HarperVoyager
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Richard Kadrey 2018
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Richard Kadrey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008219093
Ebook Edition © July 2018 ISBN: 9780008219109
Version: 2018-07-12
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge â and has to content oneself with dreaming.
âPaul Gauguin
So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it. Thank you.
âRoald Dahl, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
THEREâS DEAD AND thereâs Hollywood dead, and those are two very different things.
Dead is just dead. In the ground. Pennies on your eyes. A cold slab of meat with no slaw and definitely no dessert.
But Hollywood dead? That can be a lot of things. Yeah, youâre still a slab of meat, but now you come with curly fries and hot apple pie.
Hollywood dead is movie dead. When the director yells âcutâ you get up and have a donut, and someone makes sure your hair is perfect. When youâre Hollywood dead you can die a hundred times and still come back for the sequel.
Hollywood dead is the dead everybody thinks they want because nothing is final, everything is negotiable, and youâll even get a producer credit if you keep your mouth shut and do what youâre told. That last is the hard part. When youâre Hollywood dead itâs hard to sit still and take orders. Hollywood dead is party dead and you never want to hear last call. Hollywood dead is the best kind of dead and the worst.
Hollywood dead means you can go to the movies and have a smoke, but if youâre out in the sun too long you start to rot and stink. Hollywood dead makes you very careful about cuts and scratches because you donât exactly heal anymore.
Hollywood dead gets you thinking about making everyone else regular dead. The good news is that if youâre lucky and you play your cards right, you might just get the chance to do it.
DONâT LET ANYONE tell you that shooting a gun in a bowling alley isnât loud. Itâs very loud. Incredibly damn loud. The noise bounces off the smooth paneled walls and rattles every nerve in your skull. Of course, everything down here under the mansion is soundproof, so my target practice doesnât bother anyone else. But I should have brought some earplugs. The tissues I jammed in my ears are pretty undignified and I donât have a lot of dignity left to spare. I mean, I was dead and now Iâm alive, but Iâm still sort of dead. Not pork-chop-dropped-in-a-parking-lot dead, but dead enough that Tinder is out of the question. Thatâs why Iâm shooting the shit out of Eva Sandovalâs bowling alley.
Thereâs something very satisfying about seeing bowling pins explode when theyâre hit with a .45 slug. But Iâm annoyed with myself. I left an open frame on the right lane, only killing nine out of the ten. And yet thatâs still better than the seven-six-ten split I left on the other lane. I need to practice. My body hasnât moved in a year and I have to get it back in shape. Whatever Wormwood has planned for me, Iâm definitely going to get punched and Iâd like to be able to hit back harder than a marshmallow Peep.
Sandoval and her entourage come in while Iâm reloading. She frowns and her lackeys cluster in back of her like confused ducklings. Iâm not exactly sure why. I mean, Iâm working for them. Maybe seeing a corpse loading a Colt .45 wasnât in their day planner.
I say, âTake it up with HR.â
âTake up what?â says Sandoval.
âWhatever is bothering your Mouseketeers. They look like they just saw Lemmyâs ghost.â