First Thrills, Volume 3

by Lee Child

  Blowjobs, finger fucking, ass fucking, sixty-nine, and a position that, even with her doctorate in human biology, Pam would have needed a diagram to understand.

  She turned the page.

  He had drawn a diagram.

  From the bed, John wheezed. Pam thumbed through the journals, looking for the year of Zack’s death. She found the day before, February sixteenth. John’s cramped scrawl revealed that he had finally found love. He had been with a woman named Judy the day before their son died.

  Judy Kendridge, the math teacher down the hall. Pam had tutored kids with the woman after school. They had both complained about their corns, their aching backs, their husbands.

  The date on the next page was May third, three months after Zack’s funeral. Pam recognized it as the first line of Biological Healing. “The biggest obstacle to overcoming the death of my son was finally admitting to myself that I could not be the perfect father, the perfect husband.”

  “No shit,” Pam hissed, slamming shut the notebook.

  She pushed herself away from the desk and walked over to John’s bed.

  “Wake up, you bastard.” He didn’t comply, so she poked him, then violently shook him. “Wake up!”

  Slowly, his eyes opened. He glanced at the journals, then back to her.

  “What does this accomplish?” she demanded, anger and humiliation bringing tears to her eyes. “This is the ‘healing’ you needed, dragging me all the way out here so I can read your deathbed confession?”

  An eyebrow went up. She could have sworn he was enjoying this. He pushed the mask from his mouth and she saw it then: the smug smile on his lips, the twinkle in his eye. All of his self-help bullshit and his healing from within and his millions of dollars slapped her in the face like a wet rag.

  “You…” he said, his breath coming harder from the effort. “You…”

  “I what, John? I what?”

  “Came,” he said. “You … came…” he panted with exertion. “You … stupid bitch.”

  Pam’s mouth opened—she felt the jaw pop, the breeze drying the back of her throat. The first class ticket, the warm towel, the nuts. She had even sipped from the bottle of cold water in the car. She had fallen for it all without even thinking.

  “You…” he began again, smiling, showing his teeth.

  Pam stood there. It was five years ago. Fifteen years. Twenty. She just stood there the same way she had from the beginning and waited for the ax to fall on her head.

  “You…” The smile would not go away, even as he struggled to breathe. “You’ve … gained … weight.”

  The mask popped back on and he inhaled, his breath fogging up the plastic.

  “I should kill you,” she hissed. “I should kill you with my bare hands.”

  His left shoulder went up in a shrug, then he froze in place, his eyes opening in shock. The monitor went off, a piercing, metallic beep that signaled a flatline. The doors flew open and instead of doctors rushing in, the well-dressed man and woman entered, each carrying a cooler between them.

  “Please step out of the way,” the woman snapped, elbowing Pam aside. They opened the coolers and started to pack the bags of ice around John’s body. Oddly, Pam wondered if the man she had seen out by the van was the person who actually chopped off the head.

  “Mrs. Fuller?” the NuLife woman asked. Pam was about to answer when Cindy stepped forward.

  “Yes?”

  So, he had married her. He had married her in the end so that she would have all of his money. Pam wondered if he had put her on an allowance.

  “We need you to pronounce him,” the woman said.

  “I … I don’t think…” Cindy faltered. She burst into tears, her hands around her face, shoulders shaking. “Oh, John! I can’t do it!” she sobbed, crumbling to the ground. “He can’t be gone!”

  “Oh, for fucksakes,” Pam snapped, turning off the whining heart monitor with a snap of her wrist. “He’s dead,” she told them. “Look at him. He’s dead.”

  And he was. Even without the heart monitor bleating its signal, any fool could see that John was gone. His eyes were still open, but there was no light there. His skin was slack—everything about him was slack, that is, except for that trace of a smirk on his lips.

  He had gotten her. Even in death he had gotten the last word.

  The NuLife woman opened the cooler and started handing bags to her partner. Pam watched as they packed the ice around John like a bowl of potato salad.

  “Leave us alone,” Pam said. She had used her teacher voice, the voice that shook hallways and sent students running for their homerooms.

  “You can’t order me around!” Cindy shrieked, but she wasn’t very persuasive sitting on the floor.

  “Get out right this minute,” Pam commanded, and perhaps because she wasn’t much removed from her high school days, Cindy obeyed.

  John’s beautiful library cleared quickly, but Pam took her time. She found herself staring out the window at the fountain, water burbling over into a copper bowl. There was a rock garden in the corner that she hadn’t noticed before, and chairs were scattered around for guests. He’d had parties here. She knew he’d had parties here. They had never had parties at home. John had said they were too expensive and that they couldn’t afford it.

  Pam walked to the desk and picked up the knife. She couldn’t kill him—John had robbed her of that pleasure, but there was one thing she could do, one thing she could take, that he would sorely miss after his reanimation.

  * * *

  Until she died, Pam would always remember those last moments with John, the smirk on his face, his last words to her about her weight, the way he felt in her hand when she had walked out of the room and into the beautiful courtyard. She had crossed to the living room and taken a small lime-green cooler before leaving through the front door. The driver hadn’t asked questions when she got in. People who worked for millionaires had seen stranger things. The man had simply driven her to the airport where she easily changed her ticket and flew back home. First-class wasn’t full, so the cooler had even gotten its own seat.

  She certainly drank enough for two.

  A week later, Pam had gotten a certified letter informing her that John had left her something in his will. Two weeks after that, a cargo truck had pulled up in front of the house, blocking most of the road. Pam had been too shocked to say much of anything when the shiny BMW had rolled off the truck, and without thinking, she had signed the papers the driver handed her.

  Every morning, she got into her six-year-old Honda and drove to school, her heart racing at the sight of the X3 parked in the street, exactly where the truck driver had left it. She was bound to let it sit out there until it either rotted or got stolen.

  Then, one morning, her Honda would not start.

  She would have gotten into a car with a convicted rapist with less trepidation than she felt when she first climbed into John’s BMW. When the seat wrapped around her body like a well-worn glove, she suppressed a shudder. At school, the window snicked down with the press of a button, and the security guard gave her a wink.

  “Well,” the old fool had said. “Somebody’s moving up in the world.”

  Pam was determined to get her old car fixed. The last time she had taken in the Honda, the mechanic had said the transmission was on its last leg. Pam had saved accordingly. Two thousand dollars and it would be fixed and the X3 would be back in its spot, waiting to be stolen. Maybe she would even leave the keys in the ignition.

  Days went by, then weeks, then months. A year passed and she was still driving the BMW. The car had been John’s way of rubbing his success in her face. He knew that her old beater was on its last legs. He knew she would eventually end up having to drive the damn thing. What he could not have anticipated was that Pam would enjoy driving it, that she would look forward to getting behind the wheel at the end of school every day with the same eagerness that she had looked forward to seeing John in the early part of their marriage. The
soft leather reminded her of his soft touch. The wood grain called to mind his masculinity. Even the air bag behind the steering wheel reminded her of the way he had made her feel safe, protected. Until … well, she didn’t let herself think of the “until,” did not dwell on what had happened at the end, the way he had betrayed her, the way he had exploited her after Zack’s death.

  For almost two years, she had kept the cooler in the freezer alongside a much-contested slice of their wedding cake that her mother had insisted Pam keep until their tenth anniversary. When the anniversary rolled around they had found that freezer burn had claimed the cake and no one wanted to eat it. “Jesus, just throw the damn thing out,” John had said on those rare occasions when he had opened the freezer. “It’s just a fucking piece of cake.”

  She couldn’t, though. They were having problems by then and she wanted to keep the cake, wanted to hold on to those early years of their marriage like a talisman. Throwing out the cake was the one thing she had resisted him on and in the end, it stood as a testament to her ability to stand up to him. Even after the divorce, Pam had kept the cake, moving it from their old house to her new one, tucking it into the top shelf of the freezer, where it stayed until five days ago, when she had bought a map and planned her trip during the summer school break.

  Pam’s third and final trip out west had lasted several days, and now, as she drove the BMW into the parking lot of NuLife Laboratories (not such a secret location, considering the large sign out front), she was almost sad to reach John’s final destination. She smiled at the thought of the green cooler beside her, the piece of John she had taken sitting beside the piece of cake that represented their failed marriage. Pam imagined that in ten- or fifty- or a hundred-million years from now, if they ever figured out how to jump-start John’s body, it would be a small thing to sew his penis back on, and the slice of cake would let him know who had done him the favor. Her one act of disobedience would allow her the luxury of having the last and final word. John could visit her at the cemetery, could urinate on her grave, but he was a scientist at heart and did not believe in souls or angels looking down from on high. He would know that Pam was gone, that Pam had finally gotten the best of him. There would be nothing he could say or do to hurt her, and he would live the rest of his second life—perhaps all of eternity—knowing this. The anger would be like a new cancer, and it would eat him from the inside out.

  She could still hear the deep tenor of his voice, the tone he took when he was teaching someone.

  “Pam,” he’d cautioned her, his tone low as he tried to teach her an important lesson. “Don’t let anger ruin your life.”

  She took out the cooler and shut the car door, smiling as the sunlight bounced off the X3’s windows. The paint was an electric silver that went from gray to blue to green, depending on how the light moved. She ran her hand along the curve of the door the way she would stroke a lover.

  It took everything she had not to skip across the parking lot, let the braid beat against her back. John’s body would be rolling in its stasis tank right now, if he could see her. He would be doubly annoyed to know that the reason for Pam’s happiness was a product of his own devising.

  She was happy. She was finally happy.

  God knows it helped when you drove a nice car.

  * * *

  KARIN SLAUGHTER has written nine books that have sold seventeen million copies in twenty-nine languages. A New York Times bestselling author, Karin’s books have debuted at number one in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. She lives in Atlanta, where she is working on her next novel.

  On the Train

  REBECCA CANTRELL

  Joachim Rosen shifted on the wooden bench. He was lucky to have a seat at all. Most prisoners had to lean against the sides of the train car or sit on the floor.

  He pulled his tattered striped jacket closer around himself, folding his arms over the bright yellow triangle. Despite the afternoon sun, he shivered, but the presence of the man leaning against the side of the car next to him weighed more heavily on his mind than the cold. He looked familiar, and he did not want to meet anyone from his old life.

  Out of the corner of his eye Joachim noticed the man’s pink triangle. The familiar face belonged to a homosexual. He avoided the man’s gaze.

  “I know you from before.” The man pursed his lips.

  Joachim tensed, but ignored him.

  The man inhaled slowly. “I’m Herman Schmidt. We met at El Dorado on the Motz Strasse, in Berlin. Ernst Vogel was scheduled to sing. Remember?”

  “No.” Joachim watched the white puff of air that accompanied the word. “Never been to Berlin, except to get to Oranienburg.” He glanced around the car. Had he told anyone of his shop in Berlin?

  Herman stared at Joachim’s yellow triangle. “I didn’t realize you were Jewish.”

  He straightened on the bench. “Always was.”

  “Being different didn’t used to be so difficult.”

  Both sat silently. Joachim listened to the clatter of the train’s wheels and the high scream of the wind. The metal door clanked against the side of the car. Perhaps it had fallen off once and been refastened too loosely. Through the high window fragile black limbs of bare winter trees appeared and disappeared, each tree a sign that they were one step closer to their final destination.

  “My name was in someone’s address book.” Herman’s voice cut through the wind. “Some imbeciles didn’t even know enough to throw them away.”

  Joachim flinched. If informers heard Herman, it could cost Joachim his life. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m certain you don’t,” Herman said sarcastically. “Where are we going?”

  He lied. “Don’t know. Another camp. They’re all the same.”

  Herman picked at his ragged cuticles. “I’ve never been to a camp. What are they like?”

  Joachim looked at him for the first time. Herman suddenly seemed plump and healthy in the clear, cold afternoon light stabbing through the window. “Bad. For you, even worse.”

  Herman pointed to his pink triangle. “Because of this?”

  “It’s the worst kind to have.” Joachim glanced involuntarily down the car at the bowed, bald heads of the other prisoners. No one paid them attention.

  “You’ve been very careful, I see.” Herman twisted the right corner of his mouth into a smile.

  “I’m here because I’m Jewish.”

  Herman studied his face. “We could jump the guards when they stop the train. I’m still strong.”

  The man on Joachim’s right shifted on the bench. Joachim froze. What if he overheard them?

  “They have guns,” Joachim whispered. “I’ve never seen anyone escape like that. But I’ve seen men die trying. It’s reckless.”

  Herman sighed. “I was never very good at being careful.”

  Joachim stared blankly at the sliding door in front of him. Rust had bled deep lines into the metal. Loneliness howled through him like the wind through the open door. “I’ve always been good at it.”

  Herman ran his palms along his cheeks, as if he just woke. “Good at what?”

  “Being careful.”

  Herman slid to a sitting position with his back to the door and wrinkled his nose. The smell of so many unwashed men crowded into the car obviously bothered him.

  “It’s not a simple thing to do,” Joachim said.

  Herman embraced his round knees. “I should be in Berlin. Studying for my degree in engineering or reading the paper and thanking the Führer for ridding the country of vermin like you. Of vermin like me.”

  Joachim scratched a flea bite on his shrunken calf. It itched, but he tried not to think about it.

  “Then I’d have dinner with my landlady, Frau Biedekin. She’s an exquisite cook. We’d have potatoes, smothered with butter. We’d have sauerbraten, since today is Sunday. For dessert, let’s see—”

  Joachim’s stomach clamped into a tight knot. “Stop it!”

 
Herman snorted. “Is it more than you can stomach?”

  Joachim glared at him until Herman stopped laughing.

  “That’s the only way you’ll get it,” Herman said. “By dreaming.”

  “Dreaming is not,” Joachim hesitated, searching for the right word, “careful.”

  “I believe I mentioned that I was no good at being careful.”

  Joachim shrugged, the coarse material of his jacket scraping across his shoulders. “Dream, then. Just quietly.”

  “If you can’t escape from them in dreams, they’ve defeated you.”

  “What do you know? You’ve never even been to a camp,” Joachim said. “Tell me about dreams in a month, friend.”

  “If I can’t tell you about dreams then, I hope to have the sense to end it.”

  Joachim drew in a sharp breath.

  “Life,” Herman said as he stood, “is more than mere survival.”

  Joachim shook his head. “Not right now.”

  “No!” Herman’s voice echoed off the sides of the car. Several prisoners swiveled their heads toward him. No one spoke.

  Joachim pretended to be asleep. He sat with his chin against his chest, swaying with the movement of the train, listening to the wind whine, and watching shadows cast inside the car by passing trees.

  “You know it’s about more than simple survival,” Herman finally whispered at Joachim. “You were in Berlin with us. You remember good food and love and music and dance.”

  Joachim gripped his bony knees, knuckles whitening. “I wasn’t there.”

  Herman studied Joachim. “Do you want to know what became of the rest of the group? Francis? Ernst? Kurt?”

  Joachim inhaled. One, two, three times. “I don’t know any Francis or Ernst or Kurt.”

  Herman stared at his own soft hands. “Not even Kurt? Everyone knows Kurt, even the Gestapo. They got my name from his address book. I’m surprised yours wasn’t in there, too.”

  A hot pain stabbed Joachim’s neck. Relax, he ordered himself.

  “I saw you together.” Herman pointed a pudgy finger at him. “Everyone was together with Kurt.”

  He concentrated on relaxing his muscles, despite the cold and Herman’s voice.