by Bryan Smith
“I know it’s a tall order, but I’m confident that a properly motivated Jessica Sloan is more than up to the task. You will have all the resources you need at your disposal. Of course, apprehension is unacceptable. If you do this and are unable to get away, you will have to kill yourself.”
“Goes without saying.”
Her father picked up his whiskey glass. “So what’s the verdict? Are you on board?”
“Did you have mom killed?”
The question startled him and he almost dropped the glass. “What? Who told you that?”
Jessica felt her heart sink as the last of the love she’d felt for her father withered and died. It didn’t matter what he said from this point forward. The truth was in his eyes. He was better than most at hiding truth, but he’d never been in a situation quite like this one. “That operative you sent after me, Zelda, or whatever her real name was. It’s bullshit, of course.”
He stared at her a moment, no doubt gauging her tone and overall demeanor. In another moment or so, he relaxed again and forced a small smile. “Yes, of course it’s bullshit. She was taunting and pushing you to the limit, as per her orders. It’s a shame she was killed, really. She was a superlative agent.”
Jessica shrugged. “I wasn’t fond of the bitch, but she was sort of a badass. I can admire that. In retrospect.”
Her father drained the rest of the whiskey from his glass. “So, again, what shall I tell my superiors, sweetie? Are you with us?”
Jessica smiled. “You know me, daddy. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep on breathing.”
Captain Sloan beamed at his daughter. “Excellent!” He reached for the bottle of bourbon. “Let’s mark the occasion with a toast.”
Jessica opened her jacket and took out her gun.
She pointed it at her father.
He gaped at her and the bourbon bottle slipped from his suddenly shaking fingers, struck the edge of the table, and dropped to the floor. “Jessica! Sweetie. What are--”
“Stop calling me sweetie, asshole.”
Jessica Sloan shot her father in the face.
Then she stood up, replaced the gun in her jacket, and calmly walked out of the house.
EPILOGUE
One year later.
The girl sat in a pew in a church in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan. She had been coming to the church once every week since her arrival in the city several months earlier. The former brunette had dyed her hair blonde around the same time. Blonde was her natural color anyway, but for the first time in her life it felt right for her. There had been a lot of changes in her life, though, and this was one of the more minor ones.
She came to the church for a number of reasons. It gave her a place to think in relative peace, for one thing. The city was a bustling, busy place, and the often frantic pace of life here sometimes made reflection and introspection difficult. It also reminded her of her sister, who had been so devout in her faith. Her relationship with her sister had been fraught with drama and hard feelings, but there was a strange reassurance in the echoes of the past she felt in the church. But not because she yearned for a return to the way things were. Far from it. It was because it reaffirmed how right she had been to move to a place so far away—and so different—from her former home.
And there was one more reason.
An elderly woman who had been silently praying in a pew up front came tottering back up the aisle. The woman’s outfit suggested she was something more than the typical old lady churchgoer from back home. Her dress and handbag were expensive designer items. She was obviously wealthy.
Sienna called out to her. “Hey. You.”
The old woman stopped in the middle of the aisle and stood there blinking rapidly for a moment as she searched the mostly empty pews for the source of the voice. It took her a few moments thanks to one of the many new skills Sienna had honed since leaving the south. She could make people not see her if she focused her talent the right way. It wasn’t quite the same thing as making herself invisible, though it was next to the same thing. The only drawback was she could only apply the trick to individuals. However, she was confident she would one day be able to dupe whole crowds into not seeing her. Her talent was growing all the time and the range of things she could do with it was always expanding.
Sienna lifted the veil from the woman’s eyes. “Oh! My heavens. I didn’t see you there.”
“I know you didn’t.” Sienna smiled. “Come. Sit next to me.”
The woman slid into the pew without hesitation, as Sienna had known she would. People did whatever she wanted once she was able to compel their attention to her. It was getting easier all the time to reach into their minds and pull their strings.
The woman sat next to her.
“What’s your name, old lady?”
“Margaret.”
“Margaret, I need you to open that purse and give me all your money.”
Margaret opened her purse and removed a green leather wallet.
Sienna snatched it from her and undid the snap. She tugged at a zipper and opened a pocket containing cash and receipts. She took out the cash and counted it. Margaret had a lot of carrying around money, almost five-hundred dollars. A lot of these rich old types still preferred to pay for things that way. Stupid fuckers. She folded the wad of cash and tucked it away in her own purse. Next she removed the woman’s credit cards from their various slots.
“Margaret, I need your PIN number. Since you’re an old hag, I assume you use the same number for each fucking card. Am I right?”
Margaret nodded. “Yes. My PIN number is 1234.”
“Holy shit.”
Margaret smiled. “Did I say something funny?”
Sienna ignored this. “I want you to do something for me when you leave here, Margaret. I want you to step in front of the next speeding bus you see. Can you do that?”
“Sure.”
“Good. That’s great.”
Sienna stood up and pulled her purse strap over her shoulder. “Oh, one more thing. Before you do the bus thing, I want you to go back down there.” She tilted her head in the direction of the altar. “Go up there and squat in front of the cross. Hike up your dress, drop your bloomers, and take a piss. Maybe take a shit while you’re at it. Okay?”
The worry lines at the corners of the old woman’s eyes and mouth became more pronounced, but she nodded. “Okay.”
Sienna slipped out of the pew and stalked up the aisle to the exit. She glanced back and smiled as she saw the old biddy climbing the steps to the altar. It was one of the more juvenile bits of mischief she’d engaged in recently, but so what? What good was being a super-powerful witch-slash-goddess if you couldn’t have a little fun now and then?
She walked out of the church and descended the steps to the sidewalk. As usual, the city was a whirlwind of activity. The streets were clogged with traffic and people were coming and going everywhere. People here always seemed to be in such a hurry, but Sienna didn’t mind. She greatly preferred the high-energy rhythms of life in the big city to the way things had been in the sleepy small towns of her childhood. Here no one crossed the street specifically to avoid her and not once had she been called a weirdo because of the way she dressed or looked. She was just one of a million other misfits, an anonymous little prankster witch in the midst of a vast sea of potential victims.
Sienna hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of a wealthy man she planned to make a little less rich before the day was over.
Life was funny sometimes.
When she had first come here, her intention had been to further her experiments in raising the dead. The zombie outbreak she had caused down south had been contained and stopped somehow, which had been a crushing disappointment at the time. She had been so distraught over her failure to resurrect her father—and so infuriated by her last encounter with her sister—that all she wanted to do was rain down as much death and destruction on the world as she could. She would be the instigator of th
e apocalypse. A world destroyer. And where better to begin than in a major metropolis like Manhattan?
She hadn’t counted on falling in love with the city.
It was a wonderful place to be young and carefree. It wasn’t a cheap place to live, either, but with her abilities, she could lay her hands on any amount of money she needed.
The end of the world could wait a while.
At least until she was a little older.
THE END
NOTES ON THE STORY
A few words on some things that happened in DEPRAVED 2.
First I’ll talk a little about the inclusion of zombies in this tale. I by no means consider DEPRAVED 2 a “zombie novel”. It’s just another element of spice in a wild stew of things. Part of what motivated me to include zombies was a desire to capture that same flavor of “what the fuck is happening here” insanity that propelled previous novels of mine such as THE FREAKSHOW and the first DEPRAVED, a mind-bending sense that just about anything could happen.
The possibility of including zombies occurred to me as I was writing the first chapter of this book. I just really liked the idea of people who were cannibals in life returning from death to eat human flesh again. As already stated, however, I didn’t want the living dead to be the driving force behind the book. I also couldn’t just toss them into the story in a random way. It had to arise naturally from the plot and actually serve the story. And that was how I came up with the character of Sienna Baker and her doomed quest to resurrect her murdered father. In the end, I really like the various ways the zombie part of it all comes together in the latter part of the novel, particularly in the scene describing Daphne’s demise, in which the tables are turned pretty literally for her.
Some may believe Jessica Sloan wouldn’t do some of the morally questionable things she does in DEPRAVED 2. To that I say, go back and read the first book again. Chapters 22 and 37 are particularly instructive in this matter. Jessica had the potential to go dark all along. That potential might have gone unrealized had she lived a normal life, but things went a much different way for her. Another of the things I had in mind at the outset of writing the sequel was that the thing that propels this story, its engine, had to extend logically as consequences of things that happened in the first book. For instance, our last glimpse of Jessica in DEPRAVED is in the epilogue, after her recruitment into black ops. Now, Jessica is tough. We know that. But she also possesses a self-destructive streak. So, while it makes sense that she had a tremendous aptitude for dark side work, it also makes sense that it would go bad and end in disaster. It also gave me an opportunity to riff a bit on conspiracy theories, distrust of the government, and paranoia in general. Quite a few people these days believe in shadowy cabals that control the world and orchestrate tragedies to manipulate public opinion. Personally, I don’t buy into all that, but for a horror writer that kind of paranoia provides great inspirational material.
Chapter 15 of DEPRAVED 2 centers around a character named James Rowe. James Rowe is a real tattoo artist who lives in Tennessee. You can see his work at The Tattoo Station’s Facebook page. James did this killer Cramps tattoo for me a few years ago:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v176/fearscribe/CrampsTattoo_zps01794711.jpg
Although James is a real person, this is a somewhat fictionalized version of him. He does not drive a vintage Mustang. I just decided to give the fictional James a cool car. Also, his unfortunate friends in chapter 15, Harley Birdsong and Big Train, are entirely fictional creations. Now that I have immortalized him in fiction, I think James owes me some new ink. Right, everybody? Right, James?
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed DEPRAVED 2. DEPRAVED is my most popular book, meaning a sequel makes sense for a whole lot of obvious reasons. But I wouldn’t have been able to write it if I didn’t believe I had the basis for a worthwhile follow-up. There will probably be a DEPRAVED 3 at some point in the future. I started thinking of this story as a trilogy almost as soon as I had the general plot of DEPRAVED 2 sketched out in my head. If I never write a third DEPRAVED, the way this one wraps up works just fine as an end, in my opinion. Again, however, a third installment IS likely. But it might be a couple more years down the road, as I have many other stories I want to write as well.
Lastly, because people always ask, yes, The Killing Kind 2 will still happen. Some things happened back when I started that book that got in the way of finishing it. As of right now, however, one of my projects for 2014 is to finish and release that one. If all goes as planned, it should be published before the end of the year.
Until next time,
Bryan Smith
January 7, 2014
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bryan Smith is the author of numerous previous novels and novellas, including Go Kill Crazy!, 68 Kill, The Killing Kind (hmm, I sense some kind of theme here…), House of Blood, Depraved, The Freakshow, Soultaker, Deathbringer, The Dark Ones, and The Diabolical Conspiracy. Many of these were first available via mass market paperback from Dorchester Publishing. Some have since been reprinted by Deadite Press. All are now available in Kindle editions. A new novel, The Late Night Horror Show, was released by Samhain Publishing in March of 2013. A second novel from Samhain, Go Kill Crazy!, is slated for February 2014. Bryan lives in Tennessee with a wide array of pets. Visit his home on the web at www.bryansmith.info.
