Ghosts by Matt Rogers (ap literature book list txt) 📕

a bolt of agony. Then he sat there for thirty seconds, summoning the courage to put his other foot in the sand. Pain was coming, and he had nothing to turn to in order to dissipate it. Eventually he managed. Then there was the trouble of getting his weight up. He’d packed on another ten pounds over the last two weeks. Stress eating in full swing. He cursed his ineptitude as he clenched his teeth and fought his way out of the driver’s seat.

He was up. He used the chassis of the BMW X5 to support himself, slumping against it, using the cane to distribute the rest of his weight. A bead of sweat that had originated at the top of his forehead ran down his nose and fell off the bridge. He let it. He didn’t have the energy to brush it away.

And there he waited.

It’d have to be good enough.

He would have brought his wife if they’d allowed it. She’d been helping him simply exist for the last two weeks — following him meekly around the house, helping him out of bed, standing quietly beside him at all times, attentive to his every word. Twice he’d caught her crying behind his back. It infuriated him. An insidious thought struck him a few days ago — maybe she hates me — but he’d drowned it in half a bottle of rum.

She was the only person who listened to his commands anymore. Everyone else had abandoned ship. They’d been forced to. He hadn’t answered their calls.

That brought more pain than his physical ailments.

There was nothing worse than watching your life fall apart.

Call it fear. He never did, he tried to rationalise it as best he could, but deep down he knew the truth. If he answered that phone, if he told his underlings why he’d left them in the dark, the two monsters would come for him. He hadn’t thought he’d known what being scared felt like.

Now he did.

So he let them call, let them go to voicemail, let them get spooked and pack up and flee town. His work phone got quieter and quieter as the days went by until it became a coffin, empty and unmoving, filled with skeletons.

An empire dissolved, just like that.

It hurt him to the core.

He’d always been able to suppress it all — the uncertainty, the tortured soul, the turbulence. Take any amount of suffering — in his case, purely emotional — and there’s always substances that’ll do the trick. Sometimes booze and weed and nicotine and cocaine didn’t suffice.

Sometimes he had to turn to the darker stuff.

The benzos, the Dexedrine, occasionally a hit of smack — he’d only done heroin five times in his life, and he prided himself on that. Most took it once and spiralled into uncontrollable addiction. He always knew he was stronger than those weaklings. So he did it when he needed it, and the restlessness went away.

Now he knew there was a level of emotional pain that no amount of drugs could hold back.

Like a tsunami going up against a weak dam wall.

He looked around. The desert was hot and dry and empty. Red boulders dotted the landscape.

A ghost town.

Kerr finally got out of her car. She seemed broken, too, but not like him. She carried herself upright. She moved well. Her pain was solely inside.

She looked different.

He couldn’t figure it out.

She crossed the sand — no man’s land, technically, if this was anything remotely like a standoff — and stopped a few feet away from him.

He sagged more of his weight against his car. ‘What do you want?’

‘Thanks for coming.’

‘You should have run.’

‘I can’t.’

‘What do you mean you can’t?’ he said. Then he paused. ‘Christ, did they threaten you too?’

She didn’t answer.

He said, ‘They’re not everywhere. They don’t know everything. That’s why you wanted to meet out here, right? Look, I’ve made them think I’m giving up. I’ve let it all fall apart. What we built. But I don’t care about that. I care about me. I’m gone tonight. I thought you should know. Might give you the courage to try something similar.’

She didn’t answer.

He said, ‘You still have time.’

She didn’t answer.

But she looked like she wanted to say something.

The anger built up. He wasn’t all the way gone. He still had some of the intensity that had climbed him up the ranks.

‘What?!’ he said. ‘Spit it out.’

She looked at him with something he’d never seen before.

Contempt.

She said, ‘They told me I had to be here for this. I’m actually glad.’

He stared at her.

A shape appeared in the distance, over her shoulder.

From behind the nearest boulder.

The dark-skinned guy from the loading bay. The one who’d stepped back and watched. It was daylight, hot and arid, but the guy looked even more terrifying than he had a fortnight ago. He wore civilian clothes, but the pistol in his hand spelled it out.

Icke tried to run.

He didn’t even manage to lever his weight off the car.

The guy strode for them. Gloria didn’t turn around. She stared at Icke.

The guy kept walking. He was coming fast. He’d been limping in the warehouse. He wasn’t limping anymore. One ankle was clad in a moon boot, but it didn’t affect him.

Icke pitched forward, leaning all his weight on the cane to get off the car. Pain flared in his shins. In that moment he knew he was weak. He crumpled back against the chassis, giving up.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no, no.’

The guy kept walking.

Gently pushed Gloria aside.

Seized Icke by the throat and pinned him against the car.

Put the barrel against his forehead.

Icke said, ‘I did what you asked. Please.’

His last words.

The man pulled the trigger.

97

Kerr thought she might feel something when the bullet went through Icke’s head.

It certainly shocked her, seeing it up close. A man she’d known for years — nigh on a decade — getting the life snuffed out of him. Brain matter sprayed from the exit wound and coated the tinted window behind his head. He was over