The Many Deaths of Joe Buckley Read online

  * * *

  Someone screamed inside Buckley’s room.

  Her boot clicked on the linoleum, and Heather realized that she’d been retreating. She stopped. Despite her best judgment, all reason, and logic, Heather knew her job, and nobody had ever accused her of not doing her job. “Crap, crap, crap.” Drawing her Beretta, she flicked the safety off and raised it in both shaking hands, walking toward Buckley’s room.

  Temple flopped into the hallway, slipping onto his hands and knees, scrambling madly through the blood. Shirt rent open, he was bleeding from several deep lacerations. “Help me!” He had made it a few feet toward her when a black mass of hair bounded into the hall at his heels. It was unbelievably fast, and it certainly wasn’t human. The animal grabbed Temple by the foot and in one smooth motion dragged him back into Buckley’s room. Her fellow deputy disappeared, a look of shocked disbelief on his face.

  There was a drag trail through the blood. It had happened so quickly that Heather hadn’t even fired a shot. What was that? “Buckley?” Temple bellowed in agony. Heather forced herself forward. “Hang on, Chase! I’m coming!”

  Then the beast moved back into the hall. It came so quickly that it just seemed to materialize. It saw her, and there was no hesitation. Growling, it charged on all fours. Heather yanked the trigger repeatedly. It covered the distance in a split second. The creature leapt high. There was no time to dodge. She shut her eyes before impact.

  There was a bone-jarring bang, but the expected hit never arrived.

  Heather opened her eyes. The creature was sliding down the floor away from her, wearing what she could have sworn was a too-human look of surprise on its awful canine face.

  A man in a leather jacket had come out of nowhere and was standing protectively in front of her. He was shaking his right hand loose as if he’d just struck something hard. “Stay behind me.”

  “Did you . . . did you just punch that thing?”

  “Seemed like the thing to do,” the stranger grinned, winked, and that’s when she recognized the annoying Southerner from the traffic stop earlier. “Any chance I can get you to rip up that ticket now?”

  The animal came off the floor, roaring, and charged. “Look out!”

  Nonchalant, the man turned back as a big stainless revolver appeared in his hand. He fired so quickly that the shots sounded like a continuous crackle. Every bullet struck home, right into the animal’s head. Blood and fur splattered the walls. It collapsed, limp, forward momentum sliding it onward. The man opened the cylinder of his revolver, punched out the spent casings, and slammed in a bundle of six more so fast that his gun was reloaded by the time the creature reached them. He casually raised one boot and put it down on the body, stopping it in place.

  “How? What? How?” Heather stammered. The thing under the stranger’s boot was bizarre, unnatural. One of its claws had come to a stop only inches from her foot. “Ack!” She kicked the hand aside.

  Taking his time, he put one last shot right between the animal’s eyes. Heather flinched. “Silver bullets,” he explained. He stuck his gun back into his holster, then took a cigarette out of his coat and put it in his mouth. “Your regular ones won’t do shit to a werewolf. I’ll give you a B for effort, though.”

  * * *

  Stark’s eyes flashed to what was standing in the doorway. “Oh shit.”

  Mosher frowned. “I’m not falling for that.”

  The charred, blackened, twisted form that had been Deputy Joe Buckley rose behind Mosher. The werewolf’s hair had been burned off, exposing thick muscles that cracked and bled as he moved. Ruined lips parted in a snarl of jagged teeth, dripping a slurry of bloody ash. Mosher heard the sound and turned, armor creaking. The agent and the werewolf stood nose to nose.

  And then Joe Buckley bit Mosher on the face.

  Stark blinked as blood splattered him. Mosher screamed and kicked as Buckley dragged him into the hall. There was a series of loud bangs as Mosher ineffectually fired his pistol. Stark hurried and kicked the door shut, but not before he saw that all of his neatly stacked corpses in the hallway were getting up.

  * * *

  The impact nearly knocked him out. Earl was facedown in the snow. Head swimming, only a foot from the whirling death blades of a tractor that was only not rolling forward because one corner was jammed into a building. Groaning, he rolled over. The animated corpse of Deputy Joe Buckley was standing over him. The hilt of the Bowie knife was sticking out of Buckley’s neck. Blood ran down the vulkodlak’s cracked chest and splattered onto Earl.

  Buckley’s claw wrapped around the knife handle. Blood leaking sluggishly, he jerked it out and tossed it into the snow. Buckley cocked his head to the side, white eyes gleaming. This time it was going to bite something unarmored, and that would be the end. Earl got ready. The least he could do would be to shove them both into the blades while it was distracted eating him. “Nobody eats me and gets away with it.”

  Something moved in Earl’s peripheral vision. It took a moment to focus past Buckley’s gleaming teeth to see that the stainless-steel lid of the prison-coffin was dangling, broken and open inside the rolled-over pickup. Earl had never seen a red werewolf before.

  Buckley didn’t know she was there until it was too late. Claws flashed from the right, from the left, flaying Buckley’s back open. He turned, stepping off Earl, as Heather cleaved him twice more, crossing an X of lacerated flesh clear through his ribs. He raised one arm, and she batted it down. The other came up, and she took it off cleanly at the elbow. Buckley’s hand spun off into the night.

  A vulkodlak was no match for a real werewolf.

  Heather lashed out, spraying blood across the yard. Buckley was crumbling, falling, but that wasn’t enough. Heather was out for murder. She slashed his throat clear to vertebrae, then sunk her fingers into his neck, down, until she caught his sternum, and using it like a handle, hurled the vulkodlak into the roaring blades. Buckley simply exploded. One instant he was there; the next he was replaced with a rapidly expanding cloud of meat. A second later blood belched out the top spout, spreading a fine mist of Buckley into the air.

  Eric Flint:

  So far as I know, I’m one of the few authors who’ve bumped off Joe Buckley twice in the same series. The first time I did him in was in 1634: The Galileo Affair, which I co-authored with Andrew Dennis. We portrayed Joe as a late twentieth-century investigative reporter charging around in the seventeenth century while, alas, not being clear on the concept of “seventeenth century.” As a result, he gets murdered by one of his sources.

  He’s a bit of a dummy, but I like to think Andrew and I let Joe expire on a note of dignity. Allowing for broad values of “dignity.”

  Sadly, the next time I killed Joe Buckley in the 1632 series, the poor man got no dignity at all. That was in my story for Grantville Gazette IV, “The Anatomy Lesson.” I should mention that my story was the basis for the cover illustration, which has gone down in history as “The Joe Buckley cover.” That’s because Joe is the figure lying on the slab, about to be dissected, while the doctors gathered around to observe are myself, David Weber, John Ringo, Jim Baen, David Drake and Paula Goodlett. All of whom have killed off Joe in one or another of their stories.

  Well . . . I don’t think David Drake has. Yet.

  Joe Buckley is already dead when my story begins. It’s really his corpse which figures in the story. Alas, poor Joe. Once a notorious highwayman whose exploits were the talk of London, in later life he let liquor get the best of him. His end was thus, well, ignominious.

  Rupert got a sullen look on his face. “So what? He’s still Joe Buckley. You watch, sister. He’ll be remembered long after you’re forgotten by the world.”

  I don’t know if Rupert’s prediction will come true. But I did my best to make it so.

  I also included Joe Buckley in the Boundary trilogy which I wrote with Ryk Spoor. But I’ll let Ryk tell that story.

  The Anatomy Lesson

  from Grantville Gazett
e IV

  ERIC FLINT

  All the way there, the next day, Rupert was practically bouncing off the walls of the coach.

  “Oh, how marvelous! I can’t believe the luck! You’re to be cutting up Joe Buckley!”

  Elisabeth sniffed. “First of all, I shan’t be cutting up anyone. Madame Jeff—ah, Anne—will be doing the anatomy lesson, not me. I’ll just be one of the people observing. And, secondly, who in the world is Joe Buckley?”

  Rupert clasped a hand to his forehead, in the overly histrionic way that a teenage lad will demonstrate shocked disbelief.

  “I can’t believe you’ve never heard of Joe Buckley. The rascal’s exploits were legendary. In his prime, the most notorious cutpurse in London.”

  Elisabeth sniffed again. “I can’t imagine why I’d be acquainted with the names and doings of a foreign city’s criminal element. Or you would be, now that I think about it.”

  Rupert gave her his girls-don’t-understand look. And a splendid one it was, too.

  “Just accept it as good coin. The man’s a legend.”

  “The man’s dead, now. And how would a London cutpurse wind up the subject of an anatomy lesson in Amsterdam?”

  Her brother looked a bit discomfited. “Well. He had to flee London a few years back, since he’d gotten too well known. Then had to flee Paris, after he gained too much notoriety there also. Apparently, he turned up in Amsterdam just a few weeks ago.”

  “Indeed. And they caught him and hung him, as he so richly deserved.” Elisabeth frowned. “Or perhaps they behead them, here in Holland. Although I can’t imagine that Anne would choose a corpse without a head for an anatomy lesson.

  Rupert looked more discomfited still. “Well. Well. He wasn’t either hanged or chopped, it seems. The story is that he got drunk a night or two back and fell into the harbor in a stupor. Drowned, before anyone could fish him out.”

  Elisabeth burst into laughter. “Some legend!”

  Her brother got a sullen look on his face. “So what? He’s still Joe Buckley. You watch, sister. He’ll be remembered long after you’re forgotten by the world.”

  She turned her head and gave him a serene sort of look. “And you are forgotten also, no doubt. Given your firm resolve to devote your life to the higher pursuits instead of seeking fame and glory on the fields of war.”

  “Well.”

  Before he could come up with a lame remark, Elisabeth peered out the window. “Oh, look! We’ve arrived.”

  Rupert got another sly look on his face. He rummaged around in the sack he’d insisted on bringing with him, and came out holding a small bucket. “I brought this for you. To barf in, like you will.”

  There being no suitable rejoinder that wouldn’t be undignified—worse still, might tempt her with blasphemy—Elisabeth just sniffed and prepared to disembark. As short as she was, that was always something of a chore, if modesty was to be preserved.

  * * *

  “—lobes to the liver, as you can see. This liver is abnormal, however, because of the man’s quite obvious alcoholism. If you look closer, you’ll be able to detect—”

  Elisabeth peered more closely, as instructed. It was absolutely fascinating!

  Her brother, known as Rupert of the Rhine in another universe, the royalist hero of the first English civil war, had left the chamber some time back. Looking very pale, and taking the bucket with him.

  1634: The Galileo Affair

  ERIC FLINT AND ANDREW DENNIS

  Ducos began stroking Buckley’s wet hair with his left hand, and in that moment Buckley realized he was going to die. He began to shudder, and felt warmth on his thighs as he lost bladder control.

  “You tremble, Monsieur Buckley. You urinate from terror. Just so will France tremble and soil herself, as she is first-born into the Millennium. Just so. As Richelieu and Gaston squabble over the bleeding body of the Antichrist, the new world will come. Yes, the new world. Born of little pigs, climbing on each other’s backs. Petits cochons.”

  He kept stroking Joe’s hair. It felt like a vulture’s caress. “And both these little pigs blaming the American pigs. I care not who wins, for by then there will be the reign of Christ. And France, reborn. The new Jerusalem, and I shall be the one to lay the first stone of that heavenly city. Mortared with the blood of the Antichrist, Monsieur Buckley, and of the little pigs who pollute France with their heresy.”

  Another soft little chuckle. “I meant to have an Inquisition guard come to murder you, Monsieur Buckley. What better sport than to set your Americans, and that Jew who is your spymaster, on the heels of the Inquisition? But I must now hurry, for you learned of Marcoli’s plan. Alas, the real plan, not the one I require. So I am afraid—my apologies—that I must do my best to question you in the style of the Inquisition.”

  Torture! Buckley moaned, and began to shake again. The chair he was tied to had a short leg, and it drummed on the floorboards. “I’ll talk!” he said, suddenly and oddly embarrassed that his voice was squeaking. “I’ll talk!”

  “Why? How? I don’t mean to ask you any questions.” Stroke, stroke. That hand on the top of his head, as Ducos murmured to him softly, almost intimately. Buckley cringed at every touch. Stroke. “I have read all your notes, Monsieur. I know all you know. And I shall send off your writing for you. In this way your death will not go unnoticed. Though for the moment, of course, it surely will. This building is empty, but for ourselves.”

  Buckley swallowed. He was dead, as dead as if he’d already stopped breathing. What to do? He was still shuddering; his testicles seemed to be burrowing into his belly. The piss on his thighs was cooling, making him shudder all the more.

  Hurt him, said a still, quiet voice in his mind. He remembered a line of poetry he’d always liked a lot. From Bob Dylan—no, it was Dylan Thomas.

  Do not go gentle into that good night,

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  The hand holding the blade was next to his cheek. Joe snapped his head around like a snake or a snapping turtle and bit the hand. Hard.

  Ducos roared with rage and pain. Buckley ignored everything except sinking his teeth into that hated hand. Ducos tried to pull the hand away but it was impossible. Then he grabbed Joe by the hair and lifted him, chair and all, and slammed his head against the edge of the table. The skinny madman’s strength was incredible.

  Joe was dazed by the impact. Finally, his jaws loosened enough and Michel ripped his hand away. Buckley saw the knife fall to the floor.

  Get the knife! Get the knife!

  The chair was off-balance anyway. He managed to tip it over and fall next to the knife. There came then the greatest sensation of triumph Joe had ever felt in his life. He managed to clamp the hilt of the knife in his teeth. Try cutting me now, you son of a bitch!

  He never felt the slender cord sliding around his neck. Never felt it at all, even when the garrote tightened in the madman’s grip. The knife was everything.

  Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett:

  The first line of this story is “Whoa, Porky.”

  It’s centuries after man has reached interstellar space and Windows still doesn’t work right. When Joe Buckley dies in the alien attack on a colony world, the operating system doesn’t know what to do till it’s rescued by Porky, a riding pig, and a pig thief named Sam.

  Of course, the authors didn’t know that when Gorg Huff sent Paula Goodlett a file with that first line in it, and nothing else. But the story developed, and they’re pretty happy with it. (That was back in the old days, before they discovered Google docs and Skype.)

  When Gorg and Paula needed a victim, who else would they turn to besides Joe Buckley? If you hang around Baen’s Bar very much, that’s just the natural progression of things.

  They do like to think that their death of Joe Buckley was pretty distinctive.

  From the Badlands

  from Jim Baen’s Universe, Volume 2, Number 3

  GORG HUFF AND PAULA GOODLETT

  This de
creased the possibility that Mr. Buckley was still alive to the negligible category, which called up the will protocols. The standard will question, “What should I do in case of your death?” had been answered by Mr. Buckley thusly: “Do whatever the fuck you want. I won’t care.” The AI pondered that response in relation to the present situation.

  No known relatives of Mr. Buckley had been on planet at the time that contact with the planetary grid was lost. If there was a government, Mr. Buckley’s property would return to it, but there was a high probability that the colony government no longer existed. Besides which, Joseph Buckley did not trust governments.

  The AI considered. It was to do what it wanted. So what did it want? After due consideration it determined that it wanted to be owned. Without an owner it had no purpose.

  Further examination of the law text provided a synopsis of squatters’ rights. Oddly enough, the intruder was, at that very moment, squatting behind a bush.

  * * *

  Sam frowned. “What’s with the food? There’s never any bread.”

  “I am sorry, but all the flour went bad centuries ago. Mr. Buckley had a vegetable garden for relaxation. He also grew potatoes and several nut trees. However, the homestead was not designed to be truly self-supporting.”

  Sam nodded. “Makes sense. The valley ain’t really big enough for a real farm. What are you feeding Porky?”

  “Fish from the pond for protein and jams for energy, which is quite adequate. Pormel were designed to be flexible in their food sources.”

  “Designed? Pigs were designed?”

  “Yes. They are not actually pigs. The pormel is a genetically engineered animal primarily based on the domestic swine, but with horse and camel genes, as well as wholly artificial gene structures included in its makeup. They can eat almost anything, even derive some nourishment from dirt.”