Man of Wax (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  I keep thinking about the quote from Edmund Burke, about how all that’s necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. The only problem I see is that there are no real good men in the world, not really. We’re all flawed, each and every one of us, we’re all imperfect.

  Yet somehow, evil hasn’t yet triumphed.

  So why am I writing this? You might think it’s so that these people can be exposed for the scum they truly are, that the proper authorities will finally do something about it. But that’s not it at all. It’s impossible to point fingers and tell who these people are. They’re out there, yes, they’re everywhere, but just like Carver said, stopping them is impossible. It’s a virus that will continue to spread and there is nothing that can be done about it.

  But this isn’t for those people. This is for Sandra and Leon Ellison. This is for those residents and employees at the Hickory View Retirement Home. This is for James Henley and his wife and their unborn twins. This is for Gerald and his family, for Juliet. This is for each and every person who has either died or suffered for the sake of not just my game, but for all the games. People who never had a choice in the cards they were dealt, who were brutally moved around the game board of life as disposable pawns for the sake of entertainment.

  Mostly though, this is for Jen and Casey.

  Simon had asked me what the last thing was I’d say to my wife and daughter if I had the chance. I had told him it was that I loved them and it still is. But I’ve also come up with something else. Not the last thing I’d say to them, but the first thing I’ll tell them when I finally see them again. After I’ve hugged them and kissed them and wiped their tears away.

  For Casey, it’s that recently I’ve been going outside every night and looking up at the sky, asking aloud, “Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?” And while I haven’t yet heard the five hundred million bells, I know they’re ringing. At the moment, I think that’s enough.

  As for Jen, it’s this:

  Last night I dreamed of Michelle Delaney again. As always I’m at the college party and bored, ready to leave. I go outside, start back to my dorm, but then hear her screaming, crying for help. And I rush around the building to find her there with her boyfriend, who just continues beating her and beating her and beating her. It’s all like it always is, the night and the leaves and the chill of the wind. Just like when it first happened.

  Except this time it’s different.

  This time, I take a step forward.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robert Swartwood is the USA TODAY bestselling author of The Serial Killer’s Wife, The Calling, Man of Wax, and several other novels. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Daily Beast, Chizine, Space and Time, Postscripts, and PANK. He created the term “hint fiction” and is the editor of Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer. He lives with his wife in Pennsylvania. Visit him online at www.robertswartwood.com.

  To stay updated on Robert’s latest ebook releases, sign up for his newsletter (you’ll immediately receive an exclusive ebook) or follow him on Twitter: @RobertSwartwood.

  Continue reading for an excerpt from The Inner Circle, the second book in the Man of Wax Trilogy

  1

  We were headed south on I-95, about forty miles outside Miami, when the Kid called.

  It was Saturday night, just past eleven o’clock. A heavy rain was coming down, the dark clouds occasionally illuminated by a scattered flicker of lightning.

  Carver reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, put it on speaker.

  “What’s up?”

  The Kid said, “We got a problem.”

  I was driving the Corolla we’d picked up the day before in Atlanta. It was a small four-cylinder thing that still reeked of cigarettes and coffee from its previous owner. I’d paid one thousand dollars for it, cash, and now here we were, Carver in the passenger seat, the radio off, neither of us saying a word.

  A quarter mile ahead of us was Ronny and Ian in the SUV. A quarter mile ahead of them was the target. The target was driving a black Crown Victoria, a camera set up in the foot well of the passenger seat so those who wanted to could see what the man looked like behind the wheel of the car, instead of getting the view of the highway from the mini-camera in his glasses. The target was listed simply as The Racist. He was a large bald man with a thick goatee and tattoos of swastikas and racial slurs all over his body. He’d only been in the game for less than forty-eight hours and had already killed someone.

  “What’s the problem?” Carver asked.

  “Another link appeared five minutes ago. I started saving it right away, and ... ah, well, you just gotta see it. I’m emailing it to you now.”

  Then the Kid was gone.

  I said, “Should we call Ronny?”

  “Not yet.”

  Carver had already replaced the phone in his pocket, was now reaching in the backseat for his bag. He pulled the MacBook from the bag, along with the wireless card. Then he had the computer on his lap, opened the lid, pressed the power button. Seconds later the Apple logo appeared and the main screen came up and then Carver was working quickly, opening the web browser, opening his email account, then opening the email the Kid had just sent.

  There was a minute or two of silence as Carver downloaded the file. When the download was complete, Carver played the video. At once the atmosphere in the car changed. Carver’s body visibly stiffened.

  “How bad is it?”

  “Bad enough,” he said, and tilted the laptop so I could see.

  Most of the screen was black except for the usual box in the middle. In that box now was a small room. The camera was positioned in one of the ceiling corners, staring down at a bed. It was the only piece of furniture in the room, besides a single lamp standing in the corner.

  And on the bed lay a small dark-skinned girl, who couldn’t have been any older than ten. She was completely naked, her arms and legs stretched toward the ends of the bed, straps tying her wrists and ankles. How long she’d been there was impossible to say, but it was clear whatever fight had been in her was long gone. She just lay there, her body jerking every couple of seconds, sobbing the sob of a child who has cried so much she has no more tears left to shed.

  Continue reading for an excerpt from Wayward Pines: Nomad by Robert Swartwood, coming soon exclusively from Kindle Worlds

  Like other nomads before him, Tobias has left Wayward Pines. With only the clothes on his back and a few supplies and weapons, he’s headed west on a mission of the utmost importance. He knows his life is in constant danger. That abbies are all around him. Any false move, and they’ll tear him apart. What Tobias doesn’t know is that outside of Wayward Pines there are other things more dangerous than abbies. And worse than death.

  Day 3

  I killed my first abby today.

  I was following the river when I came around the bend and there it was, maybe fifty yards away, crouched down and lapping the water like a deer.

  I stopped at once.

  My first thought was of you.

  Not of my mission, not of saving us all, but of you.

  The abby must have smelled me, or sensed me, or maybe it even heard me. It stood up, turned in my direction, and just stared at me.

  I thought that if I didn’t move, if I didn’t breathe, it wouldn’t see me.

  I was wrong.

  The abby screeched and charged at me.

  I had the Winchester strapped over my shoulder, but it was the Smith & Wesson I pulled from my belt and aimed straight at the abby.

  The creature didn’t even slow.

  It knew nothing of the power in the palm of my hand.

  It simply saw me as a target. As meat. As its lunch.

  I waited until it was less than ten yards away.

  The look in its black eyes was completely animalistic. Any doubt I had about whether it possessed some shred of humanity was quickly erased.

  So I did what I had to do.

  I
put a bullet between its eyes.

  * * *

  Tobias read the entry once more and then closed his journal.

  The morning sun peeked up through the trees, strong and bright and warm.

  He considered tearing the page out. Crumping it up into a ball and using it for kindling whenever he felt brave enough to actually start a fire.

  She didn’t need to know about his first kill. She didn’t need to know about any of his kills.

  Still, it was important, wasn’t it? Of course it was. He was out here in the middle of nowhere, only four days gone, and had killed one of the things that was threatening their entire existence. If that wasn’t important, Tobias didn’t know what was.

  She didn’t need to know about the abby’s blood splattering on his clothes. Didn’t need to know about the clicking from just behind the trees, less than 300 yards away. About how Tobias had ducked down behind some boulders near the river, the revolver in hand, his heart pounding and his entire body on edge. About the second abby that appeared, a much smaller one, approaching the dead abby and nudging it once before nudging it again. About the glimpse Tobias had of the sadness in the smaller abby’s eyes, and the creeping knowledge that he had just killed its mother.

  It would have been so easy, he knew, to step out from behind the boulders and use the revolver on the smaller abby.

  There was the risk, of course, that the gunshot would bring even more abbies, though Tobias doubted it. If more were nearby, he would have heard them come running by now.

  No, it was just the smaller one, the dead abby’s offspring, and even though everything in Tobias told him to kill it, he remained where he was behind the boulders. Listening to the water bubbling and gurgling as it headed down stream. Listening to the child abby mourn the loss of its parent.

  * * *

  He didn’t eat much of anything for breakfast. It wasn’t that he wasn’t hungry—he was starving, in fact—but his body needed to become conditioned. For most of his life his body was used to getting three meals a day, plus the occasional snack. Now food was sparse, and he would be eating little of it.

  He hiked for nearly an hour before taking a break. That was another thing he needed his body to adjust to—more walking, less rest. Tobias knew eventually his body would adjust. He just hoped it would be sooner rather than later.

  It was bad enough being out in the wilderness surrounded by creatures that wanted to kill you. The last thing he needed was for his body to shut down on him.

  He sat on a rock that overlooked most of the valley. A mix of firs and aspens and pines lay before him like a blanket. He glanced over his shoulder, but any glimpse of Wayward Pines was long gone.

  He unzipped the Kelty backpack he’d set on the ground between his legs and pulled out the leather-bound journal sealed in plastic. Opened the cover and read the words scribbled in loopy, graceful lines by the woman he loved.

  When you come back—and you will come back—I’m gonna fuck you, soldier, like you just came home from war.

  He had the words memorized but still liked seeing them there on the page. A smile spread across his face before quickly fading. It had only been four days since he last saw her, and already he was beginning to think he might never see her again.

  He closed the journal and balanced it on his knee, staring out again over the valley. He wondered how many abbies were down there. How many he would encounter on his way through. How many he would have to kill.

  The journal fell from his knee.

  Tobias blinked, looked down, stared at the journal for a moment on the ground, then leaned forward to pick it up. And heard the gunshot just a half-second after the tree beside him spat up bark.

  ALSO BY ROBERT SWARTWOOD

  NOVELS

  No Shelter

  Holly Lin is living two lives. To her friends and family, she’s a pleasant, hardworking nanny. To her boss and colleagues, she’s one of the best non-sanctioned government assassins in the world.

  But when a recent mission goes wrong causing one of her team members to die, she realizes she might no longer be cut out for the work—except the mission, as it turns out, is only half over, and to complete it will take her halfway across the world and bring her face to face with a ghost from her past.

  Things are about to get personal. And as Holly Lin’s enemies are about to find out, she is not a nanny they want to piss off.

  No Shelter is 65,000 words long and recommended for fans of Lee Child, Barry Eisler, and Duane Swierczynski.

  “Excellent—memorable and something I’ll read more than once.”

  — HTMLGIANT

  “No Shelter is part mystery, part thriller suspense, and all kinds kick ass!”

  — The Man Eating Bookworm

  The Serial Killer’s Wife

  Five years ago Elizabeth Piccioni’s husband was arrested for being a serial killer. Her life suddenly turned upside down, she did what she thought was best for her newborn baby: she took her son and ran away to start a new life.

  Now, living in a quiet part of the Midwest with a new identity, Elizabeth is ready to start over. But one day she receives a phone call from a person calling himself Cain. Cain somehow knows about her past life. He has abducted her son, and if Elizabeth wants to save him she must retrieve her husband’s trophies—the fingers he cut off each of his victims.

  With a deadline of one hundred hours, Elizabeth has no choice but to return to the life she once fled, where she will soon realize that everything she thought she knew is a lie, and what’s more shocking than Cain’s identity is the truth about her husband.

  The Serial Killer’s Wife is a 80,000-word thriller in the vein of Jeffery Deaver, John Sanford, and Thomas Harris. It includes a special foreword by Blake Crouch.

  “This is a scary, thrilling, page-turning, race-against-the-clock novel if ever there was one, with a true shocker of an ending. Miss this one at your own peril.”

  — Blake Crouch

  Walk the Sky (with David B. Silva)

  Things are bad for Clay Miller and George Hitchens.

  For starters, they’re on the run from a posse out for blood. Then, as they ride through the Utah desert, the two come across the crumpled body of a young boy on the brink of death. The boy can’t speak, but it’s clear he’s frightened of something nearby. When asked what’s got him so scared, the terrified boy writes three letters in the dirt ...

  DED

  By nightfall, Clay and George are tied up in jail. They can’t move. They can’t speak. They can do nothing but listen to the boy, outside, screaming for his life.

  Yes, things are bad for Clay and George.

  And they’re only going to get worse.

  The Dishonored Dead

  In a not-so-distant future, the world has devolved and most of the population has become the animated dead. Those few that are living are called zombies. They are feared and must be hunted down and destroyed.

  Conrad is one of the animated dead. A devoted husband, a loving father, he is the best zombie Hunter in the world. But when he hesitates one night in killing a living adult, his job is put in jeopardy. Instead of being outright dismissed, he is transferred to a program so secretive even the Government would deny its existence—and where Conrad soon learns a startling truth about how his own son might be in danger of becoming a zombie.

  As living extremists become more emboldened and blow up a Hunter Headquarters, as a power-hungry Hunter becomes more enraged and will stop at nothing to gain absolute power, Conrad begins to question not just his profession, but his own existence. And before he knows it he is on a journey of self-discovery, remembering a past he was forced to forget, and soon finding himself not only a hunted man, but a man who must now save both his son and the entire world.

  The Dishonored Dead is a 100,000-word zombie thriller that includes the 3,000-word short story “In the Land of the Blind,” which won 10th Annual Chiaroscuro Short Story Contest and was the inspiration for the novel, plus the 3,000-word shor
t story “The Hunter” and a bonus interview with the author.

  “The Dishonored Dead is simply brilliant, and its telling a superb achievement. Robert Swartwood has given us a wonderful twist, not only on the zombie novel, but on the dystopian tale as well. It’s like Brave New World meets Logan’s Run, but with a bite all its own. Strongly recommended!”

  — Joe McKinney

  “The Dishonored Dead is one of the most original and gripping zombie novels I have ever read, offering a glimpse into the life of a zombie in a world turned backwards, where zombies live and humans are feared. Highly recommended!”

  — Jeremy Robinson

  The Calling

  When eighteen-year-old Christopher Myers’ parents are murdered, something is written on his bedroom door, a mark in his parents’ blood that convinces the police the killer has targeted Christopher as the next victim. To keep him safe, he travels away with his estranged grandmother and uncle to the small town of Bridgton, New York. And it’s in Bridgton that he meets an extraordinary young man who has come with his father to stop an unrelenting evil. Soon Christopher learns of the town’s deep dark secret, and how his parents’ murder was no accident, and how he has been brought to Bridgton by forces beyond his power—forces that just may threaten the destruction of all mankind.