The Living End

The Living End
Copyright (c) 2014 by Craig Schaefer. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

Cover design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design LLC.

Prologue

One
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Two
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Three
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Four
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Five
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Six
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Seven
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Eight
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Nine
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Ten
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Eleven
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Twelve
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Thirteen
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Fourteen
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Fifteen
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Sixteen
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Seventeen
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Eighteen
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Nineteen
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Twenty
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Twenty-One
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Twenty-Two
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Twenty-Three
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Twenty-Four
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Twenty-Five
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Twenty-Six
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Twenty-Seven
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Twenty-Eight
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Twenty-Nine
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Thirty
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Thirty-One
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Thirty-Two
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Thirty-Three
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Thirty-Four
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Thirty-Five
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Thirty-Six
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Thirty-Seven
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Thirty-Eight
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Thirty-Nine
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Forty
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Forty-One
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Forty-Two
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Forty-Three
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Forty-Four
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Forty-Five

Epilogue
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Afterword

E
ugene Planck wasn’t a danger to himself anymore, not since the day he’d chugged down a bottle of acid to burn the snake living in his stomach. He hadn’t overcome what the doctors called “delusional parasitosis”—he’d just realized that the snake couldn’t be killed. Twenty years later, his throat still burned, especially on hot, dry California days like this one. He stared through the wire-mesh window, watched the wispy clouds drift by, and waited to die.

Napa State Hospital was a comfortable place for it. He had a stiff but warm single bed, a little desk with a lamp, and a view of the lawns outside. He had books, four of them, hardcovers lined up in a neat row on the desk. He’d expressed an interest in art history for a while, and the staff was happy to indulge him. Between the pills and the locked doors, it was hard to stay interested in anything for very long.

A letter from the outside would always perk him up, though. Nobody had sent him any mail for almost twenty years, not until the day his new friends came to visit, asking about Lauren Carmichael and his trip to Nepal. Since then he’d gotten three letters, preopened and screened by the hospital staff, checking up on Eugene and letting him know he wasn’t forgotten. They always came with short postscripts at the end, veiled comments just bland enough to slip past a censor’s marker.

“Your former student isn’t doing too well, Professor. One of her real estate ventures did so badly, they had to hold a fire sale. Stay safe—Daniel.”

He had to smile at that one. On the ancient Magnavox in the dayroom, Eugene had watched the press conference where Lauren blamed the destruction of the Silverlode Hotel on an unknown arsonist. He didn’t know anything about Daniel Faust beyond that one time they’d met and even less about the beautiful woman at his side, the one who’d told him in a Scottish-tinged brogue that they could walk in his dreams. What he did know was that they had saved his life. For just one night, they’d given him his voice back.

A metallic rapping echoed at his door. Highcastle, one of the orderlies, peered in at him through the long glass window.

“Hey, Doc. You got a visitor.”

Faust. Eugene’s face brightened as he ran his fingers through his long, tangled white hair and tottered over to the door.

Highcastle strolled beside him as they walked to the visitor center. Light filled the antiseptic halls, streaming in through mesh-covered windows and security glass, putting a bounce in the older man’s step.

He’s coming to tell me she’s dead
, Eugene thought. He knew he shouldn’t dare to hope, but he couldn’t keep the dream from swelling in his heart, threatening to burst.
She’s dead, and I can leave this place. I’m going home.

The sturdy plastic tables and chairs of the visitor center were empty, baking in the light from slanted windows high in one wall. Empty except for one.

The visitor wore a vintage black hat with a veil of French lace, like a wealthy dowager might wear to a funeral, but Eugene only needed to see the curve of her chin to know who she was. One hand, cloaked in a black velvet glove, lifted. The crook of her finger beckoned him.

“Hello, Eugene,” Lauren Carmichael said. “Come. Sit down.”

The door clanged shut behind him like a falling coffin lid. Eugene looked back, startled, to find Highcastle standing in front of it. Blocking the way out. They made eye contact, and the orderly looked down at the linoleum floor, his lips pursed.

“Sorry, Doc,” Highcastle murmured.

Lauren’s hair had gone silver before its time, but between the veil, gloves, and voluminous mourning dress, that was almost all he could see of his former student. A sudden harsh whirring sound snatched his attention, the sound of the air-conditioning kicking on.

Hissing
, he thought.

He raised his chin in defiance and hobbled toward her with as much pride as he could muster. He still had a few scraps of it left, even after all these years.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Lauren said. “You were supposed to be right there beside me in my hour of triumph. Sharing the glory you helped to build.”

“You’re mad,” Eugene said.

“Could a madwoman have done the things I’ve done? Could a madwoman have my drive, my discipline? No, Eugene. Don’t be so narrow-minded, it’s beneath you.”

He stood before her table, but he didn’t sit down.

“I’ve been wondering. How did you do it?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Talk to Daniel Faust about our trip to Nepal.” She held up a velvet-sheathed finger. “My efforts to silence you—for your own protection, I might add—were exceedingly thorough. You shouldn’t have been able to speak a word of it or write about it, or express it in interpretive dance for that matter. What did I miss?”

Eugene’s chapped lips curled in a faint smile. “You couldn’t stop me from dreaming.”

“Ah. There it is. Always a loophole.”

“You’re too late,” he said. “I told them everything. Everything I saw, everything you did, the people you and those smoke-faced things
murdered
. You won’t get away with it.”

“Of course I will. Eugene, beloved, the years have not been kind to you. I see wrinkles where my lips once kissed smooth skin. Your eyes still light up when you’re angry, though. You were always my one weakness. You know that, don’t you? My one indulgence, the one soft spot in my armor that I just couldn’t bring myself to destroy.”

Lauren looked over at Highcastle. The orderly stood slump-shouldered by the door, staring at his shoes.

“Leave us,” she said. “And lock the door behind you, please.”

Eugene turned, wide-eyed, and shook his head. “Don’t go,” he rasped, nearly pleading.

“Sorry, Doc.” Highcastle grimaced with shame, but he still turned his back on the man. “Just the way it’s gotta be.”

Then he left them alone together.

“Two hundred dollars,” Lauren said.

“What?”

“Two hundred dollars,” she said, “is what I paid that man to betray you. Another two hundred for the part-time security guard, to ensure that camera in the corner is turned off. That’s the going rate for a Judas these days, I suppose. Now, Eugene, I spend more money than that on a new pair of shoes. Are you really going to stand there and lecture me about what I can and can’t get away with?”

“You can’t buy your way out of facing justice,” he said.

She laughed. It was an ugly sound, a mocking snicker that ended in a hissing rasp from behind her black lace veil.

“I’ve been doing it for years,” she said. “Grow up, Eugene. I own a
senator
. I realize you haven’t gotten out much lately, but this warmed-over hippie nonsense is beneath you. Hard work and dedication have provided me with the resources to shape the world to my liking. Haven’t you read your Nietzsche? Or Hobbes? It’s entirely natural that I exert my will.”

“Daniel Faust.” Eugene spat the words like a weapon. His frail hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“Hmm? What of him?”

“He’s coming after you,” he said. “He’s coming for you, and he won’t stop until you’ve paid for everything you’ve done. When he does? When your hold over me is gone and I can leave this tomb? The first place I’m going to visit is your grave. So I can stand over your dead body, breathe free air, and know that
we beat you
.”

Lauren lifted her veiled face. She glanced over to the clock on the wall, an old workhorse with a plain white dial and needle arms under a dusty bubble of plastic.

“Hmm. It’s eleven o’clock.”

“So?” Eugene said.

She looked back at him. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew from the tone in her voice that she was smiling behind the veil.

“Daniel Faust,” she said, “died fifteen minutes ago.”

Eugene didn’t say a word. He wanted to laugh in her face, wanted to call her bluff, but he knew her too well for that. He knew the steel backbone in her voice, that old familiar confidence.

She was telling the truth.

“That’s the problem with hope.” She studied her gloved hand, curling her fingers. “It lifts you up to the heavens, but one good kick and you plummet to the dirt. When I’ve remade the Earth to my design, the concept of hope will be the first casualty. It’s kinder that way. I had such aspirations for you…once. I have learned, though, that the road to success demands absolute devotion and absolute sacrifice. I cannot allow any soft spots in my armor, not when I’m about to go to war with the entire world. No indulgences.”

Eugene straightened his back and stared her down.

“Am I supposed to be scared?” he said. “I’ve been rotting in this hospital for twenty years. Branded as insane, abandoned, forgotten by the outside world. You have no power over me, Lauren. Nothing you could do to me is worse than what I’ve already endured. So go ahead. Kill me. All you’re doing is setting me free.”

Lauren peeled off her right glove. Her arm was mottled and green, peeling in spots, the flesh of a dying leper or a snake preparing to shed its skin. Eugene’s eyes widened.

“So many sacrifices,” she murmured from behind her veil. “I’ve been going through some changes of late, my dear. Difficult changes, but the victory is only sweeter for the pain. And no, I didn’t come here to kill you.”

Eugene let out a held breath. Then he tried to inhale and suddenly couldn’t.

His fingers clawed at his throat as his windpipe slowly bulged. His face turned purple as he struggled for air. He crashed to the floor, kicking and thrashing, one flailing foot slamming into a chair and toppling it over.

“I came to take custody of our child,” Lauren said placidly. “Killing you is just the side effect.”

A rattling hiss echoed from the depths of Eugene’s throat. Soon the thing in his stomach showed its diamond-shaped head, swamp green and glistening with bile, as it peeked out from the professor’s soundlessly screaming mouth.

Eugene made one last desperate thrash, heaving himself across the floor toward Lauren’s feet, then fell still. His dead eyes stared up at the visiting-room windows. The snake slithered out from his mouth, dropping with a wet, wriggling plop onto the floor.

Lauren reached down with her bare hand. Veins pulsed under the rotten skin, like a nest of worms infesting her arm.

“Come to Mother,” Lauren whispered. “Welcome home.”

O
ut in the Arizona desert, in a ghost town called Chloride, I slouched in my chair and patted my hip through my windbreaker. Reminding myself that the gun was still there.

Chloride was an old mining town off US-93. Back in the 1800s they had over seventy mines and two thousand men to work the rock. Today the mines were long gone and only a couple hundred people remained, retired to the dusty streets and clean, cool mountain air. Abandoned tractors rusted in the sun next to the ruins of a once-booming town, nothing left but clapboard, hickory, and smoke.

I wondered if gunfighters ever met out on that rambling main street back in the day, settling their scores at high noon like in the westerns. My watch said 10:32. High noon was some time off, but we still had a gunfight on the agenda.

“Eat your sandwich,” Caitlin said, sitting to my right. We’d camped out a table at Times Gone By, one of the town’s few concessions to the tourist traffic. The restaurant was working the old mining town angle with the decor, from the rusted pickaxes and vintage photographs on the shingled walls to the red-and-white-checkered tablecloths. I’d ordered a sloppy joe with a dill pickle spear, and a ginger ale to settle my stomach. So far I’d just sipped at my soda, eyes riveted on the empty street on the other side of the big plate-glass windows.