Contents ( 64)
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- INTERLUDE
- THREE
- FOUR
- INTERLUDE
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- INTERLUDE
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- INTERLUDE
- TWELVE
- PART TWO
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- INTERLUDE
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- INTERLUDE
- TWENTY
- INTERLUDE
- TWENTY-ONE
- INTERLUDE
- TWENTY-TWO
- INTERLUDE
- TWENTY-THREE
- PART THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- INTERLUDE
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- INTERLUDE
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- INTERLUDE
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- INTERLUDE
- THIRTY-ONE
- INTERLUDE
- THIRTY-TWO
- INTERLUDE
- THIRTY-THREE
- INTERLUDE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- INTERLUDE
- FORTY-ONE
- About the Author
- Acknowledgments
- CHUCK WENDIG in conversation with Adam Christopher
"So, how long?"
"How long what?"
"How long – er, how much do you see? One minute? Five minutes?"
"Oh. That. Well. I used to think it was a minute, right? Sixty seconds on the clock, go. Turns out, not so much. I seem to get whatever time I'm supposed to get, if that makes any sense. A car accident might happen over the course of thirty seconds. A heart attack or whatever could unfold over a five-minute period. I see what it lets me see. The weird part is, even if I see five minutes in my mind's eye, it doesn't take more than a second or two in real life. I'll space out, and then I'm back. It's certainly jarring."
Paul frowns, and Miriam can tell that, despite the thing with his uncle, he doesn't quite believe her. Not that she blames him. She finds times, even still, that she herself doesn't buy it. The easier answer is that she's just bugfuck nuts. A real moonbat. A shithouse spider.
"You're witness to the last minutes of human lives," he says.
"Well-put," Miriam says. "Lots of human lives. You know how many people you bump into on the subway during summer? Everybody in short-sleeves? It's all elbows, Paul. Death and elbows."
"So, why don't you stop it?"
"Stop what? Death?"
"Yeah."
Miriam chuckles, the sound of I Know Something You Don't. The sound of irony, that mirthless cad, expressed. She tips the bottle to her lips but does not yet drink.
"Why don't I stop it from happening," she ruminates over the lip of the bottle. "Well, Paul, that right there is the last – and cruelest – rule."
She sucks back a cheek-bulging mouthful of Johnny Walker and explains.
FIVE
Bug Light
Miriam's been walking for a half-hour, and the thoughts that run through her mind have serious legs. Terrible thoughts jog swift laps.
The man, the trucker, the Frankenstein. Louis. He is going to die in thirty days, at 7.25pm.
And it is going to be a horrible scene. Miriam sees a lot of death play out on the stage inside her skull. Blood and broken glass and dead eyes form the backdrop to her mind. But it's rare that she sees murder. Suicide, yes. Health problems, all the time. Car accidents and other personal disasters, over and over again.
But murder. That is a rare bird.
In a month's time, Louis is going to say her name right before he dies. Worse, he looks at someone before the knife punches through his eye and into his brain, and then says her name. He sees her there. He's speaking to her.
Miriam goes over it and over it in her head, and not once does it make sense.
She cries out some hybrid of "fuck" and "shit"– she's not really sure – and punctuates it by picking up a hunk of broken asphalt from the shoulder and chucking it against the dead center of an exit sign. It clangs. Wobbles.