Read Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel Online
Authors: Richard Kadrey
Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel (37 page)
“Promises. Promises. We lost faith in you when you were Lucifer. Why should we listen to you now?”
“I don’t know. It’s something to break up the tedium.”
“I tell you what, Mr. Sandman Slim. You proceed with your plan and we’ll proceed with ours, and we’ll see who gets there first.”
“I have the Qomrama, you know. I’ll use it against the Angra. And you.”
“A peashooter against an army. Good luck. Is this all you called about? I’m disappointed.”
“Stay in touch, asshole. I miss these fireside chats.”
“We’ll see. It’s not as fun when you want me to call.”
“Okay. Fuck you. If you wake up dead some night, don’t say I didn’t try to make nice first.”
“Good-bye.”
“Adios.”
I go downstairs and find Candy sitting with Kasabian on his bed, at least a dozen take-out menus spread about between them.
“Where’s Samael?”
“He kindly volunteered to go to the corner for beer. In the rain,” says Candy.
“Damn. He really doesn’t want to go home. Have you decided on dinner yet?”
“We’re down to Indian or Thai.”
“I vote Thai.”
“You might get outvoted this time.”
“This is why democracy is dying.”
I walk around the empty movie racks and restack some of the boxes of DVDs that Samael has been pawing through. A lot of memories in this place and on these pieces of plastic. If nothing else, I hate the idea of the Angra destroying us because it would wipe out all this work. All this demented horror, action, and beauty. A universe without Terrence Malick and Lucio Fulci isn’t worth living in. The Angra must be real bores. I hate them even more now. I pick up a copy of
Badlands
and go back to where Candy and Kasabian are still arguing about how hot they should order the food.
“Here’s the question of the night. If we lose, what movie do you want to watch at the end of the world? I call
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
.”
“Spirited Away,”
says Candy.
“
The Snake Charmer’s Daughter,
Brigitte Bardo’s best porn flick.”
I look around Max Overdrive. The rolled-up posters. The new-releases rack. The empty cutout bins. Fuck the world. I’ll kill the Angra to save my movies.
I say, “We’re going to need more TVs.”
New York Times
bestselling author R
ICHARD
K
ADREY
has published eight novels, including
Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, Aloha from Hell, Devil Said
Bang, Butcher Bird,
and
Metrophage,
and
more than fifty stories. He has been immortalized as an action figure, his short
story “Goodbye Houston Street, Goodbye” was nominated for a British Science
Fiction Association Award, and his novel
Butcher
Bird
was nominated for the Prix Elkaban in France. The bestselling
and acclaimed writer and photographer lives in San Francisco, California.
www.richardkadrey.com
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This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
KILL CITY BLUES
. Copyright © 2013 by Richard Kadrey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Harper Voyager and design is a trademark of HCP LLC.
ISBN 978-0-06-209459-9
EPub Edition AUGUST 2013 ISBN: 9780062094605
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