Author Archive: jsomers

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

24.

The Holland Motor Lodge wasn’t the worst motel I’d ever stayed in; the rugs were a horrifying green and yellow pattern that clashed with the drapes and bedspreads, which were tropical in flavor, and the whole place smelled like car exhaust, but it was pretty clean and the furniture was in decent shape. It was right outside the tunnel, five minutes from midtown on a good day, and since Frank’s world ended at the borders of Manhattan it was as safe a spot as any.

My suits didn’t fit right. They didn’t fit badly, but they were off the rack and were snug in the wrong way and loose in the wrong way and I felt like I was eight again, taking my First Communion to make Ma happy and swimming in some cousin’s hand-me-down suit. We’d taken three rooms and everyone but Rusch was in Falken’s, the middle room, filling it with cigarette smoke and half-empty Chinese food boxes, everything mixing with exhaust fumes and honking horns from the cars trying to stuff their way into the tunnel’s tubes, forming a brown haze that obscured everything. Falken was back to his overstuffed self, blooming out of a shiny green suit, his jowly cheeks shaved red and raw, digesting a disturbing amount of sweet and sour pork, forked endlessly and joylessly into his small, greasy mouth with robotic regularity. I didn’t like Falken. My hands itched to slapped him around, but I reminded myself that he had a lifetime pass.

I consoled myself by thinking of Alt James. That bastard had left me in an abandoned world to be eaten for the rest of eternity. My future was a bright golden vision of being able to do whatever I wanted to that son of a bitch without even a flicker of guilt.

Pacing, I pushed my foot down onto the sharp pebble I’d placed in my shoe. Walking around, it dug painfully into my foot, soothing me. Everyone was sitting around the tiny round table that wobbled in every directions, threatening to spill the mess of food, ashtrays, and half-filled glasses of booze everywhere. They watched me pace for a few seconds, patient.

“All right,” I finally said, sending a plume of smoke into the brown air. “We don’t have any muscle. Even if we had the money to hire an army—and my wad will carry us for a while but it isn’t going to buy us an army—no one in this town would touch me now that Frank’s put the kibosh on me. James is playing cop—who knows how long he can pull it off. He looks like Captain Stanley James, he sounds like him, but he’s not a fucking cop and it’s gonna get noticed.”

“He’ll pull it off for a long time,” Falken said flatly. He looked like an overfed pig, his girly little hands steepled under his chin. I owed him my life. I hated that.

I nodded. “Long enough. And while he does pull it off, he’s got the cops. He’s got all the resources of the police department, plus the Feds if he takes the trouble to dream up something big to feed them. Not only the normal cops he would have under his direction for operations, but every fucking dirty cop in the city he can slip an envelope to is his now, too. And we got Frank McKenna standing on my balls, to boot.” I put my cigarette back between my lips. “Thus I am in fucking Jersey.”

“I was born in Jersey,” The Bumble said contemplatively, studying his cigarette.

I blinked. The Bumble, I’d always been sure, had been grown in a lab vat somewhere. The thought of him with a mullet in some suburban Jersey high school disturbed me.

The door opened behind me, and I turned to find Connie Rusch struggling with several overstuffed brown grocery bags. I’d been hesitant to trust the dotty old professor with our food supply, but it had gotten her out of the room and away from the cigarette smoke she deplored.

Ignoring Billy’s sudden moment of introspection, Rachel sat forward fiercely, setting her glass of bourbon on the table. I mashed my foot down onto my hidden pebble and forced myself not to wince.

“So, what, we hide out here, grow old together?” she hissed. “I go get a fucking job as a hostess at some Hoboken dive, get five dollar bills stuffed between my tits all night?”

I shook my head, trying to keep a straight face. Rachel’s rage was endlessly entertaining. She always thought I’d volunteered for all those drives because I wanted to hurt her—my way of hurting her, anyway. But I’d just liked seeing her angry, and she was always angry.

“We’re just here to stay out of the light,” I said. “James no doubt has us on the wire. Frank’s people all know me and Billy on sight. We walk around the city, we’re fucked in an hour, tops. But I have a plan. We’re going on the offensive.”

She shook her head. “What about Elias? How is he getting out of this?”

I frowned, putting all my weight on my one leg, letting the stone really dig in there, maybe even puncture the skin. “We take out James, he—”

“How does he get home? Get back?”

I looked at Falken. Elias. He was staring out the window at the traffic, all noble pain.

“I have an—an idea.”

I blinked, and then we all turned as one to look at Connie Rusch. She was standing by the bathroom, which was doubling as a completely unsanitary kitchen, holding in each hand a jug of milk. She was wearing a floral print dress that hung on her like a sack and had probably cost about thirty cents for two or three South American children to sew from a pattern, no stockings, and sensible black shoes, the kind they put on senile old men who liked to wander the grounds. Her eyes were made ridiculously huge by her thick glasses, which had sunk down to the tip of her nose. The old broad had proven tougher than I’d imagined, but looking at her now I couldn’t believe she was even in the same room.

“I think I can help Mr. Falken with his energy needs.” She hesitated, then rushed on. “This has, after all, been my life’s work. Although seeing the practical application of it so advanced in other, other dimensions is frustrating and demoralizing. I understand the concepts. I have contacts in the scientific community, and the use of such synthetic elements in research is not unheard of. I can make inquiries.”

We stared for another moment, and then Rachel clapped her hands together. “Oh, Connie,” she sighed happily. I grit my teeth.

“We can’t afford it,” I said bluntly. “Elias borrowed enough fucking money to run New York for a week. We can’t buy what he bought.”

Rusch shook her head. her arms were trembling from the weight of the milk but she didn’t seem to notice. “We won’t need to pay for it,” she said in a horrified tone. “These are scientists I’m talking about. We’ll beg, borrow, and trade. Darling, in my field none of us have any money.”

Rachel clapped her hands again. I wanted to slap her. And then throw Falken out the window.

I pushed a smile onto my face for Rusch’s benefit. “All right. How long is that gonna take you?”

She frowned, obviously considering the question for the first time. “A week. Perhaps two. To make inquiries. Another week or two to make arrangements. I may have to do some cross-trading, pull some strings, apologize to certain folks …”

I snapped my fingers at her viciously as she looked down at her feet, doing sums in her head. “A rough idea, Connie,” I said. “Give it to me in a round number in the single digits.”

She looked up at me and blinked. “Perhaps three months.” She did a little wince-shrug. “This stuff is closely tracked, you see.”

A thick silence fell over the room. I turned back to the table. “All right—it’s a time line, at least. It doesn’t change anything. We still need to deal with James.”

Falken didn’t look away from the window as he spoke, softly. “I can’t go back, go home, unless James is gone. He’ll just follow me. And then he’ll be on familiar ground again.”

Rachel sat back again, her hair a delicious mess around her face. “All right. We have no muscle, not enough money, and he has the whole city to hit us over the head with. What do we do?”

We make them hurt, I thought. Swallowing an unformed anger I didn’t want to explore too closely, I pressed the sole of my foot against my pebble and took a breath. “We sic them on each other.”

They stared at me.

“Billy,” I said suddenly, pointing at him. “You know every Collection run in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, right?”

He blinked. “You mean Frank’s? Or everyone’s?”

“Everyone’s,” I said, feeling excited. “Frank’s, The Phin’s, Durby uptown, The Marcos Brothers, Perez and Hildy—all of them.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, sure. We gotta stay out of each other’s way, so I know.”

I nodded. “We’re going on a spree. We’re gonna hit them all. Fast, two or three a night, all in one week. We’re gonna clean them out.”

He blinked again. “We’re gonna rob them?” He blinked again, a faint slick of alarm spreading over his rocky face. “All of them?”

I nodded. “Frank already thinks we’re working for James. Let’s make it true. We kick him in the balls, we tell him James told us to. We tell him James is fucking with him, taking over, his worst fucking nightmare: A cop using his badge to run the fucking rackets.” I smiled. “What’s Frank gonna do?”

Billy’s face was comical, a mask of contemplation sitting uneasily on it. “Go after us.”

“After James. All we gotta do is lead him there, let him take the Executioner out.”

Rachel was shaking her head. “He isn’t going after cops,” she said flatly. “He can’t. He’d have every cop in the country on his ass, he did that.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I hissed, my hands balling into fists “Jesus, you don’t know shit about shit here. You don’t know Frank.” I uncurled my hands by force of will. “You go after cops, you have to. He thinks James is going to take everything from him, he’ll go for him.” I nodded. “I know Frank McKenna. You don’t.”

I looked at The Bumble. If he was with me on it, that’s all that mattered. If Falken wanted in, I had to let him, I owed him, but this was about me surviving the week, and I needed Billy.

He smiled. “Well, shit,” he said, reaching for the Wild Turkey. “Let’s make ‘em hurt, boss.”

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

23.

The Bumble nodded once and turned for the entrance of my building. It was noon, the sun hidden behind a scum of dark clouds, the air still. He crossed the street and climbed the front steps without hesitation or even a glance back at me; Billy’s greatest flaw and asset was a complete faith in everything he did. I’d told him I’d do my part, so he did his, and it never occurred to him to doubt success. It was going to get him killed someday, and I hoped today wasn’t it.

I spun away and crossed the street, working my way around the corner and up into my apartment via the back yards and fire escape, swinging silently into my old bedroom and setting my feet carefully on the painted floorboards. I could hear voices from the kitchen—The Bumble, right on cue, raising his voice and making a scene, demanding to know who the fuck they were, who’d posted them here, sitting in my apartment like spiders. I listened for a moment, trying to recognize the voices, but these were either out of town talent or not Frank’s guys at all.

Creeping on small feet, I walked over to the closet and stepped into it, feeling better once I was inside its darkened confines, the walls and floor muffled by my own clothes, torn up and dumped. I was showered and I’d bought myself a new suit, off the rack and horrible for all it cost five hundred dollars. The five of us were living down in a motel by the Holland Tunnel on the Jersey side in three rooms, me and The Bumble fulfilling our destiny of platonic marriage. I didn’t feel right, and the sight of all my beautiful suits in rags on the floor made me angry and sad.

I started to sweat. It was close and hot in the apartment.

Crouching down, I worked my fingers under the floorboards, catching splinters. The Bumble was giving it all he had—all I could make out were shouts, but I knew anyone in their right mind would hesitate to do anything more than shout at Billy Bumbles. He’d be able to stretch this out as long as he needed just by throwing around glares and pretending to not understand English, which was a favorite trick of his.

One by one the boards came up. I lay down on my belly, feeling exposed and vulnerable, and reached down into the void. Four canvas bags, heavy and thick, one by one. They came up with a cloud of dust and a musty smell, and I had to huddle for a moment on the floor, hand clamped over my nose, struggling against the strong urge to sneeze. In the kitchen, the voices had become louder, with three or four people shouting simultaneously. When I felt like I had myself under control, I started bringing the bags over to the window, and with a heave I sent them falling down to the overgrown yard one by one, silent. The voices had gotten even louder by then, and I turned, sweating, and crept back to the bedroom door, pulling it inward a half inch.

“—the fuck down, Billy. You think you just fucking disappear for a few days with your fucking pal and Frank ain’t gonna notice? Fucking sit down, Billy. Frank put your name out.”

I recognized Mikey D’s voice now, pictured the white-haired bastard preening there, a jumbo softy, the sort of guy who had a lot of stories about the beatings he’d handed out over the years, but who never seemed to graze a knuckle in real life. I stole back from the door and got back down on the floor, reaching through the shredded clothes and torn-up books under the bed and casting about until I found my trusty aluminum bat. Fucking heresy for the actual game, but metal felt better when smacked across someone’s back. I’d put a few layers of spiraling electrical tape around the grip, a callback to my days playing stickball on the corners at the Four Sewers over on North Street.

Bat in hand, I stepped back to the door and pushed my foot gently into the gap, pushing the door just wide enough for me to slip through. I knew my apartment well, and I knew that if no one was in the living room, I’d be able to slip to the left and approach the kitchen without being seen. I leaned my head out and looked forward: Aside from Mikey D I could see half The Bumble, standing with his hands up lazily, hovering in the air like he might change his mind at any moment. Assholes like Mikey liked guns, because there was no way they would ever take on a slab like Billy Bumbles by hand; Billy would turn Mikey into a memory. I couldn’t see anyone else, but Mikey wasn’t holding the piece, so that meant at least one other guy. And since Mikey liked to play cards while he did shit details like this for Frank, that meant at least one other other guy.

Moving slowly, I crept into the dim living room, bat held low. I looked around, but I was alone in my ruined living room. I kept glancing at the floor, picking my way through the debris, and angled my way left until I couldn’t see Mikey any more.

“You guys think you’re clever,” Mikey was saying. It came out clevah. “You and your colored cop friend. I told Frank—Pinks, didn’t I say it?—I told him when your husband there came in and did his little dance about Falken, I said, bullshit. Bull-fucking-shit. You guys squeeze the tar outta everyone. You collect everything. And this skinny fuck from nowhere puts you off? Naw, ain’t happening. I told Frank—Pinks, right?—I told him you boys were running a scam. And then this cop strolls in and buys the debt. The cop buys the debt. This fucking cop’s been kneeing us in the balls for years, and now he’s buying a huge debt, using his badge as collateral. I said naw, no fucking way. And here you are, Billy, and now the cop’s dropped the debt and told Frank to suck it. So I don’t know if it just fucking fell apart for you and your boyfriend, or if you’re getting skulled on this one, and who gives a shit. So sit down and we’re gonna call Frank and find out where he wants you.”

I pushed myself against the wall just to the left of the doorway and raised the bat up, feeling its weight and balance. Then I stepped around the doorway and swung, connecting solidly with Mikey D’s shoulders.

It felt good. Sharp pain shot up my arms into my shoulders, and Mikey fell to the floor like he’d been held up by wires. I stepped into the kitchen; Billy was already moving, barreling into a stocky old man in a terrible, untucked western-style shirt that hung off his man-boobs like a dress, knocking him back into the sink with a crash that sounded like cracking laminate. I spun to my left and swung the bat without looking, catching a skinny, tatted mope in a wifebeater and a fucking pork pie hat on the shoulder and whipping him around into the stove. I rushed forward and slapped him hard across the back of the knees before he could recover, sending him down to the floor with a moan. I considered hitting him again a few times just because of the fucking hat, but stepped back, searching the floor for the gun. I found it under what was left of the kitchen table, a much-used little thirty-eight that probably had a string of liquor store robberies tied to it.

I glanced at Billy, who was holding up his unconscious victim by the scruff of his flabby neck, then looked down at Mikey, who was crawling towards the front door, making about an inch a year, and pissing and moaning all the way.

“You fucking broke my fucking back,” he wheezed. “You motherfuckers.”

I walked over and put the barrel of the bat into the small of his back, pushing down like I was pinning a bug to a card. He wailed and thrashed his arms and legs.

“Stick around, Mike,” I said. “We can discuss your fucking skill set as one of Frank’s best and brightest.”

He stopped writhing and twisted his head to squint up at me. “I shoulda known you wouldn’t let your lover here out of your sight.”

I pushed down on the bat and he groaned. I liked that, so I lifted the bat up and brought it down hard on the spot right above his bony ass, making him howl. I liked that even more, so I did it again.

“Tell me something, Mike, did you bust out my apartment?”

He didn’t say anything, just lay there breathing hard, sawdust scattering away from his open mouth.

“What the fuck did you have against my suits, you stupid cunt?” I ground the bat down into him, making him squeal, and smiled, sweat dripping down off my chin. “You think I had cash sewn in the fucking linings?”

Mikey made a noise that might have been speech, filtered through the floorboards. Fucking peacock. Put him on his face and he lost all his feathers.

I pulled the bat up and dropped down onto him, knees spread to either side. He groaned again, a drawn-out, rubbery sound. I got comfortable on him. “I got a message for Frank, you listening? Tell him he can stop sitting on my apartment. I’m not coming back again. Okay?”

Mikey made a noise I chose to take as acknowledgment. I have him one last slap on the back of his head and stood up, hefting the bat. “Tell him we don’t work for him anymore, either. If Frank’s got a beef, he’s gonna get a face full of cops.” I smiled at The Bumble, who let the guy he’d been holding up crumple to the floor with a shrug. “Meet you round the side,” I said, and turned for the bedroom.

“You’re fucking dead,” Mikey managed to spit up. “Frank’s gonna push your fucking button.”

I paused and half-turned back, flipping the bat into the air and catching the fat end. “Haven’t you heard, Mikey?” I said cheerfully. “I’m fucking unkillable.”

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

22.

“Well, Mr. Falken,” I said slowly. “Looks like you’re my hero.”

He shrugged without turning around to look at me. “No. I knew where he was going to take you.” He looked around, as if he could actually see anything without the flashlight aimed directly at it. “I couldn’t leave anyone in a place like this.”

I could just make out everyone around me as we made our way through this silent, dusty Hoboken. Falken was the same chubby schlub in a suit, his head shaved down to a fine point, his jowls just beginning to blossom. He’d be a fat fuck in a few years if he didn’t cut down on the fruity mixed drinks and the steaks, the double lattes with whipped cream. Right now he just looked abundant. Moist and fertile, the sort of guy who had vast civilizations of bacteria growing in the darkened folds of his skin. He had a pinched expression on his face, very serious and unhappy, and I took it to mean he was really going out of his fucking way for me, breaking his stride to come save me from my own stupidity. I wanted to hit him, but owing my life to him made that seem impolite.

Rachel kept turning her head to glance back at me. In the old warehouse she’d stepped up to me suddenly, oh! You’re bleeding! And reached out a hand, jerking it to a halt just before she actually touched me. Since then we hadn’t spoken a word to each other. She twisted back to look at me and then twisted back around, biting her lip.

Rusch was delighted. Fucking-A delighted. She more or less danced down the street, ogling this alternate world, a place she’d been and not been, recognizable but different, the apparent proof of every theory she had ever floated at a faculty retreat and seen laughed out of the room. I could see her looking out of the corner of her eye at everyone as we walked, trying to catch our attention and start a conversation, like an excited kid.

The Bumble had gone back to his blank-faced expression, walking steadily along with his hands hanging by his sides like shovels, his eyes sleepy. Since he’d just displayed more emotion to me than I’d ever seen in him before, I figured he was exhausted.

Rubbing my torn-up wrist to break the scab a little, the pain cutting through my overloaded nerves and soaking a little more adrenaline into my blood. I was jittery and achy, grinding my teeth, all signs that I was a few moments away from collapsing. I pushed myself to catch up with Falken, who didn’t look at me as I matched his pace.

“What’s he doing now?” I said quietly, not looking at him either. “James. The Executioner.”

“Still looking for me,” he said immediately. “He wouldn’t think of me coming here, but he’s still working me. Won’t give up until I’m dead, either. Don’t worry, he won’t bother to check on you. Keep your head down and you’re fine.”

“Fuck that,” I said, turning to accept a silently proffered cigarette from The Bumble. “That piece of shit put himself on my To-Do list.” I inhaled smoke, letting it leak from my nose at its own pace. “What’s he doing? Where can I find the son of a bitch?”

Falken didn’t turn to look at me as we walked, turning in towards the cliffs at the rear of Hoboken. “He’s playing cop, pretending to be your James,” he said suddenly. “He’s using the cops to look for me. He’s walking around pretending to be him, going through the motions, using the system to track me down.”

I thought about that. I wasn’t a scientist and I didn’t know how to jump between universes. I did know how shit like that worked. “Why don’t you displace?” I asked. “Get out of town. Get out of the fucking world.”

“I can’t, goddamn it!” he snarled, his hands bunching up into fists. He visibly forced himself to relax. “The energy needed for … for traveling between—it’s enormous. In some places it’s easy to come by. Not here. here it’s expensive and difficult.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “So you borrowed money. As much as you could get.”

“And I managed to scrape together enough material to make two jumps.” I opened my eyes again and forced myself to look at him. He was staring at the ground as we walked. “And I just used half of it.”

I let that ride. I had nothing to say. He looked up and stared straight ahead, his jaw clenched, like he wished he could burn people to death with his eyes. After a second or two I nodded. “Playing cop. Sure. Everyone thinks he’s Detective James, and he gets the whole fucking city to look for you. But it also means we know exactly where the motherfucker is.”

I saw The Bumble nod his head in agreement. We were slowing down, approaching the fucking Beamer, parked right in the middle of the street. It looked scorched, black scars running along the sides, like it had driven through a fire.

“You drove here?” I said, then instantly regretted it, worried that Rusch might take this as an opportunity to give me a lesson in theoretical physics. “Forget it.” The Bumble and Falken stepped forward and opened the front doors, and then we were all getting into the car as if this was a trip to the fucking mall or something. I paused, my hands on the top rim of the door, feeling the heat of the metal.

“How much?” I asked Falken. He stopped, bent awkwardly, half in and half out of the car.

He told me. It was an amount of money I didn’t think you could actually amass in one place.

He sank into the leather seats and I ducked in too, finding myself next to Rachel, Rusch sitting up straight and excited on the other end. There was a good three inches between Rachel and me; it would have been completely natural and easy to lean my leg out and let it touch her thigh, but I didn’t. She might excuse it, she might not. It didn’t matter. I’d promised never to touch her, and until she released me from that promise there was going to be three inches between us.

Falken twisted around in his seat, holding out a pair of what looked like white gumdrops. His face was still stiff and shadowed, his eyes distant. “You’re gonna want these,” he said, dropping them into my palm. “Earplugs.”

I remembered being tied up in Alt James’ trunk, and nodded, stuffing them into my ears along with everyone else. I felt the Beamer fire up, the low rumble in my bones, and settled back, enjoying the near-total silence the earplugs offered. I shut my eyes for a moment, wondering when the last time I’d slept had been.

“Wake up, slugger.”

I opened my eyes and was awake instantly. I felt raw and bruised; every part of me ached. It was bright sunlight outside of the car, making Rachel into a tiny silhouette.

“We’re back?”

“We’re back,” she said, stepping back as I pulled myself, slowly, like an old man, from the car. We were on Hudson Street downtown, crowded with people having lunch and shopping, just strolling in the sunlight. When I got to my feet I wobbled a little, everything going hazy, my joints stiff and my mouth filled with cotton. I felt like I’d been in a coma. When I felt steady enough I climbed onto the sidewalk and leaned back against the door to shut it, sweat pouring down my back. My side burned like someone had injected my wound with acid.

We were parked right outside the White Horse Tavern. I pushed off from the car and staggered over to Falken, The Bumble, and Rusch.

“Jesus Christ, who’s buying me a drink?”

A kid named Carlos was working the bar—slow this time of day, old codgers sopping up domestic beer, mostly—who I knew from a few collections last year. Nothing major, and the kid had cheerfully handed over what he owed, apologizing for making me come out and find him, and I’d let him go with some slaps and shoves. He didn’t exactly smile when Billy and me walked in, but he slapped napkins down onto the bar as the five of us settled in and waited politely to hear what we had to say. I ordered boilermakers for everyone, and an extra one for myself. Rachel made a face, Falken ignored me completely, and Rusch steepled her fingers in front of herself as if expecting a delightful new experience.

When our drinks arrived Billy and I dropped a shot glass each into our pints, clinked glasses, and downed them as fast as we could. We were old pros, and didn’t spill much. Rusch watched us, smiling, her whole face lit up.

I picked up my second shot glass as the alcohol warmed me up, eased my nerves. I felt like I could sleep for days, but there was no time. I stepped out and around Rusch and leaned in to Falken.

“Bygones,” I said slowly. “You and me, we’re even, right? We start fresh. I can’t cover or forgive your debt—Jesus, it’s too much fucking scratch—but I can help you. I know this town, I know the players. I’m on your payroll now.” I popped a finger free from my grip on the shot glass and waggled it at him. “That’s for swinging around to pick me up back … there. Wherever there was. Okay?”

He looked me up and down, then nodded. “Okay.”

I nodded back and swallowed the second shot: Wild Turkey, rough and country, swagger and burn. It wasn’t sophisticated, but it had character, and sometimes that carried you through. “James, The fucking Executioner, is on my list now. I can’t have that fucking doppelganger running amok in my town.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Carlos on the phone behind the bar, his back to us. I twitched my head and focused on Falken. “You got your own troubles, but I could use your help, if only because you’re the only one here who has any fucking idea what’s going on. I’m asking, not telling.”

I’d left my beer by The Bumble, which had been a mistake. I really wanted it before whoever Carlos was calling arrived, and I knew from bitter experience that The Bumble considered abandoned alcohol up for grabs. I’d seen him snag glasses when I was standing a foot away.

Falken stared at me silently for a moment, then nodded. “All right,” he said. I translated helpfully for myself: I’ve got nothing to lose. He was anchored to this world for the time being, he had no more money, and no friends. If I was going to step up to the line with him, why not let me? I might draw some bullets my way. And fuck, I’m supposed to be immortal.

I turned and tapped The Bumble on the shoulder, and he turned around, grinning, and my goddamn beer was in his paw, already half gone. “Billy,” I said, and his grin disappeared. “What I’m planning to do might go against Frank’s wishes, I don’t know,” I said. “At any rate I’m not asking the old man for permission. You still in this with me?”

He shrugged and nodded. “Fuck Frank,” he said. “Asshole hasn’t skinned a knuckle in fucking decades.”

I smiled and looked back at Falken. He looked at The Bumble and back to me. “What do you plan to do?”

“What I get paid to do, Mr. Falken.” I winked, feeling jolly and limp, ready to fall over at any moment. “Make them hurt.”

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

21.

I was being eaten alive by an old woman in the dark, one fucking bite at a time.

So far she’d nailed me three times: The first nip in the neck, and once each on my already-bloody hand and arm. She kept creeping up on me in the dark, and her green, muddy teeth were surprisingly sharp, like dogs’ teeth.

The dark: I’d never been in such complete darkness before. The sky had scummed over with clouds, and the moon was hidden away. There were no lights anywhere, and I’d been crushed under a thick, complete blanket of nothing. No noise, no light, my eyes finding the vague, indistinct edges of things and sending me crashing into walls and tripping over every bump. Alt James had cleaned out my pockets; I didn’t even have my lighter.

The skinny bitch, she could fucking see in the dark, the way she moved.

I’d stayed inside the building, figuring that having a wall to back against was better than wandering the streets in pitch dark, where other … people might be lurking. I at least had a vague memory of the layout of the immediate room and hallway, and I’d found something that felt like a rusty metal pole, maybe three feet long and more comforting than effective. I hunkered down in one corner down near the rusty garage doors and stared blindly into the murk, eyes aching with the effort to spot her white hair a second or two before she darted in close, teeth snapping, hands pushing.

I told myself that all I had to do was survive the night without being entirely digested. It didn’t make me feel any better.

I was not a good man. I knew that, but I certainly did not deserve this bullshit, and the fact that the universe—all of them—saw fit to dole this out to me made me want to burn the world down. I’d spent my life seeking rules, ways to do what I wanted, needed to do without being a virus, without being destructive. To find a way for it all to serve a purpose. If this was my reward, I’d wasted my time. I could have been enjoying myself.

I heard her, suddenly, a sniffle across the room, muffled but not before I’d heard her. She was right in my line of sight, up on top of the loading dock, three or four feet higher than me, creeping close to the floor. I got up onto the balls of my feet, balancing, but didn’t try to displace; she’d shown me she could see better in the dark then I could, so there was no point. I had wall to my back and sides where I was; she could only come at me from the front. If I was patient and lucky I might finally clock her in the head, be able to fall asleep before sunrise.

I sat and listened, trying to keep my breathing slow and shallow, kept my hands loose and let one end of the rusty metal rod rest on the floor between my knees. I kept my head turned towards the spot I’d heard her, making her think I was stupid, and waited, tense, holding my breath. I didn’t have much experience with this sort of thing; my gig was to intimidate people with The Bumble crowding them from behind, then making them hurt professionally, expert pressure, sudden violence, and you walked out onto the street to have a smoke and get in the car while your client lay in a pool of their own piss, screaming. Clean and professional, purposeful. Not shivering in the dark forever, fighting off this crazy bitch.

I heard her again, somehow above me, and tried to roll away from the wall. I was too slow, and she was on me, light as air but pushing her snarling, greasy mouth towards me, enveloping me in a cloud of rot and copper. I swung the rod straight up, not managing much force, but connected solidly with her and got a squawk of rage for my trouble. I pushed myself to my feet and swung it again in a descending arc, but I hit the concrete floor and nothing else, a shock slamming up my arms and settling into my lower back in the form of a nice, burning ache.

Spinning slowly, I held the rod out in front of me, trying to see some sign of her. Then I froze, cocking my head, and heard it again: Voices, whispered, inside the building.

It spooked my little cannibal, too; I heard her moving quickly for the first time as she rushed out of the room, a startled stray cat, and for the first time all night I was confident of being alone in the darkness. After a second of triumphant relief, I realized that this hadn’t actually improved things all that much, and started taking slow steps towards the raised platform of the loading dock, where I could use it as a guide to the short flight of steps leading me up towards the exit. I had to move carefully, but I tried to hurry, because I wanted to reach the doorway before anything else did.

It was sweaty work, trying to hold your breath and drag yourself silently through the murk. I didn’t hear anything else by the time I found the lip of the dock and started to my right, one hand on the cold stone to make sure I didn’t go sailing off into the corner, but after a few steps I heard them again: More than one person, hissing at each other, a group of people trying to stay stealthy and quiet and failing almost completely. I wondered if my friend the Cannibal might not reach out to them first, drop in on them for a little snack. I’d know by the sudden and persistent screams of horror and what the fuck.

The steps were pretty much where I expected them to be, making me think I might even get used to being blind, given enough time.

I took them slowly, careful, sweat and blood sizzling on my skin. When I reached the smooth floor of the dock, I inched my way to the right until my outstretched hand found the wall, tracing my fingers along the rough cinder blocks until I found the corner. A few fumblings to the left and I had the open doorway in front of me, the air somehow feeling thinner, less dense than in the rear. I made sure of my grip on the rusty metal rod and hesitated; whoever this was, they probably saw better in the dark than I did, probably knew the layout of the building better—were used to living in this craphole abandoned world. But I couldn’t hide in the loading dock—as the frail old woman who’d been fucking eating me for the last few hours had proven, that was a recipe for getting my ass kicked.

Swallowing bile and fear, I stepped into the chasm that was the hallway, pitch black and endless.

I could hear them again, tense whispers, several voices. Knowing that I could hear them but they had no idea where I was gave me some comfort—if I managed to stay quiet and kept my ears open, I might survive. Then I imagined spending the rest of my life—fuck, the rest of forever like this, being hunted every night, starving until I was hunting the old bitch right back. It got me depressed again.

Creeping along the hallway, I tried to picture it and estimate how far the small elevator lobby was. The yawning, empty shafts might be useful if I had a group who weren’t much better in the dark than I was—get their back to them and menace them, try to make them take that fatal step back, let the building do some work for me.

It wasn’t a very good plan, but it was the best I could do with my available tools: a rusty metal rod, the possible element of surprise, and some open airshafts.

I didn’t have a lot of time; I had to get to the elevator lobby before my new friends did. Fixing my memory of the hallway in my mind, I started forward at a steady pace, swinging the rod in front of me like a blind person to catch any obstacles or fucking vampires or what the hell before I stumbled over them. I felt raw and bloody, festering infections starting to boil under my skin—my new friend did not, I was pretty sure, have the best dental hygiene, and apparently being fucking immortal didn’t do anything for your overall upkeep. I wondered if people broke bones and spent eternity limping.

After ten or twelve steps I felt the space around me change, and figured I’d found the lobby. I changed the rod to my right hand and swung it out horizontally from my hip and kept walking, smacking it into the far wall after a few more steps. I found the wall with my hands and moved in carefully, judging the approximate center of the room by memory. With my back against the wall, I had the hallway to my right and the airshafts directly in front of me. There was no time to double check my memory. I took the metal rod in my hands and banged it hard against the floor. Just once.

The voices, separated from me by a couple of walls, stopped.

I gave it a few seconds more and then let the jagged edge of the pipe drag across the floor a little, the scraping sound loud and clear. Then I hefted it in both hands and stood there, staying still, waiting. I knew the noise might draw my biggest fan back to me for another bite, but I was banking on the Gray Ghost being more afraid of the unknown group than she was hungry—one half-blind asshole was one thing, five assholes who maybe saw just as well as you did in the dark was something else completely.

They were trying to be quiet again, and failing pretty spectacularly, completely unaware how sound traveled in the empty concrete box we were in. I could track them pretty easily just with my ears, but a minute or so later I realized I could see the hallway a little—lights were dancing along the floor and walls, clean blue electric light, bouncing like a handheld flashlight would. I wouldn’t remain hidden against the wall if they were able to fucking put a light on me, so I started creeping towards the hallway. I would just have to let them move past me and try for a lucky shot, knock in some heads, maybe score a flash for my trouble and have a way of getting around that didn’t involve breaking my neck.

There were four of them. They moved past me in a vague group, two flashlights in the front lighting the way, no sense that attacks could come from somewhere other than directly in front of you. I waited until the last two were a few steps past me, then picked a spot that seemed like it might reasonably be someone’s head and rushed forward, taking a swing.

I didn’t hit anything, cutting through air and losing my balance as someone smacked a shoulder into my belly, knocking me over with ease, the rod springing from my hands and clattering away. I tried to kick and roll, but someone had my legs trapped under theirs and then there were hard, confident hands on my wrists, weighing me down.

“Get a light!” Someone yelled from the hallway. I knew the voice, and froze, watching the bouncing light approach and then turn directly on me, burning into my eyes and skin.

“Holy shit!”

I squinted up into the creased, red face of The Bumble. He was grinning down at me, and his grin was horrible, like a mistake, and I loved the sight of it.

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20.

Startling awake, I let out a little cry and flailed my arms and legs, ridiculous. My arms were still numb, my shoulders aching painfully, and breathing had become painful, every inhalation sending a slice of burning red agony up and down my side and in the deep pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been hanging there, but my stomach also told me I’d been there at least past lunch, past dinner, and probably past midnight snack.

I hung there for a few seconds, smelling the clean air and listening to the lap lap, the plop plop, the creaking of the rope … and slowly realized that the creaking had startled me awake, because it had shifted in tone. Instead of the dry, regular groan I’d come in with, it had transformed into something irregular and higher-pitched. Twisting my head up and around with some painful effort, savoring the tinges of fresh discomfort, I could see that at the edge of the crumbling walkway where the rope went over it had rubbed down to a few stubborn strands.

Just as I pictured myself falling into the river with my hands bound behind my back, the rope snapped and I plummeted.

I sliced into the water and sank, my form perfect, the water freezing, so cold I was amazed it wasn’t just ice. I convulsed, the air exploding from my lungs as I bent this way and that, trying to swim with my hands and ankles tied behind my back, water clawing down my throat. I thrashed and wriggled, sinking, the water like jelly around me, until my lungs started to burn and twitch, the sudden new pain burning through the panic and clearing my head, a rush of euphoria surging through me and making me light; I relaxed and stretched myself out flat, floating on my back, and closed my eyes.

Seconds, minutes, years later, I broke the surface, floating placidly on my back, drifting. I held my breath a few seconds more, savoring the burn, and then opened my eyes and mouth, sucking in the sweet, clean air and staring up at the blue-gray sky.

I floated for a while, trying to give myself little kicks that might steer me slowly towards the shore. I knew my river pretty well, and knew there was a small beach not too upriver where I could climb onto shore even with my hands bound, but I wasn’t sure I could direct enough energy into my thrashings to propel myself there. And I wasn’t sure if this fucking river had the same outline and personality. I took a deep breath and let it out, took another and held it, and curled myself into a ball, sinking slightly under the water but brings my fingers close to my ankles. In the water it was an easier maneuver than in the trunk, and the rope had been stretched out a little, so I managed to get my fingertips onto the knot that held my ankles together.

The rope had swollen, and the water was cold, and I couldn’t see what I was doing, but I got the knot between my thumb and forefinger, paused for a moment to relax again, and began trying to worm one strand out from under the other. After a few seconds of fumbling, I managed it, one fat finger somehow worming its way into the middle of the knot, and a moment later my legs were free.

I rolled over again and popped back to the surface. Taking three deep, coughing breaths again, I oriented myself—surprised by how far from the Jersey side I’d drifted—and started kicking. For a moment I considered kicking towards Manhattan, which loomed on my left silent and massive, but I thought better of it. I knew Hoboken was more or less empty—I didn’t know anything about this Manhattan. And Alt James had brought me in through Hoboken. On the off chance he was still there—car trouble, I thought with a smile—I wanted to be on his trail. A moment later I thought again, and tucked myself into a ball, sinking slightly as I pulled my arms up and over my feet, bending my knees and almost getting stuck in a ridiculous pose for a moment before popping free, my hands still cuffed but now at least in front of me.

I got on my belly and started doing the world’s most awkward and horrible doggy paddle, slapping my bound hands in front of me, angling as best I could against the current towards Jersey. The current wasn’t strong, a peaceful flow I cut through pretty easily, but I was blowing like a beached whale by the time I made it to the scrabbly little shore a few hundred feet from where I’d been trussed up. I crawled through the slimy sandy dirt and flopped onto my back on the rocks, gasping and groaning.

Suddenly, I caught my breath and froze. Someone was singing, not too far away.

It was a song I remembered from when I’d been a kid, though the title and band escaped me: Come on, baby, set me free … you know you ain’t afraid of me. The voice was female, low and smoky, a woman who’d smoked unfiltered cigarettes for years, I thought. A few blocks away. I sat up and stared down at the handcuffs and thought about Rachel. About never touching her again—different, somehow, from simply being forbidden to. At least I’d had the option, the mad option, of breaking the rule.

My wrists were already sore and scabbed from the cuffs, but I started working them anyway, tucking my thumb and pinky in order the other finger and pushing my hand backwards through one loop. The pain felt good, and kept my head clear as I worked the metal back and forth, stealing centimeters of skin back each time. I had nothing better to do but sit and listen to the off-key singing and the water lapping, tearing up my wrist, blood dripping onto the sandy dirt.

Come on baby, set me free … all this talk don’t satisfy me.

After ten minutes or so the pain washed out, everything going numb and senseless. If I’d been doing this just for fun, passing the time, I would have stopped and changed it up—salt in the wounds or a different material. As it was it just made it easier to stare at the blue-gray water and work the cuff up and down, tearing the skin and smearing blood everywhere. I started matching the rhythm of my movements to the lapping of the water, back and forth, push and pull, until suddenly the cuff slipped off my hand and dangled from my other wrist. My whole arm throbbed, my palm slick with my own blood, but I had my arms back.

I realized the singing had stopped, and stood up, blinking, looking around and coming back to myself.

There were signs of erosion and age everywhere. Aside from the crumbling walkway by the river, rust and collapse was every other thing, once you started looking for it. I left my wrist bloody and raw, enjoying it again, and started climbing back up towards the street. I knew which way we’d come; I was going to retrace my steps and see what I found. Probably nothing, but it was a place to start.

I got back on Washington Street and walked right up the middle, weaving around the occasional old rusted-out car or pile of debris. The stillness and quiet was like being in a box at the bottom of a very deep closet, insulated and forgotten.

I heard the steps a few seconds before she appeared and was ready for it, but when she caught up with me all she did was match my stride and walk alongside me for a while. I turned and looked at her, then quickly looked around, checking for an ambush, but it was just her: a middle-aged woman, stick-thin, gaunt, with sunken cheeks and long, stiff-looking white hair. She was wearing a pair of ragged, torn jeans, several layers of torn-up, fraying T-shirts and a pair of Converse Chuck Taylors, blue and looking like they stayed on her feet because they didn’t have any better ideas.

I kept looking around. It was an old mugger trick—you started walking with someone, strike up a friendly chat, and when you turn a corner or pass close to a wall, someone comes from another direction, fast, and jumps you. But I didn’t see anybody else. It was just her, and she was so skinny, her skin so thin and pale, I couldn’t take her seriously.

“I’m so hungry,” she said suddenly, sounding almost cheerful. “You know how long I been here? Four years. You know what there is to eat here? Nothing.”

I kept walking, keeping my eyes moving. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what the Rules of Polite fucking Society said about conversations with ghostlike women in alternate universes, and I figured I could always claim ignorance if it turned out I was being rude.

“Nothing,” she continued. “Not a dog, not a pigeon, not a fucking plant. I’d eat fucking moss if I could find any.”

I turned left at eighth street, and she turned with me like we were a flock of birds or something. I was still braced for an attack, still keeping my eyes open, but she just kept walking, not looking at me.

“There’s not even canned stuff,” she said. “Fucking stores are empty. Wrap your head around that.”

We walked down eighth for a while, chummy.

“I can’t wait to eat you,” she said quietly.

I stopped and watched her take two steps without me. When she spun around, startled, I pointed at her. “Walk some other street,” I suggested. “Or I’m going to have to break your legs.”

She smiled, and I wished she hadn’t. Her teeth were green and moldy, a few missing, her gums a bright red. “I’m going to wait until you fall asleep, and eat you,” she said happily. “I’m going to eat you forever.” She clasped her hands together in front of her chest. “Forever.”

I snapped my arm out and smacked her in the face with the free end of the cuffs, hard enough to make her yelp and stagger back, but not hard enough to even break the skin. “Walk some other street.” I looked around and listened. If this was a distraction, if she was just freaking me out to help some partner sneak up on me, I was going to be ready.

She began backing past me, smiling, her hands clasped in front of her again. “Oh, yes,” she said in a breathy little whisper. “Forever.”

I watched her back away from me, taking her time, her hands clasped, her thin face screwed up into a terrible smile. She just kept backing away until she’d disappeared beyond the rise of the street, and I turned away and started walking again, heart pounding.

By the time I arrived at the beat-up old warehouse on Monroe Street, the sun was sinking and I had the uneasy feeling I’d be spending a pitch black night in an empty world with just the Gray Ghost back there for company, waiting for her to show up with a fucking bib on and a jar of barbecue sauce in one bony hand. I’d emerged from within it some unknowable time ago with Alt James at my back, but I didn’t remember much about how I’d come there in the first place. I stood for a moment in the middle of Monroe Street staring at it: Two buildings, really, squat square lumps of concrete and rebar, connected by a shattered bridge that started off on one side filled with promise and exuberant optimism and ended about four feet later in shards of rock and metal, only to spring up again on the other side as if nothing had happened. The buildings sat on a scrubby patch of gravel and crabgrass, weeds shooting up in odd spots like trees, taller than me, swaying slightly in every weak breeze.

It looked dark inside. I circled around, finding plenty of hollow, sagging doorways leading into complete darkness. My wrist had gone from the searing, clarifying pain I liked to the dull, throbby kind of pain infections heralded, and which I enjoyed less. My head was starting to ache in sympathy, as well as my back, and the idea of stumbling through the darkness inside that building was about as attractive as going to church.

I suddenly wanted a cigarette very, very badly.

Rushing, I stepped through a wide double-doorway and into the greasy shadows. The dimming sunlight illuminated a few feet, and then it was all grays and blues and shadows. A wide, empty lobby led to a narrow hall, then to a small elevator room with two yawning holes where the elevators had once stood. I kept walking down the darkened hall, following my vague, sleepy memories, and found my way to the loading dock. My life had brought me into more loading docks than usual, lately, and I was starting to take it as a bad sign.

When Alt James had pulled me from the trunk, his big black Cadillac had been parked right there on the cracked concrete pad. I jumped down and walked back to the metal garage door that hung by force of habit, heavy and rusted but very much in place. I gave it a good shove and found it difficult to even shake, much less get up off the ground. I didn’t see how Alt James had pulled the car in or out unless he was carrying a fucking generator around in his pocket and could wire the ancient motor up.

I stared at the corrugated metal for a moment, one hand resting on it, handcuffs dangling from my wrist. I’d never felt so fucking alone in my life.

I heard her breathing a moment before she moved, a squeaky kind of low-volume mewling as she crept towards me. I forced myself to wait a moment in the failing light, forced myself to stay still and keep one hand on the garage door despite my screaming nerves: She was there, behind me, swallowed in blackness and creeping, but I knew that it was never the right move to give in to panic, to move the second you wanted to. Your brain was ancient and dumb. You had to be smarter.

When I couldn’t take it any more, I dropped into a squat and fell back onto my hands, sweeping one leg out and catching something. She went down with a yelp and I pushed myself up and tried to spring forward onto her, managing something more reminiscent of falling. She was already scrambling back away from me but I managed to get a hand on her ankle and drag her back to me—she didn’t weigh anything. I gave it all my strength and she flew up towards me like she was made of paper.

I realized too late that she’d let me pull her, and then she was on me, light as a feather, her bony hands pulling at my clothes, and before I could change gears and start pushing instead of pulling, she’d bitten into my neck, hard, pain lancing up into my brain, direct route, no detours, my vision flashing red and every hair on my body suddenly standing up on edge.

I half screamed, half growled and pulled her from me so hard she flew down and away. I heard a crash off in the shadows and felt blood pouring down my neck, soaking into my clothes. Trying to keep on her trail as she melted into the darkness, I staggered forward but caught my foot in something and slammed down onto my knees, panting.

For a moment all I could hear was my own breathing. I couldn’t believe I’d just gotten my ass handed me by an old woman who’s clothes weighed more than her, and was momentarily glad The Bumble had not been here to see it.

Then, faintly, out in the hall, I heard her whispering. At first I couldn’t make out what she was saying, then something clicked in my head.

She was saying: “Delicious.”

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19.

“There’s a couple of ways to deal with cats like you, a Terminus,” Alt James said, encouraging me to shuffle forward with his gun pressed into my back. “This is one of them.”

We were in Hoboken fucking New Jersey, which I knew well enough because Frank did plenty of business with the remnants of the old Italians who still worked out of the town. It was right across the river from Manhattan, it was where Frank Sinatra had been born, and it still had three or four old Social Clubs fronting crews. They’d seen better days, and they didn’t run City Hall like they used to, but they were there, and there was enough old money in suitcases lying around to keep Frank and Phin and the newer boys interested.

We were, I thought, the only people in Hoboken New Jersey.

Walking down the middle of the main drag, Washington Street, I could hear our steps echoing back at us. Most of the store windows had been shattered at some point, but aside from that and the sad state of the cars everything looked normal enough, though details nagged at me. On Fifth street, Sullivans wasn’t there, replaced with a place called Maroon. The cars were all old, too, big iron slabs from old Detroit, tiny little rice burners from Japan, the kind you didn’t see much any more.

The air smelled weird, sweet and thick.

“I could put a bullet in your head,” Alt James continued after a moment. “But it wouldn’t kill you. I could probably put you in a coma, leave you that way, sure, that might work. Coma ain’t dead, the universe might allow that. Except, I could never be sure. You can’t die, man. So let’s say you’re laying there in a coma, and I think I solved this little problem.”

“Let’s say,” I said, earning myself a prod from the gun into my backbone.

“A large caliber bullet in the back still going to hurt, man, okay?”

I nodded, moving my eyes from deserted storefront to rusting car to deserted storefront. “Okay.”

He’d adjusted the knots to give me just enough slack to shuffle along, bent backwards slightly so I felt like I was going to fall over at any moment. It was slow going, and the sun was making me hot and sweaty.

“You might be that way for years, decades. But then, something happens—the power goes out, and the machines breathing for you quit. Or the hospital catches on fire. The universe decides the only way you can survive is to heal, so you wake up, good as new. You’re a Terminus. Any time you might die, you’ll find a way to keep on truckin’.”

I didn’t say anything. I was enjoying myself, a little; my back burned and my legs ached and my hands were numb. I was fucking miserable. I didn’t feel immortal in the least.

“So, the problem is the fucking solution, kid,” Alt James continued, strolling along behind me. “There are infinite universes. There are universes where everything’s fucking different, universes where everything is practically the same. They’re infinite, so good luck cataloging them, but as you come across them you can make notes. Like this one. Empty as a tin can. Completely fucking empty.”

I let that drift for a moment. “How come you’re so sure I’m a—” my tongue tripped over the word. “A Terminus?”

“I can smell ’em. It’s a talent I have.” He jabbed me in the back. “You’re one.”

“How do you know you can even shoot me?” I asked, a pulse of excitement pounding through my chest. “Rusch pointed a gun at me and it misfired.”

He laughed, and it was awesomely strange: It was Detective James’ laugh, the same deep, wet rumble I’d known for years. “Your Rusch is kind of a beginner, man. You get a feel for the odds. You got to know how far you can push the universe, you know? Sure, you put a gun to your forehead, you ain’t giving the universe much choice—coma or death or misfire. Push it too hard, the gun blows up in your hand. Push it even harder, a fucking safe falls out of the sky and crushes you before you can pull the trigger.”

He stopped talking and I huffed and puffed my way through ten feet of street. I squinted my eyes and looked around. It sure felt empty. Everything was covered in a thick layer of white-gray dust, like ash. It swirled around us as we walked. “What happened here?”

“Fuck if I know,” Alt James said, sounding friendly. If I closed my eyes and ignored the misery, it was like me and the Detective were just having a friendly stroll. “Found it this way. No bodies, no bones. No dogs. No cats. No fucking squirrels. It’s as dead as the world can get. It’s perfect: I can’t kill you, but I can leave you here. You can sit here forever, no way off, safe and sound.”

Rotting. The stillness and silence of the place was oppressive. Our voices echoed back at us and then fell dead and flat on the ground. As we disturbed it, the air was getting choked with dust, and I could feel it on my skin, coating me, scratching under my collar and getting into my ears, my nose—I knew if I blew my nose right then it would be dark and muddy, filled with the fine mist. The stores with their empty, smashed windows and dark, shadowed interiors creeped me out. Anything might be hiding in there, watching us move past.

I didn’t like begging, and had to swallow a few times before I could spit out more words. “Listen, this is … this is fucking unnecessary, chief. I’m just looking to collect a debt. A debt you bought from my boss, so I don’t even have to do that any more. I’m ready to walk away from this. Let Falken take his chances.”

There was something about being hogtied and marched through a deserted town that smelled like dust and dry kindling that took all the sass out of you.

“Sorry, hoss,” Alt James said, sounding the exact opposite of sorry. “First of all, I’m aiming to become a Terminus myself someday—a hobby of mine—and you might get in my hair if I do it. Second, I’m a killer. It’s what I do. I can’t kill you, but I can come close. Besides, I didn’t buy your fucking debt. I made a deal with your boss to get information, but he’s gonna be sorely disappointed when next week rolls around and he’s looking for all that money I promised him. Take this left.”

I hobbled in a wide arc to the left, turning down third street. The pavement had cracked and crumbled, weeds poking up atop huge cairns of blacktop, and I had to sweat it to stay upright, my balance all fucked up as I tried to scale each lump in the road. Hobby of mine. It sounded like he’d done this before with other … other assholes like me. I kept my eyes moving, looking for a chance.

I asked myself if I was ready to chance his gun, if I was starting to believe everyone’s sunny belief that I was the Ever Living. I ducked the question, and kept walking.

“What do you get paid?” I asked, instantly curious as I thought about it. “For killing people?”

“I don’t just kill people. I make people immortal. It’s tough work. Long hours. Research. Violence. They pay me whatever I ask. Sometimes it’s money, sometimes it’s something else. It’s worth it, no matter what. I could ask them for their balls, they’d hand them over. Their kids. Their wives, husbands, daughters.” He laughed in a way that was completely different from Detective Stanley James—nasty and cold, no humor at all. “Sometimes I don’t even do it for money. It’s just revenge.”

I thought about that. Erasing someone from not just one universe, but every universe. Methodically hunting down every version of someone. “Jesus fucking Christ, how do you have time?”

“Most of us die young,” he said quietly. “Every other possibility is your fucking death, and then a second later you got another split chance at fucking death. By the time someone seeks me out, there ain’t but a handful of you left.”

As this was quickly becoming the most depressing day of my goddamn life, I thought about that. About me, dying. Me at six months, suffocating in my crib. Me at twelve, chasing a Spalding and getting hit by a car. Me at twenty-two, stabbed to death in the alley behind Rudy’s. Me at thirty, shot in the head by Chino over fifty fucking dollars lost in a card game. All these things could have happened, but hadn’t—except everyone had been telling me for the past few days that they had, just to some other version of me, a version that had been dead since that moment.

The quiet was smothering. Our steps were loud scrapes that rattled everything like earthquakes, and the wind was a constant mutter in the center of my ears. I could hear water, too, lapping, as we got closer and closer to the Hudson, crawling along Third Street. But there was no other noise. No sirens, no shouts. No dogs, no music leaking from fourth-floor windows. No car horns or tire screeches, no distant conversations bubbling out of the bars. It was just me and Alt James, and we weren’t making nearly enough noise.

I could see the river as we headed downhill over the broken pavement. It smelled crisp and clean, not the oily scent I remembered. I could see from a distance that the esplanade had partially collapsed into the river, pavers dripping in after the edges one by one every few weeks. I walked with my hands cuffed in behind me and could feel time running out; I hadn’t seen anything that looked at all useful, and the gun I got jabbed into my back every few steps still felt too fucking real for me to chance turning around and trying anything. The last two blocks floated by—a ruined building on my left, a jumble of bricks and iron that still held the ghostly outline of a building, like it remembered what it had been for so long, and a spectacular crush of bent-up, rusting cars completely blocking the street to me right.

“Head right on to the edge,” Alt James said as we got close to the water.

Across the river was Manhattan, looking more or less like I remembered it—something nagged at me, something missing or different, but I couldn’t place it, and as I shuffled forward I had an uneasy, unhappy feeling of disorientation, like everything had been reversed in a mirror.

I almost lost my footing as the pavers gave way under my feet, and had to shuffle backwards hastily to avoid sliding right down into the dark, steel-colored water. Most of the walkway was already in the river, but a thin line of it still clung to land, the old sidewalks next to it as broken up as the roads, the trees heavy and overgrown around us. The world turning back into one huge forest.

“Stop.”

I felt Alt James doing something behind me, tugging at the rope holding my handcuffs to my ankles, and then the gun was pushed into my back again.

“All right. Step off.”

I blinked. “What?”

The gun became more insistent. “Walk forward until you drop,” he said.

My heart raced, and my hands were shaking behind me. I couldn’t see him, couldn’t see what he was doing, and it got to me. I liked pain. I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t like not being able to grab everything in my hands, no matter how deep it bit into my skin, and wrestle it down. I took a step forward, and the fucking pavers let go underneath me without warning, and I slid down over a crumbling edge into the air.

I stopped with a jerk a foot or so above the water, and swayed there, suspended. I hung, panting for a moment, listening to the lap of the waves, the plop of chunks of the pavers hitting the water, and the creak of the rope I was suspended from. My side felt like it had split open while my shirt was made of salt, and I imagined kidneys and liver and lungs oozing out, draining me.

Craning my throbbing neck, I could just make out Alt James’ dark silhouette leaning out over the edge above me.

“Got to be careful,” he said. “If I put you in any kind of mortal danger, fate will fucking intervene. I can fuck with you all I want, just got to toe that line, you know. You’ll work your way free of this soon enough, but by then I’ll be gone, and you’ll be … here.”

He waved. The motherfucker waved goodbye.

“So this is it—you’re just gonna leave me here alone forever?”

He’d disappeared from view, but I heard him laugh. “Shit, I never said you were alone. I done this before.”

I listened to his steps scraping away, greedily. After a while it was just lap lap, creak creak, and my own labored breathing.

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18.

For the third time in as many days, I came to, this time in darkness, jostled gently this way and that. Pain radiated nicely from the wound in my side and filled me, yellow and thick and wonderful. For a split-second I just stretched against it, enjoying the feel of a controlled burn, all my nerves like embers, red and angry and floating inside me.

I was in the trunk of a car, my cuffed wrists pulled down tight behind me, my ankles pulled up, hogtied like a fucking pig. I wasn’t gagged, but the hum of the car was loud, and a thick, bouncing bass line filled the air in-between the thud of tires hitting potholes. I figured screaming would just amuse the alternate Detective James, if he could even hear it.

Alternate. The word flamed red in my mind as I thought it.

The man I’d spied in the doorway, the man who’s stormed in, stepping over the detective’s body, pointing his monstrous gun at me, looked exactly like Stanley James. The face, the haircut, the suit—he could have sat down at a bar and forced me to buy him drinks all night on threat of arrest and I’d have bought it, completely.

I only had that panicked, amazed glimpse; Alt Detective James had stepped over himself, crossed over to me, and cold cocked me with his gun, my last image his white teeth, perfect and straight, the gums bloody red.

We hit a bump, and I leaped inside the trunk, landing on something hard and unyielding, lighting up my belly like a pitchfork three inches deep, making me shiver and salivate. The beat from Alt James’ speakers ate into me, making my pulse skip and my eyes bulge.

I figured, fuck, if I really am immortal, I was probably about to find out soon. In my experience waking up hogtied in the trunk of a car was the beginning of a very bad end.

My eyes adjusted to the gloom, lit by the faint red light bleeding in from the brakes, and I craned my head around, trying to see what I had to work with. I doubted my innate ability to escape from car trunks, but it felt like I was going to have a lot of time on my hands so why not make a study of it, see if I couldn’t do some groundbreaking research on the subject.

The trunk was barren, but roomy, and I found I could roll myself over onto my belly easily, freeing my fingers to at least stretch and strain, their tips brushing against the slick nylon rope he’d used to connect the handcuffs to my ankles. I tried to bend myself backwards, straining to find the knot and maybe, somehow work it open, at least get my legs free. I didn’t know what that was going to get me, but it was better than counting seams in the highway or pretending I could hear the difference between a bridge and a dirt road, map it all out in my head.

I rolled my eyes down and saw I was lying on top of the spare tire well, the piece of carpet that fitted over the space curled up and out of place. I stretched my head down and took the edge of the carpet between my teeth, grit and dust suddenly in my mouth, and rolled myself over, taking the carpet with me. With a jerk of my head I tossed it aside and rolled back onto my belly, peering down into the spare well. There was only an undersized solid rubber donut wheel, bolted down. Sitting next to it, embedded into the soft felt, was the lugnut wrench and the jack.

The thought of having the weight of that wrench in my hands, and sinking it into Alt James’ face, made me happy. My imagination served up the crunch of his delicate facial bones and cartilage, the grunt of pain, the sudden shock up my arm as I bit into real bone, hard and thick, the spray of blood from burst capillaries and torn surface skin.

A pleasant burn had settled into the muscles of my back and arms, the steady strain biting in and holding fast. I bent my attention back to straining my fingers towards the knots, even though I wasn’t at all convinced I’d be able to manipulate them in any way even if I managed to get the very tips of my fingers near them.

The ride suddenly got rough, the car banging over something and everything getting jumpy and filled with vibration, my belly spiking and burning and clearing my head pretty thoroughly. I was bleeding all over his trunk, I was pretty sure, the coppery smell of my own fluids thickening the air. The bouncing action made it even more difficult to make any progress, and sweat began to stream down the sides of my head and neck, tickling me excruciatingly.

At least Alt James hadn’t known Falken was nearby, I didn’t think. For all I knew he’d taken the time to hunt the poor fuck down and put a shell in his ear, but I suspected Falken had bolted the room just in time, and Alt James didn’t know he’d missed him—or maybe he shared his twin’s resistance to running and had just let him go. Either way, I was glad for it. I didn’t want Falken dead—I didn’t want anyone dead. I wanted his fucking money. Though I guessed if Frank had sold the debt, that wasn’t even my problem any more.

The tone of the ride changed again, going smooth and quiet, a low hum the only noise from the wheels, like we were gliding along. After a few seconds of this the car jerked to a stop, tumbling me up against the back seat and then rolling me forward again. Then quiet, the music gone, just the ticking of the engine and my pinched, tight breathing. I heard the car door open, and then nothing. I lay perfectly still, head pounding, side burning, and strained my ears but couldn’t hear anything at all.

And then I heard everything.

The noise was unbelievable—a droning, piercing blare that made the whole trunk—the whole car—vibrate around me. My teeth chattered involuntarily, and I felt like parts of my insides were boiling off, turning to steam and leaking from my pores. One of my shoes began working its way off my foot, vibrating off my heel in tiny little increments. I clenched my jaw shut as hard as I could to stop my teeth from shaking loose and shut my eyes to keep them in my skull, every muscle in my body taut. It was the same as the noise I’d heard in the limo with Alt Rusch, similar to the noise I’d heard just before Falken had disappeared on me in McHales.

And then it got louder.

I pushed my head down into the scratchy, thin carpet of the trunk, trying to block off at least one ear, but the lower pitch of the murderous whine around me bled up through the metal of the car, bouncing into my ear and tunneling into my brain. I couldn’t enjoy it, couldn’t pick out the nuances of the agony, the specific nerve endings being burned out and browned, sizzling away like candle wax. It was just more than my nerves could handle. I opened my mouth to make my own noise, but I couldn’t hear myself, or even feel the vibration in my chest. It was like I’d disappeared into the noise.

And then it stopped.

I lay there with my mouth open, my ears ringing, every muscle taut and painful. I kept myself tight and still for a moment, waiting, and then slowly let myself relax, my muscles twitching. There was a muffled bang I felt more than heard which took me a moment to identify as someone getting back into the car. A moment later we started moving again, and I felt the steady thump of the bass line jumping under me.

Shivering, I lay still for a while, eyes closed. Then I set about relaxing my muscles one by one as the car took on the old familiar rhythm of street driving. When I’d forced my body to unclench, I opened my eyes again, and spared a few seconds to revel in the burning in all my muscles, like an acid stain on my bones, etched in deep. I was back inside a normal trunk, the bloody glow of brake lights seeping in and offering me the only light, my hands still pulled cruelly down towards my ankles, the thumping beat mixing with the rhythm of the road seams into a complex song that seemed kind of familiar, probably entitled Fucked Three Ways from Sunday.

Breathing hard and blinking the sweat from my eyes, I started bending my hands back again, seeking the elusive knots in the rope. I had a goddamn cigarette jingle from the television commercial in my head, running on a doubletime loop, high and squeaky: feeling down need a lift Luckies’ll fix ya in a jiff. I didn’t even smoke Luckies.

My dad had smoked them, I suddenly remembered. I remembered he’d smelled like smoke all the time, a strangely earthy and acidic smell that had fascinated and repelled me at the same time. Nicotine, alcohol, and aftershave, the smell of adults. Dad had shown me once the circular burn marks on his forearms, starting just above the wrist and ending at the elbow, where he’d pressed his cigarette against his skin for as long as he could stand it. It was a standard bar bet he liked to trot out when he’d run out of cash. Sometimes he’d spend the whole night burning himself for shots, and wake up the next day stuck to the sheets, his arm leaking and inflamed. I remembered the feel of pushing the cigarette into his skin, the satisfying way he would suck in his breath and tense up. I remembered smuggling a pack into the hospital, risking our lives to light them up and burn him.

Alt James drove slower this time, the car inching along, and hit a lot of potholes, tumbling me around. I tried to redouble my efforts at the rope, trying anything that came to mind, my wrists burning nicely where the cuffs bit into them, bending myself backwards as far as I could manage. I tried to clear my head and get all zen on the fucking problem, but before I could take some deep breaths and center my thinking, the car stopped, the music cut, and I heard the front door opening and slamming.

Shoes on gravel, a key in the lock, and then the trunk lifting up. Framed against a burningly bright, cloudless blue sky—somehow we’d skipped some hours and arrived at noon—was Alt James, gun held slackly in one massive hand, disturbingly white teeth bared for me.

“All right,” he said cheerfully. “We’re here.”

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17.

The Bumble kept a bottle of shoe leather gin in one of the kitchen cabinets along with his antique collection of mouse droppings. Detective James had stood quietly for about twenty seconds, taking it all in, and then he’d turned to The Bumble.

“Billy, man, do me a favor and take the professor and the girl home, okay? I’m gonna have to have a talk in private with these two gentlemen.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Rachel snapped.

James grinned at her. “Darling, I admire you. I do. Damn, I need more women like you in my own life. But, sweetheart, I’m asking you to step out for a while. I’m no killer. And I’m making this police business, okay? You want, I can have a couple of officers who don’t ask too many questions and haven’t read this year’s procedural handbook come by, book you on suspicion of something and hold you for our twenty-four, okay? And I wonder if your jacket comes up clean.” He winked. “I only ask once.”

When The Bumble had herded them out the door, James let out an explosive sigh and pulled out one of the kitchen chairs, dropping into it recklessly, the old wood creaking under his weight. He pulled a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, snapped it out, and mopped his face.

“Well, fuck,” he said. “Cut the poor man loose.”

I considered it, then shrugged. “Why not.” I got up and scavenged through the kitchen, finding an old steak knife in a drawer that sagged crazily in its tracks, knelt down, and began sawing at the tape around his ankles.

“Now that your audience is gone,” James said slowly. “You wanna give me the straight version of this? This motherfucker here owes money, right?”

I nodded, my belly burning with pain, sweat running into my eyes. I felt lightheaded, the dull knife taking forever to cut through the tape. “A fucking mint. To everyone.”

“And you got his file, huh, for Mr. Frank?”

I nodded.

“And the rest of this bullshit is what, trying to convince him to pay up? You too fancy to break a leg these days?”

Falken was free, so I sat back on my feet, wiping sweat out of my face and breathing hard, breathing like a man who’d been stabbed non-fatally not so long ago. I looked up at Falken. “Well, you want to answer that one?”

Falken scowled. “So if this isn’t The Executioner, what the fuck is he here?”

James shrugged. “I’m the man who can tell him to tie you the fuck back up, baby, so why not play along?”

Falken scowled, but settled himself and told him the whole ridiculous story in about four sentences. Detective James sat through it all with a stone face, then sat back and rubbed his chin, the scratch of his beard against the palm of his hand audible in the creepy silence that had filled the tiny room. He lifted his hand from his chin and pointed at Falken.

“You’re from an alternate universe,” he said, and a wave of weary amazement swept through me.

Falken shrugged. “One way of putting it, yes.”

James shifted his long finger to me. “And you’re fucking immortal.”

I shrugged. “I don’t feel it.”

The finger went back to Falken. “Because he’s the only him left in all the fucking world out there. And one of your other selves wants to kill you so he can be the only one, and be immortal too.”

Falken stared back at James like he’d expected to be dead ten minutes ago and wasn’t convinced it hadn’t come to pass. “Yes.”

The finger came back to me. “And he owes you shitloads of cash, because your boss is a fucking moron.”

I nodded. “That’s about the whole of it.”

James made a hissing noise between his teeth, raising an eyebrow. “Shit, kid. I’m beginning to wonder if you just wasted a couple hours of my time.” He leaned forward, rings glinting on his hands. “You ever wasted my time before?” he shook his head. “I don’t recommend it. I look all jolly and shit, I know, like a guy who could be pushed around, but I can unleash fucking hell on you and yours in the form of the uniformed police officer of this great city, pulling over your cars, searching your shit every place you go, fucking carding you at bars. You dig?” He planted his finger on the greasy table top. “I put your name on the list, motherfucker, they’re going to be pulling you out of line at the airport. Fucking security guards at the mall gonna be pulling your ass into little windowless rooms for strip searches. It ain’t official or anything, but I put your name on the list every cocksucker with a badge is gonna know your name and face, we understand each other?”

I nodded, lifting my hands up to spread them. “I needed to see if he recognized you.”

“And why is that?”

“Because it kind of makes me think he isn’t crazy.”

James stared at me for a moment, nostrils flaring, and a second or so before he leaped to his feet I knew I’d taken a wrong turn and things were going to get sticky. Then he was up on his feet and his gun, a huge honker that looked like it would turn me into a fine mist if he pulled the trigger, was in one hand and his handcuffs in the other.

“Up,” he snapped. “On your feet. I’ve had about enough of this shit.”

I got my legs under me and pushed myself up. “Look, I know—”

“You know shit. Dragging my ass out here to listen to bullshit. Spin around, hands on the counter.”

I turned to face the sink and put my hands on the countertop. It felt oily under my hands. The Bumble never lived here, so I didn’t know what in the world could be coating it, and didn’t want to think about it. I felt dizzy and hot, and could tell my bandage was soaked in leaking blood. I shut my eyes. “Listen, Detective—”

“Shut up.” He was behind me, shoving his knee between my legs to spread them, yanking my arms behind me and slapping the cold cuffs on, too tight. “I got bodies and a tear-down, and I can clear a case for someone by bringing you in, and that’ll make this trip here worth it, so we’ll be even, and when you get out of jail in thirty years we can be friends again, okay?”

I winced as he put his weight into the small of my back, pressing me painfully against the sink base. I didn’t have time for foreplay. Someone owned Falken’s debt, and if I didn’t keep it current I was going to get knifed in jail, and if I was really immortal like everyone had been telling me for the last twenty-four hours it meant I was going to get knifed in jail a lot, which might be kind of fun but fucking exhausting.

He spun me around. He wasn’t smiling. He glanced over at Falken.

“Don’t worry, we’re taking you in too.”

Falken snorted. “I’m dead anyway. You put me in your system, he’ll find me, and I won’t be able to run.”

James considered him. “All right, let’s play You’re Not Fucking Crazy for one minute. If someone’s after you, let’s hear it. Whatever else you got hanging on your collar, I’m not in the business of letting people get killed. Just leave the bullshit out of it, okay?”

Fucking Detective James.

“Forget it,” Falken said, his voice hollow. “He’s fucking you. He’ll walk in and smile at everyone and shoot me in the fucking head.”

James was silent for a moment. “Kid, someone really—”

Someone pounded on the door, hard, and we all paused. “You forget something, Billy?” James shouted.

Someone pounded on the door again.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” James hissed, spinning away from me.

I turned around, finding James heading for the door. I took a step after him and paused. “Don’t,” I said. “Look, I know we sound crazy, but—”

“You don’t want to take a fall on your way to the precinct,” he said, reaching for the doorknob, “you’re gonna want to shut up now.”

With a grunt, Falken was up out of the chair and sprinting, disappearing into the next room as James tried to wheel around and catch him by the collar. The detective stood there for a moment while someone pounded the door again, hard, making it jump on its hinges, then he shook his head.

“I haven’t broken a sweat in fucking fifteen years,” he muttered. “I’m not starting with that piece of shit.” He stepped over to the door and glanced back at me. “You get your running sneaks on and I’ll take out my frustrations on you, okay? You used to know better than to fuck with police.”

Detective James turned back and opened the door. Detective James stood in the doorway, face blank, eyes red. Detective James shot Detective James in the belly twice.

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16.

Wincing as a sharp needle sliced up my torso, I leaned forward towards the grating that separated the backseat from the front in James’ car. The low squawk of his police radio was constant background noise, and no one had spoken on the drive to Staten Island, where The Bumble had an apartment for no reason I’d ever been able to suss out of him. It was creepy out here, everything damp and dark and lush, the houses spaced so far apart you wouldn’t be able to hear your neighbors walking around. I couldn’t imagine sleeping without hearing my neighbors.

“Stay in the car five minutes,” I said to James.

He turned his head sharply and reached up to remove the gold toothpick he was sucking on. “What? Fuck that.”

I nodded. “Let me set it up for him, okay?”

“I think I just said fuck that.”

“Call it a favor,” I said, opening the door and pulling myself out with a grunt, a wonderful shudder of agony slicing through me. Everything ached, deliciously, and I’d spent the ride over prodding the spots that hurt the most, just for the sudden sharp thrills they offered.

“Call it fuck that,” he said as he emerged from the car after me, buttoning his jacket and smoothing his lapels.

“At least let me do the talking. Don’t say shit, we walk in there.”

Rusch popped out of the other side of the car as we circled around to the gleaming sidewalk. “I’ll let you run for a bit,” James said mildly, completely certain he was in charge of the situation. “You tell me this is gonna pay off for me, I know you’re a serious man, I’ll give you some slack.” He put his hand out in front of me, a gentle motion that stopped me in my tracks. “Some, follow? Think of me as the Judge and Jury here, and I just told you your line of questioning had better be going somewhere, follow?”

I nodded, and he pulled his hand back. Rachel climbed out of the front seat and shut the door behind her, tugging her sweater down over her belly. James grinned.

“That’s a fine girl you got hating your guts,” he said cheerfully. “A fine girl. Looks like she was a cheerleader back in school.” He turned and jabbed me in the ribs, making a red bolt of pain flash through me. “Limber, and shit.”

I swallowed irritation. “Come on.”

As we approached the dung-brown apartment building, a box with small windows and landscaping via overgrown weeds, I flipped open my phone and speed-dialed The Bumble. He never said anything on the phone, just pressed the button and listened; you had to pay attention to know he was even there.

“I’m outside. Don’t fucking shoot me,” I said, and snapped the phone shut.

“You and Billy got a special relationship, huh?” James said, pleased with himself.

The four of us took the cramped elevator to the fourth floor, the machinery wheezing and whining; the cab smelled like cabbage. Rachel stared at the doors with her arms crossed under her chest, a statue of a woman entitled Irritated. Rusch kept twisting around to smile at us as if we were all chums on some sort of grand adventure, which I supposed was true enough for her—up until a few months ago she’d been a tenured professor at a State University in fucking Jersey, the kind of cruft the school wished would just die to open up the budget slot. Now she was in goddamn Staten Island, running around with cops and legbreakers and hot chicks. I itched to make her hurt, to impress on her the way the world worked, but she hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

There was nothing specifically wrong with the apartment building; the hallway was clean and neat, the place was quiet. The carpet was a hideous shade of mocha that made you feel like you were walking on a packed-down lane of shit, and the walls were a shade of green you normally didn’t see outside of a toilet. The flickering fluorescent lighting added a spice of headache to the whole scene, and the floors under your feet felt soft, like the joists were rotted, and you might fall through at any moment. Every time we made use of Billy’s secret place, I felt like I might not make it out alive.

The door opened when we were still a few steps away. The Bumble filled the doorway completely, a mountain of muscle and fat, his red nose almost as big as his face, everything being pulled down by gravity and making him look like a sad clown. He looked at me and shook his head slowly, looking up to the ceiling, and I knew he’d had a long night with Falken. For The Bumble, not being allowed to smack someone around was the hardest thing in the world. He didn’t have any other social skills.

I stepped in, James close behind me, and found Falken sitting at the kitchen table, a cigarette burned almost down to the filter in his mouth. The ash was heroic, almost the entire smoke, trembling there like the memory of a cigarette.

“Jesus fucking hell,” he said immediately, the ash collapsing onto the table. “He’s got me duct-taped to the fucking—”

He froze as his eyes landed on James, his whole body going absolutely still. I stepped between him and the Detective and grabbed one of The Bumble’s greasy, rickety wooden chairs, spun it around and sat down. Falken was, in fact, attached to his own chair by an amazing amount of silver duct tape. If the apartment had caught fire, we would have to throw him out the window as a unit. If Phin’s boys had used duct tape, I thought suddenly, I’d be dead.

I thought of Rusch again, and wondered if that still held true.

I reached out and snapped my fingers in front of his face a few times.

“Falken,” I snapped. “Falken—on me, buddy.”

He looked at me suddenly. “Why is—”

“Hey,” I slapped him lightly, a tap on his chin. “On me. Don’t talk except to answer my questions, okay?”

“Hey!” Rachel hissed. I heard her move, and I heard The Bumble move, and then everyone was still again. I held one hand up behind my head.

Falken opened his mouth, and I gave him another gentle tap on the chin. “Okay?”

Most people I dealt with didn’t have to deal with violence in their lives. The world was a violent place, seemed like it was falling apart even if the news was always telling us it was only a matter of years before every country united under one government, but in the city, behind money and drywall and buzzers on your front door, people managed to go decades without taking a beating. It made them pretty easy to intimidate. A little violence went a long way; a lot of new kids in my line of work set about breaking thumbs and peeling back fingernails immediately. It got results, sure, but it was unnecessary effort. I was an old man now and if I could convince someone to give me what I wanted just by staring at them, then that’s what I would fucking do.

He swallowed, eyes flicking from me to James and back. “Okay.”

I kept my hand in his field of vision and curled it, pointing a finger at his nose. “I’ll tell you what I think, Mr. Falken. I think you’ve got money. I think you’ve been fucking with me for a few days now, and I am irritated.”

He shook his head, eyes wide. I remembered seeing him for the first time in the flesh, back at McHale’s. He looked exactly the same: A little chubby, his beard already getting thick on his jowly face, his hair thinning and his right hand weighed down by a huge gold ring, plain and thick. His suit had been woefully mistreated, and was wrinkled and disturbed, but it was of a fine brown cloth with a nice sheen to it, and cut well. He was still a shiny penny, but he’d been tarnished.

“I swear—”

I tapped him on the chin again. “You got one chance to say it,” I said, leaning back. “Don’t blow it.”

He licked his lips and stared over my shoulder at James for a moment. Then he looked back at me. “I guess it doesn’t fucking matter any more.” he shook his head. “I don’t have a dime. Not one dime left.”

I squinted at him. “You’re in deep with at least The Phin and Frank McKenna,” I said. “No doubt you barnstormed the block, hitting up as many loan shops as you could, probably in the same fucking day, right? Using someone’s name as a reference.”

He nodded, sagging in the chair. “Maury Levns, out of the Bronx.” He looked at me again. “I knew him. Back where I … come from.”

I nodded, pulling out cigarettes. “If you tell me you’re from an alternate universe, I’ll hit you for real and take my chances with her.” I fed a butt between my lips and held one out to him, close enough for him to lean forward and take it with his mouth. “Maury’s dead. A month ago.”

“In this world, yeah,” Falken suddenly struggled mightily with his bonds. “Goddammit! If he’s going to do it, just fucking do it! I don’t have any money left, you fucking bloodsucker. He probably paid you plenty to roll on me, though, didn’t he?” He suddenly stopped. Sweat had broken out on his forehead. “Can you believe it?” He looked at me, his eyes hollow. “I’m killing myself. Can you fucking believe it?”

I struck a match, let it burn a bit, then lit my cigarette and held it out for him to light his. He hesitated, and the flame burned down to the tips of my fingers, but I just held it there, waiting, the sizzling pain wonderful, head-clearing. It was a favorite trick. After a moment he leaned forward and puffed the cigarette into life, then leaned back and laughed.

“Last smoke for the condemned, huh?”

“Shut up,” I said, “and tell me how it is you’re broke after you borrowed every dime this city has.”

“For equipment,” he snapped back. “For fuel. This shithole of a universe hasn’t figured out passing from Alt to Alt, okay? I have to fucking buy components. Generators. Cable. CPUs. I can do the work, but I need to fucking reinvent everything everywhere I go, being chased down by my cocksucker self like a goddamn roach. I got it all in a warehouse in Hoboken, of all goddamn places. I finally got the fuel in, I’m finally ready to stay one step ahead of him, and I run into you.” He started pulling at his duct-tape bonds again. “All right? Okay? You got your information, you greedy piece of shit. Let him shoot me and get on with it.”

I frowned, leaning forward a little. “Calm down, Mr. Falken. What I want is money. Who exactly do you imagine is going to fucking kill you here?”

He looked at me, and then jerked his chin at Detective James. “Him.”

I winced my way into turning around to look at James. He loomed over me stroking the fuzz of mustache over his lip, his eyeballs reddened, the palms of his hands thick and pink. He glanced down at me and smiled, bringing his eyebrows up comically. “Don’t fucking look at me, man. I killed some motherfuckers this morning, so I’m good.”

I grimaced as my side bit at me, and looked back at Falken, thinking of a man who looked like James buying the debt from Frank. “I thought Rusch was trying to kill you.” I shut my eyes and took a breath. “The other Rusch, I mean.”

I opened my eyes and Falken was shaking his head, smoke all around him from his cigarette. “Rusch is just the bloodhound. Rusch just finds us poor shits and marks us out.”

I jerked a thumb at James. “For him?”

“For me?” James said, sounding amused. “What the fuck is this shit?”

“If it isn’t Rusch we should be worried about,” I said. “Then who is he supposed to be?”

Falken looked at me like I had horns growing out of my head. “He’s the guy they hire to hunt down their alternates and murder them, so they can become Terminus,” he said. “He’s The Executioner.”

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15.

She opened the door and her face was a marvel: Curiosity, then irritation, then melting horror.

“Jesus—”

“I’m in the wind,” I said, my words thick and slurry. “I just need to sit down for a minute.”

I stumbled into the foyer, forcing Rachel to scamper out of my way. I grabbed onto the wall for balance and left a streak of blood on it, finally bumping into the little console table she had against the wall for keys and cell phones, making everything rattle but finding my feet again.

“Jesus,” she hissed, grabbing onto me and putting herself under one arm, pulling me up a little and walking me down the short hall. It was the first time she’d touched me in years, and my head went a little gray again as her perfume and shampoo enveloped me.

“I’m sorry, kid,” I slurred. She kicked open her guest bathroom door and pushed me in. “I didn’t have anywhere else close.”

“Shut up,” she said, getting me to the floor the easy way: By just letting go of me. I sank onto the cool tile and found it to be surprisingly comfortable, like the porcelain had been transformed into tiny cushions. She pushed me onto my back, lifted up my coat, and gasped, rocking back onto her heels. “Oh, fuck,” she said softly, then started to push herself up. “I’ll call Frank. Get him to—”

I flopped an arm out and grabbed her calf. It was the first time I’d touched her in years, and the jolt up my arm almost made me pass out.

“No,” I said heavily, letting my hand slide off her leg. “You call Frank and I’m dead. You call Frank and three guys with shotguns are here in fifteen minutes and we’re both dead.”

She sat down without ceremony or grace, legs folded under her, and stared at me. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered, then look up. “Hospital. Emergency Room. You’re bleeding.”

I shook my head, feeling peaceful and languid, like I’d been drinking for hours, but drinking something that didn’t give you a hangover, something that just made you feel good. “Even worse.”

“I have to do something. You’re going to fucking die on my fucking bathroom floor, goddammit.” She stared at me, looking angry, and then she jumped up. “I’m calling Rusch. She’s with Billy and … your guy.”

She was out of the bathroom before I could say anything. I lay there and stared up at the donut-shaped fluorescent light fixture, and I drifted. Her bathroom smelled clean and fresh, like she’d just cleaned it, or never used it. I drifted. Nothing mattered, I was cool and comfortable and after the endless, terrible trip from the bar to Rachel’s place I was able to just lie there and breath, shallow, easy breaths. I imagined Rachel in here every day, in her pajamas, yellow dotted pajamas, her hair tied back. I imagined her brushing her teeth, taking a shower, toweling off, doing her makeup. It was peaceful. Sun shining in through the frosted window, a radio on, her dancing a little when a certain song came on.

Then I opened my eyes because someone was shaking me. It was Rusch, the creepy old hen, squinting down at me. She was wearing her usual wrinkled jacket, too light for the weather, and a white dress shirt that had never, as far as I could tell, been dry-cleaned, or even ironed. She waved a hand in my face until I grimaced and swatted it lazily away.

She stood up. “He’ll be fine.”

“Excuse me?” Rachel said from behind me, out of my field of vision. “He’s going to bleed to death.”

“No,” Rusch shook her head. “He’ll be fine.”

There was a stretch of silence. “Are you going to tell me he’ll be fine because he’s immortal? Because if you are, I’m going to be fucking upset.”

“He’ll be fine,” Rusch repeated, sounding amused. “The bleeding’s just about stopped. Look at him: He looks like he’s getting his color back, and his breathing isn’t labored any more.” She looked down at me and winked, like a favorite auntie being convinced to hand out candy. “I only had two years of med school, but I think he’ll be fine.”

“Doc,” I said, pushing myself up to a nearly sitting position, my arms stiff behind me for support, both of them shaking a little with the effort. “I’m starting to get the feeling you’re not as smart as you look.”

She cocked her head a little and gave me a strange little off-center smile. “How are you feeling? Take a moment and truly consider the question, now.”

I started to say something meanspirited, but realized I did feel better. The vibrating fuzziness was gone. I still felt weak, but I didn’t feel like I’d pass out at any moment. When I put a hand on my belly to feel the wound, fresh pain sweeping through me like an invisible laser cutting through me without breaking the skin, I kept myself upright with one arm, no trouble.

“All right,” I said slowly, feeling a strange foreboding fill me up, a dark sense of trouble. “I’m … better.” I cocked my head to mimic the old bat and smiled. “Maybe you healed me.”

She shook her head. “You’re a Terminus, my friend. Whether you realize it or not, I’m sure this has happened before. You can be hurt, yes—possibly even rendered comatose or otherwise non-functioning. You could be paralyzed, or blinded, or your existence could be made a hell—but you will never die, because every other version of you in the universes has already met that fate.”

I heard Rachel behind me and spun in time to hold out my hand. “Leave it,” I said. “She doesn’t mean any harm.”

She stared at me. “You’re not bleeding any more.”

I paused and felt myself out. I was an expert in pain, a specialist in my own. The wound was still there, and it ached and sizzled like the blade was still inside me, broken off and working its way towards my heart. But I didn’t have the fuzzy, buzzing feeling like I was floating an inch above my body any more, and I was able to take a deep breath without wincing. I turned and looked at Rusch again, studying her. The old woman had picked up a tube of something from Rachel’s sink and was peering down at it with a furrowed brow, as if he’d spotted an ingredient that wasn’t supposed to be there, like plutonium.

She didn’t look crazy. If I’d met her in a bar, I wouldn’t have paid any attention to her: A woman who made less than fifty thousand dollars a year, based on her clothes. A woman who didn’t value social interactions, based on the lack of care she put into those clothes, who was forgetful and easily distracted, based on her one black and one blue sock. A woman who lived in her own head, but not crazy.

After a moment, I got my legs under me and pulled myself up to a standing position. Rachel didn’t step over to give me any help, and I guessed without looking at her that we were back to normal, just like that. I pulled up my sticky, scabbing shirttail and examined my wound, then looked at Rusch again.

“So what you’re saying is, I might not die, but it could get infected, right?”

She looked up from the tube as if she’d forgotten I was there. Then she nodded, smiling. “Miss? You have a first aid kit of some kind, you said?”

I sat at Rachel’s neat kitchen table of blond wood, smoking a cigarette with my shirt off, watching Rusch as she hunched over my belly, packing on a thick bandage.

I felt almost normal. It still throbbed and burned, but no worse than a million other injuries I’d survived. I thought back on that, all the times I’d been bleeding and broken, which was plenty. I’d been stabbed before, and shot at, and beaten unconscious—that was my job. But I’d always come through it, and never come close to dying.

It didn’t prove anything.

I studied the scalp showing through Rusch’s thinning white-gray hair, then looked up as Rachel came back into the room, carrying her phone. “Everything kosher?”

She nodded as she dropped into the chair across from me. “Billy says Falken wants to leave and he’s had to knock him down a few times, but he’ll be okay.”

I smiled. “Billy’s an expert at knocking people down. He can calibrate it exactly.” I looked back down at Rusch’s head. “You about done, Doc?”

“You are in a rush?”

I put the cigarette in my mouth and reached down to gently push her away. “Time to go have a follow-up conversation with your boy, Doc,” I said, standing up and reaching for my shirt. I glanced at Rachel, who was staring at the bandage on my side, already blooming red with leaking blood. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt him.”

I felt weak and jazzed. Immortal or not, I’d lost a lot of fucking blood. I threaded an arm through my shirt, and grunted as I twisted around to thread the other one. I started to say something to Rachel, see if I could make her smile, when there was a thunderous knocking on the door.

Rusch was up on her feet like someone had stuck a needle in her ass. “What do we do?”

I sucked in smoked and shrugged, snapping my shirt into place and working the buttons with my fat fingers. I looked at Rachel. “Ask who it is,” I suggested.

“It’s Mister Detective Stanley James,” he boomed, bouncing that big profundo voice off the hallway walls. “And he can hear every fucking word y’all say, so mind your words.”

My heart leaped, pumping air and dust through my sagging, empty veins. Rachel and Rusch both looked at me, head’s snapping around in sync. I ignored them for a moment, mind racing. If he’d come looking for his debt, things were going to get ugly, and I couldn’t bring that down on Rachel, not in her home. “I’ll come out, Detective.”

“Naw, I’ll come in, son,” he boomed back. “You and I need to have a conversation.”

I grimaced and looked at Rachel. “Take the doc and go inside,” I said. “This isn’t your problem.”

She smiled at me, sunny and wide and meanspirited. “Fuck you. You made it my problem by dragging your bleeding ass here.”

“I thought I was dying.”

“So you came to die here? Thanks.” She stood up and crossed to the door, twisting the knob and tearing it open, turning away without a word and resuming her seat.

Detective James stood framed in the doorway, shoulders butting up against the edges, dressed in a gorgeous blue pinstripe that had been sewn by an artist. His gold tie pin gleamed in the kitchen light as he struck a pose and smiled.

“You’re slippery,” he complained. “For a moment I thought you were running.”

I shrugged as he stepped into the room. “How’d you find me here?”

“Shee-yit,” he drawled, nodding at Rachel. “It doesn’t take a fucking genius. You and the lady here have a history, huh?” He frowned, looking me over. “Hell, man, what happened to you?”

“I took a meeting,” I said, tucking in my shirt, “that I ought to not have taken.”

He stared at me for a moment, then nodded. “All right. None of my business. We’ll let it lay for now.”

“You’re here about your debt,” I said. “I was current with Frank. I’ve still got better part of a week on that.”

He frowned. “A fucking debt? What do I look like, a goddamn shylock?” He unfurled a long, dark finger at me. “That’s your business, friend.” He spread his hands and smiled. “I’m here doing what cops do: Keepin’ track of the scum and filth that rots my beloved city.” His smile faded. “I got a couple of dead bodies downtown, a three-alarm fire. I know you had a meeting with Phin Lanzmann the other day; this joint happens to be owned by Phin fucking Lanzmann. It occurred to me to wonder where in hell you’ve been this evening, and as a courtesy I chose to ask you, like a gentlemen, instead of putting your name on the wire. I don’t know anything about whatever debt you have with Frank McKenna.”

I stood for a moment, racing over my conversation with Phin. “You didn’t buy a debt from Frank. My debt. The Falken debt.”

He looked from me to Rachel and back again, ignoring Rusch completely. For a moment I thought he was going to get angry, but then he settled himself and just shook his head. “No.”

I looked over at Rusch, who had a twin running around. Then I picked up my coat, shook it out, and looked the blood-stained lining over critically. “All right, let’s go.”

James cocked his head and pushed his hands into his pockets. He looked like a millionaire. He was a cop who spent half his salary on clothes. “Go where, motherfucker?”

“To see Falken,” I said, pulling on my sticky coat. “To see if he recognizes you.”

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