[sic]

What is this about?

Strange Heat

“What happened.”

“Jude’s dead. They all are.”

“Dammit!”

“But it was weird at first. To see them just standing there, twenty at least. They’d come around the bend and seen Jude out in front of the cave. They were watching him. Hungering for him, but didn’t attack. Just stood there, shuffling and drooling and moaning and hissing the way they do.”

“Undead motherfuckers!”

Yeah, but there was something diffferent. It was almost as if these were afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Jude, I think.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Maybe. But I’ll tell you they had reason to be. He just stood there with the long swords crossed in front of him like he wasn’t afraid. Like he was fucking zenmaster invincible. Took out nine before they even got a hand on him. I picked off five more with the rifle. Would’ve gotten more but…”

“But what?”

“But the gun fucking jammed all right?”

“Take it easy. Tell me what else.”

“Those that were left got into the cave. I got the gun fixed and put ‘em all down when they came out, but Denny, Sarah… Morgan.”

“Gone?”

“All gone.”

“How’d you escape?”

“Jude sent up on the ridge before they came. Told me not to give away my position ’til the dance started.”

“The dance?”

“That’s what he calls — called — it whenever they attacked.”

“Right.”

“But Jude was awesome, man. Just stood there like no one was getting past him and didn’t give a shit or an inch. Absolutely no fear. Zero. None would come by themselves so they worked themselves up into a frenzy until they charge as a group. And when they did Jude let out this roar came at them. And I swear — I swear! — that spooked ‘em. Even if it was just for a sec. Never seen it before but I saw it there.”

“But why? How?”

“I’m tellin’ you. Fuckin’ Jude, man!” Fuckin’ Jude.”

What is this about?

A Chili In The Air

Here’s the thing. Forty hours ago give or take I’m cruising home from Canoga having wrapped my latest — a real high-concept piece of shit with a three-day shoot in an ungodly hot industrial building. If you don’t know what goes on in industrial buildings out Canoga way then Google it because I’m not your teacher.

My bike is purring between my legs down the 101 under the Barham Bridge then up over the Cahuenga Pass and I’m 80 miles per hour out of the valley heat and into into the westside cool and life is good. Real good. I’m on my way back to my place off Alameda south of downtown where my latest Desiree or Delores or Delana or otherwise-named delight de soir probably got her ass up out of bed perhaps about an hour ago and has probably already sniffed herself through my stash of pharm grade and is borderline OD’d, more fixated on the blood from her nostrils spilling down the drain instead of getting focused on getting herself cleaned up so we can trip over to take our seats at Staples and watch Kobe & Kompany continue kicking the ass they started before the all-star break.

Then something makes me exit the freeway south of Silver Lake. Out of fucking nowhere. Some urge or intuition, and I always heed such unexplainables. So I’m off and in a brief span I’m downtown bound on Beverly Boulevard. I pass the county social services building on my right, a fortress prison I vaguely recall having to visit on many occasions with my mother when I was a kid. Tommy’s goes by busy on my left. I get a whiff of the chili in the air and a glimpse of a security guard who must be all of five feet tall and packing a .45-caliber revolver with an eight inch barrel that dangles practically all the way from his hip to his knee.

It’s troubled times when you need Yosemite Sam to stand guard , baby. Troubled fucking times. I don’t care how good the burgers are.

What is this about?

The Cleaner

It was so cake. Print up a few flyers at the local library with a bogus name and number and then pick a neighborhood — preferably within walking distance of a Vons or a Ralphs — and go door to door up and down a few blocks like a salesman. Clipboard, nambadge, necktie, the whole costume. Dom hadn’t worn a tie since his eigth grade graduation. Sometimes the pressure of it around his throat freaked him, but so far he’d been able to keep things under control and ward off any more “episodes” as he called them. The police called them assaults. The namebadge he’d found laying in the street while biking Sunset from the free clinic to the missions downtow. The name engraved in it read “Valery Papelian” and Dom looked about as Armenian as a martian, but that’s what initially gave him the idea for it all.

He guessed you could call him its mastermind in part because he was the only person involved, but he tended to shy away from that word — hated it, in fact — as it was most often was used in news reports to describe someone who had been in charge of something that got royally fucked up, as in “the botched scheme’s alleged mastermind was blah blah blah.”

Dom always thought: Pffft, some mastermind.

(more…)

 

What is this about?

Charge

He took another quick breath and listened. Nothing stirred outside, but suddenly lights that were on inside were being shut off, and searchlights positioned on the corners of the house hummed to blinding life and began sweeping in wide arcs that blanketed the front lawn in light.

Lloyd took out the three guards he could see with three shots. Then reloaded and put another mag off .223 rounds through the glass of the front facing windows on the first and second floor. After the sound of shattered glass subsided, he knelt in the stillness and heard only the muffled yelling of voices from inside.

Tyson had circled the wagons.

Dropping the Bushmaster he filled each hand with a Beretta and charged like the light brigade headlong out of the shadows toward the front of the house.

What is this about?

Breach

Three guards were visible on the front and east sides of the mansion. Probably more in the back and west side. Maybe someone on the roof. The whir of a panning surveillance camera at the top of the poll Lloyd squatted beside told him all he really needed to know: Tyson was expecting him.

“Company’s coming,” he whispered. “Better quit counting your blood money and start counting your heartbeats you son of a bitch, ‘cuz there aren’t that many left.”

Or maybe, Lloyd thought, he should take his own advice.

Nah.

Eyeballing the beefy bouncer-type patrolling the front door with a choke-chained rotty who growled and sniffed the air for signs of life and death, he briefly considered computing the opportune time and order in which to cap the goons that would maximize the amount of time he had to cross the open acreage to the house.

“Fuck it,” he said, unslinging the silenced and scoped Bushmaster that he had boosted from the veritable arsenal contained in the trunk of Derek’s ‘69 Chevy Impala.

Sighting the lean and mean creep at the east wall, he chambered a round, flicked off the safety and squeezed the trigger.

It was like a video game with the sound off. A muffled phwump jumped the gun and then 200 yards away, the creep fell.

One down, he sighed.

He took out the centerpiece next, and the guy’s head snapped back with the bullet’s impact. The dog got one startled bark out before Lloyd dispatched it as well. The odd bark was enough to bring the westside guard trotting around the corner, and in another phwump, he was fertilizer.

Lloyd grabbed a deep breath and held it, listening intently and heard no further movement. He scanned the roof line. Nothing. Calling card time, he thought, and he aimed the rifle high, sending a round through the surveillance camera housing.

“They’re heeeeeere,” he whispered with an almost joyful glee that frightened him, but only for a moment. But it was moment enough to realize that something had changed deep within him. Something that once was was now gone. Fear? Love? Kindness? All of the above?

He’d just killed a dog for hell’s sake. Two weeks ago, he never could’ve done that.

What is this about?

Throwing Bones

At 2:30 a.m. on a drizzly December Saturday, a smart person might not have walked past Jackson Square on Chartres across Dumaine and St. Philip and the rest to make a right turn onto Barracks Street. Check that. A smart person might not have gone past Jackson Square.

It’s not that Alton was stupid, it was just that he was in New Orleans for the first time in his life, his train from Los Angeles having arrived only five hours earlier and he wanted to take it all in. Or at least as much as he could of the Quarter in the few hours that he had left until his next train departed for Birmingham.

So when he proceeded up Barracks it was with the thought of getting back to the buzz of Bourbon Street, and not with much consideration that he perhaps wasn’t in the safest section of the quarter, or at least the most hospitable… or well lighted.

Even when he saw the hunched silhouettes of the four men rolling dice low in the shadows against the front steps of a building on the left he didn’t think much of it. But when they all stopped their game and their heads simultaneously turned in his direction and locked on him, suddenly he’d not only wished he’d chosen another street to go down, but he silently cursed for not taking the trouble to remove the camera from around his neck.

But rather than turn tail and flee, which was what every fiber of his being was suddenly screaming for him to do, Alton forced himself to continue moving forward, eyes straight ahead. As he did he tripped a bit over the uneven road, but quickly corrected his stride to keep from making a further fool of himself.

The four men didn’t move anything other than their heads, following him as he drew up to them and then beyond. As he did the street seemed to close in claustrophobically. With the men at his back Alton could feel the four pairs of eyes burning a hole through him but still he resisted the urge to break into a run. A few more steps and he almost jumped when he first heard the clatter of the dice on the pavement but quickly he realized it was about the best sound he could’ve hoped for.

He got to Royal Street and made another left, without looking back.

What is this about?

Mt. Lee

It wasn’t like the good old days. Back then you could drive up Beechwood Canyon to Ledgewood up to Deronda and from there it was a short winding walk along a dirt portion of Mulholland Highway that brought you around a bend and there you were at the base of Mt. Lee.

From there it was a bit of a clamber over gullies, through some brush and up makeshift trails until you were standing at the base of the Hollywood Sign and commanded a view that on a clear day stretched out over the Hollywood Reservoir and the city to the shore and all the way to several of the Channel Islands out there on the ocean.

You could slip on the headphones, pop a beer or fire up a bowl and just be king of the world for as little or as long as you wanted.

Not anymore. Sure, you could still roll it up Beechwood to Ledgewood to Deronda to that fire road, but once you got around there, the mountainside the sign sits atop might as well be a detention facility what with all the fencing and signs warning of trespassers being prosecuted and surveillance equipment being in operation and all the bullshit that comes with a post 9/11 world.

Cal could give a shit as he pitched the large cutters he’d hauled up with him and used to open a break in the chain link big enough for him to slip through. He wasted no time moving forward up the loose rock of the embankment before him because it had been 20 years that he’d been missing that view fand didn’t care if he got arrested f getting a refill.

“Attention! You are trespassing on private property! Do not proceed!” Cal picked up a baseball-sized rock and looked around at the loudspeaker and camera mounted atop the utlility pole next to the fence.

“Attention! Fuck you!” he yelled and heaved, the rock hitting the speaker dead on, knocking it askew. He’d been aiming for the camera.

“The authorities have been notified! Leave now or you will be arrested and jailed.”

Cal gave the camera the finger before turning his back on it and marching uphill. If they were coming to get me, he thought, I might as well make them have to work for it.

What is this about?

The Doublecross

The 747 lumbered across the sky as dozens do every day. As it descended towards the airport it passed behind the office tower next door and only its tail was visible above the roof line reminding Patrik of a shark’s dorsal fin. A moment later the whole bird came back into view and continued on its way until it moved beyond the edge of his window and out of view.

It was a brilliantly clear day today. The ridge of what millions of years ago had been an island but today was known as the Palos Verdes Peninsula stood tall against the crisp blue sky behind it. To the left and much farther out Patrik could even make out the big cranes at the ports that loaded and unloaded the big ships that came and went. The weatherman on the television this morning had gushed about the surprise conditions and referred to the day’s expected temperatures as “unseasonably warm.”

But if all went according to plan it was about to get a lot warmer, and maybe Patrik a lot richer. He checked his mobile phone for the tenth time in the last four minutes. Still nothing from Olaf. A couple more minutes and he knew what could be taking his partner so long. He was either dead, in custody, or on his way to Sao Paulo with their ten million dollars. Either outcome was troublesome, especially the last.

A voice from his office doorway that he didn’t recognize asked “Mr. Patrik Helt?” And he spun slowly around in his chair to find two men in suits that matched in color but clearly one bothered to have his tailored whereas the other wore his off the rack. That one had his gun drawn on him and a weird smile on his face.

“Gentlemen?” Patrik asked.

“FBI, Mr. Helt,” said the one without a gun pointed at Patrik’s chest. “I’m Special Agent Walen and this is Special Agent Anster. We have a warrant for your arrest.”

Well that answers that, Patrik thought. Happy trails, Olaf.

What is this about?

The Deck

Of course, the bottle of Merlot he’d nearly emptied wasn’t making it too hard to unwind. But it was an unwinding that was long overdue.

Blinking himself out of his tipsy daze and turning his head south, Harlan stared at the tops of downtown’s tallest skyscrapers, backlit in the moonlight, which could be seen above the hills of Echo Park. His head still rested on the railing, and his legs scissored back and forth slowly in the empty air beneath him.

But the moon was strange tonight. A dirty-orange hole in the darkness above downtown, the moon didn’t so much rise above the city, Harlan thought, as it seemed to lurk along its edge, trapped in the layer of smog that blanketed Los Angeles. It looked almost as if it were peering over the rim of the city, afraid of either what it might see, or of being seen.

He smiled to himself and leaned backward, he could identify with that feeling. Reaching backward for the bottle of wine without looking or paying attention, Harlan swept his arm forward too fast, knocking the wine over. And with his dulled reaction time, the noise of the rolling bottle took a moment too long to register, and he turned just in time to watch it reach the edge of the deck and pause there momentarily before tumbling off and down into the sloping abyss of wretched ivy, roaches, rocks and dirt fifteen feet feet below.

Still smiling, but also cringing a little awaiting the noisy shatter, he looked down in surprise after hearing the bottle hit and not break, and his eyes followed it as it rolled and bounced downward, shattering only after it slammed into the rusting spike-topped iron fence that marked the property line. The remaining contents of the bottle splashed out onto the neatly manicured grass beyond the fence and looked like…blood, he thought.

What is this about?

The Krylon Killer

Clark stood seething but silent several feet behind the unsuspecting tagger rattling the can of black spray paint before the whimsical mural on Mohawk just off Sunset, the centerpiece of which features two cartoonish chickens in love. It was one of Clark’s favorites.

At first, before he had any idea of the power he had — much less that he could actually control it — Clark would simply revive after everything went black at some indeterminate time and place forward remembering nothing much more than the rage that had filled him upon finding another mural or other public artwork destroyed by some worthless piece of shit.

It didn’t take long before he started putting things together. First because the body count and their marked similarities started getting more play from a media hungry to capitalize on the city’s next serial killer — already dubbing him the “Krylon Killer” despite police insistence the four cases weren’t necessarily connected. And second because the victims were all found at the scenes of their last defacement — which also was always where Clark had last been.

But here was the freaky thing: Clark wasn’t catching any of these maggots in the act. Instead his fury had somehow triggered an ability to jump back to the time and place of their destruction and do a little of his own.

Honestly though? As much as Clark venomously despised these subhumans, he hadn’t wanted to kill anybody — not that he mourned too heavily their demises. It was only in those first fully engulfed journeys that they died — and not at all nicely. Now it was much different as evidenced by this punk who stood before him still entirely alive. Clark could have already wrapped the bike chain he held between his hands around his scrawny neck and choked the life out of him. But now that Clark had gained greater control of his rage, all he was going to do was send a message, albeit a painful one that the jackass wouldn’t soon forget.

Still, he had to be careful. It took a locomotive level of hate to cross over and then it took a full reverse thrust to keep him from killing. Or in this case, being killed. Because when Clark cleared his throat almost politely to draw the surprise attention of his target, the last thing he expected was to see his target turn and draw a gun out of his waistband, much less feel a searing pain in his right thigh as it fired.