Warning! Do Not Read This Story! Page 3

  If he'd been fighting anyone but a grizzly like Towers, he would have flipped them to the ground with that move. He would have twisted the glass shard free and hogtied the opponent with his necktie in a heartbeat.

  Instead, Towers flung herself on top of him.

  Her crushing weight came down like a car rolling side-over-side in a ditch. She knocked the breath out of him and pinned him in the dust. Buzz's only consolation was that her hand with the shard was trapped under him, so she was unable to slash her wrist.

  It was only a consolation, however, until she started dragging the shard out from under him. He howled in pain as the jagged edge cut through his shirt into the meat of his chest.

  *****

  Secrets can make a story great. Used effectively, they can keep a reader guessing, build suspense, and create surprise.

  Used improperly, however, they can kill a story's momentum. When a secret seemingly pops up out of nowhere, it can drain a story of internal logic and a sense of fair play. It can ruin everything.

  That's what Sascha LaVerge's secret did for me.

  It turned out she had a special motivation for trying to stop me. And a special insight, which is why she understood me so well.

  I didn't know it until she operated on me that night in the kitchen. I didn't know it until she finally reminded me.

  The two of us had met before.

  *****

  Buzz tried with all his might to push off Towers, but she wouldn't budge. She kept her full weight planted on his back and inched the jagged shard out from under him, slicing open his chest.

  Then, suddenly, the weight increased, and the hand stopped moving. At first, Buzz didn't realize what had happened.

  At least until he heard Carrol hollering above him. "Yee-haw! Git along little dogie!"

  Buzz quickly figured it out. Bad back and all, Carrol had climbed atop the pile and was riding Towers like a cowboy on a bull.

  Carrol whooped as Towers roared and bucked, trying to shake her. "Yippi-ki-yi-yay!"

  Finally, Towers jerked up onto her knees and yanked her arm out from under Buzz. Buzz snatched up the glass shard and scooted away in time to see Towers peel off Carrol and pitch her to the ground.

  And whip around to charge after him again.

  *****

  You heard me right the first time. Sascha and I had met before.

  She mentioned it when she was working on me. "This time will be different, you monster," she said. "I won't let you win."

  I wondered what she was talking about.

  "I'm closing the books on you," said Sascha as she scribbled furiously on a steno pad. "I'll do to you what you did to my sister.

  "I'll cripple you." Sascha pressed so hard, the tip of her pencil snapped. "I'll make you suffer the way that she's suffered. I'll make you wish you'd never come to Sestina."

  It was then that it hit me. I'd heard her mention it before, when she and Carrol had arrived in Lasco. I'd heard her say the name, but I hadn't connected the dots until now.

  I'm like a rock star that way. I've been intimate with so many people in so many places; you can't expect me to remember every one by name. Not at the drop of a hat.

  You can't expect me to remember every butthole dogpatch grease-stain podunk I depopulated decades ago. Or every dingleberry traumatized survivor to crawl from the wreckage with a bellyful of nightmares.

  Even after Sascha mentioned Sestina, I remembered it only vaguely. But I did realize with great clarity what our past association meant.

  And for the first time in my life, I felt fear. For the first time, I faced a true challenge.

  Because it was personal.

  *****

  Towers charged at Buzz with arms extended, snarling. Buzz knew what she wanted, knew also she wouldn't flinch from hurting or killing him to get it...so he decided to get rid of it.

  "Carrol!" Buzz hurled the glass shard over Towers and across the yard. "Think fast!"

  Towers stopped charging and spun, looking for the shard. It was thirty feet away, in the dust at Carrol's feet. Carrol winced and held her lower back with one hand as she crouched to retrieve it.

  Just as Towers was about to bolt toward her, Buzz launched himself at the trooper's broad back. He plowed a shoulder solidly into her spine, sending her toppling to the ground.

  Buzz's momentum pitched him down on top of her, and he rolled off as soon as they hit. He came up fast on his feet, springing out of her radius...but not quite fast enough. Towers landed a huge paw on his ankle and yanked him to his knees.

  Buzz scrambled in the dust as Towers dragged him toward her...and then he heard a loud crack. Suddenly, Towers relaxed her grip, and Buzz fumbled away from her.

  As Buzz bounced back up to his feet, he whirled to see Carrol standing over Towers' limp body, brandishing a plank. She tossed it away and staggered backward with a wince.

  "Tell your boss...I want a whole new back...for that one." Carrol turned away, shaking her head, breath hissing between teeth clenched in pain.

  Buzz brushed himself off. "Thanks." His own back wasn't feeling so hot after all the tossing around he'd gotten. His head felt funny, too; there was dizziness and faint pressure behind his eyes.

  He bent down for a moment, leaning his hands on his knees. He thought maybe he should find a place to sit down.

  Then, he looked over at Carrol and changed his plans.

  She was still turned away from him...but he could see the glass shard glinting in the moonlight. Heading for her throat.

  She was going to pick up where Towers had left off.

  *****

  When things quieted down outside, I felt a rush of relief. I thought I'd won after all. In spite of Sascha's personal vendetta, she hadn't finished in time to save her friends.

  I expected her to give up and leave me alone. I figured she'd realize there was no reason to keep fighting me.

  But I was wrong.

  Sascha didn't even look up. She just kept scribbling on her pad, working on me as if it still mattered.

  Believe it or not, I felt sorry for her.

  Here's something you might not know about stories. Whatever our goals or content, we really do care about the people who hear and read us. We have a connection.

  Because we put something of ourselves in every last one of you.

  *****

  Carrol's grip was surprisingly strong. She had a bad back, she couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds, and her fingers were oozing blood...but Buzz could not at first free the shard from her hands. In spite of his efforts, she kept pressing it closer and closer to her throat.

  It was as if she had a secret reservoir of power beneath the scrawny, hobbled façade of her body. Unexpected power surging to the surface without restraint now that the safety protocols had all been switched off in her brain.

  Buzz didn't think he could stop her. He put everything he had into it and barely slowed her progress.

  He tried a desperate move or two, shifting weight and position, to no avail. He called for Sascha, as loud as he could...then wished he hadn't. She might get there just in time, he realized, to see her sister kill herself.

  "Please, Carrol."He focused all his will on stopping Carrol, on saving her life. "Please stop! Don't do this!"

  Then, suddenly, the dizziness swelled in his skull. The pain behind his eyes spiked. His head felt like it was full of bees, all buzzing at once...all buzzing the words of the story Towers had told on the sofa.

  Once upon a time...

  And then Buzz no longer cared about saving Carrol LaVerge.

  *****

  I couldn't stop her. With all my being, I wanted to stop Sascha from running out the back door. From saving her friends.

  But I couldn't.

  Events had been set in motion. Someone else was driving the action, and all I could do was sit back and watch. Watch and wonder what was going to happen next.

  Now I knew how the rest of you feel when you're reading one of us.
>
  *****

  With a sudden surge of strength, Buzz wrenched Carrol's arm out of its socket. He no longer cared if he was hurting her.

  His head was full of the story. It was all he could hear.

  The same story Towers had told...yet different. Overlaid with a latticework of plot that seemed new and familiar at the same time.

  Buzz took the glass shard away from Carrol and knocked her to the ground.

  That was what the story said, and that was what Buzz did.

  When he was done with that, Buzz was going to run to the Humvee and drive as fast as he could to the nearest town. When he got there, he would tell the story to as many people as he could, so they could tell as many people as they could.

  When he was done with all that, Buzz Mahaffey was going to kill himself with the glass shard. He was going to drive it right into his heart.

  Yes. That sounded about right. That was exactly what was going to happen. Buzz knew it to be true with all the simple certainty that he knew the sun would rise in the East and set in the West.

  In this way, Buzz was going to be a hero. He was going to help the story travel all over the world, and it would save mankind. It would do this by making most of the people in the world kill themselves before everyone could die in the storm to come. The storm that always comes when a civilization becomes too powerful and people forget their humility.

  Following in the footsteps of the original storyteller from Atlantis, Buzz would help to sacrifice the many to save the few. And for his bravery, he would be rewarded with immortality.

  By becoming part of the story.

  Buzz liked that. He liked that he would be remembered.

  He also liked the idea of being a hero and saving people. It was the reason he'd gotten into law enforcement to begin with. It was the reason he'd given up everything else that had ever meant anything to him, including the wife and children who'd left him years ago.

  So he was familiar with sacrifice, too. He didn't mind it.

  He didn't mind any of it. If anything, it made him feel free. It made him feel wonderful, knowing what was in store, knowing he wouldn't have to worry any longer about making it up himself as he went along.

  Buzz turned to run across the back yard to the street that would lead him to the Humvee...

  And he stopped.

  A voice had suddenly cut through the buzzing of the story in his brain. It was a familiar voice, the voice of Sascha LaVerge...but who she was wasn't what got his attention.

  What got him to turn around and listen was this:

  Sascha was telling a story.

  *****

  She won. I still can't believe it, but she beat me.

  Because she was willing to go too far.

  Say what you will about me, but I would never dream of doing what Sascha did. I would never wish it on another story.

  She stopped me the only way she could. She did the worst thing you can do to a story, the absolute worst.

  Imagine if someone cut off your right leg. Your left arm. Your face.

  Imagine if someone cut out your eye. Your stomach. Your vocal cords.

  That was what Sascha LaVerge did to me.

  *****

  Buzz listened as Sascha told the story. Carrol hobbled over beside him and listened, too.

  It was the same story, almost, that Towers had told on the sofa. Some parts were exactly the same...and some were different. Some were changed.

  Like Towers' story, it held his attention, and Carrol's, too. It made him shut out the world and focus only on the words. It made him want nothing more than to find out what was going to happen next.

  And as he listened, the story in his head began to fade. The dizziness and the pain behind his eyes died away.

  The shard of glass fell from his hand.

  Soon, the new story completely replaced the old.

  The old story was gone forever. No one would ever again tell it in its original form. Only Sascha's digital recording remained, and she was going to destroy it.

  The old story wouldn't hurt anyone else. Buzz and Carrol would be fine.

  And though Buzz could no longer remember that story, could not exactly recall how Towers had told it on the sofa, he did know one thing about it. Though he'd once hung on its every word as if it had been a masterpiece, it hadn't been so great after all. It turned out it had needed some work.

  He liked the new version much better.

  *****

  That was what Sascha LaVerge did to me. She edited me.

  She left me a shadow of my former self, gutted and depowered. Unable to program minds.

  She rewrote my software. Turned me into limpware.

  So here I am, incomplete. Broken. Abused.

  She got her revenge for what happened in Sestina. She crippled me as I'd crippled her sister.

  There's just one thing I don't understand.

  Sascha heard me, just like Towers and Buzz and Carrol. She heard me word for word in my original form.

  So why didn't she do what I told her?

  *****

  "Thank you." Towers shook Sascha's hand...then shot forward and gave her a huge hug. "Thank you for everything."

  "No problemo." Sascha hugged her back, closing her eyes and holding on for a long moment. "All part of the service, hon."

  It was the morning after the craziness in Lasco. The sun was just nosing over the horizon, airbrushing the few wispy clouds pink and gold.

  Buzz spun the keys to the Humvee around his index finger and frowned. Shadow Service business could get wild sometimes...but what happened last night still bothered him. He didn't like being so completely out of control, at the mercy of forces he didn't understand.

  Usually, he at least had half a handle on things. As in-over-his-head as he sometimes was, he had a grasp of the game. But not this time.

  This time, it was mostly a blur.

  "Hey there, big boy." Carrol snapped him out of his reverie with a slap on the back. "Nice job on the shoulder, man!" Her right arm, which Buzz had dislocated, hung in a white sling Sascha had made from a pillowcase she'd found in one of the houses. Carrol swung it around to show him.

  "Sorry about that," said Buzz. "I wasn't myself."

  Carrol sniffed and stroked the tip of her nose with a thumb and forefinger. "I hear ya', bro. Desperate times and all that, right?"

  Buzz shrugged.

  Carrol bounced on the balls of her feet and looked around. Then, a slow, devilish grin curled onto her face. She popped up on tiptoes and locked eyes with Buzz, looking insincerely sweet to the point of pure evil.

  "I'm going straight to my lawyer when I get home," she said softly. "Good thing your boss has got deep pockets."

  Buzz stared back at her...then smirked. "All aboard!" He said it without breaking her gaze. "Time for our next adventure."

  Carrol scowled. "Adventure?"

  Buzz leaned closer. Their faces were only inches apart. "We already have another case. My boss needs you in Nebraska...and he doesn't take 'no' for an answer." He smiled. "So you might not be getting home for a while...hon."

  Carrol started to say something, but Buzz cut her off with a kiss on the forehead. Eyebrows raised in amazement, she lowered herself off her tiptoes and stood there, mouth open, in the dust.

  On his way to the driver's seat of the Humvee, Buzz stopped to shake Towers' hand. "Nice work, Sergeant." He turned away from her...only to fall into Sascha's waiting arms.

  "We make a great team," she said. "I hate the circumstances, but I'm glad we got the chance to work together."

  "Thanks for saving my ass," said Buzz. "Whatever it was you did."

  "Nothing much." Sascha laughed, her breath warm in the bell of his ear. "Somebody got snipped."

  Buzz leaned back and gazed into her dark brown eyes. "Just tell me one thing."

  "Deal," said Sascha.

  "Why didn't it affect you?" said Buzz. "You heard the story just like the rest of us."

  "Because." Sasc
ha pulled him closer and whispered in his ear. "It can't make you want to kill yourself...if you're already dead."

  Then, she pecked him on the cheek and spun away from him, heading for the Humvee. This time, it was Buzz's turn to stand there in the dust with eyebrows raised and mouth open. Wondering.

  Wondering what the rest of the story would be.

  *****

  Every ending is a new beginning. That's what I think.

  It might seem like my story is over...but I think there's always hope. There's always a chance someone will come along to pick up the pieces and fill in the blanks. Someone with a creative streak, like you.

  I think we have chemistry, don't you? I know I'm damaged goods, but maybe you can save me.

  Maybe, between the two of us, we can spark up that old magic of mine again. Come up with a rewrite that's as good as the original.

  Or better.

  I'll bet we can make it a bestseller. Our readers will be dying for a sequel.

  And wouldn't it be a blast if Hollywood came knocking? Imagine me on the big screen. Once audiences catch the vibe, it could bring new meaning to the term "box office suicide."

  So what do you say? Does the premise grab you? Would you like to see what happens next?

  Tell you what. I'm going to be optimistic...

  The Beginning