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  Weapon

  Ryan B. Schow

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  WEAPON

  Copyright © 2016 Ryan Schow. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, cloned, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this eBook via the Internet or via any other means without the express written permission of the author or publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents—and their usage for storytelling purposes—are crafted for the singular purpose of fictional entertainment and no absolute truths shall be derived from the information contained within. Locales, businesses, events, government institutions and private institutions are used for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes only. Furthermore, any resemblance or reference to an actual living person is used solely for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Cover Design by Milo at Deranged Doctor Design

  Visit the Author’s Website:

  www.RyanSchow.com

  See Note To Reader at the end of the book for information on upcoming titles as well as a sneak peek at the next book in the series.

  Other Works of Fiction by This Author

  From the Swann Series Novels (In Order)

  VANNIE

  SWANN

  MONARCH

  CLONE

  MASOCHIST

  WEAPON

  RAVEN

  ABOMINATION

  ENIGMA

  This is for my father. In the early years we never really saw eye to eye, but thanks to your constant efforts (and mom’s guidance!), we’ve spent these last decades as solid as a father and son can be. Your support of my many endeavors not only with enthusiasm, but with insight and devotion, has become many layers of bedrock beneath my feet. I love so many things about you, but what I’ve come to cherish most is your unconditional love and support.

  Table of Contents

  The Fourth Dead Thing

  Wet Noodle

  The Slow and Steady Demise of Margaret Van Duyn

  Little Invisible Feet

  The Alien-Faced Blonde

  Cock Sure and Full of Swagger

  Abomination

  The Crazy Russian and the Corpse

  Reanimated

  The Absence of Everything

  Into the Mouths of Sharks

  Awakening

  Ladies and Gentleman, Behold…the Charlatan

  Savannah and the Social Terrorists

  The Raping of Minds

  Brayden and the Russian

  First Class

  Fecal Tossing 101

  The Stink of Inventory

  The Safety of the Abyss

  Virtuous

  Sumptuous Stranger

  Electric Blue

  Slave

  A Primal, Visceral Thing

  The Tearing of the Mind

  The Flames of Lovers Past

  Best Laid Plans

  Brayden Unchained

  Paralayers

  The Failures of Version 2.0

  The Piss of the Dying

  From the Catacombs of Dulce

  Breaking Bread with the Fake Family

  Heart Stopper

  Victoria’s Secret Model: The Zombie Edition

  Blood Pancake with a Side of Bones

  Dead is Better

  The Fog of Lust and Redemption

  Epilogue: Ugly Little Teeth

  Important Note to Reader

  Available Titles in This Series

  Book 6 of the Swann Series Novels: RAVEN

  FREE DOWNLOAD

  THERE’S NOTHING QUITE AS EXCITING AS GOING BACK TO THE BEGINNING…

  Only the fly on the wall and your therapist know your darkest secrets. Today you get to be the fly.

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  “Anymore, no one’s mind is their own. You can’t concentrate. You can’t think. There’s always some noise worming in. Singers shouting. Dead people laughing. Actors crying. All these little doses of emotion. Someone’s always spraying the air with their mood.”

  —CHUCK PALAHNIUK, LULLABY

  The Fourth Dead Thing

  1

  Georgia arrived at Netty’s with Brayden in tow. Night had already fallen over the city. In the artificial light of the apartment hallway, Brayden looked two shades lighter than normal. His bloodshot eyes had that raw look of agony that seemed to go on forever. Even his hands were shaking.

  Standing outside Netty’s front door, using the keys Abby had given her before she died, Georgia and Brayden let themselves in. The apartment was pitch black and a little cool against the huge picture window framing the brilliant San Francisco nightscape. Irenka was out hosting a swingers’ party, and Netty was likely in her bedroom. Brayden went for the couch, folded himself into its overstuffed corner like a beaten child. Georgia struggled to find the words.

  Any words.

  For a second Brayden just laid there, perfectly still, but then those red, defeated eyes shimmered and ran, his trembling body shaking loose one fitful sob after another.

  All the way home from the lab, Georgia had been waiting for that. His breakdown. If she could feel envy for his ability to feel, she would. If she could feel anything, that would be better. It would be something.

  The hall light snapped on; Netty appeared. Rubbing her eyes, she looked at Brayden, listened to him for a moment, then said, “What’s wrong with him? What happened?”

  Georgia’s answer to Netty was a long, expressionless look. She waited for words that weren’t on the way. How was she supposed to tell Netty a thing like this? It’s like she was reaching for something that just wasn’t there.

  “Seriously,” Netty asked, her tone a bit more lively, “what happened?”

  Georgia wanted to be to the point, direct, but something inside told her to take a different tact. To not just blurt it out. Then the words came.

  “Abby’s not coming back.”

  Netty’s body went rigid for a second. She tilted her head against this bad news, thought about it for a second then went completely blank. She was looking at Georgia. Waiting for the punch line. And Brayden? The way he was snorting and choking, then sniffling and half-sobbing, Georgia nodded in his direction, as if his meltdown was proof she wasn’t lying.

  Netty still stared at her, completely expressionless; Georgia didn’t blink. Refused to speak. Her mouth was neither willing nor able to offer up conversation. Not since her transformation.

  She was in deep space, a void she couldn’t escape.

  Netty broke her blank stare, glancing back at the front door, as if Abby would walk through any minute now with a logical explanation. When the door didn’t open, when no one told Netty t
hey were joking, that this was some reality TV prank, the weight of the news closed in on her. Left her grasping at doubt, yet plagued with a million questions.

  “Where is she?” Netty squeaked. Her voice was changing. Clogging up with fear. An already sparkling brilliance of pain shimmered just behind those tired blue eyes.

  “She’s gone,” Georgia repeated, softer this time.

  By the sound of things, Brayden realized he couldn’t still the pain any longer and it was better to just let it out. His tortured noises said everything Georgia was hoping but failing to say.

  Reality was finally setting in.

  Netty’s face drained of color, giving her a ghostly pallor. Emotion filled her face, bent it, took a hold of her, and then stopped. Like she managed to push away the truth, to stall the inevitable. Georgia took Netty’s hand in hers because her brain had an epiphany, and in that instant, she knew that was what people did when delivering shitty news. That and they cried together.

  But she couldn’t cry, which was a problem. She would if she could, but she was fast realizing how flawed her DNA had become.

  How had this happened to her?

  What did Gerhard do?

  The former version of her, the super nurturing non-triplet, she should be on the couch with Brayden, holding him, crying with him. But not now. Since her transformation, she had become a veritable on/off switch with only two emotions: rage and indifference.

  Indifference was her default.

  It was her mind jammed in neutral and not really going anywhere. The only thing that seemed to jumpstart her emotions was rage. And the distance between the two emotions? These middle emotions? They were fleeting, things she felt blowing past her, slippery feelings she couldn’t get her hands around. Fear, curiosity, delight, jealousy, want, love…these were all emotions she no longer had access to. They were here, then gone. Like the words on the end of your tongue you just can’t speak. That memory you can’t seem to drag up when you need it most.

  “She’s gone?” Netty’s barely audible voice asked. “Gone where? Stop being so cryptic and tell me where she’s at!”

  Georgia watched the emotions pour into Netty’s face, catching her eyes with the most incredible shine. Her body was wrought with tension, and splotches of color were now blotting red on those pallid cheeks. Why couldn’t Georgia feel like that? To feel something, Jesus anything, she thought, would be amazing. A God’s honest miracle.

  Finally Georgia said, “She was shot in the head twice, then once in the heart. When I said she’s gone, what I meant to say was she’s dead.”

  Netty jerked her hand free of Georgia’s, then walked across the room, looked at the wall, turned around, looked everywhere and nowhere, almost like she was lost. Her pale skin grew so white the girl looked vampirish. For a moment, Georgia wanted to tell Netty how small she looked against the large picture window overlooking the bay. What would be the point, though?

  “I didn’t intend for it to sound like that,” Georgia said. “So blunt, I mean.”

  Brayden was winding down again. Falling silent with exhaustion. Her back to both Georgia and Brayden, Netty stood perfectly still, lost in the stunning nightscape before her.

  “I don’t like jokes like this,” Netty finally said. She then yanked the Tiffany blue drapes closed, shutting off the outside world. She spun around, her eyes no longer so shiny. They were now obsidian. Impenetrable.

  “This isn’t a joke,” Georgia replied in a tone so unintentionally even it sounded callous.

  Netty glared at Georgia. Georgia didn’t know how to read her. Then, unblinking, Netty said to Georgia, “It’s beautiful, out there in the city. But in here, it’s ugly. I hate all your lies. You should be ashamed of yourself for telling them.”

  Georgia never wavered. Never blinked.

  “I’m not lying.”

  Netty scoffed at the comment, then stomped across the living room. Breezing past Georgia, she said, “When she gets home, tell her to come and see me. I don’t care what time it is.”

  “Tell who?” Georgia asked as Netty was leaving.

  “Abby,” she snapped, loud and tired. When she shut her bedroom door, she didn’t seem to care that it practically shook the walls.

  There was a cogent denial Georgia’s broken brain seemed to understand. Perhaps Netty could be like her: unfeeling. Clearly she could numb herself at will. Georgia, however, had been stripped of such a choice. She couldn’t help wondering, is mine a permanent state?

  If this emptiness persisted, Georgia would never experience emotions like love and sorrow. A broken heart. She would never again feel the want to lose herself in emotion the way the old Georgia had when she learned her mother had cancer, or her brother died. She reflected back on that moment with her brother, and for some reason she thought she smelled Jasmine. But just for a second. She fell into that memory, hoping to extract some emotion from the event that once defined her entire world. If anything, just to prove she was still alive.

  It was summer when he passed, and she was riding her bike with a skinned knee. A line of blood from the road rash trailed like a solitary tear down her shin. She pedaled up to the porch, where her bloody brother was standing. She hadn’t even noticed his smashed up car in the driveway, or the tight speckling of blood drops leading from the car all the way up to the porch. He collapsed the minute she got off her bike. She forgot all about her cut.

  Later she was told by those around her she was screaming for help, and trying to shake him back to life. She had forgotten all that, too. To this day, she only remembered how lovely the flowers had smelled. Perhaps it was jasmine, or the fresh blooms of their Meyer lemon tree. The Meyer’s blossoms smelled the same as jasmine to her in the summer time.

  That was the old Georgia. The Georgia that felt. The Georgia that survived heartbreak with her tears, and a hundred sleepless nights. Death for her was an event she barely survived. Abby was dead now. Dead like her brother. How could she not feel that? How could she feel nothing?

  It’s like her heart had been cast in steel and now her head could do nothing to unclasp the armor. Maybe Netty’s heart had options, she reasoned. But hers didn’t.

  After a moment, she heard the soft, labored sounds of snoring. Brayden. He was slumped over, asleep on the couch, his face still splotchy. He looked so fragile. So wounded. Vulnerable, like a little boy. She didn’t know what to do so she sat on the couch next to him, perfectly still, her head wanting to feel, her heart emoting nothing at all.

  As she waited for sleep to steal her away, she wondered if her emotions would return in the same way that memories sometimes come back to amnesia victims. Would the passing of time create such an effect? She prayed this wasn’t permanent. That one day she would feel…whole again. The voice in her brain, a loveless voice with hostile edges, said, “That was the before girl.” Her former self.

  Now all she felt was a creeping rage reserved for Gerhard. And again she wondered, what did he do to me that I should live like the dead in such an emotional world?

  That’s when the snoring stopped and she realized Brayden was looking up at her. “Don’t you feel anything?” he asked in a voice made ragged by grief.

  If she could recoil from the statement, she would. As it were, she couldn’t even manage to feel offended. Or insulted. How was she supposed to explain this nothingness to Brayden? Would he even understand?

  “She was my friend, too,” Georgia replied.

  Brayden turned away from her, closed his eyes again, and after awhile, the snoring returned. He finally found that deep REM sleep. Georgia laid down beside him, closed her eyes. Every so often, his mouth made whimpering sounds and his body jerked with a tremor, perhaps the unconscious effect his nightmares had upon him. Her body moved against his, exhausted. For a single moment, she wondered which was more consuming, that he felt everything or that she struggled to feel anything.

  2

  Around two o’clock that morning, Netty’s mother, Irenka, unlocked the front
door and walked inside. She looked at Georgia, who had yet to fall asleep. She was just sitting at the table, in the dark.

  “Why are you still up?” she asked.

  “I can’t sleep,” Georgia replied. Then: “Abby died earlier this evening.”

  “What?” Irenka said, stricken. She looked at Brayden, then down the hallway to Netty’s room, then back to Georgia. “Is this…I don’t understand.” She sat down on one of the kitchen chairs next to Georgia and said, “How?”

  “Gunshots to the head and heart.”

  It took a long time for reality to set in. Like mother like daughter.

  “You were friends,” Irenka said, her voice constricted with emotion. She had that barren look in her eyes, that lost look, like if she connected too deeply with the incident, tied it back to the girl who had been staying with them, she would lose herself fully to the grief.

  Georgia replied, “Good friends, I’m told.”

  Irenka said nothing to this strange reply. Still wrapped in her coat, she sunk into the chair and managed to look completely uncomfortable.

  Georgia nudged Brayden awake. He stirred, then rose. Blinking away the sleep, dazed, his eyes puffy, bloodshot and uncertain, he looked around, rubbed his eyes and tried to make sense of everything.

  “It’s time for bed,” Georgia told him. He stood on unsteady legs, looked around like he still had no idea where he was, then followed Georgia to the back room where she and Abby had slept the night before.

  Brayden crawled in bed and was practically asleep by the time she pulled the blankets over him. She slid in beside him, scooted close. He slipped back into a soft, rhythmic breathing pattern, followed later by intermittent thrashing resulting from nightmares. She wrapped her arm around him. Wanted to feel his warmth. Needed that connection.

  He woke once crying, and twice screaming.

  3

  In the morning, Netty shook Georgia awake. She had that look like she’d been bawling all night, like she hadn’t slept a wink and hysteria had her unraveling.