Stress Fracture: Book One in the Dub Walker Series Read online

  My left arm, now supporting us both, quavered. I knew that if I collapsed to a prone position, I would have no leverage and would be finished. Where was T-Tommy?

  I attempted to twist and buck against him, but his strength proved to be too much. The pressure in my head seemed to push my eyes from their sockets. The room spun, and the window above me seemed to twist, flex, and melt. For some odd reason it reminded me of a Dali painting. My arm gave way and I collapsed forward, forehead striking the floor. Supported only by my knees and forehead, I fought to remain conscious.

  “Have a nice death, Dub.” He pulled on the belt.

  I searched for some way out. I needed T-Tommy, I needed the cavalry. I twisted and turned but couldn’t break free. My lungs burned, my vision dimmed, and my forehead and knees screamed for relief.

  Do something.

  I slipped my left hand into my jacket pocket and yanked out the small bottle of Tabasco, spinning the cap off with my thumb. I shook a generous amount into my cupped right hand.

  Brian leaned forward and pressed his lips close to my ear. “Goodbye, asshole.”

  I jerked my left shoulder up, against his chin. He recoiled slightly. I gave another hard twist of my shoulder and managed to turn just enough so that I could slam my right palm into his face. The fiery liquid splashed into his eyes, up his nose.

  Kurtz screamed and leapt to his feet, clawing at his face.

  I rose to all fours, tugged the belt loose, and gulped air. Getting my feet under me, I lunged at him with all the strength I could muster, driving my shoulder into his chest, knocking him backward.

  He staggered, arms flailing, and crashed into the window behind him. The glass shattered and the aluminum frame groaned, then collapsed under the impact of his weight. He toppled through the window, screaming as he fell.

  CHAPTER 74

  FRIDAY 8:32 P.M.

  I STOOD WITH CLAIRE, TWENTY OR SO FEET FROM WHERE Kurtz’s body lay. Dead, he seemed ordinary, not the enraged beast he had been just minutes earlier. Not the monster Hublein had created. I hugged Claire tightly. I never wanted to let her go. A near-death experience will do that to you.

  T-Tommy walked up and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”

  My voice was barely a whisper. “I’m fine. You?”

  “Scratch.”

  “Dub,” Luther said as he approached. “Good work. Claire filled me in on this whole operation. Just when you think you’ve seen everything, something like this happens.”

  “Sounds like you have a couple dozen more Kurtzes to find.”

  “Scotty and the guys are on it. They’re up in Hublein’s office packaging up the remaining files.”

  “What about Pearce?” I asked.

  Luther shook his head. “Didn’t make it.”

  “He was Kurtz’s partner in this.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “The cell phone. Pearce had it. Used it to call nine-one-one. It’s the same phone he used to call me.”

  Luther rubbed his forehead, shook his head. “So Pearce was Kurtz’s controller. The rational voice.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Who exactly was Pearce?” T-Tommy asked.

  I shrugged. “Not sure, but I’d check out a drug company called Danko-Meyer. They were in a serious competition with Spellman to develop a new drug for PTSD. Spellman made the drug Kurtz and the others were taking.”

  “Why do think that?”

  “Got it from an old med school classmate. He’s a researcher up at the NIH now.”

  “A drug competition? Is that worth all this?”

  I nodded. “Billions, Luther. It’s worth billions.”

  Luther shook his head. “Don’t it always come down to money?”

  I looked at T-Tommy. “Let’s go by the hospital and get your ear looked at.”

  “Just a scratch.”

  “Humor me.”

  The Channel 8 truck rolled up. “Time to work,” Claire said.

  “I’ll go over to the ER with T-Tommy,” I said. “Have them drop you there when you’re done.”

  “Will do.”

  “Then you can take me home and put me to bed.”

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.” She slapped my butt.

  CHAPTER 75

  MONDAY 11:32 A.M.

  IT WAS A FUNERAL KIND OF DAY. DRIZZLE FELL FROM A HAMMERED pewter sky and a cool breeze pushed in from the north. Didn’t feel like July.

  Over a hundred HPD and sheriff’s department officers attended Mike Savage’s graveside service in Maple Hill Cemetery. Raincoats covered their uniforms and fat raindrops tapped the umbrellas that sprouted above their heads. Several of the guys who had worked with Mike over the years spoke, including T-Tommy and Luther. And me. Wasn’t easy. Wasn’t nearly enough.

  After the crowd began to head for the shelter of their cars, I stood at the edge of the rectangular pit and stared at the gray-metallic casket. “We got the bastards, buddy. For what it’s worth, we got them.” I walked toward the car where T-Tommy and Claire stood talking beneath an umbrella.

  “You okay?” Claire asked.

  “Been better.” I glanced back toward the grave. Two workers were shoveling dirt into the hole. I looked away. Didn’t want to see that. I looked at T-Tommy. “Anything new?”

  “We’ve located all the other subjects. Except for Robert Swenson. Still a murder warrant out on him.”

  “Kurtz’s tox report? Anything on that yet?” We had couriered samples up to NMS in Pennsylvania Saturday morning. They agreed to rush the work. Helped that they knew what to look for.

  T-Tommy nodded. “They called a couple of hours ago. Right before I headed over here. Kurtz had toxic levels of that drug in his system. Toxicologist said that his blood, liver, and muscle tissues were saturated with it. Said that to reach those levels he must have been given a series of very large doses over several weeks. Maybe longer. Looks like Pearce had been tampering with the dosing and with the lab results. The syringe you guys found at the scene contained a large concentration of the drug and a hefty amount of methamphetamine.”

  “Why would Pearce do that? What was the payoff?”

  “Scotty did some digging into Harold Pearce’s background. Had to use some of my DC sources. Ex-marine intel. Ex-CIA. Lot of wet work. Iraq, Iran, Bosnia, North Africa, even Russia. Didn’t play well with others, though. A handful of reprimands in his file. Punched out a general once. Ended up leaving the military and hooked up with a guy named Lawrence Smithson.”

  “And he is?”

  “CEO of Danko-Meyer.”

  “So this Smithson guy hired Pearce to sabotage his competitor,” I said, more a statement than a question.

  T-Tommy nodded. “Don’t have it all nailed down, but it sure smells that way.”

  Claire shrugged. “Money trumps all.”

  Ain’t it so.

  CHAPTER 76

  MONDAY 2:41 P.M.

  I DON’T KNOW HOW I ENDED UP HERE.

  After Claire and I left Maple Hill, I drove up over the mountain, intending to head home. Instead I drove past my street and back down the hill. I was too restless. Didn’t want to be confined. I felt as if the case had been solved, yet not. As if it had been neatly wrapped, yet a corner had worked loose. As if something inside me needed to get out. To Claire’s credit, she seemed to sense that I needed to be lost inside myself and said nothing, letting me zigzag all over the city.

  I drove north, and then south, and then found myself on I-65 south, toward Birmingham. Then I was at the UAB Medical Center. Where I had spent nearly four hard years. I drove past the buildings and hospital wings that had been my life so many years ago. My entire life. Seemed as though I rarely ventured beyond those walls.

  I drove past the ER. The new one. It had been moved out of the Old Hillman Building, where it had been when I was there, and into the new North Pavilion. The move didn’t change things much, though. The receiving ramp was busy. It was always busy. Like it
had been that night twelve years ago. Now three ambulances sat there, having disgorged the ill and injured.

  I continued farther down Fifth Avenue and turned into a parking lot. The parking lot. The one where Jill had waited for me. The one where someone besides me met her. Took her. I pulled up next to the exact space where my car had sat that night. It was empty.

  I left the engine running and got out of the car. I ignored the light rain and stared at the space. Slicked with rain and oil stains, it looked like a black hole. It looked like a grave.

  “I’m so sorry, Jill.” I sniffed. “I always will be.”

  I stood for a few minutes and then wiped tears from my eyes and got back into the car.

  “Are you okay?” Claire asked.

  “No.” I would never be okay. I pulled from the lot.

  One More Moment

  Check it out! There is a new section on the Medallion Press Web site called “One More Moment.” Have you ever gotten to the end of a book and just been crushed that it’s over? Aching to know if the star-crossed lovers ever got married? Had kids? With this new section of our Web site, you won’t have to wonder anymore! “One More Moment” provides an extension of your favorite book so you can discover what happens after the story.

  medallionpress.com

  In one moment, with no explanation, six billion humans fall unconscious. For three minutes, minds collide with truths hidden beyond the physical realm.

  During those decisive minutes, every conceivable accident transpires. People reawaken to a world that has changed, drastically and horrifically, with decimated populations and gutted social order. And no one seems to remember the truth that has been revealed.

  But Laura remembers—most of it, anyway. Yet even she doesn’t know why all post-Blackout births are mutations, and what is so wrong with some of the survivors.

  ISBN# 978–160542103-2

  Mass Market Paperback/Horror

  US $7.95/CDN $8.95

  AVAILABLE NOW

  Jake Helman, an elite member of the New York Special Homicide Task Force, faces what every cop dreads—an elusive serial killer. While investigating a series of bloodletting sacrifice rituals executed by an ominous perpetrator known as The Cipher, Jake refuses to submit to a drug test and resigns from the police department. Tower International, a controversial genetic engineering company, employs him as their director of security.

  While battling an addiction to cocaine, Jake enters his new high-pressure position in the private sector. What he encounters behind the closed doors of this sinister operation is beyond the realm of human imagination. Too horrible to contemplate, the experimentation is pure madness, the outcome a hell where only pain and terror reside. Nicholas Tower is not the hero flaunted on the cover of Time magazine. Beneath the polished exterior of this frontiersman on the cutting edge of science is a corporate executive surrounded by the creations of his deranged mind.

  As Jake delves deeper into the hidden sphere of this frightening laboratory, his discoveries elicit more than condemnation for unethical practices performed for the good of mankind. Sequestered in rooms veiled in secrecy is the worst crime the world will ever see—the theft of the human soul.

  ISBN# 978-160542072-1

  Mass Market Paperback/Horror

  US $7.95/CDN $8.95

  AVAILABLE NOW

  www.slimeguy.com

  The Road Through Wonderland is Dawn Schiller’s chilling account of the childhood that molded her so perfectly to fall for the seduction of “the king of porn,” John Holmes, and the bizarre twist of fate that brought them together. With painstaking honesty, Dawn uncovers the truth of her relationship with John, her father figure-turned-forbidden lover who hid her away from his porn movie world and welcomed her into his family along with his wife.

  Within these pages, Dawn reveals the perilous road John led her down—from drugs and addiction to beatings, arrests, forced prostitution, and being sold to the drug underworld. Surviving the horrific Wonderland murders, this young innocent entered protective custody, ran from the FBI, endured a heart-wrenching escape from John, and ultimately turned him in to the police.

  This is the true story of one of the most infamous of public figures and a young girl’s struggle to survive unthinkable abuse. Readers will be left shaken but clutching to real hope at the end of this dark journey on The Road Through Wonderland.

  Also check out the movie Wonderland (Lions Gate Entertainment, 2003) for a look into the past of Dawn Schiller and the Wonderland Murders.

  ISBN# 978-160542083-7

  Trade Paperback/Autobiography

  US $15.95/CDN $17.95

  AUGUST 2010

  www.dawn-schiller.com

  Karl Gruber wasn’t an ordinary German clockmaker. And it wasn’t an ordinary night in 1893 when his unique creation, a sweet spirit name Ernst, came into the world. Fashioned of cogs and wheels and nickel, this inanimate object had no beating heart. He ticked … like a clock. Yet somehow Karl gave his fantastic man the gift of life.

  On the amazing pages of a diary, Ernst records the events of his time-keeping existence. With mortal sensitivity, he lives with enthusiasm and passion, feeling, thinking … even loving. This piece of clockwork is alive. Some might call him a piece of work with his shimmering blue eyes. Within his mechanical soul is a sterling personality that far exceeds the average human being.

  Then a dire series of events puts this automated man out of action for over one hundred years, plunging him into a dormant state of despair. He wakes in the twenty-first century, facing a dangerous, unfamiliar civilization. Ernst has a new purpose. He cannot stand by and watch as innocent people are intimidated, endangered, and harmed. The Clockwork Man does not comprehend apathy. Apathy is a human frailty.

  As long as Ernst can rewind, he will live in the shadows of the city, shunning materialistic society and avoiding the capture that threatens to reduce him to a museum-quality piece of machinery. Another urban legend has been born …

  ISBN# 978-160542099-8

  Mass Market Paperback/Science Fiction

  US $7.95/CDN $8.95

  SEPTEMBER 2010

  In every hardened cop’s worst dreams there lurks a nightmare waiting to become reality. Captain Mace has encountered his. When a string of raped and dismembered corpses appears throughout New York, the investigation draws Mace into an interactive plot that plays like a horror movie. Taking the lead role in this chilling story may be the challenge of his career, testing his skills and his stamina, but even a superhero would find the series of terrifying crime scenarios daunting.

  Unlike anything Mace has experienced, every blood-spattered scene filled with body parts and partially eaten human remains looks like an animal’s dining room strewn with rotting leftovers. Only Satanic legends and tales from the dark side of spiritual oblivion resemble the mayhem this beast has created in his frenzy. In the wake of each attack is the haunting premonition of another murdering onslaught.

  As Mace follows this crimson trail of madness, he must accept the inevitable conclusion. Whoever—or whatever—is responsible for this terror does not intend to stop, and it’s up to him to put an end to the chaotic reign of a perpetrator whom, until now, he’s met only in the annals of mythology. The mere mention of the word would send New York into a panic: werewolf.

  ISBN# 978-160542099-8

  Mass Market Paperback/Horror

  US $7.95/CDN $8.95

  JUNE 2010

  www.slimeguy.com

  Fallen angels.

  The last words of a dying man. To the local cops, the words are meaningless. But legendary assassin Cain knows exactly what they mean.

  A hit is in the works.

  And the target is big.

  In 1971, five U.S. soldiers trained as assassins landed in North Vietnam to complete a deadly mission under the watchful eye of Cain, a man feared by the Vietnamese on both sides of the DMZ. Today, joining forces with his old boss General Lucas White, Cain soon learns that Seneca, a former ally,
has been hired to kill the president of the United States and three top leaders in the Middle East.

  Against a ticking clock, Cain must hunt down his former ally. But an even deadlier betrayal could sabotage his mission—and cost him his life.

  From the dark jungles of Vietnam to the midnight shadows of Central Park, Heirs of Cain takes its readers on a thrilling ride they won’t soon forget.

  ISBN# 978-160542102-5

  Mass Market Paperback/Thriller

  US $7.95/CDN $8.95

  MAY 2010

  Arch Stanton has a bad job that’s about to get a hell of a lot worse.

  He’s sixteen, scrawny, and dirt poor. He has an almost supernatural ability with firearms, but it may not be enough to survive the weekend.

  Welcome to Whitewood, California, an isolated small town in northern California, a place full of bad manners and even worse hygiene. Money is tight, jobs are scarce, and bitter rivalries have simmered just under the surface for years.

  Fat Ernst runs the local bar and grill. He’d stomp on his own mother for a chance at easy money, and when he forces Arch to do some truly dirty work, all hell breaks loose.

  Fat Ernst’s customers find themselves being infected by vicious, wormlike parasites and dying in unspeakable agony. As events spiral out of control, decades of hatred boil over into three days of rapidly escalating carnage. Will anyone in this town escape … before they’re eaten alive?

  ISBN# 978-160542101-8

  Mass Market Paperback/Horrible Horror