Stephen King - End of Watch

‘Go on,’ he says. ‘Do it.’

She sits down at the top-of-the-line desktop Mac with its twenty-seven-inch screen, refreshes it, and types in her password – a random collection of numbers. There’s a file simply marked Z, which she opens with another password. The subfiles are marked Z-1 and Z-2. She uses a third password to open Z-2, then begins to rapidly click away at her keyboard. Dr Z stands by her left shoulder. He’s a disturbing negative presence at first, but then she gets lost in what she’s doing, as she always does.

Not that it takes long; Dr Z has given her the program, and executing it is child’s play. To the right of her computer, sitting on a high shelf, is a Motorola signal repeater. When she finishes by simultaneously hitting COMMAND and the Z key, the repeater comes to life. A single word appears in yellow dots: SEARCHING. It blinks like a traffic light at a deserted intersection.

They wait, and Freddi becomes aware that she’s holding her breath. She lets it go in a whoosh, momentarily puffing out her thin cheeks. She starts to get up, and Dr Z puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘Let’s give it a little longer.’

They give it five minutes, the only sound the soft hum of her equipment and the keening of the wind off the frozen lake. SEARCHING blinks on and on.

‘All right,’ he says at last. ‘I knew it was too much to hope for. All things in good time, Freddi. Let’s go back into the other room. I’ll give you your final payment and then be on my wa—’

SEARCHING in yellow suddenly turns to FOUND in green.

‘ There! ’ he shouts, making her jump. ‘There, Freddi! There’s the first one! ’

Her final doubts are swept away and she knows for sure. All it takes is that shout of triumph. It’s Brady, all right. He’s become a living Russian nesting doll, which goes perfectly with his furry Russian hat. Look inside Babineau and there’s Dr Z. Look inside Dr Z, and there, pulling all the levers, is Brady Hartsfield. God knows how it can be, but it is.

FOUND in green is replaced with LOADING in red. After mere seconds, LOADING is replaced with TASK COMPLETE. After that, the repeater begins to search again.

‘All right,’ he says, ‘I’m satisfied. Time for me to go. It’s been a busy night, and I’m not done yet.’

She follows him into the main room, shutting the door to her electronic hideaway behind her. She has come to a decision that’s probably long overdue. As soon as he’s gone, she’s going to kill the repeater and delete the final program. Once that’s done, she’ll pack a suitcase and go to a motel. Tomorrow she’s getting the fuck out of this city and heading south to Florida. She’s had it with Dr Z, and his Z-Boy sidekick, and winter in the Midwest.

Dr Z puts on his coat, but drifts to the window instead of going to the door. ‘Not much of a view. Too many highrises in the way.’

‘Yeah, it sucks the big one.’

‘Still, it’s better than mine,’ he says, not turning. ‘All I’ve had to look at for the last five and a half years is a parking garage.’

Suddenly she’s at her limit. If he’s still in the same room with her sixty seconds from now, she’ll go into hysterics. ‘Give me my money. Give it to me and then get the fuck out. We’re done.’

He turns. In his hand is the short-barreled pistol he used on Babineau’s wife. ‘You’re right, Freddi. We are.’

She reacts instantly, knocking the pistol from his hand, kicking him in the groin, karate-chopping him like Lucy Liu when he doubles over, and running out the door while screaming her head off. This mental film-clip plays out in full color and Dolby sound as she stands rooted to the spot. The gun goes bang. She staggers back two steps, collides with the easy chair where she sits to watch TV, collapses across it, and rolls to the floor, coming down headfirst. The world begins to darken and draw away. Her last sensation is warmth above as she begins to bleed and below as her bladder lets loose.

‘Final payment, as promised.’ The words come from a great distance.

Blackness swallows the world. Freddi falls into it and is gone.

Brady stands perfectly still, watching the blood seep from beneath her. He’s listening for someone to pound on her door, wanting to know if everything is all right. He doesn’t expect that will happen, but better safe than sorry.

After ninety seconds or so, he puts the gun back in his overcoat pocket, next to his Zappit. He can’t resist one more look into the computer room before leaving. The signal repeater continues its endless, automated search. He has, against all odds, completed an amazing journey. What the final results will be is impossible to predict, but that there will be some result he is certain. And it will eat into the old Det-Ret like acid. Revenge really is best when eaten cold.

He has the elevator to himself going down. The lobby is similarly empty. He walks around the corner, turning up the collar of Babineau’s expensive overcoat against the wind, and tweets the locks of Babineau’s Beemer. He gets in and starts it up, but only for the heater. Something needs doing before he moves on to his next destination. He doesn’t really want to do it, because, whatever his failings as a human being, Babineau has a gorgeously intelligent mind, and a great deal of it is still intact. Destroying that mind is too much like those dumb and superstitious ISIS fucks hammering irreplaceable treasures of art and culture to rubble. Yet it must be done. No risks can be allowed, because the body is also a treasure. Yes, Babineau has slightly high blood pressure and his hearing has gone downhill in the last few years, but tennis and twice-weekly trips to the hospital gym have kept his muscles in fairly good shape. His heart ticks along at seventy beats a minute, with no misses. He’s not suffering from sciatica, gout, cataracts, or any of the other outrages that affect many men at his age.

Besides, the good doctor is what he’s got, at least for now.

With that in mind, Brady turns inward and finds what remains of Felix Babineau’s core consciousness – the brain within the brain. It has been scarred and ravaged and diminished by Brady’s repeated occupancies, but it is still there, still Babineau, still capable (theoretically at least) of taking back control. It is, however, defenseless, like some armored creature stripped of its shell. It’s not exactly flesh; Babineau’s core self is more like densely packed wires made of light.

Not without regret, Brady seizes them with his phantom hand and tears them apart.

Hodges spends the evening slowly eating his yogurt and watching the Weather Channel. The winter storm, ridiculously dubbed Eugenie by the Weather Channel wonks, is still coming and is expected to hit the city sometime late tomorrow.

‘Hard to be more exact as of now,’ the balding, bespectacled wonk says to the knockout blond wonk in the red dress. ‘This one gives new meaning to the term stop-and-go traffic.’

The knockout wonk laughs as if her partner in meteorology has said something outrageously witty, and Hodges uses the remote to turn them off.

The zapper, he thinks, looking at it. That’s what everyone calls these things. Quite the invention, when you stop to think of it. You can access hundreds of different channels by remote control. Never even have to get up. As if you’re inside the television instead of in your chair. Or in both places at the same time. Sort of a miracle, really.

As he goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth, his cell phone buzzes. He looks at the screen and has to laugh, even though it hurts to do it. Now that he’s in the privacy of his own home, with nobody to be bothered by the home run text alert, his old partner calls instead.