Risen Read online

  Risen

  by

  Jan Strnad

  Kindle Edition

  Risen and the Risen short stories are copyright © 2010 by Jan S. Strnad. All rights reserved.

  Risen was previously published by Pinnacle Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp., under the pseudonym J. Knight. The novel and short stories have been revised for the current edition.

  Web page: www.atombrain.com

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This digital edition of Risen is provided without copy protection (DRM) because DRM limits the buyer's ability to make back-up copies and to read the book on a variety of devices. The author does not believe in selling a book "crippled" by DRM. If you believe in supporting living authors, please do not give copies of this book away. If you have received this book for free, please consider purchasing more of the author's work. After all, he has a three-legged dog to feed.

  About the Author

  Jan Strnad has spent most of his life sitting in a small room writing stories. It's what he did in his home town of Wichita, Kansas, and it's what he did after he moved to Los Angeles with his wife Julie.

  He's written comic books, cartoons, screenplays and teleplays. He's worked for Disney and Fox and MGM and Universal and a number of other studios. Risen is his second novel.

  Here are answers to the questions everybody asks:

  "Jan" as in "Jan and Dean" (not "Yahn"). His parents named him after the comedian Jan Murray.

  "Struh-NOD."

  It's Czech.

  Prologue

  The murdered man's body floated near the bottom of the Cooves County Reservoir.

  A twelve-foot length of rusted chain pinned his arms to his sides, bound his wrists, ran down between his legs and looped twice around his ankles. From there it plunged straight down another four feet where the last link clung to a metal pole sunk ten inches into a ragged block of concrete.

  The few hairs on his nearly bald head waved like seaweed on currents stirred up by lazy catfish. Mud swirled around his face. Turtles nibbled his fingertips.

  The murdered man woke. His eyes flashed open, alive with comprehension and fear. He strained to free his arms, kicked and wiggled and squirmed. His body thrashed convulsively.

  He wrenched at the chains around his ankles and wrists. He twisted his body one way and the other, fighting the impulse to scream. Panic rose in his throat.

  When he could hold it no longer, the murdered man's breath exploded from his mouth. His terrified eyes followed the ascent of bubbles as they fled to the surface. His lungs drew in fish-soiled water. He gagged. His heaving chest pumped water with great spasmodic gulps.

  He pulled at the chain, testing for the one weak link that would let his body follow his breath to freedom. The metal post rocked like a child's lead-bottomed toy, but the concrete block refused to budge from the lake floor. The chains held fast.

  Bubbles exploded on the surface of the lake, shattering the sliver of crescent moon reflected on the surface. The water boiled for long moments. Ripples chased each other toward the shore.

  Below, the murdered man's body went limp, its drama spent. It undulated in the dying eddies of his struggle. Mud began the tedious process of settling around the concrete block while agitated fish resumed their rounds.

  Above, the last bubble broke on the surface. The ripples died, the moon assembled its scattered parts, and the water lay smooth as a sheet.

  Day One, Friday

  One

  From his desk at the Cooves County Times, Brant Kettering could keep tabs on most of downtown Anderson.

  The tiny office was one of two dozen storefronts located along Main Street. There was a hardware store, a movie house that charged two dollars a seat and was open only on Friday and Saturday nights, an insurance office, a grocery, the Sheriff's office...the usual assortment of Mom and Pop businesses that had served Anderson for the past fifty years. The only concession to modern times was the video rental store that had been opened by the owner of the movie house whose philosophy was, if television was going to drive him out of business, he'd as soon drive himself.

  Parking was head-in and meterless. The streets were wide and lined with mature oaks. The tiny park that made up the town square boasted eight park benches, four trash cans, and a civil war cannon set in place by the local Optimists.

  The cannon was aimed directly at Brant's head, a fact that seemed especially profound every Friday around noon when he knew he should have this week's Cooves County Times written and laid out on the Mac. Sloan Malone, the local printer, needed the layouts before lunch if Brant wanted his papers for Saturday distribution. The only way Brant could get a reasonable price on five thousand copies was if Sloan piggybacked Brant's print run with three other regional weeklies. Missing the deadline meant losing money on this week's edition rather than more or less breaking even after paying himself a modest salary as reporter, editor, photographer, typesetter, manager of distribution and executive in charge of advertising sales.

  Brant sat and stared at eight empty column inches on the computer screen. He toyed with the idea of a humorous piece concerning the Optimists' cannon. What was so optimistic about setting a cannon in the middle of the town square? Wasn't that, in fact, a decidedly pessimistic act? From whom were the Optimists expecting an attack, the Rotarians?

  Experience had taught him, however, that satire did not play well in Cooves County. Such a piece would surely inflame both the Optimists and the Rotarians, and the Times' paltry subscription list could hardly take a hit of that magnitude. After a few tentative opening sentences his finger mashed the "delete" button.

  He'd planned to spend a few inches introducing the new preacher, Reverend Talbot Small, who'd joined the Anderson community two weeks before. But he'd put off the interview because preachers made him uncomfortable. They always wanted to know when they'd see Brant in church and Brant would stand there digging his finger in his ear while searching for a polite substitute for "when Hell freezes over." By now, word of mouth had spread whatever tales were worth telling about Reverend Small, which was typical of Anderson. What mere newspaperman could hope to keep up with the network of busy tongues that fueled the local rumor mill?

  The tension was making itself felt in Brant's neck. He swiveled his head a few times, then he reached for the telephone to call his stringer at Anderson High School, a senior student named Tom Culler. The school secretary answered.

  "Sorry, Brant. Tom's a no-show today," she said.

  "Sick?"

  "Friday Flu. The usual gang's absent. Tom, Darren Coombs, Buzzy Hayes, Kent Fredericks. And the Ganger boy, of course."

  Brant frowned. Tom had been a top student and a decent reporter. He'd written a column during his junior year, "My Town," that featured probing portraits of Anderson's notable citizens and their ancestors. Probing turned out to be even less popular than satire in Anderson. When Tom's research linked the current mayor's great-grandfather to deliberate attempts to spread smallpox among the local natives back in the 1850s, Brant had had to pull the plug on "My Town" or face the wrath of the entire Anderson political machine, such as it was. In a town this size, you either got along or you got out. Brant hadn't come to Anderson to make waves and "My Town," though cleverly written, was making new enemies for the paper with every edition.

  He'd regretted that decision ever since. Yanking Tom's column was all the proof Tom needed that the entire adult world, and especially that of Anderson, was composed of crooks and hypocrites. Brant, an outsider, had been young Tom's lifeline out of cynicism, and Brant had cast him adrift.

  In place of his final "My Town" column, Tom had submitted a poem by Emily Dickinson that began, "It fell so low in my regard/I heard it hit the ground." Brant printed the poem despite a prudent policy ag
ainst verse of any kind. Since then he'd been flooded with unsolicited doggerel praising babies, pigs, springtime, summer, fall, winter and grandmother's old gnarled hands. As penance for what he'd done to Tom, Brant forced himself to read every one before rejecting it.

  Tom's contributions to the Cooves County Times, which previously had included items on the new low-fat menu at the school cafeteria and the alarming rise in restroom vandalism, ceased abruptly. Brant was calling Tom now out of sheer desperation. Learning that Tom was hanging with the likes of the Ganger boy awakened a new guilt and Brant hung up the phone feeling like a hundred-seventy-five pounds of horse manure.

  And he still had eight column inches to fill.

  Bleakly he dialed the number for the parsonage and offered his belated welcome to the Reverend Small.

  ***

  Brant finished modeming his layouts to Sloan Malone and locked up the office behind him. His neck was tight as a piano wire after the Reverend Small interview. Of course the Reverend had asked when he'd see Brant in church.

  "I'm not much of a church-goer," he'd mumbled, meaning, "If you ask me, the church has been responsible for more misery in the form of guilt, shame, and outright bloody warfare than it could make up for with a thousand years of hospital visits and youth volleyball nights, so don't expect to see my hands passing around the collection plate this Sunday or any other."

  Brant was swiveling his head and concentrating on the crunching, popping noises from his neck when he stepped into the path of the local mortician, an exuberant and smiling man named, inappropriately, Jedediah Grimm.

  Brant was in his late thirties and Grimm was easily ten years his senior, but Grimm's vigor put Brant to shame. Grimm's barrel chest produced a loud, full voice that would have been at home behind Reverend Small's pulpit. Brant couldn't imagine Grimm speaking in the hushed tones of a mortician comforting the bereaved and, since Brant had no family within a five hundred mile radius, he didn't expect to see Jedediah Grimm at work until Brant's own interment, at which point he'd hardly be in any position to observe anything.

  "Whoa!" Grimm said as if reining in a team of Clydesdales. His brawny hands caught Brant in the chest and Brant felt immediately puny and foolish. "That neck again?" Grimm asked.

  "Nothing a potion of lime juice and tequila wouldn't cure."

  "All it wants is a twist," Grimm offered. "Let me give it a try."

  He spun Brant around but Brant ducked skillfully before Grimm could lay hold of his head.

  "No offense, but I never take medical advice from a mortician," Brant said.

  "Maybe you should have Doc Milford take a look at it. He'll tell you it only wants a twist."

  "Maybe I will."

  The two men waved their good-byes as Brant headed across Main Street toward Ma's Diner.

  The bell on the door announced his arrival. The sole waitress, Peg Culler, turned and gave him a smile. "Hi, stranger," she said. It was their personal joke, a reference to Brant's lack of tenure in Anderson.

  Peg remembered their first meeting clearly. She'd told him to sit anywhere and she'd be right with him. He'd said, "Great, but who's going to bring us our food?" Peg was busy juggling four lunch specials and two boats of gravy on the side and didn't realize for a couple of minutes that she'd just been flirted with, however clumsily, by an attractive out-of-towner. By the time it dawned on her, Brant was sitting at the counter and had already helped himself to a menu. He looked up sheepishly as she approached.

  "Sorry about the wisecrack," he said.

  "Oh, no. It was funny."

  "You didn't laugh."

  "Well, not funny exactly, but...." Words failed her.

  "Droll? Witty? Clever? You can lie and say 'yes' at any time."

  Peg laughed genuinely. The stranger had smiled an easy smile and asked what was good.

  "The chicken fried steaks come frozen, so they're safe. There's not much damage you can do to mashed potatoes. The gravy's not bad...it's Heinz...and the green beans are straight from the can."

  "I take it Ma's cooking isn't exactly Cordon Bleu."

  "If that's French for 'edible,' I'd say no," Peg said. The stranger's eyes were a lovely chestnut brown.

  "Recommend the meat loaf?" he asked.

  "Were you going to eat it or poison a gopher?"

  "I'll take the chicken fry."

  Peg had spent the next thirty minutes in a state of grace. Her feet stopped burning and she lost that persistent ache in the small of her back. Even the lousy twenty-five cent tip at table number one didn't bother her.

  And for thirty minutes she didn't think about Annie.

  ***

  Eight months ago:

  Rodney Culler chipped at the ice on the Ford's windshield with the corner of his ice scraper. The snow was no big deal, just a two-inch layer of fluff you could brush off in a moment. But the ice beneath the snow was a quarter inch thick, and breaking it out was a pain in the ass.

  Inside the car, the defroster exhaled air only slightly warmer than that outside, which was two degrees Fahrenheit. With the wind chill, it was cold enough to freeze the nipples off a mastodon.

  Normally Rod would've just started the car and let it run with the heater on for twenty minutes if that's what it took to loosen the ice without all this damn chipping, but he was late getting Annie back to Peg's and she'd give him hell for making her worry. He could call and let her know they'd be late, but then he'd have to talk to her and he was still too pissed off about the divorce to want to do that.

  Annie waited impatiently inside the front door. All bundled up in her down parka and wool muffler and snow boots she looked like a stuffed doll, arms practically perpendicular, legs all but immobile. Rod didn't know why Peg made her wear all that crap, like she was going on a damn polar expedition or something, when all she had to do was dash from the front door to the car, then from the car to Peg's. He'd said as much when he'd picked Annie up, and Peg had stubbornly kept adding layers to Annie's outfit.

  "What if the car breaks down and she has to walk?" Peg had asked.

  "Jesus, Peg, I just live in Isaac. It's thirty fucking miles, not halfway across the Arctic continent."

  "You never know. It pays to be prepared."

  "Whatever." In the end it was easier to just give in. That was his problem with Peg. He'd always just given in. It made him feel like a pussy just thinking about it. Maybe if he'd slapped her around a little....

  Ah, the hell with it.

  Chip chip chip. The heater was starting to loosen the ice from underneath. A big chunk broke away, clearing a space big enough to see through. Good enough. Rodney Culler beckoned to his daughter to come on. She did, and of course she left the door open.

  "She's only five." Rod could hear Peg's voice in his head as he ran carefully up the frozen walk to close the front door.

  "Old enough to know how to close a damn door," he muttered.

  Annie had stopped halfway down the walk, waiting for him to catch up.

  "What're you waiting for?" he said, giving her a nudge. "Come on. We're late." He ushered her into the car and slammed the door, hurried around and jumped in behind the steering wheel, thinking that he should get some thermal underwear, he was freezing his goddamn nuts off.

  He'd moved out of their house in Anderson before the divorce, as soon as Peg informed him, after seventeen years of marriage, that "it wasn't working out." Rental housing was at a premium since work began on the nuke plant and hundreds of construction workers had moved into the area. He'd been lucky to find a spare bedroom to rent in Isaac, upstairs in the house of an elderly widow. It had been her husband's "snoring room" where he'd been banished for the last twenty-two years of their marriage. The husband had died of pneumonia, which Rod could well believe considering the gale force wind that whipped through the room on these winter nights.

  The highway to Anderson was black and slick in spots. The county did a pretty good job of keeping it clear of snow, but now and again Rod would hit an icy patch th
at spun his wheels for an instant. No big deal, but it made him long for the 4x4 he'd had his eye on before the divorce.

  Annie sat silently beside him. She stared out the window at the piles of snow heaped along the roadside by the plows. They were dirty and ugly now with exhaust. Beyond them stretched pure country black.

  She seemed to be handling the divorce well, but with a kid this young, who knew what was going on in her head? At Annie's age it was all pony-this and dolly-that. Rod couldn't relate to any of it and, truthfully, would've been happier with another son.

  Tom had turned out good, at least so far. The trouble he'd gotten into was minor. God knows Rod was no angel himself at that age, and he'd turned out okay. At least, in his own opinion he had. Peg obviously disagreed.

  These thoughts and more were churning around inside Rod's head as he closed on the bridge that spanned the drainage canal. It looked dry and clear and Rod hit it at sixty.

  Sheet ice was a fucker, that's for sure. You don't see it, it just sits there invisible on the road, waiting for you, and the instant your wheels hit it you know you're fucked.

  Annie's eyes went wide as the Ford lost traction and the rear end slid around and Rod was suddenly cursing as he spun the wheel and pumped the useless brakes. Annie clutched the arm rest and stuck her feet out to brace herself against the dashboard as the car spun around like a carnival ride. The bridge railing flew past the front window and she looked briefly down the road they'd just traveled as the car continued spinning and flying and then there was the railing again and she had to shut her eyes to keep from getting sick.

  Rod spun the wheel one way and then the other. It was as if the whole mechanism had come loose and he flashed on spinning the steering wheel of the kiddie cars at the amusement park when he was small and how frustrating it was that it didn't make any damn difference what he did, the cars just kept circling. He felt small again and just as helpless as the Ford spun around once more, spinning and hurtling unchecked across the ice. Annie was screaming and Rod couldn't remember if he'd made her buckle up.