They still hadn't noticed him but he was about to change that radically when his eye went to a blonde kid in a varsity letter-jacket, green, number thirty-four according to the jacket who was standing leaning against a tree maybe forty feet away from them and he was thinking what the fuck is some asshole doing in a letter jacket in all this heat? is he nuts? when the guy pushed away from the tree and opened his jacket and pulled out something short and black that looked like a combination pistol and machine-gun and started spraying the field and trees left to right.
Stroup hit the dirt. He saw the woman with the bubbles go down with red exploding from her shoulder and a guy with headphones double over like sombody'd kicked him in the stomach. He saw a kid maybe seven years old take one high in the forehead and then his father lurching toward him before his hip burst open.
People were screaming. Scrambling for cover.
The guy's automatic was moving toward Carla. They hadn't even gone down. They were holding one another, wide-open targets, the dumb lezzie bitches.
This guy was gonna do it for him, he thought.
This guy was gonna shoot the hell out of them.
The fuck he was.
He had the .38. He flicked off the safety and aimed and squeezed.
The guy yelped and stumbled back surprised as hell and then looked down at his belly. His belly was a mess. Stroup had made it that way. The guy screamed. Stroup squeezed off another one and the guy's balls were gone. Stroup was shooting in a nice vertical pattern he thought, down the guy's body. Had to finish it up higher, though. The guy was still howling when his jaw splashed against the tree.
Stroup pocketed the gun and stood. Carla was looking at him. He walked over.
"I saved your fucking life, Carla," he said. "Didn't I?"
Carla was white as paste. So was Randi.
"Y-yes," she said. "Yes you did, Stroup."
"You want to forget the rent now?"
`Uh. O-okay." She nodded.
"Thanks, bitch."
He turned and walked away.
He was watching New York One that night when his boss called. He was watching coverage of the shooting for the fifth time. He was drinking scotch. It looked like the black kid and his father were going to live and the bubble-lady too but the guy with the headphones was a goner. So was the shooter. The shooter had been identified as one Will Obey, originally from Center Cut, Texas. He'd told friends just the day before that he was six months pregnant with the child of Behemoth Yuggdoroth Nit. They hadn't believed him. So far nobody had mentioned Stroup's name but that couldn't be.
He turned the volume down. He had to do it manually. He was going to have to get a new remote, goddammit.
"Stroup?"
"You're calling me on a Saturday, Max. You're calling me for the second time. That's unusual."
"I know."
"You can't fire me, Max. You did that."
"Downsized, Stroup. Downsized."
"I don't care what you call it."
"Listen, are you watching the news, Stroup?"
"Matter of fact I am."
"Carla called me."
"Who?"
"Carla. I know it was you, Stroup. Carla told me everything. You're a hero, Stroup. You saved people's lives out there."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I think we can get a book deal."
"A what?"
"A book deal. It was Carla's idea, but I think she's dead right."
"At least she's dead something."
"Huh?"
"Never mind."
"Look, we do it anonymously, under a pseudonym. Nobody's ever going to find out."
"They found out about Ed McBain, Max. They found out about Richard Bachman. And what's his name? Ketchum or something."
"We'll be careful. Those guys weren't. Those guys were clumsy. I know plenty of writers who've never been found out. You're not a bad writer, Stroup. This book could be the beginning of a new career for you."
"And Carla gets a piece of it, right? That's the deal?"
"Well, yes."
"She mention a figure?"
"Well, yes she did."
"It wouldn't be something around two thousand, seven hundred dollars, would it?"
"Thirty five hundred. But look, advances for this kind of thing are crazy these days. We do it strictly true-crime. If it were fiction we'd be lucky to make a nickel. But we do this thing right, you could make a million dollars. Would that be acceptable?"
"Make it two million and you got a deal."
"I think I can safely say, done."
Stroup went to bed. And woke up smiling.
All fiction and non-fiction contained within are copyrighted by Jack Ketchum.
The Goblin on the Dance Floor © 1999
The Hang up © 1976
The Heat © 1977
Skin Game © 1977
The Burn Artist (originally published as Bosom Buddies) © 1978
The Rubdown © 1979
Never Trust a Smart Cunt with Two First Names (originally published as Fixing Her Plumbing) © 1979
Fish © 1999
Old Men Dancing (originally published as Dancin') © 1979
The Liar © 1979
The French © 1978
The Christmas Caller © 1976
East Side Story (originally published as Head Games) © 1980
Dead Heat © 1982
The Old Days © 2004
Beyond The Pail © 2003
Ugly George: Cable TV's Prince of Pickup © 1980
Welcome to the Chateau (originally published as Hot Nights in an S&M Club) © 1979
Flashers and Freaks © 1980
Bad Girls, Sad Girls in the Heart of Disco © 1979
Sheep Meadow Story © 2001 (Jack Ketchum, writing as Jerzy Livingston), novella, Triage, Matt Johnson, ed., Cemetery Dance Publications
Jack Ketchum, Broken on the Wheel of Sex
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