Jordan smiled again. “With an anonymous star on the wall somewhere in Langley, I’m told, because I died so many times.”
“But just one star?”
“One star is always enough.”
“Is that what you want? To return to the fold?”
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I don’t know anything else.”
Peel nodded in agreement. He wasn’t sure what life he could go back to now either. He looked to the monks and wondered if their style of living would offer the simplicity he desired. Probably not.
“It still doesn’t make sense, why should Henbest disappear now? I don’t think Uncle Sam’s stock markets could suffer another shock in the current climate if an important CEO vanishes too, one connected to the disaster.”
Jordan said nothing. He was smirking.
“It’s not the Americans who are going to snatch him.”
“I’ll deny this if you ever say this to anyone, and then I’ll have you killed. I made good with my Russian contacts. They didn’t get the Infinite Replicator, but I told them when and where to find Henbest. In a few short hours GRU SV-8 are going to snatch him. Then he’s going to be spending the rest of his probably very short life in an undisclosed camp in Siberia, spilling every Code-89 secret that has ever been on Centaurus’ books.”
“You’re still on your vendetta?”
Jordan picked up a stone, threw it far into the flat empty plain. Jordan’s target, a herd of grazing yaks, were too far for Jordan’s stone to even come close to reaching them. Did he think he was some alien god, able to throw stones for many, many miles?
“You and I are the same, Harrison. We’re not like the Henbests of this world, or your boss or my boss. We are not political animals.”
“Then what are we?”
“We are simple men.”
Peel chuckled.
“Laugh if you will, but you know I am right. We only have one objective in life, and that is to stop these horrors, wherever and whenever they occur. We’ll do whatever it takes to make it so.”
Jordan took another rock, threw it much further than the last one. One yak grunted in disapproval, or seemed to, and Jordan appeared glad. “I know you want to rest Harrison. I know you’ve had enough. But I don’t think you will. I don’t think it is in you to stop.”
Peel wanted to argue with Jordan, but there was no point. His mind was made up already. He was going to disappear soon, somewhere remote and comfortable. If nothing else he had the funds saved to do so comfortably, and New Zealand’s South Island was looking more and more promising every day. Nothing bad had ever happened to him there.
“I know you want to stop these threats too, Jordan. But there will always be others, who’ll fight the good fight after us. We don’t have to die first, before it is someone else’s turn to step up.”
“Who are we talking about?” He held his arms out wide to embrace all the people absent in this scene. “The monks? They only pray. Like I said, we are men of action. Simple men.”
“Do you regret the choice that you made Jordan? Do you wish that it was the other you standing here now, and not the other way around?” Peel remembered the simple game of paper rock scissors in an icy ocean in a dingy that had sent the same man down two completely different paths.
“You are the only person alive on the planet, Peel, who knows there are two living Jordans. One needs to stay active in the field, so that his enemies don’t decide to go look for the other if they think he is not around any more, doing their endless dirty work.”
Peel shook his head. “Don’t I get that choice too?”
Jordan stared at Peel with serious eyes. “You do, but I’m asking you not to. I need you out there buddy, watching my back. I really don’t think I can keep doing this if I don’t have any friends left, and you’re my last living friend.”
Peel had been to this place many times before, wondering when he should step down, disappear and retire into obscurity. Maybe this day, like so many before it, wasn’t going to be that day. Besides, what he really wanted was someone he cared about to disappear with, someone he could love, whom he was attracted too, like Zoe Isles, but she was gone forever.
“Okay, I’ll stick around, but not indefinitely, and only on one condition.”
“What condition is that, Peel?”
“That you finally tell me what your real name is.”
8. Detroit
It was a cold night in Michigan. It was snowing, and the temperature was an icy twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Jordan rolled up the collar on his overcoat, dug his gloved hands deep into his pockets, and stepped inside the shop front of Grand River Movie Rentals.
It felt weird not to be carrying a gun, or even a knife. It was even weirder to have bought an apartment and slept inside it every night for more than a month. Jordan was changing; but he needed to know if this new life was to work out as he hoped. He also had to stop thinking of himself by that name anymore. He was not that man. That man was somewhere else, out there in the world maintaining the old life for both their sakes.
There was a young lady behind the counter. Her back was to him. She hadn’t noticed him. Seeing her Jordan felt anxious, a man who killed cold blooded killers and monsters without compulsion every other week was scared by a nineteen-year-old girl. Of course he was; she was his daughter.
He didn’t approach her at first, so he browsed. Eventually he found what he had come for, Dan in Real Life. He read the promotion blurb. It sounded like the kind of movie a father and daughter would enjoy together. Not today though, he wanted to become her friend first, before he told Madison the truth.
To get past his fear he took the DVD to the counter. When she saw him she smiled. She was so pretty and happy, and he was glad.
“Hello,” she said in a friendly voice. “What have you got there?”
He held up the DVD. “Is this any good?”
“It’s great. It’s one of my favorite movies.”
“Well in that case I’ll have to take it.”
“Are you a member?”
“No, just moved into town.”
“Nice. Come from far away?”
“You could say that. I lived in Michigan once, but that was a long time ago. It’s nice to come home again.”
“Well welcome back. To sign you up I’ll just need some ID with a current address.”
“Sure,” He reached into his pocket, took out his wallet with his single identity; credit cards, drivers license, health care card, social security card, and so forth. He was one man, one identity forever more. He handed her his license.
“Thank you,” Madison read his name. “Welcome to Detroit, Jacob Horner. I hope you like it here.”
“I like it already,” he smiled at her. “And I’m not going anywhere, not anymore, not ever.”
If you enjoyed Cthulhu Unbound 3 you may also enjoy:
If God Doesn’t Show by R. Thomas Riley & John Grover
The Harvest Cycle by David Dunwoody
The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe by Peter Clines
Acknowledgements
David Conyers and Brian M. Sammons: Delta Green and GRU SV-8 referenced in “The R’lyeh Singularity” is ©, TM and the intellectual property of the Delta Green Partnership created by Dennis Detwiller, Adam Scott Glancy and John Tynes, and is used with their kind permission.
Resolution Zero reference in “The R’lyeh Singularity” originally appeared in “Resolution Zero: The United Nations and the Starkweather Moore Conspiracy” by Daniel Harms with David Conyers and Adam Crossingham, first appearing in The Black Seal, Issue 3, 2004, and used with their kind permission.
The editors would also like to thank David Kernot, John Sunseri, Thomas Brannan and Jacob Keir.
Cody Goodfellow: Thanks Ennio Morricone, Zane Gray, Mike Dubisch, Jeromy Cox, Robert Parker and Victoria Goodfellow.
D.L. Snell: Thanks to my mother and my wife, who always give great and honest feedback on whatever I write; and to
Thom Brannan for his critique. Also thanks to my friend Sam Battrick for the stimulating Scattergories debate.
About the Authors
Cody Goodfellow has written three novels—Radiant Dawn, Ravenous Dusk and Perfect Union. His first collection, Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars, received the Wonderland Book Award. His recent short fiction has appeared in Dead But Dreaming 2, Crimewave, Mighty Unclean, Weird Fiction Review and The Year’s Best Horror, Vol.3. He is also the editor and co-founder of Perilous Press. He lives in Los Angeles. www.perilouspress.com
D.L. Snell has sold Lovecraftian stories to anthologies such as Cthulhu Unbound1 and Headshot Quartet from Permuted Press. In his first novel, Roses of Blood on Barbwire Vines, brutal vampires and Lovecraftian zombies fight over the remnants of the human race. His second novel, Demon Days, co-authored with screenwriter/producer Richard Finney, is “the best damned horror novel” Ray Garton has read in ages. Visit Snell’s website for more information, and for market scoops with editors at publishing houses, anthologies, and zines. www.exit66.net
Tim Curran is the author of the novels Skin Medicine, Hive, Dead Sea, Resurrection, Skull Moon, The Devil Next Door, and Biohazard. His most recent books have been The Spawning from Elder Signs Press (the second book of the Hive series) and The Corpse King, a limited edition novella from Cemetery Dance. Another novella, 1867: The Skulleater Campaign was featured in Four Rode Out, a collection of four weird-western novellas by Curran, Tim Lebbon, Brian Keene, and Steve Vernon, also from Cemetery Dance. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as City Slab, Flesh&Blood, Book of Dark Wisdom, and Inhuman, as well as anthologies such as Flesh Feast, Shivers IV, High Seas Cthulhu, and Vile Things. Upcoming books include the short story collections Bone Marrow Stew and Zombie Pulp, and the novel Graveworm. www.corpseking.com
David Conyers is an Australian science fiction and horror author residing in Adelaide. With John Sunseri he is the co-author of the Lovecraftian spy thriller collection The Spiraling Worm and the author of the sequel novella The Eye of Infinity, both featuring the earlier adventures of Harrison Peel from “The R’lyeh Singularity”. He is the editor of the anthology Cthulhu’s Dark Cults and a contributing editor for Albedo One, Ireland’s longest running magazine of speculative fiction. David’s short fiction has appeared in various magazines including Jupiter, Book of Dark Wisdom, Midnight Echo, Innsmouth Free Press and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. He has also appeared in over a dozen anthologies including the Permuted Press titles Monstrous, Cthulhu Unbound2 and Best New Tales of the Apocalypse, as well as Horrors Beyond, Award Winning Australian Writing 2008, Scenes from the Second Storey, 2012, Macabre, and The Black Book of Horror. www.david-conyers.com
Brian M. Sammons has been critiquing all things horror, science fiction, dark, or just plain icky for over a decade. His reviews and columns can currently be found in the pages of Cemetery Dance Magazine, on the web at Hellnotes.com, and in seven other magazines and websites. Not being satisfied at being a humble and handsome critic, Brian has penned a few tales himself. They have appeared in such magazines as Bare Bone, Cthulhu Sex and Dark Animus, and in such anthologies as Monstrous, Cthulhu Unbound2, Arkham Tales, Horrors Beyond, and Twisted Legends among others. He has also written extensively for the Call of Cthulhu role playing game in an attempt to corrupt as many new, young minds as possible. Despite all this, Brian is often described by his neighbors as “such a nice, quiet man”, and he loves animals. His webpage is: brianmsammons.blogspot.com
Table of Contents
UNSEEN EMPIRE by Cody Goodfellow
MIRRORRORRIM by D.L. Snell
NEMESIS THEORY by Tim Curran
THE R’LYEH SINGULARITY by David Conyers & Brian M. Sammons
Other Books You May Enjoy
Cthulhu Unbound 3 Page 31
