Man of Wax (35 page)

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 short 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!”