Stephen King - End of Watch

‘Boy, that’s sad,’ the male anchor opined at the end of the story. ‘So sad.’

‘It sure is, Ken,’ Betty said. Then the screen behind them flashed a picture showing a bunch of idiots in wedding clothes standing in a swimming pool, and her sad face clicked off and the happy one came back on. ‘But this should cheer you up – twenty couples decided to get married in a swimming pool in Cleveland, where it’s only twenty degrees !’

‘I hope they had a hunka-hunka burning love,’ Ken said, showing his perfectly capped teeth in a grin. ‘ Brrrr! Here’s Patty Newfield with the details.’

How many more could I get? Brady wondered. He was on fire. I’ve got nine augmented Zappits, plus the two my drones have and the one in my drawer. Who says I have to be done with those job-hunting assholes?

Who says I can’t run up the score?

Brady continued to keep track of Zappit, Inc. during his fallow period, sending Z-Boy to check the Google alert once or twice weekly. The chatter about the hypnotic effect of the Fishin’ Hole screen (and the lesser effect of the Whistling Birds demo) died down and was replaced by speculation about just when the company would go under – it was no longer a matter of if. When Sunrise Solutions bought Zappit out, a blogger who called himself Electric Whirlwind wrote, ‘Wow! This is like a couple of cancer patients with six weeks to live deciding to elope.’

Babineau’s shadow personality was now well established, and it was Dr Z who began to research the survivors of the City Center Massacre on Brady’s behalf, making a list of the ones most badly injured, and thus most vulnerable to suicidal thoughts. A couple of them, like Daniel Starr and Judith Loma, were still wheelchair-bound. Loma might get out of hers; Starr, never. Then there was Martine Stover, paralyzed from the neck down and living with her mother over in Ridgedale.

I’d be doing them a favor, Brady thought. Really I would.

He decided Stover’s mommy would make a good start. His first idea was to have Z-Boy mail her a Zappit (‘A Free Gift for You!’), but how could he be sure she wouldn’t just throw it away? He only had nine, and didn’t want to risk wasting one. Juicing them up had cost him (well, Babineau) quite a lot of money. It might be better to send Babineau on a personal mission. In one of his tailored suits, set off by a sober dark tie, he looked a lot more trustworthy than Z-Boy in his rumpled green Dickies, and he was the sort of older guy that chicks like Stover’s mother had a tendency to dig. All Brady had to do was work up a believable story. Something about test marketing, maybe? Possibly a book club? A prize competition?

He was still sifting scenarios – there was no hurry – when his Google alert announced an expected death: Sunrise Solutions had gone bye-bye. This was in early April. A trustee had been appointed to sell off the assets, and a list of so-called ‘real goods’ would soon appear in the usual sell-sites. For those who couldn’t wait, a list of all Sunrise Solutions’ unsaleable crapola could be found in the bankruptcy filing. Brady thought this was interesting, but not interesting enough to have Dr Z look up the list of assets. There were probably crates of Zappits among them, but he had nine of his own, and surely that would be enough to play with.

A month later he changed his mind about that.

One of News at Noon ’s most popular features was called ‘Just A Word From Jack.’ Jack O’Malley was a fat old dinosaur who had probably started in the biz when TV was still black-and-white, and he bumbled on for five minutes or so at the end of every newscast about whatever was on what remained of his mind. He wore huge black-rimmed glasses, and his jowls quivered like Jell-O when he talked. Ordinarily Brady found him quite entertaining, a bit of comic relief, but there was nothing amusing about that day’s Word From Jack. It opened whole new vistas.

‘The families of Krista Countryman and Keith Frias have been flooded with condolences as a result of a story this station ran not long ago,’ Jack said in his grouchy Andy Rooney voice. ‘Their decision to terminate their lives when they could no longer live with unending and unmitigated pain has reignited the debate on the ethics of suicide. It also reminded us – unfortunately – of the coward who caused that unending, unmitigated pain, a monster named Brady Wilson Hartsfield.’

That’s me, Brady thought happily. When they even give your middle name, you know you’re an authentic boogeyman.

‘If there is a life after this one,’ Jack said (out-of-control Andy Rooney brows drawing together, jowls flapping), ‘Brady Wilson Hartsfield will pay the full price for his crimes when he gets there. In the meantime, let us consider the silver lining in this dark cloud of woe, because there really is one.

‘A year after his cowardly killing spree at City Center, Brady Wilson Hartsfield attempted an even more heinous crime. He smuggled a large quantity of plastic explosive into a concert at Mingo Auditorium, with the intent to murder thousands of teens who were there to have a good time. In this he was thwarted by retired detective William Hodges and a brave woman named Holly Gibney, who smashed the homicidal loser’s skull before he could detonate…’

Here Brady lost the thread. Some woman named Holly Gibney had been the one to smash him in the head and almost kill him? Who the fuck was Holly Gibney? And why had no one ever told him this in the five years since she’d turned his lights out and landed him in this room? How was that possible?

Very easily, he decided. When the coverage was fresh, he’d been in a coma. Later on, he thought, I just assumed it was either Hodges or his nigger lawnboy.

He would look Gibney up on the Web when he got a chance, but she wasn’t the important thing. She was part of the past. The future was a splendid idea that had come to him as his best inventions always had: whole and complete, needing only a few modifications along the way to make it perfect.

He powered up his Zappit, found Z-Boy (currently handing out magazines to patients waiting in OB/GYN), and sent him to the library computer. Once he was seated in front of the screen, Brady shoved him out of the driver’s seat and took control, hunched over and squinting at the monitor with Al Brooks’s nearsighted eyes. On a website called Bankruptcy Assets 2015, he found the list of all the stuff Sunrise Solutions had left behind. There was junk from a dozen different companies, listed alphabetically. Zappit was the last, but as far as Brady was concerned, far from least. Heading the list of their assets was 45,872 (Zappit Commanders, suggested retail price $189.99. They were being sold in lots of four hundred, eight hundred, and one thousand. Below, in red, was the caveat that part of the shipment was defective, ‘but most are in perfect working condition.’

Brady’s excitement had Library Al’s old heart laboring. His hands left the keyboard and curled into fists. Getting more of the City Center survivors to commit suicide paled in comparison to the grand idea that now possessed him: finishing what he had tried to do that night at the Mingo. He could see himself writing to Hodges from beneath the Blue Umbrella: You think you stopped me? Think again .

How wonderful that would be!

He was pretty sure Babineau had more than enough money to buy a Zappit console for everyone who had been there that night, but since Brady would have to handle his targets one at a time, it wouldn’t do to go overboard.

He had Z-Boy bring Babineau to him. Babineau didn’t want to come. He was afraid of Brady now, which Brady found delicious.

‘You’re going to be buying some goods,’ Brady said.

‘Buying some goods.’ Docile. No longer afraid. Babineau had entered Room 217, but it was now Dr Z standing slump-shouldered in front of Brady’s chair.