Fiction River: Pulse Pounders

Copyright Information

Fiction River: Pulse Pounders

Copyright © 2015 by WMG Publishing

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright © 2015 by WMG Publishing

Editing and other written material copyright © 2015 by Wordfire, Inc.

Cover art copyright © Maxborovkov/Dreamstime

Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

Foreword: Starts with a Bang copyright © 2015 by Dean Wesley Smith

Introduction: Strap Yourself In and Hold On copyright © 2015 by Kevin J. Anderson

The Chair copyright © 2015 by JC Andrijeski

Change of Mind copyright © 2015 by Wordfire, Inc. & Peter J. Wacks

A Man of His Times copyright © 2015 by Patrick O’Sullivan

Tower One copyright © 2015 by Thomas K. Carpenter

Big and Shady copyright © 2015 by David Farland

Daisy Wong: The Hell of the Unprepared Sinners copyright © 2015 by Jamie McNabb

The Yellow Coat copyright © 2015 by Herbert Properties LLC

Fraternization copyright © 2015 by Ron Collins

Frostburnt copyright © 2015 by Brigid Collins

The Scent of Amber and Vanilla copyright © 2015 by Dayle A. Dermatis

The Mer copyright © 2015 by Phaedra Weldon

Sole Survivor copyright © 2015 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Three Strikes copyright © 2015 by Chuck Heintzelman

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Contents

Foreword: Starts with a Bang

Dean Wesley Smith

Introduction: Strap Yourself In and Hold On

Kevin J. Anderson

The Chair

JC Andrijeski

Change of Mind

Kevin J. Anderson & Peter J. Wacks

A Man of His Times

Patrick O’Sullivan

Tower One

Thomas K. Carpenter

Big and Shady

David Farland

Daisy Wong: The Hell of the Unprepared Sinners

Jamie McNabb

The Yellow Coat

Frank Herbert

Fraternization

Ron Collins

Frostburnt

Brigid Collins

The Scent of Amber and Vanilla

Dayle A. Dermatis

The Mer

Phaedra Weldon

Sole Survivor

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Three Strikes

Chuck Heintzelman

Acknowledgements

About the Editor

Copyright Information

Foreword

Starts with a Bang

Dean Wesley Smith

The editor of this great volume in the ongoing Fiction River anthology series, Kevin J. Anderson, told writers he wanted the stories he would buy to start with a bang, have a lot of bangs in the middle, and then end with an even bigger bang.

And these stories do just that, and even more. Much more in many cases.

When it comes to writing, Kevin knows what he’s talking about, and knows how to create pulse-pounding stories himself. As a writer, he’s been on the New York Times bestsellers list more than most writers could ever dream about. And he has been the lead writer, the main person in many ongoing major worlds at one point or another in his career.

For example, he was the go-to writer for Star Wars books and comics for numbers of years. That’s a series that certainly packs a punch. Then he ended up writing with Brian Herbert, continuing one of the great science fiction universes of all time in Dune.

In fact, he managed to convince the Frank Herbert estate to let him publish an unpublished Frank Herbert story in this volume. And the story fits and is wonderful. What a fantastic treat.

Even though Kevin is a bestselling writer, he’s also a great editor, a skill most people don’t realize he has because his writing overshadows his editing in so many ways. Over the years he’s edited dozens of books, including three Star Wars anthologies, the bestselling science fiction anthologies of all time.

These wonderful stories in this anthology came together in a rather unique fashion. About fifty major professional writers met in a large banquet room on the Oregon Coast. They had all written stories ahead for different Fiction River projects, one of which was this project.

Then, as everyone watched, the six editors doing projects talked about each story for each project, with the volume editor, in this case, Kevin, having the final say. At the end of the day he had far, far too many stories he loved and wanted to buy, so we all got to watch him weed his list of stories down, matching stories with other stories, fitting together the puzzle you hold in your hand.

A unique and amazing way to find fantastic stories.

Fiction River set out from its start to be a series of anthologies that had no borders or genre restrictions. Our only requirement was good stories, told well. Kevin had the same goal with this volume. He wanted great stories told well, that started with a bang and ended with a bang. He didn’t care if they were in a certain genre or not. The key for Kevin was the experience of reading the story.

That’s the key for all readers as well. The experience of reading these stories.

One of the major things that gives Fiction River a unique voice is the guest editors. Kristine Kathryn Rusch and I watch over the quality, but we always let the editors have free reign to create the best volume they can create.

And that uniqueness of Fiction River, the various editorial voices, is what will keep Fiction River fresh and different off into even more years.

And with this volume, we are over halfway through with our full second year and looking into the future. More guest editors, more quality unique fiction.

So I hope you enjoy this fantastic new edition in the Fiction River anthology series. You hold a book full of great, pulse-pounding stories (including an original Frank Herbert) put together by one of the best writers and editors of our time.

Enjoy.

—Dean Wesley Smith

Lincoln City, Oregon

May 20, 2014

Introduction

Strap Yourself In and Hold On

Kevin J. Anderson

We’re not wasting any time here.

Typically, a reader will sit back in a comfortable chair with a good book to enjoy the writing, experience the adventure, get to know the characters. This book delivers all that—but you’d better fasten your seatbelt, too.

A pulse pounder is a story that plunges you eyeballs-first into the action; a bungee jump to the heart of the plot, rather than a slow relaxing stroll.

Brace yourself. This isn’t chic lit with long leisurely chapters of subtle character development, everyday life, social interaction, mundane telephone conversations, with eventually maybe, maybe, something happening (or is it just a dream?).

These aren’t creative writing class stories, where characters express their angst at great length, usually about a flawed or strained relationship breaking up, with a climactic conversation over the breakfast dishes. The end.

No, pulse pounders are stories that (often literally) start with a bang. If you’re not engulfed in the tale by the bottom of page one, then the pulse pounder has failed. This poses an added challenge to the writer, like a mixed martial arts match: He or she has to get you completely involved in the characters and make you care for them, while building the world and explaining the situation—usually a crisis—in a paragraph or two. No time to waste. You have to understand the people, the set-up and the problem, all while you’re in the midst of the action. That takes a very special skill.

And these guys have that special skill.

Pulse Pounders contains a variety of genres, from straightforward mainstream thrillers, such as J.C. Andrijeski’s The Chair, Dayle A. Dermatis’s The Scent of Amber and Vanilla, and David Farland’s Big and Shady, a tale of an American screenwriter caught up in a Chinese Mafia effort at filmmaking—a story that is, sadly, far too true to Dave’s personal experiences.

We have time-travel thrillers, such as Chuck Heintzelman’s Three Strikes and Thomas K. Carpenter’s Tower One, and near-future high-tech SF in Ron Collins’s Fraternization, as well as far-future hard science fiction in Jamie McNabb’s Daisy Wong: The Hell of the Unprepared Sinners, Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Sole Survivor, and my own, Change of Mind, written with Peter J. Wacks. We have Phaedra Weldon’s urban fantasy The Mer, and the delightful fantasy, Frostburnt, by Brigid Collins, a story I enjoyed so much that even though it wasn’t written for my anthology, I stole it from a different one. And there’s flat-out pulp adventure, in Patrick O’Sullivan’s A Man of His Times.

And a special treat, a previously unpublished thriller written by grandmaster Frank Herbert, author of Dune. While I was editing a collection of Herbert’s unpublished short stories, which I’ll publish through WordFire Press, I came upon The Yellow Coat, a tense story about a bank robbery gone wrong and the robbers’ desperate flight through the wilderness—it seemed like a perfect pulse pounder. When I mentioned the story to Fiction River series editors Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, they insisted that I include it here.

Now, take a breath, turn the page, and let your pulse start pounding.

—Kevin J. Anderson

Monument, Colorado

May 15, 2014

Introduction to The Chair

As soon as I read this story, I knew I wanted to buy it for Pulse Pounders. Very soon after that, I knew I wanted to lead off the anthology with it.

The Chair is a perfect pulse pounder: It starts out immediately with a compelling situation, and the peril ratchets up line by line, without a wasted word. Not even a wasted comma. The author wrote, I’ve had this image in my head for a while, of a woman alone in a room, bleeding to death, and no one to help her. And that’s where it starts.

JC Andrijeski writes new adult urban fantasy (Allie’s War), dystopian (Alien Apocalypse), paranormal romance and crime fiction, such as the Gate Shifter series, about a shape-shifting alien and a tough-girl PI and a crime series featuring quirky, brilliant and deeply dangerous hero, Quentin Black. In addition to fiction, she writes nonfiction essays and articles and children's fiction.

The Chair

JC Andrijeski

Devon fights...

She fights at first just to be there. Just to...

Keep her eyes open.

If she closes them...

Well, if she closes them for too long, she’ll die.

That should motivate you, Devon...

One of them doesn’t really open, though. Not anymore.

She can hear it.

A steady drip, drip, drip under the bolted down chair where she sits.

She’s...tied. Tied up...

Ankles handcuffed to the front legs. Wrists handcuffed behind her, the chain wrapped through the metal back support of a heavy chair with no padding. She hears the sound, like a light, tapping hammer against her skull.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Each drop hits more liquid.

More liquid every minute.

...a growing pool. It lays below her, mostly under her seat where it drips down from her sliced thigh and the larger gash in her abdomen. It’s already soaked through her black pants. She doesn’t look at the pool...

She doesn’t look at it.

Her elbows touch behind her, trembling.

Well, shaking maybe.

Shock. She must be in shock. The body kind of shock. Some part of her wants to fight or flight...at least until she collapses in front of the sliding glass doors of an emergency room.

They left her here.

Bastards just left. Didn’t even bother to finish her off.

Devon’s eyes drift up, to a metal shop light hanging on a long, half-chewed wire from the ceiling. The ceiling lays high above. Cross-beams with rivets, a broken catwalk. Corrugated tin roof with holes and sheet-metal walls. Cement floor. The expanse and size of it are clear to her suddenly, even in the dark...even with only one eye. It’s a modern-day cavern. An empty, rusted-out ruin.

Warehouse.

Jeez...cliché, much?

The smile doesn’t linger on her swollen lips.

Where, though? Where is she? Should she try yelling? Is it worth it, spending time and energy trying to get the gag off to yell?

She doesn’t have a lot of time. Has to choose wisely.

The warehouse is empty...vast.

She hears doves somewhere. Pigeons? They fuss and coo and rustle feathers against metal and more feathers. The sound comes from up high, echoing down to her. She imagines she sees them, huddled next to framed, dirty, dust-covered windows. Shafts of broken sunlight slant down, illuminating dancing dust motes. None of that light touches her.

It’s quiet. Really damned quiet.

No cars. No voices. No footsteps to echo.

Would anyone hear her, if she yelled?

Probably not, she decides.

Why would they have left her here, alive? She tries to think about this, to make sense of it, then realizes the answer is simple. She doesn’t matter. She is nothing to them. It amused him to leave her alive, so he did.

She’s probably not in the city at all, not anymore.

Her mind finds and scuttles other possibilities. She wastes more time, trying to remember the ride out here, in case she gets a chance to report in. How many of them took her. What they looked like. She didn’t see shit on the drive here, or as they dragged her inside. She tripped a few times. On metal edges, steps, maybe. She didn’t see anything that could help her now.

She’d been terrified.

They whipped the bag off her face...

Nothing but the hanging light, those tools, rough hands...

Screaming.

It went on for a long time.

Questions. She won’t remember those, either.

...she tried to listen. Before that. She tried to...

She hadn’t been trained for this. No one told her this might happen.

First job. Big deal first job, working for the president.

Just a noob. A rook.

A red shirt.

She tries to make a report. To herself. A report on what happened...

...three men forced a black bag over my head at approximately 7:15 am. I’d just reached the edge of the perimeter on our secondary check, at the southeast corner of the UN building on East 42nd and 1st. I was overpowered, drugged, then blindfolded with a bag before being marched down the emergency stairwell I’d been patrolling. They took me outside the building through a lower access door, where I was almost immediately shoved in the back of an unmarked van...

Well. Her mind said unmarked van.

She remembers a sliding door, the grating sound before it slammed shut with a muffled bang and the snick of a lock. In the movies it’s always an unmarked van...but it could have been some suburban minivan, for all Devon knew.

Maybe with a My Kid is an Honor Roll Student bumper sticker...

Distraction. She doesn’t have time for distraction.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

She doesn’t know much about the human body, but she knows it needs blood.

Hers is running out. Too fast.

No one is coming.

They’d cut her...

Christ. How did this happen?

Wrong place, wrong time.

...but she can’t think about that anymore, either.

Her one good eye scours the space again.

Heavy wooden table. Dirty, covered in tools.

Devon doesn’t want to look at those tools, given that most are covered in her blood. She makes herself stare at them anyway. Some are sharp, sure...most are sharp, rusted, like a horror movie or something from the Tower of London. A few blunter things. She can’t say for sure, but doesn’t think any of them would help her get out of the chair. Not with no hands. Not fast enough.

A spark ignites somewhere in her mind.

Keys.

He’d snorted, staring at her with those hard, slate-like eyes.

He’d been finished. Worked up a sweat. Probably a calorie deficit day for him. Like going to the gym.

Orange-tinged blond hair sweated to his forehead and neck. Face, neck and upper body speckled with small and large red dots, larger patches of the same fluid on the sleeves of his blue t-shirt and his hands. He made a show of wiping those thick, hairy hands on a dirty rag before he left.

She’d already been counting down the minutes.

Maybe he had been, too.

Or maybe the clock had already stopped, from his perspective.

He’d left the keys.

Well...sort of. He’d thrown them across the empty warehouse.

He did that casually, too, tossing them in a high arc, like tossing a bottle opener to a friend at a party.

They went far, though.

Devon heard them land. She hears it again now, a distant thunk in her head as she fights to remember. She hears them skitter across the cement a few feet...or maybe a few yards...like a distant replay.

That bastard grinned at her after he did it. Teeth yellow from smoking. Face broken with a darker scruff than that pale blond hair. Between that and his darker roots, he must have bleached his hair, come to think of it.

Distraction.

He threw the keys...that was right before he left.

She thinks she remembers the direction. She thinks...

Devon bites down on her lip. Hard.

The pain forces her eyes (eye?) open once more.

It brings her mind briefly, sharply, back into focus.

You’re not going to just sit here and die, Devon.

You’re not going to play some stupid wait-and-see denial game...like some fatalistic ass, waiting for angelic intervention...

That time, she doesn’t think.

She starts to rock the chair.

She starts to rock it for all she’s worth.

***

It’s difficult at first.

Side to side. Baby steps.

Then wider swings.

The legs teeter a few times, chunk down. Make her flinch.

It takes a few, good seconds to get her rhythm down...

Then it’s a little scary. The chair starts to sway for real. Those legs chunk down harder. Land less steadily.

Some part of her still winces back.

Some part of her doesn’t want more pain.

Death, Devon.

Death is worse than a little pain, damn it...

...she makes herself do it, anyway.

When that final rock tips her over the edge, she’s startled. Like some part of her still doesn’t see it coming.

Her body tries to catch it in reflex…

It can’t.

She lands, hard, exhales in a pain-filled grunt.

Moaning, she gasps. Winded. She lays on her side, panting, wasting oxygen, moaning, feeling like she just wants to die. She’s sure she’s broken her arm. It feels like she just hit it with a hammer.

She did, more or less. On purpose.

It feels like an eternity of time she’s wasted.

She can see it now, though. She’s half-laying in it.

That pool of blood. It’s big.

Scary big.

It motivates her.

She starts to writhe inside the bindings of the chair. She tried to pull the chair with her, across the cement floor.

On her side, she can move her body, like a snake. It hurts her abdomen. It hurts enough to distract her from her throbbing leg, from her arm. She can even move the arm under her, but it hurts like hell.

All of it hurts like...well, it hurts a heck of a lot.

More than anything she cares to remember.

She does it anyway.

She’s going to get across the floor. No matter what.

If they find her dead, she won’t just be sitting in a chair.

She won’t just be sitting over a pool of her own blood.

***

At first, she thinks she’s not getting anywhere.

It’s slow. Really slow.

She looks back though, when she has to rest. She sees a smear of blood, coming mostly off of that cut he made in her leg. A lot probably off that hole in her abdomen, too.

She looks forward again, moving.

Writhing. Gasping.

Nothing ever hurt so much.

She’s tired.

She doesn’t want to think about being tired.

She doesn’t want to think about what it might mean.

She’s really damned tired, though.

She fights to see through the one eye. It’s fogged a bit now, not really working right. She blinks, fighting to clear it. It works, but not really.

She can’t get tired.

She can’t...

The first time she snaps out, she realizes she’s been lying there. She doesn’t know how long. Dozing…

Time for a nap, Devon? Really?

...but it scares the shit out of her.

She’s fading. She has to hurry.

She writhes faster across the cement floor, groaning a little from the wounds that have stiffened just enough to remind her she’s been lying there.

She makes it a few more feet.

A few more.

She’ll stop, just for a second.

Needs to rest.

Needs to...

***

Hey! Hey, lady!

Devon’s head lolls on her neck.

The ground hurts. Something sharp there. Glass?

A nail.

Light in her face.

Really bright.

It’s dark in here. Really dark.

She’s still tied to the chair.

Whatcha doin’ down there, lady?

The voice slurs, then laughs. The laugh echoes, a hollow pinging against the metal insides of the cavernous space.

Devon blinks up, unable to shield her eyes from that light. Her wrists are still cuffed to the back of the chair.

She’s still tied to the chair.

Panic fills her.

A memory of that drip, drip, drip...

She fights to speak. Help, she whispers.

Lady, you’re bleeding a lot. Damn. A lot...that’s really fucked up...

Help me... she whispers. Please...help me...

She fights to move. Maybe to plead with him.

Maybe just to show him she can’t.

Hey, he says. What you doing in here, lady? What happened to you?

She has the absurd desire to laugh.

Then to scream at him.

He laughs again, maybe at the look on her face.

Devon feels sick, dizzy. Is this real? Is someone really here? Is she dead? Dreaming on a gurney in