Authors: J.A. Konrath,Jack Kilborn
Tags: #General Fiction
T
om switched off the news on TV and turned to look at his partner in the hospital bed.
“They think it was some kind of slavery operation.” Roy’s words were dulled by the pain medication. Both of his legs were in casts, and his right arm was in a sling. This was the first time in almost a full day that he was well enough to talk.
“It’s a good guess. Lots of burned bodies, but only four who had dental work. Plus a dungeon in the basement.”
Roy smiled, sleepily. “Be interesting to see what happens if they run DNA tests.”
“It sure will.”
“We cool here?”
Tom nodded. “Told the doctors it was a hunting accident. Pretty dramatic one. Campfire out of control, falling trees, shooting at a bear. If you were awake, you would have enjoyed the story.”
“Joan okay?”
“She came out of surgery after me. She’s fine.”
“Bert?”
Tom laughed. “Completely unscathed. He saved all of our lives, coming back for us.”
“I’m starting to like that guy. Reminds me of my little brother.”
Tom crossed his legs, wincing at the pain. The burns were only first degree, but stretched from his butt to the soles of his feet. His butt actually got the worst of it. The hospital had actually given Tom an inflatable donut. His arm wound wasn’t serious—he’d caught a few pellets and would be sore for a while, same as Joan. Roy had taken the brunt of the damage. Tom didn’t bother to tell him that his dislocated shoulder probably had nothing to do with the fall, but rather their attempt to drag him out of the burning house.
“How about the FBI?” Roy asked.
“I talked to the Special Agent in Charge in Chicago. He’s driving here tomorrow. I figure we tell him the truth. There should be enough evidence still intact at Stang’s house to back it up.”
“Five bucks says the government keeps it hush-hush.”
“I won’t take that bet.”
“Is this a private party, or can anyone attend?”
Roy and Tom smiled at Bert as he walked into the hospital room. Tom was especially pleased to see who Bert had brought with him. The face. The eyes. The beard. All perfect. He felt like he was in the presence of a celebrity. Tom extended his hand.
“Mr. Lincoln.”
“Mr. Jefferson.” Abe winked at Roy. “Mr. Hendrix.”
Roy shook his head and grinned. “Hi, Abe. How was jail?”
“Good. I made some friends, caught up on my reading, got all that free publicity. Best thing I ever did.”
Tom nodded. “I saw the morning paper. Something about Congress suppressing free speech in the Capitol Building. You’ve become a poster boy for the First Amendment.”
Abe winked. “I just landed a talent agent. We’re considering commercial work. Starting small. Coke. McDonalds. Chevrolet. I told Bernie to try and land me a porno, but he didn’t think it was good for the image.”
“What brings you out this way?” Roy asked.
“I had something to give to Bert.”
Bert beamed. “Monthly Lincoln Police Department auction. They raise money by auctioning off things they’ve confiscated. You know; stolen cars, bikes, antique lures found at a murder scene…”
“I actually thought forty bucks was kind of high,” Abe said, “but since I was there I felt obliged to buy something.”
Roy laughed. “Why, Abe, how honest of you.”
“Least I could do. If it wasn’t for you guys, I’d still be selling cars instead of making the big Hollywood bucks.”
“So you’re back in business?” Tom asked Bert.
“Actually, no. I sold the rest of my lures and bought some property in New Mexico.”
“You didn’t…”
“It’s going to take a few weeks to get my new ostrich farm up and running, but I expect all of you to visit when I do. Especially at Thanksgiving.”
Roy smiled wide. “Good for you, buddy. I’m proud of you.”
“Hey, I got you guys something. This is for you, Tom”
Bert handed him an envelope. Tom dumped the contents onto this palm. It was green, with hooks.
“A Luny Frog. Thanks, Bert.”
“You probably need to clean it. There are still some small bits of… uh… Anyway, you should clean it. This one’s for you, Roy.”
Bert took a DVD out of his pocket.
The Love Bug.
“Slug bug yellow no hit backs!” Bert whacked Roy in his good arm.
“No fair,” Roy laughed. “Beating up on a cripple.”
Bert’s face became serious. “How are you doing, Roy?”
“Because I was on vacation when it happened, I only got partial disability. Gonna walk with a limp, probably for life. They say I could come back to work in a limited capacity. But pushing papers—I dunno. It ain’t for me.”
Bert stared at Roy, hard. “You know, I’m going to need a lot of help on the ranch.”
“You’re serious? Me and you, in the desert, chasing giant chickens around?”
Bert nodded. “Eating jumbo omelets.”
“Might be something to consider.”
Tom noticed that the small hospital room was becoming a bit cramped, but he felt his heart rate increase when one more person joined them.
“Oh my God, is that Abe Lincoln?”
Joan came into the room, and Abe gave her a big hug.
“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Arc.”
Joan closed the door and faced them, looking serious. “I’m glad you’re all here. We need to talk.”
Tom noted the manila folder Joan was carrying, with
CLASSIFIED
written on the side.
“Is that from Stang’s?”
“Yes. It’s the only file I managed to save. You all need to look at this.”
Bert opened the file and flipped through it. As he read, his face became progressively grimmer.
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Roy said. “Spill.”
Bert held up a paper. “This first page. It’s a list of the ten clones Dr. Harold created. Me, you, Abe—the others with numbers on their heels.”
He handed it to Tom. “Yeah. These are the ten. So?”
Bert handed him the next page. Tom stared at it. The first name that stood out was Jerome Huntington, the crazy Navy SEAL Stang had working for him. Printed next to his name was “
clone of GERONIMO
.”
Tom scanned down the page, seeing many other famous names, some of them real doozies. And just like the first page, there were numbers next to them. Eleven through twenty.
“Let me see.” Roy took the paper and read through it. “You mean to tell me there are ten more clones of famous people running around?”
“Nine more.” Tom frowned. “Minus Geronimo.”
“Nine more?” Abe reached for the page. “Tell me one of them is Marilyn Monroe.”
“So what do we do about this, Tom?” Bert asked.
Roy nodded. “Yeah, Tom?”
Tom shook his head. “The FBI can take care of it. I’m done. I did my part. This is no longer my business.”
“There are some very bad people on this list, Tom.” Joan put a hand on his shoulder. “Who knows what they could be doing in the world?”
Tom couldn’t believe that came from Joan.
“Don’t you want to go back to living a normal life? A safe life?”
“Can anyone in the world be safe with number 17 running around?”
“Number 18 is even worse,” Bert said. “And 20 is pretty bad too.”
Tom’s shoulders slumped. “It’s not our fight.”
“You know,” Abe grabbed his lapels and rocked back on his heels. “There were a lot of people who didn’t want to stand up to King George in 1776. A lot of them said it wasn’t their fight. But a few of them did. One of them was a guy named Thomas Jefferson.”
Tom sighed. Corny as it sounded, Abe was right. Ultimately, it didn’t matter why Tom was the way he was. It might have been genetics. It might have been the way he was raised. It might have been something totally unique to him. Tom had no choice but to follow his nature, wherever his nature came from.
“Okay,” he said, standing up and taking Joan’s hand. “Who should we try to find first?”
Are You Brave Enough?
BEYOND AFRAID…
It was an experiment in fear.
Eight people, each chosen because they lived through a terrifying experience. Survivors. They don’t scare easily. They know how to fight back.
BEYOND TRAPPED…
Each is paid a million dollars to spend one night in a house. The old Butler House, where those grisly murders occurred so many years ago. A house that is supposedly haunted.
BEYOND ENDURANCE…
They can take whatever they want with them. Religious items. Survival gear. Weapons. All they need to do is last the night.
But there is something evil in this house. Something very evil, and very real. And when the dying starts, it comes with horrifying violence and brutal finality.
There are scarier things than ghosts.
Things that torment you slowly and delight in your screams.
Things that won’t let you get out alive.
HAUNTED HOUSE
People are just dying to leave.
Jack Kilborn, author of AFRAID, TRAPPED, and ENDURANCE, brings back some favorite characters from those earlier novels and puts them through his own unique brand of hell. One that hurts real bad. One that will scare you to death.
Are you brave enough?
This novel is for Maria
Roy Lewis cleared the doorway, then spun as something in the darkness lunged at him.
He fired, a double-tap at the approaching center mass, but it kept coming. Before he could flinch away the thing hit him in his outstretched Glock.
It took Roy milliseconds to process what it was, and then revulsion coursed through him.
A body bag.
Black plastic with a silver zipper. Hanging from a chain.
But something was wrong with it. The weight was… off.
Roy aimed his flashlight up at the ceiling, the tactical beam cutting through the ever-present dark of the house, and saw the rail system that had swung the bag into him. Pulleys and springs and a steel track, all automatic. Probably triggered by a motion sensor.
He reached out and gave the bag a tentative squeeze.
Foam rubber.
Not a real body. Just a goddamn Halloween prop.
Roy chewed his inner cheek, heart hammering, realizing he’d wasted two valuable bullets on a dime store scare.
Only one bullet left. Then he was out of ammo.
Roy checked his watch. Not even 4am yet. Hours to go before dawn. Might as well be days.
Breathe. Remember to breathe.
He took in air through his nostrils, tried to let it out slowly. His hands were shaking, and sweat was stinging his eyes despite the cool temperature. Roy holstered his sidearm, and drew his KA-BAR knife from his belt sheath, clutching it to his chest.
Okay, stay calm. Find a place to hole up. Someplace you can defend. Where they can’t sneak up behind you.
A snort escaped his nose before Roy could stop it. All damn night he’d been searching for a safe place in this hell-on-earth. But there were no safe places. Every room, every corridor, in this damned house was lethal. Maybe, if the others were still alive, they could have protected each other. But that hadn’t worked out, and Roy was pretty sure he was the only one left.
He thought back to his military days, before he became a cop. The Q course for Special Forces, the hardest training in the world. Desert Storm in Iraq. Then over a decade on the street, working his way up from beat cop to homicide detective. He was good, and his past had prepared him for a lot.
But not for this.
Nothing could have prepared him for this.
Roy sucked in another breath through clenched teeth. The air was musty, foul, like old running shoes mixed with…
Body odor.
Strong, noxious body odor that wasn’t coming from Roy.
He flinched.
Roy knew that smell. Knew where it came from.
That’s when he heard it.
Giggling.
High-pitched. Almost childlike.
But that’s not a child.
“Oh, no,” Roy whispered. “Not this again.”
Roy waited, hoping, praying, it had been his imagination.
The darkness remained silent.
You’re freaking out, man. Imagining shit. You need to keep it together if you want to—
“Hee hee hee hee.”
Not imagination. This was real.
Real, and coming somewhere in the unlit room.
Somewhere close.
Roy stumbled backward, his bladder constricting, and then fell as his foot stepped into a hole in the floor.
He landed on his ass, strained to get his foot free, and the pain came hard and fast.
Sharp points. Stabbing through his pants, into the flesh of his calf.
A punji trap.
The hole contained spikes, pointed at a downward angle, trapping his foot there. The harder he tried to pull away, the deeper the spikes dug into his leg.
“Hee hee hee.”
Roy swung his flashlight beam, locking onto the sound.
The giggling man who had been stalking Roy through the house for the last two hours was standing only a few meters away. Roy could see him clearly now, for the first time. He was tall, over six feet, wearing a black rubber gas mask that obscured his face. His chest was bare, covered in dried blood. All he wore was stained white underwear, and combat boots, their laces untied.
In the man’s hand was a meat cleaver.
Roy reacted viscerally, immediately trying to scramble away, the spikes digging further into his calf. He cried out in pain, then stared at his stalker.
“Hee hee hee.”
The Giggler didn’t move closer. He simply stood there, swaying slowly from side to side. The BO coming off him coated Roy’s tongue.
Roy pawed for his sidearm, drawing it and pointing the weapon at the man.
“Get the fuck away from me! I swear I’ll kill you!”
The man stared.
“I said get away!”
He continued swaying. Staring.
“Hee hee hee.”
Roy hadn’t signed on for this. It was supposed to be simple. A way to get ahead, provide for his daughter. But the nightmare of the last few hours, the horrors he’d been through, was almost beyond comprehension.
“Someone help me!” he shouted to the house.