Chapters (42)
- DEDICATION
- EPIGRAPH
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- ALSO BY RICHARD KADREY
- CREDITS
- ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
“I know. It’s just that sometimes he doesn’t have the sense of a sack full of squirrels.”
“I know.”
Steve took a long gulp of his beer.
“Remember not to drink too much tonight,” said Susie. “You promised to help me with my pie for the bake sale.”
Steve took a breath. “Yeah. About that. Do you still want to go through with it? I mean, there isn’t a store in town that will let us sell outside. They all say the Apocalypse is bad for business.”
Susie sipped her beer. “I know, but I want an excuse to make one more apple pie. I’m not going to the fiery depths of the underworld without showing up that bitch Randi Huston and her damned lemon squares.”
Steve put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Okay, honey. One more sale.”
Susie gave Steve a loving peck on the cheek, then wiped off the lipstick with her thumb. “Hail Caleximus,” she said.
NINE
THE STRANGER SAT ALONE IN A BOOTH INSIDE LARRY’S Large Lad diner in Red Bluff, a California town about five hundred miles north of Los Angeles. The day was sunny, and from his booth he had a view of both the I-5 freeway and the Sacramento River. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about rivers. He liked the flowing water, but they were all crooked and bent at funny angles. Too meandery, he thought. Maybe something needed to be done about that.
Around the diner’s ceiling were pictures and knickknacks from Red Bluff’s early days as a Gold Rush and then a railroad town. Directly over his table was an autographed photo of Leo Gorcey of Bowery Boys movie fame.
The stranger was tall and slender, with the kind of dramatically sculpted cheekbones that you only see on Greek statues and rich people who’ve paid a surgeon to make them look like statues. His shoes were expensive black Oxfords, but badly stained with road grime. Though it was warm outside, he wore a long coat that in another, more nervous locale would have made people, well, nervous. Like he might be hiding something, which, in fact, he was. When he took off his sunglasses the stranger revealed his most striking feature: that he had one deep brown and one glittering blue eye. In his opinion, it made him look dashing. A great number of other people often thought it made him look like he needed medical attention or perhaps a good burning at the stake.
He took a menu from the holder on the side of the table and opened it with the reverence befitting a Gutenberg Bible.