Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

To her right, a young man crawled toward her with a terrible slowness, leaving a snail’s trail of shining red behind him. Blood bubbled from his lips, and there were tears in his eyes.

  “Harry!” she cried and broke into a run.

  CHAPTER 179

  EAST TEXAS CONVENTION CENTER

  LABORDE, TEXAS

  Santoro dropped and pivoted to swing a vicious Muay Thai shin kick to the outside of my left knee, but I was already in motion with a cutting palm to his chin. Because I was pivoting, his shin hit my knee straight and bent, which did no damage but hurt us both. A lot. My cutting palm missed his chin because he was pivoting and banged off his forehead. The two blows buffeted us backward.

  Pain meant nothing to Santoro, and it meant even less to me, so we closed again. Only slightly warier. We were evenly matched for speed. He was smaller and could move his whole mass more quickly; I had a longer reach.

  He tried a stamp, missed my instep but mashed my big toe. But I crouched and twisted and drove a two-knuckle punch into the center of his quads. He hissed and chopped me across the side of the mouth with the edge of his hand. My lip split, and droplets of blood followed his hand like the tail of a comet.

  I feinted with a low roundhouse kick but then tilted forward to try to put my thumb in his eye. He parried my shot and caught me under the arm with a short, chopping uppercut. It numbed my arm as he knew it would, and he tried to close on that side, but I pivoted in place and swung a spinning elbow at his nose. Santoro leaned into me to nullify the force of the blow, but I’m a big guy and I hit hard, so the sheer torsion I’d generated sent him stumbling sideways.

  I tried to correct my balance and follow, but I was still at the end of a pivot, and by the time I’d shifted my stance, he was out of range and beginning to circle.

  We played that cat game of walking in opposing circles for a few seconds, reading each other, waiting for the moment, stalking each other on the balls of our feet, knees bent, able to move in any direction. That’s how the pros do it. It’s what they try to teach students on the first day in the dojo. Don’t be flat-footed, keep your weight balanced, don’t root yourself to the ground.

  I sprang at him, using my left hand to chop down on his guard while I looped my right up and over and down with a smashing palm-heel. He was fast. My lord, was he fast. I had him cold, and he still managed to twist and contort his body to empty the space where he’d just been. A matador would weep for such an evasion; a danseur would kill for that grace.

  His evasion turned into a counterattack as—with his back briefly toward me—he kicked up backward in a deer kick that caught me high on the inner thigh with his heel.

  I was not wearing underwear, and my balls were right there, directly in the path of the kick.

  It hurt. Real fucking bad.

  Here’s the thing about pain, though. Unless the pain is coupled with debilitating damage, it’s just sensation. It can be dealt with. It can be endured and even disregarded. Every boxer knows this, every soldier injured in combat while still a hundred yards from cover knows it. Marathon runners know it, and so do teenagers playing soccer on a Sunday morning. Getting hit in the balls hurts. In a civilized moment, you tend to curl up into a fetal position and pray for death. In action, though, when it’s not only your life but the lives of everyone who needs you, counts on you, depends on you … it becomes something else. It becomes fuel.

  The pain galvanized me, and I hurled myself at Santoro, trying to drive him against the wall. But he was already turning, having seen or sensed my jump. He slapped his arm around my waist, turned away, bent over, and used his hip as a fulcrum and my mass and momentum to throw me onto the floor.

  But I grew up in jujitsu schools. Throws and counter-throws, or counters to counters … that’s my thing. If I’d fed him that technique, it could not have been more ideal. As I landed, I turned like an axle and made him the wheel. The new torque whipped him around me, and then he was on the floor and I was on top.

  Last year in Oslo, he’d had a dominant moment like that and, instead of ending it right there, decided to beat me to death. He’d knocked out teeth, fractured an eye socket, and busted bones in my face. He could have used that time to kill me, and it gave me a chance to turn the tables on him. And … damn if I hadn’t done the same thing. I’d wanted to punish him for the deaths of the helpless and innocent people on the islands where the Rage pathogen was released.

  I should have killed him. Like Santoro a moment before. I could have killed him. Both of us had made the mistake of succumbing for the need to use our blows as punishment and as a lesson. Know this, understand this, be aware of why you are being beaten. That’s its own kind of arrogance. The price I paid for that was him slipping away and then coming after my family. Their deaths were on me.

  On me.

  I completed my roll, and for a moment I was on top, straddling him, my hands free.

  And the Darkness tried to own me.

  It rose up like a tsunami of utter blackness. It wanted Santoro punished. It wanted to dominate, to own, to humiliate, to educate. I could feel it spreading through me like a jar of ink poured into a gallon of water. The tendrils uncurled along the paths of least resistance, filled every nerve ending, every muscle fiber. I could feel it behind my eyes, and I wondered if they had turned as black as the Fixers’ eyes turned red. I believed that if I opened my mouth, I would vomit out a cloud of stygian horror.

  It wanted to steal this moment from me.

  And in doing so, give Santoro a chance. In the past, he’d proven that all he ever needed was a chance.

  The Darkness was so powerful that I was becoming lost in it, just as I was aware that all of this was happening inside the bubble of a millisecond.

  I was the Darkness now, and an awareness stabbed through me, whispering awful truths.

  If I gave this moment to the Darkness, then it would have all my moments henceforth. If I became the Darkness, then everything that I was—that Joe Ledger was—would be gone.

  Nicodemus would win. Kuga would win.

  Rafael Santoro would win because he would have eradicated, however indirectly, the entire Ledger family for all time.

  If I yielded to the Darkness, then that would be where I lived forever, and there would be no other home to go to.

  There would be no Junie.

  There would be no joy, no love.

  No light.

  The millisecond stretched and snapped.

  Santoro and I were just coming out of the roll, I was only then straddling him, looking down at him. In the next moment, he would react.

  And so I struck him under the chin with my left palm, tilting his head back, exposing his throat, and I slammed a full fist punch down. I put every ounce of my rage, my hurt, my loss into that punch. Crushing his throat, breaking his neck, ending him. I gave everything I had to that punch.

  I killed him, goddamn it. Not the Darkness, goddamn it.

  I did.

  Joe Ledger.

  EPILOGUE

  -1-

  Even the longest night ends.

  After darkness, there is light.

  -2-

  They medevacked Harry Bolt to the best hospital in the region.

  Violin went with him, holding his slack hands in both of hers. He was rushed into surgery, and the doctors worked on him all night.

  I got there hours later. The aftermath at the venue was titanic, and I was the center of a hell of a lot of suspicion and scrutiny, despite my credentials. It wasn’t until phones started ringing in the right hands and voices representing frightening levels of officialdom told them to leave me the hell alone that they did.

  Bug made sure my name and face were erased from every news story. That must have pushed MindReader to its limits, but it wasn’t the first time I’d been edited out of a slice of history. Which was perfectly fine by me.

  While I sat with Violin and Toys in the waiting room, I got two calls. The first was from Scott Wilson. He told me about the fight at
the Pavilion. Bunny, Top, and Andrea were all in a Spokane hospital. They were alive, but each was badly banged up. Andrea had burns and lacerations from flying debris. He was in the best shape. Top had some damage to his lower back, but Church was flying in the top spine doctor in the world. No joke. Church has a lot of friends.

  As for Bunny … he had a broken sternum, four broken ribs, a cracked collarbone, and three broken fingers. His fiancée, Lydia, who was once a shooter back in the DMS days, was flown in one of Church’s jets, and a nurse was along for company because Lydia was entering her third trimester.

  But we lost Mia Kleeve. She’d gone down hard and taken out the last major lingering threat from the Relentless program. The word hero is bandied about too much. Football hero. Guitar hero. There are actual heroes, though. There’s no way to calculate how many lives her actions saved. I liked her and had planned to see about her getting a transfer to Havoc Team. Now … she would be a star on a wall at Phoenix House. Tales would be told, drinks raised. The public at large would never hear her name, never know how much intelligence and courage it took for her to stop that truck.

  Those of us who understand the nature of that sacrifice, though? No, we wouldn’t ever forget.

  I shared all this with Toys and Violin.

  Toys merely grunted. He had stitches and bruises and looked like he’d been the star attraction at a muggers’ convention.

  Then Church called me to say that Junie was flying in. That news came closer to breaking me than anything else. I had to go into the men’s room and just stand there for a while. I used a trash can to block the door.

  When I came out, Toys was alone.

  “They called her in,” he said.

  “Harry…?”

  Toys took a moment. “They used the phrase cautiously optimistic.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yes.”

  We sat. Time lost all meaning.

  Finally, without looking at him, I said, “About Rotterdam…”

  “Mind if I just sum it up?”

  “Uh … yeah, sure.”

  “Fuck you.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough.”

  We sat.

  “Are you regretting the whole ‘going into the field’ thing?”

  He took so long that I didn’t think he was going to answer.

  “Actually,” he said, “I haven’t enjoyed myself this much in years.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “But seriously … and I mean this with my whole heart, Ledger … Fuck you.”

  We nodded to one another and lapsed into a long silence.

  That was me and Toys.

  -3-

  The authorities arrested eleven Fixers at the convention center.

  With Rafael Santoro dead, they seemed a whole lot less hesitant about making deals for reduced sentences in exchange for telling every damned thing they knew. And they knew a lot. Since that day in LaBorde, there have been close to three hundred subsequent arrests, and with Interpol, Mossad, MI6, Barrier, and a slew of other agencies involved, that tally was likely to rise.

  As for Kuga?

  Only one Fixer knew about his mansion in Canada, but by the time the CRMP descended on it in a swarm of helicopters, there was nothing left to find. Some blood in what was clearly Kuga’s office, and it was a DNA match with Harcourt Bolton. But no bodies, no computers, no anything.

  One odd little detail that I got from one of the Mounties was that the whole area—from driveway to the backyard to the eaves of the house—was covered with thousands of black birds.

  -4-

  On a sultry night in early September, I lay on a towel at the high tide line in a small cove of a secluded beach in Kauai. The sun was just starting to edge toward the horizon, the light through the clouds smearing the sky with every color in the paint box. Less than a hundred feet from the beach, two juvenile dolphins leaped and splashed and played; and a big old green sea turtle crawled out of the crystal water and stopped to doze near me. I looked into his ancient, wise eyes and saw peace and understanding there that went miles and miles deep.

  There was a splash, and I saw Junie come out of the water pulling off her mask and snorkel. Water sluiced down her long legs, and her blond hair hung in salty rattails down the front of one shoulder. She wore a bikini that made no attempt to hide the scars time and hard use had cut into her skin. She was then, and forever, the most beautiful and complex woman I have ever known. And I’ve known a few.

  She saw me watching her, and a smile blossomed on her face.

  There are few smiles like that. Full of understanding and grace, full of love insight. As deep as that turtle’s, but with a different kind of awareness. A keen intelligence and childlike joy at simply being alive.

  Junie came and sank down next to me. She stretched out, and we kissed for a long, long time.

  Then she made a pillow out of my left bicep, snuggled close, and we watched the magnificence of the sky. Even though this was the beginning of the long, slow Hawaiian evening, the sky was filled with light.

  And there was not a trace of darkness to be seen anywhere.

  THE RELENTLESS PLAYLIST

  “1X1” by All Them Witches

  “45” by Shinedown

  “A Place for My Head” by Linkin Park

  “A Place Where You Belong” by Bullet for My Valentine

  “Accidentally Like a Martyr” by Warren Zevon

  “Afraid of Heights” by Tom Fletcher

  “Again” by Flyleaf

  “All I Want Is You” by U2

  “Alone” by Judas Priest

  “Alone, Omen 3” by King Krule

  “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan

  “Angel from Montgomery” by Bonnie Raitt

  “Angel of Death” by Thin Lizzy

  “Angry Chair” by Alice in Chains

  “Animal I Have Become” by Three Days Grace

  “Anymore” by Savatage

  “Bad Day” by Fuel

  “Bad Man” by Esterly ft. Austin Jenckes

  “Bankrupt on Selling” by Modest Mouse

  “Barton Hollow” by the Civil Wars

  “Battle Royale” by Apashe ft. Panther

  “Beginning to End” by Paul Haslinger ft. Nona Hendryx and Sussan Deyhim

  “Believer” by Imagine Dragons

  “Better Than Me” by Hinder

  “Black River Killer” by Blitzen Trapper

  “Blood in the Cut” by K.Flay

  “Blood on My Name” by the Brothers Bright

  “Blow Up the Outside World” by Soundgarden

  “Brick by Boring Brick” by Paramore

  “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence

  “Bruised Orange” by John Prine

  “Buffalo Run” by Orville Peck

  “Built for Pain” by Esterly ft. Austin Jenckes

  “Bullet the Blue Sky” by U2

  “Bulletproof” by Godsmack

  “Call Me When You’re Sober” by Evanescence

  “Caught in the Sun” by Course of Nature

  “Chain of Sorrow” by John Prine

  “Changes” by Charles Bradley

  “Circus for a Psycho” by Skillet

  “Click Click Boom” by Saliva

  “Closer” by Kings of Leon

  “Confusion” by Metallica

  “Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums” by A Perfect Circle

  “Cowboys from Hell” by Pantera

  “Crush ’Em” by Megadeth

  “Crying” by Roy Orbison

  “Day One” by Matthew West

  “Death” by White Lies

  “Decoration Day” by Drive-By Truckers

  “Delete Forever” by Grimes

  “Demons” by Imagine Dragons

  “Dig Up Her Bones” by Misfits

  “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” by AC/DC

  “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult

  Elevator to the Gallows soundt
rack by Miles Davis

  “Emergency” by Paramore

  “En vivo Salón Pata Negra (14 de enero ’20)” by Deby Medrez Pier

  “Epiphany” by Staind

  “Every Heart Is a Beating Piece of Shit” by Miava

  “Excitable Boy” by Warren Zevon

  “Fade to Black” by Metallica

  “Forever Autumn” by the Moody Blues

  “Full of Hell” by Entombed

  “Give the Bastards Hell” by the Killigans

  “Glycerine” by Bush

  “Go to the Light” by Murder by Death

  “God Is a Bullet” by Concrete Blonde

  “Going Under” by Evanescence

  “Golden Brown” by the Stranglers

  “Gone Away” by the Offspring

  “Gone Forever” by Paul Williams

  “Gone Sovereign” by Stone Sour

  “Grace Is Gone” by Dave Matthews Band

  “Happy?” by Mudvayne

  “Hard Times” by Paramore

  “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

  “Helena” by My Chemical Romance

  “Hell or High Water” by Billy Raffoul

  “Hells Bells” by AC/DC

  “Hemorrhage” by Fuel

  “Here Comes Revenge” by Metallica

  “Here I Am” by Yelawolf

  “Here in the Black” by Gary Numan

  “Here Is Gone” by the Goo Goo Dolls

  “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC

  “Holy Ground” by Napalm Beach

  “Hurt” by Johnny Cash

  “I Alone” by Live

  “I Am the Wolf” by Mark Lanegan

  “I Can’t Make You Love Me” by Bonnie Raitt

  “I Don’t Care Anymore” by Phil Collins

  “I Hate Everything About You” by Three Days Grace

  “I Stand Alone” by Godsmack

  “I Will Break You” by Godsplague

  “I Will Not Bow” by Breaking Benjamin

  “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor

  “I Won’t Back Down” by Johnny Cash

  “I’d Rather Go Blind” by Etta James

  “If You Fear Dying” by One Day as a Lion

  “In the End” by Black Veil Brides

  “Independence Day” by Martina McBride