John Ridley_Those Who Walk in Darkness 02 Read online

  Copyright © 2006 by John Ridley

  Excerpt from Those Who Walk in Darkness copyright © 2005 by John Ridley. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cover design by Don Puckey

  Cover illustration by Herman Estevez

  Warner Books

  Hachette Book Group, USA

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com

  First eBook Edition: January 2006

  ISBN: 978-0-446-50638-0

  Contents

  Also by John Ridley

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  About the Author

  A Preview Those Who Walk in Darkness

  ACCLAIM FOR THOSE WHO WALK IN DARKNESS

  “Reads like a graphic novel without the pictures.”

  —Denver Rocky Mountain News

  “Delightfully cunning . . . An exciting . . . superb fantasy tale.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Exciting . . . taut and fast-paced . . . a gem.”

  —Black Issues Book Review

  “Powerful . . . explosive, exhilarating, packed with action but also with morality and thoughtfulness.”

  —Sullivan County Democrat (NY)

  “Fun . . . fascinating . . . a winner . . . A fast, exciting read which will keep you in suspense until the very last page . . . A science fiction story unlike any you’ve ever read before.”

  —Lebanon Daily Record (MO)

  “Great beginning to an exciting series and I can’t wait for a sequel.”

  —University City Review (West Philadelphia, PA)

  “Moves at a brisk clip . . . It continues Ridley’s tradition of lean, athletic prose intermixed with challenging new genres.”

  —Pages

  “His prose is tough and vivid, his characters ruthless, hard-boiled and beset by personal demons . . .

  A fast, addictive read.”

  —Scifi.com

  “Thought-provoking . . . absolutely riveting! I was hooked from the very first page . . . Soledad O’Roark just may be the first great antihero of the twenty-first century—in more ways than one.”

  —Roger Stern, New York Times bestselling author of The Death and Life of Superman

  “Explosive, exhilarating, noirishly fun, slyly comic, and wound as tight as piano wire . . . Recalling the work of Alan Moore or Stan Lee, with dollops of Norman Spinrad and Walter Mosley, Ridley’s near-future adventure successfully treads the same path so well established by The Watchman and The Dark Knight— and takes it a step further.”

  —Steven Barnes, author of Lion’s Blood and Zulu Heart

  “As both a screenwriter and a novelist, Ridley is one of the most versatile writers in the business. With sure-handed action and characters real enough to breathe on you, this is a thriller that delivers.”

  —Tananarive Due, author of My Soul to Keep and The Living Blood

  “Sophisticated cop drama crossed with a postmodern take on the fondly remembered Marvel comics of your childhood. John Ridley’s a genius, and his readers are in for a treat.”

  —Dwayne McDuffie, writer/creator of Static Shock

  Also by John Ridley

  Those Who Walk in Darkness

  For

  Jason

  I’m alive for a reason.

  I don’t mean that with the cheap, feel-good populist existentialism daytime TV talk show hosts love to hand out: You’re alive because even though you eat too much fast food and can’t point to your own state capital on a map, we’re all really unique and individual and speciablah, blah, blah. I mean: in the world we live, with what I do, there’s a reason I’ve remained among the living. A reason I’ve survived.

  Actually, a couple of reasons depending on what kind of survival you’re talking about.

  Regarding my physical endurance, science is my guardian angel. Science by way of an O’Dwyer VLe. An all-electronic handgun that can fire a four-shot burst in just 1/500 of a second. Ordnance that is designed, specifically, to deal with the problem.

  Funny. Kinda. It’s that easy to turn the struggle for persistence into catchphrases. “The problem.” “After San Francisco.” “Freak hunting.”

  Too bad it’s not as easy to solve the problem as it is to label it.

  Nothing’s ever easy.

  Not in this world.

  This world is hard, it’s bleak, it’s unsure, it is filled with risk. It’s fat with weak sisters who look for obvious morals, comfortable politics, and clutch themselves hoping that hope alone will deliver them soft resolutions to hard situations.

  Sorry.

  And the world’s got people like me. People who do, rather than subsist because of the deeds of others.

  And people who do what I do; we’re good as dead.

  Accepting that, accepting my mortality: It’s the other reason I survive.

  Venice, California.

  Venice, California, was beachfront land bought up by Abott Kinney and Francis Ryan at the end of the 1800s.

  Venice, California, was an oceanfront attraction the two men built acre by acre, canal by canal, that matrixed the vistas of Rome with an American boardwalk.

  Venice, California, was, long time ago, a tourist attraction. A place to ride amusement rides on a pier, go to an aquarium.

  Then the pier burned down. Then oil got discovered percolating under the ground. Then the city of LA did
a land grab, snatched Venice for its own just like LA did with everything it wanted. Water from up north. The movie business from out East. Venice was like that. Worth stealing. A sweet piece of real estate.

  Things change.

  Turned out there wasn’t all that much oil in Venice, California.

  So the city of LA lost interest in Venice, California, let her fall just about to pieces same as an ex-mistress tossed aside ’cause it’d grown tiresome. And when it didn’t fall apart completely on its own, the city tore down more than five hundred historic buildings.

  Five hundred.

  LA didn’t care.

  Progress doesn’t own any sympathy. Why should the city?

  Venice, California, became kind of a shithole for bangers and dealers. Wannabes when they gave up and quit wanting to be anything but what they were which wasn’t much. It was a haven for illegals coming up from Mexico who couldn’t get to anywhere better than Venice, California.

  But, real slow, Venice turned itself around. Some.

  Just because it was cheap didn’t mean decent people couldn’t end up there. Decent people need affordable housing as much as bangers. More than bangers. Bangers aren’t usually long-term customers.

  With reasonable renting rates, a laconic beach vibe, into Venice flooded artists both visual and unique as well as crappy.

  And Venice gladly took in the oddball, mainstream hating artistes because like a lonely boy who was otherwise without affection, Venice was really happy for anybody who came to be with her.

  Venice, California, was like that; mostly about the little guy or the bohemian, the actor or the failed male beefcake who ends up pumping iron down at the beach, spending his considerable free time getting bigger for bigger’s sake. Venice said to them: Forget about Brentwood or West Hollywood or Sherman Oaks or any of the parts of the city where people aspire to reside. Come here, live here. We’ll take you as you are. Happy that you came, we will offer you little stress.

  Things change.

  Mostly, what changes, property values go up.

  At some point the little guy, the little guy in Venice—the artist and the bohemian—has gotta get with the fact he’s sitting on prime, oceanfront real estate. The little guy’s gotta get with the program. The program: get outta the way.

  The program: That’s when the developers move in. The malls and complexes go up. The little guy is invited to move to Van Nuys or East LA or anywhere that wasn’t here where we’ve gotta put up a mini-mall with a sixteen-screen movie multiplex.

  Most, most little guys—small boutique shop owners, mom-and-pop businesspeople—they took the hint, sold out, went their way.

  No fighting things.

  Progress’s got no sympathy.

  But in Venice, California, against the odds, there was still the occasional coffee shop that wasn’t a Starbucks, the bookstore that wasn’t a B&N or a subsidiary thereof. Every now and then there was someplace other than a Gap, Inc., LLC, trying to make a stand, trying to offer people some other kind of joint where they could buy retail. And there was even a bank on the corner of Rose and Main that wasn’t part of some massive, interstate fiduciary corporation. The tellers worked through lunch and the loan officers—David and Carol and Rick—looked at more than your TRW before deciding if you were an acceptable risk. ATM fees were under two bucks. Diane Woodward had been doing her banking there since her divorce—she’d left her stay-at-home-dad husband for a partner at her firm—had forced her to make some new financial arrangements. Regularly, Mike Anderson strollered over with his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter before stopping by the newsstand to pick up a copy of Chocolate Beauties. And there was old Mr. Roth, the sweet, septuagenarian widower whom life never seemed to get the best of though life never shared with him the best of anything. The bank was, in a city of far too many millions of people, where you could go for a minute, do your business, get a smile in return that wasn’t based on the size of your deposit. Wasn’t charged against your account.

  It was also the kind of place, like a lot of banks in Los Angeles, where a couple of guys—White. Gaunt. Sweaty with nerves, sweaty on the tail end of a hard meth jag that was crashing—walked in, stood for a second, stood for a second as their waning high gave them fake courage, then yanked nine-mils from beneath their jackets.

  The usual bank robbery confluence of events followed.

  Sweaty Guys: “Get down! Everybody get the fuck on the floor!”

  Nobody moved.

  “Get the fuck on the fucking floor now!”

  No movement. Minds were processing what was happening—men, men with guns. Crazy-looking men waving their gafs around—while bodies waited for further instructions.

  Except for the security guard. The security guard knew what was going on. The security guard was also getting paid minimum. The security guard went down like the class whore on prom night, hugged the floor. He never even bothered going for the gun he hadn’t used in the year and a half since he’d capped his two-week private security training course.

  “Get fucking down!”

  Shots fired in the air.

  Screaming. Crying. The mental/physical debate was over. People, finally, got down.

  Time wasted. Time wasted by the Sweaty Guys getting the shouldabeen relatively manageable situation managed.

  Old days, you couldn’t take that kind of time to get a job handled. Old days, too much time wasted, all of a sudden you’d have the Adjudicator punching his way into the bank through a wall. The Sweaty Guys’ guns? Useless. Bullets were like spitballs to the Adjudicator’s kind. Then the Adjudicator would’ve been all over your sweaty ass.

  That was the difference between then and now. Now there was time to scream at people just trying to do their banking to get the F down. Fire off a few shots if they didn’t get the F down.

  These days, when all you had to worry about were outgunned LAPD cops, seemed like there was all the time in the world for bad things to happen.

  Unless you’re jagged on crank. You’re hopped on tina. Then time’s got a way of being trippy, unnervy. No matter how fast things happen, they don’t happen fast enough.

  For Mike Anderson, with his baby in the stroller, it took a swipe of a pistol to the head to hurry up his downward progress. Wasn’t really much of a blow. Mike Anderson more or less went with the swing, went to the ground on his own and covered his daughter knowing, beneath his body, she’d be safe.

  David, Carol, Rick: still screaming, but learning well from the pistol-whipping demonstration the rewards of noncooperation. They pressed themselves on the tile behind and below their desks. Would have pressed themselves through the floor if they could have. The tellers went down behind the counter.

  In the whole of the bank only three were standing. The Sweaty Guys. Mr. Roth.

  Mr. Roth was old, didn’t move so quick. Mr. Roth’s eyes were probably bad and his hearing most likely shot. There was a real chance Mr. Roth didn’t know, didn’t really understand, what was happening. For him it must’ve been like trying to figure out what’s going on when you’re watching the world from under five feet of Jell-O. The “fucks” screamed, the pistol whips given: It was all lost on him.

  “Wha . . . what’s—”

  “Get down!”

  “I, I don’t—”

  “Get the fuck down!”

  It could be read in the Sweaty Guys’ dilated eyes. Loss of control was on the horizon.

  Mike Henderson saw it.

  From where he was on the floor Mike Henderson, sensing the badness to come, had a variation on a single thought: I gotta do something. No matter his daughter was there, no matter doing something wasn’t . . . wasn’t right, wasn’t safe, he could real easy see the sum of the equation before him: Old man doesn’t move fast enough, jagged thugs don’t react rationally. Bullets fly. Old guy dies.

  “Get down on the fuck—”

  “I don’t . . . I can’t—”

  From the rest in the bank a modified Greek chorus chanting in
frightened wails: “Please, Mr. Roth! Get down, Mr. Roth!”

  One of the Sweaty Guys worked the slide on his gun. Should’ve done that before he hit the bank. Anyway, a round was chambered. He was, finally, ready for business.

  “Goddamn it, fucker! Get the fuck—”

  Consequences didn’t matter.

  It was coming to that.

  Consequences didn’t matter for Mike Henderson. A life mattered. Not his own. Mike Henderson had to—

  “Told you to get the fuck down!”

  A gun yelled twice. Deafeningly loud in the tight space.

  The screams, the screams from David and Carol and Rick, from Diane and especially from the security guard, spiked and died. The bank was filled with a bed of sobbing.

  All looked.

  Even Mr. Roth, still standing, looked and saw the two sizable holes in his chest.

  A couple more screams from someone at the sight, the sight of Mr. Roth with those holes.

  The two guys, the Sweaty Guys, they weren’t high anymore. Not so much so. Shooting someone can do that to you. Sober you up. Shooting someone in California where they execute people for such things will slap the fuzziness straight out of you.

  Mr. Roth looked up, looked from his wounds to the formerly Sweaty Guys.

  And then the wounds in Mr. Roth’s chest, which were not wounds, but truly holes—tunnels opened to allow the passing of a couple of slugs—self-sealed.

  And then Mr. Roth gave a smile. A smile that stretched, stretched itself across his face. The corners of his lips seeming to . . . not seeming to. They did. The corners of his lips touched the base of his ears. Teeth filled his mouth, swelled to fill his mouth. Twisted. They went jagged. Looked more like ivory claws then dentition.

  For a second Mr. Roth’s smile . . . it quivered. It quivered. For a second it was like Mr. Roth’s smile couldn’t contain its glee, its perverted anticipation.

  And then Mr. Roth’s smile, his jaw, had at the two used-to-be/now-again Sweaty Guys who’d tried to rob a bank and had only gotten as far as shooting at a seemingly old man. Mr. Roth’s smile bit at them, tore at them, ripped, ripped and ripped them. Did not slow for the shrieking, the screaming, the spraying blood and flying flesh. And meat.

  And Mr. Roth’s smile accomplished all this mayhem while Mr. Roth’s body remained a good thirty feet clear of the slaughter.