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Authors: Randall Boyll

Darkman (34 page)

BOOK: Darkman
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ANGER . . .

“These are my treasures now, a bit wet, but still mine, you ugly son of a bitch. Remember that mole on her thigh? I will be seeing it again and again and again, while you rot in the hell you came from.”

RAGE!!!

He jumped at Strack, no longer afraid of the height, no longer afraid that Julie might see his face, no longer afraid at all. Strack swung the gun up, too late. Darkman smashed it aside and tore Julie from his grasp. She wobbled, arms pin-wheeling, a high-pitched scream of terror slipping out, but Darkman pulled her so she could regain her balance, and stood face-to-face with Strack, boiling with hatred for this human swine.

“Now who jumps, asshole?” He snarled in Strack’s face and grabbed him by the hair. With one overpowered move he yanked him some ten feet in the air. For a moment Strack was outlined against the moon, a windblown scarecrow with its legs and arms wildly flailing, a thin scream of fright bursting out, and then he was falling and falling.

Darkman reached out as he passed. He snagged him by one ankle, the bare one, gloating inside that as Darkman he was stronger than Charles Atlas, stronger even then Schwarzenegger, the victim of a mutation that had made him powerful and deadly. He laughed at Strack.

“If you can’t fly, you’d better learn how, Strack,” he said, chuckling. “Better learn pretty fast too.”

“Wait,” Strack screeched, upside down, the change in his pockets clattering out. “Listen to me! If you kill me, you’ve become as bad as I have. Maybe worse. If you drop me, you’ll be the monster you look like. I know you. Julie told me a lot. If you kill me, you’ll never be able to live with yourself. Right?”

Darkman dropped him.
“Wrong.”

Julie gasped.

Strack screamed for a remarkably long time before stabbing through the re-bar and splatting against the cement that his own men had poured just two days ago.

“I’m learning to live with a lot of things,” Darkman whispered, and covered his face as he walked to the elevator, afraid only that the moon would show his face to Julie and end forever the memories she already had.

Epilogue

Nobody

J
ULIE WAS WAITING
by the crude elevator, tears sparkling on her cheeks, her hands still tied behind her back. Darkman walked toward her, his emotions draining, replaced by a numbing weariness and dread for the future.

She unhooked the chain and backed inside, her face becoming a black mask. Darkman stepped in beside her and turned his face to the plywood wall, feeling that even in the darkness his mangled features could be seen. He reached to the lever on the wall and the elevator started down.

“Peyton?”

He didn’t respond.

“My hands?”

He turned a bit and untied her. The thin white rope dropped to the floor. She wrapped cold fingers around his forearm, trying to pull him close, but now he had become a statue.

“Peyton, look at me. I can help. The burns don’t matter to me.”

He laid a claw on her hand. Sudden nausea rose up her throat as the cold, pointy things touched her skin, skeleton fingertips that were broken and spiky and smelling vaguely of rot.

“Look at me,” she said evenly, almost sternly. “Peyton, turn around and look at me.”

He shuffled around. Bars of light and shadow swept upward on his . . .

face?

She clenched her teeth together to capture the gasp that had welled up in her throat. In the stuttering darkness a savage monster was encaged beside her. She gave herself a mental slap.

“It’s only a burn,” she said, hoping to convince herself as well.

He let out a miserable chuckle and spoke. “Don’t you think I’ve told myself the same thing, night after night? A burn. Only skin-deep. I could make masks to fool you, but it only made the disaster worse. I wanted you to love me without pity. But just when I got the masks down pat, something strange happened.”

“What?” she asked. “What happened?”

He clutched his head, groaning. “I’m not Peyton anymore, Julie. I live in the dark like a vampire. I have no future left, nothing. I won’t drag you down with me.”

The elevator jerked as it touched the ground. Julie unhooked the chain and guided Darkman out of his cage, pulling him by one elbow. He had begun to make wrenching sounds of despair. Her stomach gave another lurch. He was crying.

“I want our old life back, Peyton,” she said, pressing herself close. That aroma of slow decomposition enfolded her and she nearly retched. “I want our lives, our careers, our nights—Peyton, wear a mask if you must, but for God’s sake don’t leave me again.”

He sighed heavily, shaking his head. “Ninety-nine minutes, Julie. A chance to pretend nothing happened, no fire, no explosion, no nothing. But I can’t spend the rest of my life making Peyton masks that self-destruct every hour and a half. I don’t belong in the real world anymore. I’ve changed—been changed—and I can never go back.”

He started to walk away. She grabbed him and flung her arms around his neck, crying herself. “You can’t leave me again. I can’t take it anymore! Jesus, Peyton, I can’t live without you!”

He pushed her away gently, stroking her cheek with what was left of his fingers. “These hands used to caress you, but now they can only kill and destroy. Julie, Peyton did die. He will stay dead forever. I do not know who I am, but I do know who I was—and never will be again. Good-bye, Julie.”

“No!
Don’t leave me!”

But he was already walking away.

It began to snow, but by then she had crumpled to her knees with her hands clasped over her face, and didn’t notice the snow, and didn’t care.

Winter was here at last.

BOOK: Darkman
13.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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