No one to be trifled with. No one to piss off.
That’s what she was.
Her eyes were beginning to adjust from the unnatural glow of TranStar’s interior lights to golden sunset still peeking over the horizon. A cool breeze stroked her cheek.
Lauryn looked around. She seemed to be in a desert somewhere. Just like that. She’d stepped through a foggy doorway in the heart of TranStar into … this.
Wherever this was.
The sun’s dusky rays still lit the jagged cliff walls stretching upward in the distance. The rocks had a red hue, as if someone trying to impress God had sacrificed an entire herd of sheep upon the altar of the surrounding hills. The failing light cast sharp shadows across the sand from the faraway mountains.
Maybe this is the High Desert she mentioned, Lauryn thought.
There was no road she could see, no real road anyway. She felt more a sense of direction, of knowing where to go. The desert itself seemed to have a magnet quality, pulling her forward. She peered deeper along her apparent course and saw a small campfire burning in the sand. And a slight figure sitting next to it. A small man?
Or, God no, not a boy.
No. I have to go the other way, she thought.
“Any person—any being—you meet on this road, you are to kill.”
But her path forward was clear. The Road that wasn’t a road sang like a siren, its irresistible energy commanding her will.
Going any direction other than forward? Impossible.
Trying to quell the voice in her head, the stubborn moralist demanding she resist, Lauryn hardened her heart to the task at hand. This was the only way she could protect Megan now. If this was what being a good mother required, then so be it.
Get it over with. Do what has to be done.
She walked forward on the Road that wasn’t there. Each step brought her closer to the small campfire. To the person sitting next to it, warming his hands.
To her first victim.
“Hello, missie,” said a scratchy voice from beneath a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. His voice sounded like it wasn’t used to speaking. Unused.
Lauryn stopped in her tracks. It was a man, she knew now. That was some relief. She wouldn’t have to kill a child. At least, not yet.
But how had he known she was there? His back was to her, and half the world hidden by that big black hat of his. Smoke from a cigarette wafted upward, glowing with the light of the fire before being taken by the wind.
“Come, sit down,” he said. “It gets cold out here at night. Too much wind in the open.”
His voice was foreign. Its withered tone was aged and sounded Asian.
The man turned to her. He took a long drag on his cigarette, removed it out of courtesy, and smiled.
Stop that, she thought. I’m here to kill you. And you’re not helping.
“I know why you’re here,” he said, the smile plastered on his face. He took another drag on his smoke. “It’s okay, Missie Texas. Yes, I know that also about you,” he said to her astonished look. Then he shrugged. “My destiny appears intertwined with Texans.” He took off the cowboy hat and, setting it on the ground, gestured toward a spot on the opposite side of the fire. “Sit. It’ll be all right.”
Lauryn patted the pistol at her back, then walked around him. The wizened man looked away from her, returning his fascination to the fire.
Maybe I should do it now, she thought. Wouldn’t that be the merciful thing?
“Not yet,” he said in that creepy, mind-reader tone again. He gestured with the cig. “Go ahead. Sit.”
So Lauryn did. With her adrenaline high on the decline, her feet remembered their time in the tunnel. It felt good to sit down on the sand, to rest a moment.
Don’t feel good. You don’t deserve to feel good.
“Like I said,” he said, inhaling another long, luxurious drag, “I know why you’re here.”
“Why am I here?”
The old man smiled around his cigarette and picked up a stick to stoke the fire.
“You’re here to kill me, missie.”
Lauryn blinked. The 9-millimeter at her back pressed hard against her spine.
Good. Be uncomfortable. It’s the least you can do.
“How do you know that?”
Instead of answering, the old man just picked the black cowboy hat back up and asked, “You want this? It’s my favorite possession. But I don’t need it anymore.”
Lauryn shook her head.
He put the hat back down in the dust.
The fire crackled.
The desert wind grew chilly. It carried cinders in the direction of the Road that wasn’t there.
The old man blew smoke into the air above his head. “Well?”
“Well what?” asked Lauryn.
“You gonna do it or do I have to shoot myself?”
She merely blinked again. Partly at the man’s brazen attitude about her mission to murder him. Partly at the thought that maybe, if she handed him the gun…
“Come to think of it, Missie Texas, I don’t think that would count.”
“Please stop calling me that. My name is Lauryn Hughes.”
It spilled out of her, and she was immediately ashamed of admonishing him. He should call her whatever he wanted. He should curse her and wish her eaten alive by ants. Something, anything to somehow hold her accountable for what she was about to do.
He smiled again and nodded. “You can call me Mr. Vo.”
“Mister—?”
“Vo.” He shrugged, as if unable to explain his ancestors’ choice of surname. “Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way….” He opened his arms. The gesture reminded her of Megan standing up in TranStar, offering herself as an easier target. “Don’t just wing me. I hate pain.”
Lauryn stood up, her fury boiling over. “What the hell’s the matter with you? I’ve come … I’ve been sent here to kill you.”
“Yes. I told you that myself.”
A long drag and a make-the-moment-last pillar of smoke blown high.
“And you don’t care? You just want me to do it?”
Mr. Vo stretched his feet out toward the fire. He reached over and thumped his hat. “You sure you don’t want this? It cost me a pretty penny a while back, probably worth something—”
“I don’t want the goddamned hat!”
The old man released a breath. “Listen, Missie … Miss Hughes. I’ve lived a long time. I’ve seen some bad things. I’ve done a lot of them myself. Now is my time. I’m not shy.” He smiled again, then winked. “Not even gun shy.”
“This is a big joke to you?”
“No.” His tone shifted. His voice deepened. Then he took a calming drag. “No joke,” he said more softly. “But dying is the price I pay. Killing me? That’s the price you pay.”
Lauryn stared at his face and its sad expression.
“My only regret,” said Mr. Vo, “is that I told them I’d be there. The boy and his family of kids. I told them I’d be there to help.” He shrugged. “This is how I help. This is how I keep them safe.”
“You made a bargain? Like me?”
“Not like you. Your bargain is to kill. Mine is to die.”
A light dawned in Lauryn’s mind. “And by dying…”
“I keep the others safe,” he nodded. Then he sighed, staring at the ground. “I hate for nobody to have that hat. You take it. You ever meet the boy, Ellis, you give it to him, yes?”
But Lauryn ignored him. “This is … this is really what you want?”
“I lived a long life, Missie Texas. I’ve done many bad things. This is better than I ever expected to die. At least it means something.” He stared across the flickering flames and straight into her eyes. “For both of us, yes?”
Lauryn nodded woodenly. Her mind was racing. Could this be okay? Could it be okay for her to kill this man, if it was what he wanted? It wasn’t like killing Iris, was it? Not like murdering an innocent.
Right?
The g
un bit into her backbone.
Like it was urging her on.
“Please, Lauryn. I’ve been sitting here a while now, waiting for you. It’s too cold for old bones out here.”
She returned his penetrating gaze across the firelight. He didn’t sound crazy. He didn’t seem coerced. He didn’t even seem resigned to a fate beyond his control.
He just sounded ready.
So she stood.
“Mr. Vo—”
“I don’t know you well enough for you to feel sorry for me. Not even well enough to say goodbye, really. I don’t mean to seem without courtesy. I’m just tired. And it’s cold out here.”
Lauryn nodded as she got to her feet. She slowly walked around the perimeter of the firelight until she stood by his side.
“You sure you don’t want the hat?” he asked, staring into the flames. The old man took another lingering drag on his smoke, then took it from his mouth and, dropping it, carefully ground it into the sand. He didn’t take his eyes from the fire. “It’s a nice hat.”
Lauryn pulled the pistol from behind her back.
“Okay then, you see Ellis, you give it to—”
A single shot rang out in the chilly darkness.
The sharp, wet thunk of the bullet entering Vo’s head.
The thump of his body as it settled into a slumping repose in the desert sand.
Lauryn’s arm fell slack to her side, the weight of the smoking pistol heavy in her hand. The bitter smell of gunpowder mixed in her nose with the lingering, sweet scent of Vo’s tobacco.
Her heart hitched in her chest.
The desert wind, cold and biting, whipped at her skin.
She turned away from the fire’s warmth, her steps slouching, moving her irreversibly forward down the Hero’s Road.
End of Serenity 2.0
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful to the principals at Wonderment Media, Inc., (WMI), who challenged me to write the first novel in this series, The Serenity Strain: Stormbreak, in just a few months. Once they greenlighted this sequel, I pretty much repeated the rapid-development process. Although WMI has closed its publishing doors, those folks gave me a chance to reach a wider audience and refine my writing craft at a geometrically accelerated pace, and I very much appreciate that.
As always, I have to thank my wife, Alison, whose loving support for my writing is perennial and unconditional. She’s always the person with whom I first share what I’ve written, and her guidance never fails to help me create a better story for you.
My beta-readers were Stefan Bolz, David Bruns, Jennifer Ellis, Harlow C. Fallon, E.E. Giorgi, and Mitch Utsey. Their feedback helped me figure out how to cut to the chase (sometimes literally) and where to expand to offer clearer description or explanation for your benefit. If a passage reads particularly well, you have these folks to thank for it.
You also have the Apocalypse Weird Series Editor Ellen Campbell to thank. Ellen has been the guiding hand behind the editorial consistency of the AW novels, and as an editor myself, I know how tough that job can be across different authors’ works. Thanks, Ellen, for making Ironheart a better book than it was when I handed it to you.
Speaking of Apocalypse Weird, one of the original novels published under that initiative was Texocalypse Now, set in Central Texas and authored by Michael Bunker and Nick Cole. If you’re familiar with that novel, you might’ve noticed some crossover elements in Ironheart. It’s my understanding that Nick Cole will be continuing that storyline as part of his Wyrd World bookverse, of which Ironheart—like its predecessor The Serenity Strain: Stormbreak—is now a part. If you’re not familiar with Texocalypse Now and would like to be, I understand it will be re-released in the near future, also as part of Cole’s Wyrd World bookverse.
Although I took some liberties with the description of TranStar, Houston’s traffic management center, I had the floorplan for the real facility in mind while writing. That’s thanks to a personal tour by TranStar Public Information Officer Dinah Massie and Mike Vickich, senior systems analyst with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s Houston Office. Seeing TranStar’s interior layout guided by their expertise helped me understand how the various local partners work together to facilitate traffic flow and really helped me visualize Marsten’s twists and turns as I was writing. Any inaccuracies (or authorial liberties taken) regarding the actual facility are entirely my own.
As I did in The Serenity Strain: Stormbreak, I have to acknowledge fellow author Eamon Ambrose and my good friend from college, Lauryn Zepeda-Groppell, for allowing me to borrow their first names for my characters.
Finally, thank you, dear reader, for the time you spent reading this novel. I’m still pleasantly surprised when people I don’t even know choose to spend their time reading my stuff. In the end, time is shorter for all of us than we’d like it to be, so that feels like a great gift from you to me, every time. I hope you enjoyed reading Ironheart and found it time well spent.
A Word to My Reader
If you enjoyed The Serenity Strain: Ironheart, I’d like to ask you for one small favor before you go. Please take a moment to review this book at the venue where you purchased it (as well as on Goodreads if you’re a member).
As a reader of independent authors, you’re both our market and our marketing force. Reviews are a key factor in promoting a work’s visibility—to other readers, of course, but also to critics and booksellers, who use reviews to determine, for example, what books to feature in promotions.
But reviews also help other readers just like you decide if they should spend their money—and their time—on a published work. Providing a review is like presenting a public service announcement to your fellow readers, something you also benefit from when they do the same for you. Please recognize that by leaving a review, you’re making a real contribution to the world—and the quality—of independent publishing.
Thank you for that.
About the Author
Chris Pourteau has been a technical writer and editor for over twenty years. In November 2015, he edited and produced the collection Tails of the Apocalypse, which contains short stories from 14 of the most talented independent authors publishing today. Each story is set in a different apocalyptic scenario and features an animal as a main character.
Among his other works of fiction, Chris has published a compilation of military sci-fi, Tales of B-Company: The Complete Collection, to the praise of readers and his fellow writers alike. If you’d like to let Chris know what you think about Ironheart, or if you just want to say howdy, feel free to email him at [email protected] or visit his website at http://chrispourteau.thirdscribe.com/.
Chris lives in College Station, Texas.
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