"I told them you were one of the good guys."
"Not a bad girl?"
"Not a bad girl."
Another drag off the cigarette. "Thanks, Wren. I'll catch up with you one day. Keep your grapes peeled."
"Bye, Miriam."
Click.
SIXTY-THREE
Funeral Flowers
The flowers – paid for with stolen money – arrive at Katey's doorstep around noon. Roses and carnations in a silver wrap. She fetches them only minutes after discovering in the bathroom mirror that her eyes and cheeks are a bit yellow – jaundice, by the look of it. An early sign of pancreatic cancer, or so she read.
With the flowers, a note:
Dear Miss Wiz,
I won't be seeing you again. Gotta bust ass out of here before the cops find me. I've heard by now that the guard lived – who knew you could survive having your throat slit? Just the same, things are a wee bit complicated and I don't feel like sticking around to get tangled up in all of that.
I don't know who else to talk to about this – I know, I know, Louis, but that's a whole other kettle of fucking fish right there – so I'm talking to you.
Eleanor Caldecott told me I was the same as her.
And fuck me if I wasn't starting to buy that line of thinking.
But then, down in the dark of the river I had a – well, what alcoholics call their moment of clarity. Eleanor Caldecott was willing to die to make sure that Wren died, too.
I was willing to die to make sure that Wren lived.
Two sides of the same coin, maybe, but different sides just the same. Or maybe I'm just fooling myself. Maybe I'm no different.
But I like to think I am.
And that means I have work to do.
Maybe we'll meet again someday. In the here or the after.
Die well, Katey Wiznewf…howeverthefuckyouspellyourlastname.
Hope you meet Steve soon.
Peace in the Middle East,
Miriam Black
"Most people just write a card," the delivery guy says.
Katey looks up at him, wiping tears out of her eyes.
He's a big fellow. Round. Like a teddy bear. Kind of a buckethead, but adorable in his delivery outfit. Clean and pressed.
A tag pinned to his button-down shirt says: Steve.
"Steve," Katey says, laughing. The laughs start out small but soon go tumbling into a whole crazy cacophony of laughter – so that she's laughing and crying not at the thought of dying but at the madness of it all.
"Are you okay?" he asks, offering her an old-fashioned paisley handkerchief.
The laughter dies down. "Steve. I'm going to need you to come inside and have a cup of tea with me. You good with that?"
Steve smiles. "I'd love a cup of tea."
"And maybe a trip to the Caribbean?"
"I'd love a cup of tea first."
"Tea first it is, then."
INTERLUDE
Trailer Park
They lie together, Miriam and Louis.
"How's your eye?" she asks.
"You mean the eye that isn't there anymore?" he says. "It itches."
"I bet."
"How's your…"
"Boob? Tit? Bazonga? You mean where that fucker stabbed me?" She bites at her thumbnail, suddenly wishes she could smoke in here. "It itches."
They laugh.
"Guess we're just two itchy people," Louis says.
Miriam thinks,
But I got itches you can't scratch.
That's not what she says, though.
She says, "I'll scratch your itch if you scratch mine."
"You sure you're feeling up to it?"
Her hand slides down to his jeans, eases past the waistband like a snake sliding under a closed door, and she puts her chin up on his shoulder. "The question is, Mister Darling –
are you?"
SIXTY-FOUR
Letting go, and Other Dick Moves
She finds him in the parking lot of the motel. A low fog clings to the ground and above the sky is a hazy white smear that's eaten the sun. Louis kneels down by the first slashed tire of his truck, head on the rim, rubbing his temples.
The day after the fracas at the Caldecott estate, he had two new truck tires delivered to him and put on right at the intersection where he left the truck, and before the police came sniffing around he and Miriam hit the road. They traveled about a half-hour south to Mechanicsburg.
"Dangit. I just got these fixed," he says. He bites his knuckle so hard it leaves pale indents.
"Somebody slashed your tires," she says.
"Yeah."
"That was me."
He turns. "Ha ha, Miriam. Now isn't the time."
"I also stole a bunch of money from the glove box. A couple hundred. About half of what you had sitting there. I know, I know. Dick move."
Crestfallen, he stands. "Wait. You're not kidding."
"Nope."
It's then he gets it.
"You're leaving me behind."
She hesitates but finally says, "Yeah. Yes. I know. I'm sorry."
"I'm your protector."
"And you did that job crazy good. Look. See? Still alive." She pats her chest as though to confirm she's not a ghost. "But I saw the look on your face. When I shot the headmaster. That's no small thing, Mr. Darling."
"I can get past it. I killed someone, too."
"I know. And that's fucked up. That's not who you are but this is who I am. Once I thought I was a good girl but it ended up I was a bad girl. Then I thought that fate was what fate was but then I learned there was one way to change it. I thought I was a thief. But as it turns out… I'm a killer." She looks up at the sky, sees geese overhead heading south. "I'm not going to be responsible for turning you into me."
"It doesn't have to be like that," he says.
"Oh, but it does. Like Popeye says, I yam what I yam."
"Why the tires?"
"Because I knew you'd come after me."
He shrugs. "I still will."
"Don't."
"You are who you are, and I am who I am."
"You won't find me. This is the end of our road."
She walks over, and stands small before him.
"I could grab you," he says. "I could just… reach down and hold you here. Forever. You wouldn't be able to get away."
"I'd like that. I would. But you'd be better off jumping on a grenade. Instead, let's just do this." She gets on her tippy-toes and kisses him. Long, slow, deep. The kind of kiss where you can feel little pieces of your soul trading places as mouths open and breath mingles.
He reaches for her but she pulls away.
"Bye, Louis."
"I'll find you."
"No, you won't."
But she's not so sure.
SIXTY-FIVE
On the Road Again
"Stop here," she tells the driver. He's a cantankerous old git, a slack-jawed denture-wearing pucker-eyed motherfucker named Albert. His wife died a year and a half ago, and now he travels the country doing what he and his wife always said they'd do as a joke but never did – find all those crazy roadside attractions like the world's biggest ball of yarn and the house where everything sits at crazy angles and haunted hotels and gravity hills and all that silliness.
He picked her up thumbing for a ride outside the Roadside America exhibition, an 8,000 square foot building depicting the United States in miniature. The sign announces that they have over 10,000 little trees, over 18,000 light bulbs, and 22,000 feet of electrical wiring.
It's probably the only attraction in Shartlesburg, Pennsylvania, a town whose name Miriam finds so funny she, well, nearly sharts every time she hears it.
Albert was coming out of the epic miniatures display when he saw Miriam hitchhiking. He asked her where she was going and she told him.
He's a nice guy. Chatty as a squirrel. Which is okay by her. She likes to talk, too, but for now she figures it's time for her to be quiet.
Albert dies soon. In thirteen months.
It's evening when it happens, and he's standing in front of a giant tree-stump – a sequoia or a redwood – carved into the face of a bearded man that calls to mind a real Paul Bunyon type. A sign next to it indicates it's the face of John Muir, whoever the hell that is. And as the sun goes down, Albert takes out an old photo of his wife, as he's wont to do, and he turns the picture toward the big stumpy head (so she can see it) and then he clutches his chest and dies.
Dead before he hits the ground.
The picture blows away on the wind.
For now, though, he's very much alive.
"You good, little missy?" he asks. That's what he calls her. Little Missy.
She gives him a wink and a thumbs-up.
"Stay frosty!" he yells at her. "I'm gonna have one of your ciggies while you're gone! You gotta pay the hitchhiker toll!"
She's glad he only means a smoke. He cackles as she walks up to the house.
The walkway remains ruined beneath her feet.
Pots still shattered. Steps, too. Above her head is a crow perched on the edge of the gutter, shuffling from foot to foot. She tries to think her way into the crow's mind, tries to get the bird to do something, anything –
lift a wing, clack your beak, take a shit
– but all the bird does is take flight and disappear into the trees.
Whatever. Stupid bird.
She knocks.
Eventually, Uncle Jack answers.
"You," he says. Dubious.
"I want Mother's number. And her address. In Florida."
"I'm surprised."
"Me, too. Just go get it, willya?"
He returns, puts the paper in her hand. Fort Lauderdale.
Fine. Good. Her heart races.
"Thanks, Jack. See you when I see you."
Which will probably be never.
"Later, killer."
She turns toward him. She expects him to be smiling at her. Maybe holding up a dead robin and a loaded pellet rifle. But he's already gone, back in the house.
Miriam hops back in the car with Albert.
"Where we off to?" he asks.
"Just head south," she says.
And that's the direction he goes.
About the Author
Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer.
He is a fellow of the Sundance Screenwriting Lab. His short film (written with co-author and director Lance Weiler)
Pandemic
showed at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011. That same year,
Collapsus
– a digital transmedia drama, also co-authored with Weiler – was nominated for an International Digital Emmy and a Games 4 Change award.
He has contributed over two million words to the game industry, and was developer of the popular
Hunter: The Vigil
game line.
He currently lives in Pennsyltucky with his beautiful wife Michelle, their taco terrier Tai-Shen, and his son (known as "B-Dub").
You can find him at his website, Terrible Minds, where he remains busy dispensing dubious writing wisdom. Said dubious wisdom is collected in eBook form, such as in the popular
500 Ways To Be A Better Writer.
Acknowledgments
Sounds so soft, so limp, so passive – "I acknowledge you" is the barest, smallest thing we can offer someone, isn't it? It's hardly a head-nod, a shrug, a fluttery gesticulation in one's general direction. So, assume that these are not acknowledgments but, rather, Awesome Freeze-Frame High-Fives of Awesomeness. With bacon and whisky and unicorn dreams.
Awesome Freeze-Frame High-Fives of Awesomeness to go:
Stephen Blackmoore and Stacia Decker for helping kick this book into high gear.
The fine feathered folks at Mysterious Galaxy for helping
Blackbirds
fly.
The clanking doom-bot geniuses of Angry Robot for putting Miriam Black into your hands.
My wife and son for supporting me and not kicking the crazy pantsless writer out of their house.
And all the people who read
Blackbirds
and wrote reviews and told me how much they dug it.
ANGRY ROBOT
A member of the Osprey Group
Lace Market House,
54-56 High Pavement,
Nottingham,
NG1 1HW, UK
The future is killing me
An Angry Robot paperback original 2012.
Copyright © 2012 by Chuck Wendig
Cover Artist: Joey HiFi
Distributed in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.
All rights reserved.
Angry Robot is a registered trademark and the Angry Robot icon a trademark of Angry Robot Ltd.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold and destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.