Road of the Dead (23 page)

Think about it.

Think.

Think.

Think.

Listen.

Concentrate, listen.

Silence. A background hum. Something ticking. A faint solitary beep. No voices. For a moment, I think they’ve gone…but then, from across the room—
snap
—a rubbery snap, and the murmur of voices again.

This is ridiculous, Ryan. I can’t operate without consent. What if he dies? What if—

I’ll clear it. It’s cleared. I can take care of it. Listen, you’re not doing anything—OK? It’s just a minor emergency operation. You had to do it. These things happen, don’t they?

Yes, but—

We have to know. We have to find out. There’s no choice. We have to find out right now.

I don’t understand—

Click.

Do you understand this?

A threatening silence.

All right. But only—

Only an exploration. That’s all we need.

A heavy sigh. Then another sharp snap, the snap of a surgical glove.

Put this surgical mask on, Mr. Ryan. I’m going to need some help.

The fear is killing me now, overpowering my mind. I can’t think. I have to think. I
have
to move. Move move move. I’m
trying
to move myself—trying, forcing, straining, struggling—I’m doing everything possible to think myself into moving my body. But it’s useless. There’s no connection between mind and flesh. Nothing. My body just lies there, inanimate. It’s just a thing. A container. I’m still conscious of it, conscious of its unconsciousness, but I can’t do anything with it.

Kamal, how is he?

Tick tick.

The same. Steady.

I need you there, Ryan.

All right.

Don’t touch anything, just do what I say. Kamal?

OK.

OK.

A chill tingles my skin as the sheet is folded back from my stomach. I can feel the cold white air. I’m naked. Out in the open. Exposed. I can hear a distant whistling sound inside my head, a scary white noise. The sound of fear. I want to clench something, but I don’t have anything to clench
with
.

Membraned hands touch my skin. Soft. Then a little harder. Kneading, probing.

Words.

It feels all right…a little unusual. Here, I think. Something…maybe.

The whistle of fear intensifies, then suddenly stops. All at once my head is soundless. Empty and dead. And in the inner silence, I can hear the inaudible sound of a scalpel being plucked from a silver tray.

I’m going to cut here.

No…

Fingertips…then the flat of a hand on my skin.

Oh no.

No…

The slice of the scalpel is quick and tight. At first I feel nothing, just the silent peeling of skin and fat, opening up like a bloodred smile…then suddenly the pain cuts in.

It hurts.

Oh, it
hurts
…

IT HURTS.

So sharp it’s dull, like cold, like ice…burning hot…

It hurts it hurts it
HURTS
…

And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Somewhere in the screamless distance, the voices continue.

Hold that, Ryan, just there. Let me clear that.

What is it?

I can’t make it out. Just a second.

Pain and pressure…pressure and pain…

I don’t understand it.

What’s that brown stuff?

Hold that away.

Look at that. Jesus!

There’s some kind of…like a shell. Hard, pliable. A plastic. I think it comes up to about here.

A sudden searing pain rips through my stomach…it’s too much too much too much too much…

What’s in there? What’s underneath it? Is that liquid? Wires? They look like moving wires.

This…I can’t get through it. It has—look—patterning. Like bone structure. Outlines. It could be some kind of shield. That might explain the X-rays.

A shield? A body shield?

Perhaps…

Get in underneath it.

I can’t without—

Just pry it up, for Christ’s sake.

Pass me that.

It was then, just as the tip of a broad-bladed instrument touched something under my skin…it was then that I felt my fists clench. Out of sight, beneath the sheet…I felt them clench.

And unclench.

I felt the movement.

Movement.

I could
move.

And in that same miraculous instant, I was suddenly seeing a face. Above me. Behind me. Hovering over my head. Brown eyes, olive skin, a slight beard showing beneath a surgical mask. Kamal, the anesthetist. I could see him. My eyes were still closed, but I could see him. It wasn’t possible, but I didn’t care. I could see him.

I could see all around me.

The pain had gone.

How?

How had the pain gone?

How could I see all around me?

There shouldn’t have been time to think about it, no time to take anything in…but somehow there was. There was all the time in the world—and I took it all in:

A small white windowless room.

White white light.

Machines and monitors.

Silver cutting instruments laid out on a tray, like an exhibit of lunatic cutlery.

A metal table covered with papers and tapes and photographs.

A white door guarded by a thickset man in a suit.

And there, standing over me, two masked men, peering intently into the meat of my belly: Casing and Ryan. Professor Casing was the narrow-faced one, the one in the white coat and glasses. Ryan was tall and severe, dressed in a plain black suit. He had silver eyes, a grayed face, coal-black hair. An automatic pistol was clipped to the back of his belt.

They were looking at me, looking inside me, and now I was looking at them. I didn’t know how, but I was looking at them.

Look.

Shit, look what they’ve
done
to me. What have they done? My poor stomach…white and flat with a slash of red and—shit!—what is that? Look—a gaping slice, like a bad clown’s grin, fastened back with tiny black clamps, and inside me…

Oh God, the things inside me…the things I saw. Unknown things. Terrible things. Black and brown things, red things, silver things…creamy-white shapes of living metal or plastic or God knows what…all of it moving like a blooddark shimmer inside me.

I couldn’t think about it then. It was just too much. There wasn’t time. The frozen moment was nearly over—all the time in the world was fading.

And I was moving.

I was
moving.

As Casing dug a spatula into my guts, and Ryan leaned over to get a better look, something electric shifted inside me—and I moved, faster than I’d ever moved before. Jerking upright, tearing the mask from my mouth, ripping the tube from my throat…I didn’t know what I was doing.

But something inside me did.

With tapes and wires snapping off all around me, I saw myself snatching the pistol from Ryan’s belt and jamming the barrel against his head, and then a voice hissed out of my mouth.

“That’s enough,” it said—a cold dry whisper.

It was just supposed to be
a routine examination.

But what the doctors discover inside Robert Smith doesn’t make medical sense. Naked and numb on the operating table, Robert can hear the surgeons’ shocked comments:

“What the hell is that?”

It’s me, Robert thinks,
and I’ve got to get out of here.

Armed with a stolen automatic, Robert manages to escape. Off the radar, on the run, and with a beautiful thief as his hostage, he embarks on a violent odyssey to find out exactly who—exactly
what
—he is.

Did I hate him? Of course I hated him.
But I never meant to kill him.

Martyn’s father is dead. Now he has to make a choice. Tell the police what happened—and be suspected of murder. Or get rid of the body and go on with the rest of his life.

Simple, right? Not quite. One lie leads to another. Secrets become darker and darker. And Martyn is faced with twists and turns that will leave him stunned and spinning. Life is never easy. But death is even harder.

I would have done anything to freeze
the moment forever.

One unforgettable summer afternoon, Caitlin meets a boy named Lucas, and her world turns upside down. Lucas is everything Caitlin longs to be. Brave. Honest. Free. And he is also everything the people around her fear the most.

As Caitlin grapples to find her true self amidst the unforgiving ways of her small town, she is mysteriously drawn to Lucas. For this, there are consequences. When the town suddenly turns on Lucas, Caitlin must make the most difficult choice of her life…

The TRUTH?
I’ll tell you about the truth.

Everyone thinks of Moo Nelson as a nobody. They tease him. Shove him. Call him names. There’s only one place he can escape: the bridge. High above the traffic, Moo can watch the world go by and not worry about anything else.

Until he witnesses a car chase. And a murder.

Suddenly everyone—gangsters and police officers, friends and foes—wants the truth from Moo. Or some version of the truth. But Moo isn’t sure what’s true anymore. He must decide between fact and fiction, loyalty and loneliness, justice and retribution. And he must do it soon…