Resurrection Express (50 page)

“He did what he had to do, too.”

“You’ve lost a lot.”

“Maybe not. Maybe it was just a way of going back to zero. Whoever gets a second chance at anything? A
real
second chance, I mean.”

“Do you think he would have wanted it that way?”

“He only ever wanted us to live happily ever after. I guess that’s what this is, in some way. I spent a lot of years waiting for him to be my father while he decomposed in a jail cell. All that time, learning to be what Toni wanted me to be. What
they
wanted me to be. I was never my own man, not really. Always living for some other person’s guilt, some other person’s ideals.”

“Some other person’s plan.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty strange to think about.”

“So you try not to?”

“No . . . I think about it a lot. But it doesn’t hurt so much now. I’m back to zero, after all. People are strong. Like you said.”

“Where will you go when you get out of here?”

“The money first. I’ll need it to start over. I could give you some of it. I owe you a couple, after all.”

“I don’t need money. But I wouldn’t mind starting over.”

She looked at me with longing eyes when she said that. Asking me. She bit her lower lip softly, shivering at the edge of everything.

Not like my wife at all.

That’s what I told myself.

Toni was dead and Heather had killed her.

I guess some part of me should have been really mad about that, but I couldn’t make any part of myself regret Toni’s death. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to mourn her. And not because
it was her or me down there—not because Toni would have killed my ass deader than hell to protect Jenison’s new world.

All of those feelings were replaced by something else.

And I wasn’t quite sure what it was at the time.

None of it was Heather’s fault, not really.

Then again, maybe it was a big lie I told myself back then, just to get through it all. Maybe someday I would hate Heather for what she had done—what she had to do. Was it a miracle that either of us made it back at all? I decided right then that it probably wasn’t. And maybe we weren’t even lucky. Maybe we should have followed those other parts of ourselves into oblivion. Maybe those parts of us were truly lost forever.

Maybe.

We talked for hours that day, about everything. About new life and new paths. About the things we hoped to avenge in our futures. We made plans and cast them away, laughing. I was speaking to the strongest woman I had ever met. For real this time.

I didn’t see her again until the day I left the hospital, a month later.

She was scheduled to be released three weeks after me.

We both stood at the front entrance, she on her crutches, me in my walking shoes, leaning on my cane.

And this is what she said to me: “We all go down in the dark, Elroy. Only a few of us make it back. I’d like to know I wasn’t alone.”

You aren’t alone, Heather.

You’ll never be alone.

We kissed each other then, and the kiss was good. Full of things you remember. Like love and the promise of love. The end of old lives and the beginning of new ones. Something that could stay, after all. I realized in that moment that I’d never kissed any other woman besides my wife. And that I didn’t even
know
this
woman standing in front of me. Or maybe I did. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe I’d be back for her.

Maybe.

She bit her lower lip softly, like only Heather would do it, the ghost of my wife looming bitterly over our shoulders.

The ghost of my father smiling like the sun.

I turned and left her there, walking away from it with my bum leg cocked and crooked, the stick clicking on the ground, thinking about the future.

And what I would do when I got there.

•  •  •

I
’m sitting in the comfy chair, as Jenison enters my living room.

Three days ago, it was the one-year anniversary of my wife’s death.

I haven’t thought about her in a long time, but today’s the day.

As usual, the lady in black hasn’t left anything to chance. She has twenty men with her, armed with shotguns. Guess she caught onto me when I was doing my snoop job at Cryton Electronics, the new front company she established six months ago to shield her movements. She’s into all kinds of dirty business now, above and below the radar. She’s more hands-on than ever. But she doesn’t call herself Jayne Jenison anymore, and she’s more careful about who she recruits. She started up with it again, late last year. Has a hundred wireheads working for her now. Double-blind thieves and criminals, all networked together, like it always was. A machine that can never really die. The CIA knows all about it. The colonel and his people are still playing chess with them. Ghosts sniping at ghosts. I’ve been following them all for months—me and my new partner. It’s been an interesting year. Very, very interesting.

Jenison’s had my house staked out for weeks, but she’s just now making her move. She walks over to the chair and I hear her calm voice:

“Hello, Mister Coffin.”

She says something else that I don’t quite understand. It doesn’t come through. Something about her daughter. Something about revenge. I think I know what she means. I smile as she turns the chair around. And sees that I’m not in it.

Instead there’s an iPad on the seat.

I speak to her from a mile away:

“
Dead game, lady.
”

I see Jenison’s face drain white on my screen, and she almost swears out loud.

I look over at Heather, who is smiling wickedly at me.

And I put my finger on the detonator switch.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The locations, organizations, and protocols described herein are partially fictitious, altered as needed for dramatic license, because this is a novel. And like many novels, this one faced a long, long road in order to find its way into your hands. The key figures in this are the people to whom I’ve dedicated the book. What follows now is a short list of shout-outs to a few additional select folks, who either helped in some way with my career or the inspiration/creation/publication of
Resurrection Express
. I would also like to thank you, dear reader, for buying the book and (hopefully) telling a friend. If you were moved in any way by our humble endeavor, I am moved also. Please feel free to stick around for the sequel. You can visit me for all the updates on this and other matters at: stephenromanoshockfestival.com. There’s some fun stuff over there.

My thanks to:

Scott Hiles, Tom Piccirilli, Wiley Hudgins, Billy Spence, David J. Schow (still yodeling down the big porcelain megaphone), Andrew Vachss, Joe R. Lansdale, William Kotzwinkle, Chuck Palahniuk, Don Coscarelli, David Hartman (the real one), Stephanie Crawford (a superior creature), Shawn Lewis (a depraved creature), Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, Leif Jonker, Briana, Jennii and Matt at Rough Ride Creations (who make my website look good), Grindhouse Releasing, Ellen Leach, Richard Pine and the crack squad of badasses at Inkwell Management.

Extra special thanks to:

Jennifer Bergstrom and Louise Burke at Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, who believed in a guy named Elroy.

To my mother:

I love you and I live on.

S
TEPHEN
R
OMANO
is an award-winning author, illustrator, designer, and screenwriter. His acclaimed projects include an adaptation for Showtime’s Emmy Award–winning
Masters of Horror
series, the illustrated work
Shock Festival
(hailed by
Fangoria
magazine as “one of the greatest homages to B cinema ever undertaken”), and cowriting the original novel
Black Light
with
Saw
franchise screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan. He lives in Austin, Texas. Catch him at:

www.stephenromanoshockfestival.com

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JACKET PHOTOGRAPH OF AUSTIN SKYLINE BY DONOVAN REESE / GETTY IMAGES

AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES KEATING

COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Stephen Romano

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First Gallery Books hardcover edition September 2012