things she did and the way she did them, then I was with the wrong person.

She stared at the little box as I opened it up, and then, for one brief moment I knew I’d surprised her. I’d caught her off guard, and she smiled, eyes shining, and started nodding.

“Yes,” she said. “If you can stand it, yes!”

That expression of shock. It was the last new thing I’d ever shown her, the last time she’d been startled, and the last time, I knew now, that she’d had hope. Because if something could still surprise her, then she might turn out to be wrong about everything.

I thought of the Bechels Sphere. I thought of Anna. And I thought, if she’d been surprised, then it was possible to break free.

.o0o.

Texas was holding up well. At the border, walking along Route 90 into Orange, Staties had set up a simple checkpoint where they stopped you, asked a few questions while they performed a thoroughly illegal search of all your possessions. They weren’t too bad, though, and I found it oddly comforting to see cops in the saddle, keeping track of things. I answered their questions; Atelia, as always, said nothing. She’d filled out a little, gained a few pounds, and was starting to look like a normal, healthy young woman.

When I saw her out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Moira.

Orange was depressing. A lot of crumbling little houses without fences, piles of junk in the yards. Big wide highways that had no traffic and empty, abandoned body shop businesses. There were dogs everywhere; a pack of them slowly collected behind us, trailing us, stopping when we stopped with their ears tilted forward, ready to run. A few people peered out at us from behind windows, and sometimes there’d be someone sitting on their front porch or yard, shotgun or automatic rifle across their laps, watching us in silence.

I’d been traveling with Atty for three months, from the rainy, freezing beach we’d tumbled onto all the way to Texas. On that beach, I’d thumbed the remote and the Sphere had disappeared. The Beta was lost; I didn’t even make an attempt to head back to New York. But if I’d understood Bechels – and I was never sure I had – they couldn’t operate it without the remote that had been keyed to it. They could cannibalize it, tear it apart and let smart men and women pore over its innards seeking secrets, but they couldn’t just turn it on.

Bechels had expressed a hope that it would explode when they tried, and take every one of them with it. Considering the collected governments of the world had tried to murder him in the wake of London, I didn’t blame him.

.o0o.

I’d taken Atelia to where Moira still lay, crumpled at the bottom of a latrine pit. The elements had melted her, and something had been at her, tearing her clothes and flesh. She had turned into a swollen mushroom, bursting out of her clothes and being slowly absorbed by the sand. Atty didn’t speak. After saying I’ve seen you. You and I, we go to London she hadn’t spoken once.

She didn’t speak looking down at Moira. Just stared down at her with hard eyes and an almost unreal stillness, shivering, hanging onto me because her legs were too weak to hold her up.

I carried her for the first three weeks.

Standing there, I told her everything I knew. About us, about being Forever, about London and the Sphere and what Jenks had told me about being able to kill me. Kill us. About the Loop. About how someday we would get pulled into the Sphere and we’d have to do it all again. And again. And then I told her about Anna, and the one time I managed to surprise her, and that I didn’t think Jenks and Brusca had been fucking with me. That I thought Jenks really had known how to kill me – to kill us. And that I intended to figure it out and cheat destiny.

That I intended to never go back to London. That I intended to never enter that Sphere and relive it all, and I didn’t give a fuck if it destroyed the whole fucking universe. I would burn it all. I would tear down the world and the sky and all the worlds and skies I couldn’t see if it meant I could finally cross over and see Anna again.

Or see nothing. As long as I didn’t blink and wake up in the Sixth Floor Walkup again, a few months before we jumped.

And then I asked her if she wanted to come with me, to look for the answer, and when we found it we could help each other end it all. Finally make the jump for real.

She stood there staring down at her sister for a few minutes, the wind pushing at her and almost succeeding in knocking her over. And then she looked up at me with those wide, unblinking eyes, and nodded once, and squeezed my hand.

.o0o.

The place was called Spanky’s. It looked trim and neat, and had a bunch of cars outside in the parking lot. When we walked in, it was pretty full, smokey and loud, music on the juke – George Strait, telling us he’d seen god that day. There was a pretty big dancefloor that people were standing around, but no one was dancing. I shot my cuffs and we walked to the bar, pushing our way through the crowd. The bartender reminded me of Billie: Tall, nice legs, not exactly pretty but skinny with big tits that had likely had some help along the way.

“What ya need?” she barked over the roar.

I ordered two beers and passed one to Atty, then handed the bartender five hundred dollars.

“We’re looking for a guy we’ve heard about,” I shouted. “Sandler Niks.”

She studied me for a moment, both our hands on the bills. Then she chucked her shin towards the dancefloor. “He’s on in five. You want to talk to him, you gotta play.”

I released the bills, picked up my beer, and made my way to the dancefloor. Fighting our way to the front, I paused, a cold chill settling over me.

The dancefloor had been roped off. The crowd was shouting bets to an old lady wearing all denim – denim skirt, denim shirt, little undersized denim jacket, a black cowboy hat. It was an outfit that would have been cute if she’d been sixty years younger. As the crowd shouted she would point and nod, and then write bets on the board.

On the floor itself were two chairs, plain wooden chairs with stiff, straight backs, and a large, nickel-plated revolver on a red pillow in the middle of them.

There was a shout, and a man strode out from the crowd onto the dancefloor. He was short and skinny, like a kid, but his face was middle-aged and pinched with scars, light and pink. He was shirtless and barefoot, and had a huge tattoo of a single black rune on his back, a thick line splitting off into three at its peak, like a man with his arms outstretched.

He worked the room, shouting as they shouted back, waving his arms around. Finally a fat, white-haired old man ambled onto the floor and put his own pudgy hands up for quiet, eventually getting everyone to settle down.

“Who’s first?” the white haired man said as Niks stood there, glaring, breathing hard, veins popping on his neck. “Who’s gonna get rich tonight? Half the house. Half the house!”

The crowd roared again, but no one stepped forward. White Hair eyed us shrewdly, smiling.

“No one? No one? Christ fucked, people, this is Texas, and we – ”

I raised my hand. “I’m first.”

The crowd roared, and then slowly faded back to silence as people turned to stare at me. White Hair stared at me in surprise too, and then smiled.

“Step forward, sir! Step forward and play The Game! Half the House is yours if you survive!”

The crowd found itself again as I ducked under the rope and approached White Hair, shouting and cheering. Bets were being revised and Denim Woman was having a hard time keeping up.

“You’re the challenger,” White Hair said. “You’re up first.”

Niks was staring at me with what could be described as pure hatred. As I knelt down and picked up the revolver, I wondered if we’d get any information from him in any event. Then I stopped worrying about it, because the gun felt alive and at home in my hand, the weight natural and missed. I weighed it, then popped it open and inspected the round.

Snapping it back into place, I gave it a spin and thrilled to the old familiar oiled sound of it. Then I extended it to White Hair, grip first. he took it, made a show of looking at it, and handed it back.

“We’re clean, people!” he assured the crowd in his throaty, nicotine-coated voice. The crowd applauded.

Niks and I took our seats. It was strange to be sitting, but otherwise it felt natural. Normal. After months of abnormal, it was good to be home. He watched me with the same angry expression on his face, glaring. He looked poised to jump on me if I refused to pull the trigger.

I pressed the gun against my temple. The crowd hushed, suddenly. I was wearing my Funeral Suit, expertly repaired and still fitting me perfectly. I did some mental calculations, and realized it was a Friday. As always.

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Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is FOREVER MAN. Enjoy!

32

We stood there for a moment with guns pointed at each other. His shook slightly.

“That’s a bluff,” Jenks said.

I nodded. “Look at you. You’re already feeling the radiation. All of you were dead the moment I invoked the Sphere. They never understood the radiation, Bechels told me. Couldn’t account for it. And so didn’t find a way to avoid it.” I shrugged. “All I have to do is wait.”

It’s outside, Bechels had panted. Of the universe. Not of it. It’s leaking in, and we can’t figure out why, or how to stop it.

The sound of rotors was painfully loud, making the whole building seem to shake.

“Let’s play,” I said. “We count three, pull the trigger. Someone dies, someone lives. Simple rules.” I smiled at Jenks and recalled the words Danik had said to me, all those years ago: Death is a waste, usually. Why not make yours worth something?

.o0o.

I wasn’t sure how long after the Jump it was. I was still limping, and there was an infected slash across my chest that kept breaking open and staining everything with yellow-tinged blood. My head ached all the time, and the Funeral Suit, as I’d started to think of it, was still torn up and stained. I stank. I barely spoke.

Danik, as always: Urbane and calm, expressionless. Smoking brown cigarettes and sitting in his tiny office, waiting for his men to bring me. I remembered a sense of jealousy for being a man who had minions. He gestured to the only seat in the room aside from his own and poured us each a glass of very fine vodka. He picked up his and held it aloft to me.

“To your Anna,” he said. “You received the flowers?”

I stared at him, my head ringing. I didn’t think he knew my name. Or Anna’s. It was somehow disturbing. After a moment I reached out and picked up my glass. Free liquor was, after all, free liquor.

“No,” I said, and swallowed the shot. It was pure liquid fire in my belly, and I immediately wanted to throw it all back up, before it could burn a hole through me.

“That is unfortunate,” he said, pouring two more shots. “I will speak to someone.”

I wondered if I’d just gotten someone killed.

“My men have told me a fantastic story,” he said in his soft way. “I do not believe them, but they have sworn it to me.” He studied me and I stared back. “Would you be willing to give me a … demonstration?”

I shrugged. “You have a gun?”

.o0o.

“All I gotta do is – ”

I didn’t let Jenks finish. “I’m going to shoot you in ten seconds, Barrow. You can either try to shoot me first, and play your turn, or just eat the bullet. I don’t care.”

I’d rattled him. He looked awful, but being shot at least twice and standing just feet from a Bechels Sphere would do that to anyone, I imagined, when they didn’t have the protective, smothering blanket of predestination around them like a shield.

I started to count.

“Ten. Nine. Eight – ”

He squeezed the trigger. Misfire. He tried four more times, and it misfired each time. “Goddammit,” he hissed, staring at it. He dropped his arm and looked at me, throwing his free hand in my direction. “Wait – ”

“I win,” I said, quietly. Squeezed the trigger. I was amazed to discover it felt just as empty and terrible, as always.

I dropped the gun. Looking out the dirty window with its half-melted glass panes and lead glazing bars, I could see two black helicopters just settling onto the ground outside, people in dark uniforms and helmets pouring out. I doubted a few bullets would make any difference.

I stepped back out into the bloodbath of Brusca’s outer office. Everyone was dead, lying in stagnating pools of blood. The Sphere sat implacable, smooth and perfect. Reaching into my pocket I took hold of the remote and pressed a pattern of buttons, and without any noise or artifact of its existence the Sphere winked out of existence. If I’d understood Bechels – and I had no reason to think I had – the Sphere in England was still there, an entrance without an exit.

Kicking the Beta shut, I dragged it into the room with Atelia. I’d had the dense, heavy case for so long, it seemed to leap into my hand and almost push me along.

“Can you walk?” I asked her. She looked at me, her face calm, and shook her head. Of course not. She’d been strapped to a bed for months, years. I set the Beta down and leaned over her, working on the straps.

“We have to go,” I said. “I’ll have to carry you.”

She nodded. She was Moira’s age but seemed like a child, she was so small and frail, so silent and accepting. When I had the straps undone I pulled her into a sitting position and she slumped there, looking exhausted, but smiling.

You and I, we go to London.

I could hear the troops outside. Shouting, distant and muffled, buried under the muted but still-present buzz of the rotors. I didn’t know who they were. Barrow Jenks had been some sort of Special Forces, certainly, but whether for some government still keeping a toehold on the world or just a bigger and better gangster, above Brusca’s pay grade, I didn’t know.

I hoisted her onto my shoulders and she slid her arms around my neck. She weighed nothing. I considered what it took to strap a human woman into a bed long enough for her to accumulate those scars and to weigh less than the suit I was wearing, and regretted that I’d killed Brusca and Jenks so quickly. So painlessly. I should have tied them up and left them inches from the Sphere, soaking in it.

With Atty on my back, I took hold of the Beta and walked out the rear exit, plunging into the dark interior of the old warehouse. A set of ancient rusted stairs led upward, and I attacked them, taking them two at a time for the first flight, Atty bouncing on my back. She pushed her face into my neck. By the second flight I was winded, and slowed down.

Being unkillable didn’t mean you were in any kind of shape.

The air seemed hot and dense as I climbed, but her breath on my neck was cool and sweet. It seemed possible that she’d fallen asleep with her arms clasped around my neck. I struggled up past the third floor, then onto the fourth. I staggered to a stop just in time: There was no floor. It was just a pattern of steel joists.

Below, I could hear the shouts and clamor of troops, heading up the stairs right behind me. I lifted up the Beta Unit and hugged it to my chest as Atelia hugged herself to my back, and started picking my way carefully along the narrow strips of metal, the third floor twenty or thirty feet below, concrete and debris. At the other end of the floor a final set of narrower steel stairs clung to the exposed brick wall, leading up to the roof.

Behind us, voices. Low and befuddled at first, then suddenly rising up in a chorus of shouts, the tone something I would label authoritative asshole. I didn’t recognize the language, and didn’t pause or turn around.

I reminded myself not to flinch when they started shooting. Breaking both legs on the floor below wouldn’t kill me – but I was suddenly certain I didn’t want to know what the alternative was. I forced myself to pick my steps carefully, moving slowly towards the stairs. I made another five steps before a warning shot rang out, a single round that was deafeningly close.

I kept moving.

I wasn’t sure if they’d risk shooting at me, if they’d risk the Beta Unit. They clearly knew about it and had come for it – I supposed it was possible it was all for me and Atty, our Forever nature – but I doubted it. I’d been an open secret in New York for years. Gangs had gone to war over me. If some paramilitary group or lingering echo of government had wanted me, they could have come for me long ago, taken me in my sweaty, troubled sleep in the Sixth Floor Walkup.

They started to move onto the joists after me, but had the same limitations – they couldn’t move very quickly. I kept my eyes on the stairs, picking up the pace. I had to reach them with enough time to make the roof, or they’d swarm me.

For just a second I considered setting the Beta down. Maybe, I thought, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to hand it over to some group – funded, staffed, protected. Let them do what Bechels couldn’t. And then I thought, if this was really a government mission, if this were legitimate authority popping back in for a moment to try and do something good, they could have gotten to London. They could have contacted Bechels. Years ago.

I kept moving. I felt Atty’s breath against my neck. Sweat streamed down my face and got in my shoes and my lungs burned and my legs burned and the joist seemed to be wobbling under me, trying to buck me off. Another two shots made me jump and almost saw me toppling off, but I somehow shifted my weight and managed to more or less fall forward onto the stairs.

For one breath I hung there, panting. Then Atty tightened her grip on my neck with a soft grunt, and I launched myself upwards on unsteady legs, mouth open, drool leaking from my lip as I struggled to breathe deeply enough to fuel my way up. The shouting behind me had multiplied into a cacophony of hard voices, and I concentrated on taking each additional step, pushing up.

When I burst onto the silvery-black roof, the wind pushed back at me as I skidded into a puddle that came up to my ankles, formed by a concave dent in the rubber that gave under me, soft and yielding. Something tore in my back that I felt all the way down to my legs as I struggled not to fall backwards onto Atelia, like a turtle with my legs in the air.

I ran for the edge and set the Beta down. Kneeling next to it, I peered down at the water lapping against the eroding bank of the river, a long way down. With a deep breath, I pushed the Beta over the side and watched it fall. It hit the water with a vague, lackluster splash, and I wondered for a second if I’d just destroyed it, and if that would be so bad.

I didn’t have to jump. I wanted to jump.

I pushed my hand into my pocket and found the remote. Keyed in the pattern, and in a blink there was a Sphere about as big as a hot air balloon below us. I felt the soft, invisible heat of it against my face, and then I struggled up onto my spastic, exhausted legs. Head pounding, I turned and raced back towards the center of the roof, splashing in the deep puddles the fading rood hosted, brakish water filling the air and creating rainbows all around me.

I slid to a halt, Atty squirming around my neck. I reached up and gently unlaced her fingers and knelt down, letting down and picking her up, standing up with her draped in my arms. She looked like she was sleeping.

Two black-clad soldiers appeared framed in the doorway. I smiled. Spun. Sprinted.

Without the weight of the Beta, I felt almost refreshed. Light. Easy. Shouts from behind but they weren’t ready for me. This was just another round of The Game. Two players. Stakes. And me, in my Funeral Suit. There was no one to share a look with, no Anna, but as I stepped off into the air over the water and flipped over, staring up at the sky, I felt her.

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