Epitaph Read online

  He screamed falsetto.

  I walked down the hall in a crouch, and a bullet zinged over my head and buried itself in the ceiling. I kissed the floor, looked left, and saw the shooter in the bathroom; the guy who had held my other arm and laughed every time I got smacked.

  I stuck the Glock in my jeans and reached behind me, unslinging the Mossberg.

  He fired again, missed, and I aimed the shotgun and peppered his face.

  Unlike lead shot, the gray granules didn’t have deep penetrating power. Instead of blowing his head off, they peeled off his lips, cheeks and eyes.

  He ate linoleum, blind and choking on blood.

  Movement behind me. I fell sideways and rolled onto my back. A kid, about thirteen, stood in the hall a few feet away. He wore Latin Kings colors; black to represent death, gold to represent life.

  His hand ended in a pistol.

  I racked the shotgun, aimed low.

  If the kid was old enough to be sexually active, he wasn’t anymore.

  He dropped to his knees, still holding the gun.

  I was on him in two steps, driving a knee into his nose. He went down and out.

  Three more guys burst out of the bedroom.

  Apparently I’d counted wrong.

  Two were young, muscular, brandishing knives. The third was the guy who’d worked me over the night before. The one who’d called me a bald son of a bitch.

  They were on me before I could rack the shotgun again.

  The first one slashed at me with his pig-sticker, and I parried with the barrel of the Mossberg. He jabbed again, slicing me across the knuckles of my right hand.

  I threw the shotgun at his face and went for my Glock.

  He was fast.

  I was faster.

  Bang bang and he was a paycheck for the coroner. I spun left, aimed at the second guy. He was already in midjump, launching himself at me with a battle cry and switchblades in both hands.

  One gun beats two knives.

  He took three in the chest and two in the neck before he dropped.

  The last guy, the guy who’d broken my nose, grabbed my shotgun and dived behind the couch.

  Chck chck. He ejected the shell and racked another into the chamber. I pulled the Glock’s magazine and slammed a fresh one home.

  “Hijo calvo de una perra!”

  Again with the bald son of a bitch taunt. I worked through my hurt feelings and crawled to an end table, tipping it over and getting behind it.

  The shotgun boomed. Had it been loaded with shot, it would have torn through the cheap particleboard and turned me into ground beef. Or ground hijo calvo de una perra. But at that distance, the granules didn’t do much more than make a loud noise.

  The banger apparently didn’t learn from experience, because he tried twice more with similar results, and then the shotgun was empty.

  I stood up from behind the table, my heart a lump in my throat and my hands shaking with adrenaline.

  The King turned and ran.

  His back was an easy target.

  I took a quick look around, making sure everyone was down or out, and then went to retrieve my shotgun. I loaded five more shells and approached the downed leader, who was sucking carpet and whimpering. The wounds in his back were ugly, but he still made a feeble effort to crawl away.

  I bent down, turned him over and shoved the barrel of the Mossberg between his bloody lips.

  “You remember Sunny Lung,” I said, and fired.

  It wasn’t pretty. It also wasn’t fatal. The granules blew out his cheeks and tore into his throat, but somehow the guy managed to keep breathing.

  I gave him one more, jamming the gun farther down the wreck of his face.

  That did the trick.

  The second perp, the one I’d blinded, had passed out on the bathroom floor. His face didn’t look like a face anymore, and blood bubbles were coming out of the hole where his mouth would have been.

  “Sunny Lung sends her regards,” I said.

  This time I pushed the gun in deep, and the first shot did the trick, blowing through his throat.

  The last guy, the one who made like Pavarotti when I took out his knee, left a blood smear from the hall into the kitchen. He cowered in the corner, a dishrag pressed to his leg.

  “Don’t kill me, man! Don’t kill me!”

  “I bet Sunny Lung said the same thing.”

  The Mossberg thundered twice; once to the chest, and once to the head.

  It wasn’t enough. What was left alive gasped for air.

  I removed the bag of granules from my pocket, took out a handful and shoved them down his throat until he stopped breathing.

  Then I went to the bathroom and threw up in the sink.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. Time to go. I washed my hands, and then rinsed off the barrel of the Mossberg, holstering it in my rig.

  In the hallway, the kid I emasculated was clutching himself between the legs, sobbing.

  “There’s always the priesthood,” I told him, and got out of there.

  * * *

  My nose was still clogged, but I managed to get enough coke up there to damper the pain. Before closing time I stopped by the bakery, and Ti greeted me with a somber nod.

  “Saw the news. They said it was a massacre.”

  “Wasn’t pretty.”

  “You did as we said?”

  “I did, Ti. Your daughter got her revenge. She’s the one that killed them. All three.”

  I fished out the bag of granules and handed it to her father. Sunny’s cremated remains.

  “Xie xie,” Ti said, thanking me in Mandarin. He held out an envelope filled with cash.

  He looked uncomfortable, and I had drugs to buy, so I took the money and left without another word.

  An hour later I’d filled my codeine prescription, picked up two bottles of tequila and a skinny hooker with track marks on her arms, and had a party back at my place. I popped and drank and screwed and snorted, trying to blot out the memory of the last two days. And of the last six months.

  That’s when I’d been diagnosed. A week before my wedding day. My gift to my bride-to-be was running away so she wouldn’t have to watch me die of cancer.

  Those Latin Kings this morning, they got off easy. They didn’t see it coming.

  Seeing it coming is so much worse.

  * * * * *

  Author Biography

  J. A. Konrath has sold more than three million books in twenty countries. He’s written twenty-four novels and over a hundred short stories in the mystery, thriller, horror and sci-fi genres, winning multiple awards for his work, including the Love Is Murder Award for best thriller. He lives in Chicago with his wife, a few kids and dogs. Visit him at JAKonrath.com.

  Be prepared to be thrilled as you’ve never been before…

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  Lock the doors, draw the shades, pull up the covers and be prepared for these stories to keep you up all night.

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  ISBN-13: 9781488094392

  Epitaph

  Copyright © 2006 By Joe Konrath

  First published as part of an anthology of works entitled Thriller in 2006.

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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