Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is FOREVER MAN. Enjoy!

“I made ?em hurt, but they’re two, and they’re big.”

I nodded, working on the knots. I could feel her body heat and smell her sweat as I leaned into her, concentrating. Above us, Jenks was working his way through a new soliloquy.

“You ain’t the first, Burning Man. You thought you were the first and only? Not many, I’ll grant you, but there’s been some. Last couple of years, they’ve shown up. They make a splash, you know, people who can’t die.”

Moira shifted slightly to give me better access to the knots around her wrists behind her, grunting with pain. I felt her moving next to me, alive, more than alive, burning with life, fevered and hot. I wasn’t sure if it was anger or the cold, if she was getting sick.

“Except, they can die. Shit, brother – guys like Brusca – who’s only half smart – they like to have contingencies on contingencies. Nothing’s more paranoid than dirty money, because they took it, so why couldn’t someone else take it from them? So, Brusca wanted someone to keep an eye on you, keep you honest. And Brusca wanted someone who could take you down if it came to that. Lucky for him I’m an all-in-one kind of package.”

I worked the knots. They were professional and tight. “Are you okay to move?” I asked her, whispering. I was asking her if she could fight. The way she sucked in breath every time I shifted my weight, I wasn’t too sure.

“I can move,” she said. “You free me up, I can move.”

I thought about Jenks and Mays limping around with their broken noises and black eyes. Two big, trained men with superior equipment, and she’d almost gotten over on them. Almost.

My fingers were stiff and cold, though, and I was making slow progress. I also figured Jenks knew this was the first thing I would do. He’d tossed me in here but he wasn’t a man to act in anger or on whim. He knew I’d free Moira, and he knew we’d start plotting. Hands free, the two of us might manage something interesting. Jenks had something ready for it, whatever it was.

“I killed one of you Forever Folks – that’s a name I use, it’s not official or anything – in Barcelona a few months ago. On contract, a’course. Funny about him was he didn’t want to go. Was all about living forever, unable to die. He fucking cried when I proved it to him.”

“Jesus,” Moira whispered. “You should have run.”

I shook my head, cursing my numb, thick fingers. “Not possible. He’s fucking lying.”

Bechels had explained it to me – how I was the way I was. Why. Someday, I would return to London – or to wherever the Sphere had expanded to by then – and I would step inside. Or the Sphere would expand suddenly and engulf me, and I would “loop” around to the moment the Sphere had come into existence, and do it all over again. I couldn’t die because because it was inevitable. I had to live to step into the Sphere.

If Jenks came into it, it was in a way neither of us could foresee. That wasn’t comforting.

The first knot suddenly gave slightly to my numb tugging, and a stabbing sensation of hope thrilled me. I didn’t have much of a plan beyond setting Moira free, but Moira was a fucking secret weapon. I thought to myself, wind her up, let her go.

“And if you’re wondering, does Captain Jenks have fucking permission to kill Burning Man? Won’t he get into trouble if he cuts the throat of Mr. Esmundo Brusca’s fucking secret agent weapon? And the answer is, nope. Captain Jenks has certain prerequisites when he takes on employment, and one of those prerequisites is what we call in the service a free hand. Mr. Esmundo Brusca knows perfectly well that the death of his pet Forever Man is a risk he had to take when he hired on Captain Barrow Jenks.” He paused. “Like I said, y’all are rare, but you ain’t the only one. We can always find one more.”

“I’m not supposed to fucking die here,” Moira whispered in my ear, her breath hot. “I have to get my sister. I have to get Atty or what was the fucking point of all of this?”

“Hold on,” I whispered, working the knots. “Almost there.”

I took one hand back to wipe ice-cold sweat from my brow, and felt the slick, greasy swatch on my face. My hand was slick with blood.

“You’re fucking bleeding like a stuck pig,” I accused, getting back to work. It wasn’t just my stiff, numb fingers. It was her leaking blood all over the knots, lubricant.

“I’m good to kill these bastards,” she hissed back. “That’s what I do, Charley.”

Up above us, Jenks was still fucking talking.

“You might wonder how I, the humble and uneducated Barrow Jenks of Dripping Springs, Texas, came to be the Executioner, the one man in the world who can kill the unkillable. I’ve always had an interest in killing, hoss. It’s what I was good at from my short pants days. I’ve made a study of it, startin’ with dogs in the neighborhood and continuing into the profession of killing. Where I met Mr. Mays, a fellow traveler who lacked that final bit ?o talent for the Forevers.”

As if they’d made a sentient decision on their own, the knots slipped free. Moira sat forward with a sharp intake of breath. “Your shirt,” she gasped, her voice tight.

I blinked, then nodded, and tore a strip of the white cloth from my shirt, then another. She took and with shaking hands and folded one up to make a bandage, and wrapped the other around her midsection to hold it in place.

“Take this,” she gasped, holding out the ends. “Pull as tight as you can – tight – and then knot it.”

I pulled and ignored her grunt of pain. I knotted it off and felt the cold wind against my skin where my shirt exposed my belly. I’d been freezing for months. I imagined a world where I had pneumonia forever, for the rest of my life, coughing up blood and getting incrementally thinner without ever reaching the terminus.

“Okay,” she whispered, nodding. “Okay, Any weapons?”

I shook my head. “Nothing for this.”

She nodded, squinting up at the corner of canvas that had been turned up, Jenks’ back visible against the darkened sky. “Then this is how it goes. You’re gonna boost me. I’m gonna take hold of that cocksucker’s leg and hold on for fucking life, and you’re gonna pull us both down into the hole. And then you’re gonna be on him like a fucking rock and we’re going to take him down.”

I took a breath. “Mr. Mays is, what, sitting in stunned silence while this happens?”

“You got a better idea, speak now or go fuck yourself, Charley.”

I had a moment of brief, intense affection for her. She was pale and trembling, her eyes sunken but burning, and we were imprisoned in what I was fairly certain had originally been dug as a latrine. And she was still dangerous.

I didn’t have better ideas. “All right. Let’s do it.”

We moved to the corner where the canvas was flipped back, Jenks sitting there on the edge of the hole looking up at the sky like that Boy Scout I kept picturing. I knelt down without looking at Moira, because every time I looked at her I got less confident about her ability to accomplish much, and laced my fingers together. Without hesitation, she stepped forward and put one foot in like a stirrup, and braced herself with a hand on each shoulder.

“Give it some pop,” she whispered. “Throw me at him.”

I nodded, took a deep breath, and surged up. She leaped, I pushed, and with a scream of pain she leaped up and slammed against the side of the hole, her hand digging into the thick fabric of Jenks’ trousers.

“Charley!”

I jumped and took hold of her legs, and went dead weight. She screamed, the most horrible sound I’d ever heard in my life, and they both came tumbling down. Someone smacked into my face and my nose crunched, purple and green flashing behind my eyes. Blind, I struggled to take hold of Jenks, but got shoved violently aside. I rolled and pushed myself up onto my elbows, tasting blood, and looked up.

Jenks was facing up, on top of her. He put his hands beneath him and started to push himself up, but she suddenly locked her legs around his neck, yanking him back to the ground and twisting her pelvis to jerk his head to the side. Red-faced and bulging, he slapped his arms up against her torso, and with a precise move found the red bloom on her belly and clamped one huge hand on it.

Moira screamed. I lurched into motion and threw myself at him, and at the last second he scissored his legs and kicked at me, connecting with my jaw and flipping me back again, the purple and green filling my thoughts for a second.

When I could see again, Jenks’ tongue was popped out of his mouth as he reached behind himself, desperately trying to grab hold of Moira. Any part of her. I took one staggering step towards him to lend a hand when a mountain in the form of Mr. Mays dropped on top of me.

He took hold of me by the shoulders and flipped me around so I was facing him, then issued a pair of thunderous punches that whipped my head this way and that, everything going slow and wiggly, sound rushing away as if they’d just punctured the atmosphere and all the air had evaporated. I settled gently back against the wall of the latrine and watched the rest in a queer calm silence: Moira spun off of Jenks and to her feet, turning the spin into a kick that connected pretty well with Mays’ chin, sending the huge man stumbling while Jenks sat sucking his eyes back into his head and struggling to breathe.

She spun back to Jenks and tore a small knife from his boot, and with a balletic move spun back in a perfect reverse of her route and stabbed it directly into the side of Mr. Mays’ neck.

Mays began moving backwards in a slow stumble, waving one arm vaguely at the knife as blood, looking black and shiny in the moonlight, gushed down, slowly transforming his clothes and skin into an oily layer that stretched and flowed over him like he was being absorbed.

She turned back towards Jenks but stumbled and went down to one knee as he scrambled back away from her, digging into his jacket’s interior. I threw myself for a third time and crashed onto him, feeling a satisfying crunching as he screamed, his arm caught between us. And the giddy feeling of triumph I’d almost forgotten the feel and smell of seeped into me. We were going to beat them. We were going to walk out of this on top.

He started to buck me off, and I squeezed my thighs around him desperately, hanging on as I pushed my hands into the warm, sweaty interior of his coat, fighting for the gun that I knew had to be there. Both of our hands were on it as his free hand inserted itself into my hair and pulled hard. Pain seared down my neck into my arms as I felt the roots tearing free, but I hung on and when I had the butt of the gun in my hand I leaped backwards, blood pouring down my back. I landed on my ass, flicked off the safety and held the gun on him for a second, steadying myself.

I pulled the trigger twice, and got a dry click each time.

Instinctively I turned the gun to the side to examine the action, and then Jenks was on me like a boulder dropping from a high place, knocking me back into the ground. One hand locked onto my wrist and banged the gun against the ground. It went off, a thunderous large-caliber explosion that jerked my hand almost free of his vise-like grip. His other hand went around my throat, crushing the breath out of me. I wasn’t worried about being choked. He couldn’t kill me, I told myself, whatever his grandstanding. He couldn’t.

He slammed the gun against the hard, cold ground again and the gun popped free from my hand. Jenks rolled off and slammed into the wall of the latrine, the gun on me.

He pulled the trigger, and there was a dry click. He suddenly put his arms up, the gun pointed at the sky. For a second we both sat there, breathing hard.

“You can’t be killed,” he said between gasps. “Not like this. And I can’t be killed. Not like this.”

I stared. “You’re – ”

He nodded. “A Forever. Sure. What, you thought you were it? The Be All?” He smiled, those white teeth. “Takes one to kill one, Burning Man.”

I froze, a sudden sense of urgency stealing over me in a shiver. I turned, suddenly, twisting around, my head throbbing, my back protesting. Putting Jenks in my blind spot. And none of it mattered, because Moira was dead. She lay at the bottom of the latrine, staring blindly up at the sky, one hand lightly on top of the lake of blood that had soaked through her shirt.

When Jenks hit me from behind, knocking me cold, I welcomed it.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF