The Complex

  Brian Keene

  DEADITE PRESS

  P.O. BOX 10065

  PORTLAND, OR 97296

  www.DEADITEPRESS.com

  AN ERASERHEAD PRESS COMPANY

  www.ERASERHEADPRESS.com

  ISBN: 978-1-62105-216-6

  The Complex copyright © 2016 by Brian Keene

  The Complex first published as a signed, limited edition hardcover by Thunderstorm Books, 2015

  Cover art copyright © 2016 Alan M. Clark

  www.ALANMCLARK.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Printed in the USA.

  Acknowledgements

  This time around, thanks to publishers Paul Goblirsch and the staff of Thunderstorm Books, Jeff Burk and the staff of Deadite Press; technical advisors Kevin Foster, Abby Wright, Patrick Freivald, Jack Rosenquist, James Monroe, Kelly and Veronica Smith, Scott Goforth; pre-readers Mark Sylva, Tod Clark, and Stephen McDornell; and friends Bryan Smith, John Urbancik, Geoff Cooper, Mike Oliveri, Mikey Huyck, Mary SanGiovanni, Mike Lombardo, Dave Thomas, Bryan Johnson, Sarah Pinborough, Chris Golden, Jim Moore, Dallas Mayr, Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, Chet Williamson, Joe R. Lansdale, John Skipp, David Schow, Edward Lee, Cassandra Burnham, and my sons.

  This novel was written while listening to heavy doses of AC/DC, The Adorkables, Autopsy, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Body Count, Broken Hope, Charred Walls of the Damned, Cypress Hill, Dot Com Intelligence, Faith No More, Flatliner, The Gaslight Anthem, Halestorm, Ice-T, Kasey Lansdale, Michael Withers, Orchid, Pentagram, The Police, Shooter Jennings, Sick of It All, Willie Nelson, Witch Mountain, Xander Harris, and YOB (in case you need a soundtrack).

  This one is for Cathy and Hannah…

  Part One

  Meet the

  Neighbors

  One - Sam: Apartment 1-D

  When everyone starts killing each other, Sam doesn’t notice at first because he’s too busy preparing to kill himself. Samuel L. Miller is pushing fifty and still struggling with the type of financial debt most people have escaped from by the time they reach their mid-thirties. He lives alone because his girlfriend left him and he can’t afford another one, and because he never had children with either of his ex-wives, and also because his dog died a week ago.

  Sam doesn’t miss having a girlfriend. He was never much on talking or sharing, and if he’s horny, there’s always internet porn. He doesn’t miss his ex-wives, except when he’s been drinking.

  But he misses that dog.

  The dog, Sergio, is currently being kept at the Leader’s Heights Veterinary Clinic, where he was put to sleep after inoperable cancer in his guts caused him to stop eating and start shitting and pissing blood. The vet gave Sergio two shots—one to calm him and one to put him to sleep. Sam is a writer by trade, and appreciates a good turn of phrase, but he hates that euphemism. Put to sleep. Euthanasia is what it is. Murder, if you want to be less polite about it.

  The vet smiled sadly after administering the dose, and then told Sam in her most sympathetic voice that she’d give them some time together. She left the room, and then it was just the two of them, Sam and Sergio, curled up together on the hard linoleum floor, with bright fluorescent lights glaring from above. Sergio’s breathing slowed. He licked Sam’s hand. His brown eyes closed. Then his breathing stopped. Sam held him, and cried. Eventually, the vet came back in, expressed her sympathies, and asked Sam how he’d be paying for the procedure. When he learned how much it cost for them to kill his dog, Sam explained that he wouldn’t be able to pay until his next royalty check arrived. The vet then informed him that he wouldn’t be able to take Sergio home until the bill was paid.

  Sam considers that as he loads five hollow point rounds into his Taurus .357. If he kills himself now, who will claim Sergio’s body? Who will bury him? But then it occurs to Sam that the same questions apply to his own corpse, and he decides that it doesn’t matter. He has a sister, Laura, whom he hasn’t spoken to in over a year, as well as his brother-in-law, Mike, and their son, Hunter. Sam likes his nephew okay. He’s always gotten along well with kids and animals. It’s people who he has trouble with. Among Sam’s papers are his will and literary estate, assigning the rights to all of his work to Hunter. Unfortunately, any money earned will first have to go toward paying Sam’s outstanding debts, the first of which is the Internal Revenue Service, so it’s doubtful Sam’s post-mortem book royalties will put his nephew through college.

  Sam also has two elderly parents who never miss a chance to let him know what a disappointment he has been, be it not providing them with grandchildren, or having two marriages end in flames (his mother is close with both ex-wives and still stays in touch with them), or wasting his time in a career that provides no 401K, no retirement, no health insurance, and is only of interest to them on the extremely rare occasions when Sam or his books are mentioned in The New York Times or on FOX News, at which point they gloat to their friends about how proud they are of him, their son, the writer.

  Fuck it, Sam thinks. They can bury me and Sergio both. Let them make the arrangements.

  The bullets seem heavier than they normally do. His hands are sweating, and although the bullets feel cool, the oil on his fingers makes them slippery. He manages to slide one into the chamber. The second bullet tumbles from his grasp and lands on the carpet. Sam pauses, debating with himself. Does he really need to load all five chambers? One bullet should suffice. Unless he fucks this up, too, and blows the side of his face off. He’s read about such mishaps—people like himself who eat a bullet, but instead of blowing their brains out the back of their head, the bullet travels around their skull and exits out the other side, leaving them a vegetable or a disfigured freak for the rest of their miserable lives.

  He decides that he’d better load all five chambers, just in case.

  He slides bullets into chambers two, three, and four, and then leans forward on the couch. The brown cushions are covered in dog hair, all that remains of Sergio. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to clean them up. The couch is a leftover from his last girlfriend. She left it behind, along with everything else, including him. They met at a book signing. She’d been a fan of his work. Before she moved out, she told Sam that while the fantasy of dating a dark, brooding writer was tantalizing, the reality of being in a relationship with a high-functioning sociopath was anything but.

  Sam has never blamed her. He doesn’t like living with himself either. And in another few minutes, he won’t have to.

  Something bangs outside. The noise makes him jump. Sam’s grip on the pistol twitches. He’s glad he didn’t have his finger on the trigger. It wouldn’t do to start shooting without first putting the gun in his mouth.

  The noise is followed by laughter—a man and a woman. Sam caught a glimpse of them earlier, a young couple in their twenties, fresh out of college by the looks of them (and Sam is usually pretty good at studying people and discerning things about them), with a small kid. They’re moving in next door, and they’ve parked a big rental box truck in the spot where Sam’s car used to be, until it was repossessed earlier today for late payments.

  Sam puts the handgun on the coffee table. Like the couch, it’s a leftover from his previous relationship. A few stray dog hairs cling to this, as well.

  A police siren wails. The sound is distant. As it fades, it is answered by another.

  He roots around on the stained, thin, coffee-colored carpet, searching for the last bullet. Like everything else in this shithole, the carpet was new back in the early eighties, when the Pine
Village Apartment Complex was built. The same goes for the kitchen appliances and the bathroom fixtures. The blinds over the windows are new, but only because Sam bought them himself. Everything else is archaic and either broken or failing. The windows are drafty, the water pressure sucks, the bathroom mirror is cracked, the molding around the front door is loose, and the heating takes forever to warm the place. The chipped paint on the walls is a dingy shade of cream, and is about twelve coats thick. If you look closely at the walls you can see hair and dirt embedded in the previous layers of paint, and poorly patched nail holes left over from previous tenants. Insects and spiders are a constant nuisance. He doesn’t know how they get in, but they are always present, no matter how many bug bombs he sets off. The Pine Village management say they can’t do anything about it other than call an exterminator, a service for which Sam will have to pay the bill for.

  The decrepitude extends to the apartment complex’s exterior, as well. There’s a playground in desperate need of repair, with rotten wood planks and sharp protruding nails, and a tire swing dangling from rusty chains. The area around the garbage dumpsters is a disaster, with trash and debris scattered across the pavement. Other tenants leave the dumpster doors open, providing a nightly buffet for raccoons, rats, squirrels, feral cats, homeless people, and other scavengers.

  No, Sam decides, he will not miss this dump.

  Outside, somebody screams. Sound is a constant factor at the Pine Village Apartment Complex. It comes through the walls and the windows and echoes from the parking lot and other apartments and the alleys and streets. When the scream is not repeated, he assumes that nothing is amiss. Screams are a normal sound here at the Complex. So are shrieks, laughter, shouting in various languages, revving car engines, and booming woofers blasting the garbage that passes for hip-hop and country music these days. Sam remembers when hip-hop was Public Enemy and Ice-T, and when country music was Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. These days, every hip-hop song sounds exactly the same, and most country music sounds like eighties pop.

  The police sirens continue to shriek and fade, shriek and fade. Then a car alarm begins to whoop. Sam considers getting up to check, but then decides against it. After all, his isn’t out there anymore, and in a few minutes, a thief breaking into one of his neighbor’s cars won’t matter. At least not to him.

  He scans the living room, looking at his possessions. A plasma television which is only four years old and already shows ghost images in the upper right hand corner. A DVD player that was new back when most people still bought videotapes. The couches and coffee table, left behind by his last girlfriend. A few framed photographs—Sam signing books for some readers, Sam in a bar with some fellow writers, Sam and his first ex-wife, Sam and Sergio at the lake, Sam and Sergio and Sam’s second ex-wife. And books. Six cheap pressboard bookshelves bought at Walmart and put together over a long frustrating weekend, crammed with over two-thousand paperbacks, hardcovers, first editions, and signed limited edition collectibles.

  In the bedroom, there are six more shelves, also stuffed with books, but these are all ones that have been written by Sam, along with comic books, magazines, anthologies, and other outlets that have featured his work. One shelf contains his literary awards, of which he has many. Last year, Sam was given the Grandmaster Award, one of the highest achievements a writer in his genre could receive. He’d been proud, but twenty-four hours after receiving it, he’d seriously considered selling the award on eBay in order to pay the rent. Awards were nice, but money was nicer. Sadly, a long time ago somebody in his field had apparently decided bronze and plaster busts were better than cash.

  The bedroom also has a cheap, pressboard desk (purchased the same weekend Sam bought the shelves). His laptop and printer occupy the desk, along with stacks of miscellaneous papers receipts, and dirty coffee cups. The laptop is on its last leg. It takes forever to start, and the battery only lasts a few minutes when it’s not plugged in, and the question mark key doesn’t work. Anytime Sam wants to type a question mark into a manuscript he’s working on, he has to go online, find an image of a question mark, and then copy and paste it into the document. The bedroom also has a bed, which is nothing more than a cheap mattress and box spring on an even cheaper frame and headboard, haphazardly screwed together and shoved into one corner.

  Sam realizes that the only things of value that he owns are the books and the handgun. Everything else is shit. The handgun will probably be taken as evidence after the police investigate his death. But what of the books? Will his relatives claim them? They’ve never shown any interest in them before, so why would they after his death? He imagines that whatever belongings aren’t claimed by his next of kin will be unceremoniously tossed in the dumpsters by the Pine Village Apartment Complex management. He’s seen this happen before, almost on a weekly basis. Someone doesn’t pay rent, the sheriff puts a notice on their apartment door, and they abscond in the night, leaving behind their belongings, which management then tosses in the dumpsters. He’s seen furniture, bedding, toys, and even electronics equipment thrown away in such a manner, and has also seen his neighbors dumpster diving for it all after management has left. He thinks about his books filling up a dumpster, and the illiterate tenants picking through them, looking for DVDs or videogames because nobody reads anymore. For a brief moment, this image is almost enough to make Sam reconsider his decision.

  But then, shrugging, he reaches for the gun. No sense delaying the inevitable.

  He wonders if it will hurt.

  Before he can go any farther, the screams outside start up again.

  This time, they don’t stop.

  Two - Terri and Caleb: Apartment 2-D

  “Caleb,” Terri calls, “where did you go?”

  “I’m right here, Mom.”

  The six-year old stomps out of the truck, obviously enjoying the sound his feet make on the long metal ramp extending from its rear. Terri wonders what he’s pretending to be this time. The Hulk, perhaps? Or maybe a Stormtrooper from Star Wars? Mom logic says that it has to be a character who stomps.

  Caleb carries a cardboard box. Printed on the side of the box in black magic marker with the particular, painstaking scrawl of a six-year old still learning to write, is ‘CALEBS ROOM.’ He hauls it through the open apartment door just as Randy comes back outside. Grinning, Randy ruffles Caleb’s hair.

  “You’re pretty strong, little man.”

  “I know,” Caleb says, not bothering to stop, and—Terri notes—also not bothering to look up at Randy. “I got my powers from a gamma-irradiated arc reactor. Now I’m Iron Hulk.”

  Well, Terri thinks. Now I know who he’s pretending to be.

  A police siren shatters the moment. It is followed by a second one, coming from a different direction, judging by the sound.

  “Sounds like a busy evening,” Randy quips.

  Caleb seems undeterred by the sirens. He reemerges from the apartment and continues to stomp around the parking lot.

  The depth of her son’s imagination pleases and amazes Terri every single day. He’s in first grade, but reading at a third grade level. He does okay in math, as well. Indeed, the only thing Caleb struggles with at school is playing with other kids. He gets frustrated when the other little boys don’t want to play whatever it is Caleb wants to play, or don’t want to play it the way he wants to, and as a result, he often ends up playing by himself. And although he’s okay with the little girls chasing him on the playground, he doesn’t like it when they try to hold his hand, and he especially doesn’t like it when they tell him they’re going to marry him some day. Caleb insists that the only girl he’s ever going to marry is his Mommy. Terri sometimes worries about this. While it’s normal for little boys to want to marry their mothers, she thinks perhaps he should have outgrown it by this age. She also worries about his tendency to play by himself if the other kids don’t want to do what he’s doing.

  Caleb is an only child—her only child. He has never known his father. In truth, Terri d
idn’t know Caleb’s father very well, either. He died before Caleb was born. Terri met the father, Mark, in college. They had five dates, and then she got pregnant. Mark was killed in a drunk driving accident before she ever got a chance to tell him. She reached out to his parents instead, but they wanted nothing to do with her. She has tried contacting them a few times over the years, wanting to offer them an opportunity to know their grandson. They have never responded.

  Terri dropped out of college and had Caleb. They’ve been together ever since. They moved in with her mother, who watched him during the day while Terri worked, and then left for her job as a night nurse when Terri got home. And while that arrangement has mostly been pleasant, and while Terri will always be grateful to her mother for the help, it is time that she and Caleb lived on their own. There are little inconveniences—little battles—like when her mother contradicts Terri’s punishment or rules for Caleb. But there is also the fact that her mother is interested in dating a co-worker, a “nice male nurse named Dave”, and it’s hard for her to do that when her daughter and grandson both live with her. In truth, it’s hard for Terri to have any kind of social life either, not that she’s really been interested in one. For the last six years, her life has revolved around her son, and she’s fine with that. It rarely occurs to her to date, except when her friends try to convince her to sign up for one of the various dating websites or attempt to fix her up with one of their friends. Their Facebook profiles are full of pictures of them and their boyfriends, or, in an increasing number of cases, their husbands. Terri’s is full of pictures of Caleb. And a few of her mother. But none of her father. Her father died when she was six-years old. Terri grew up without a father.

  Just like her son is doing now.

  And that breaks her heart, and she keeps thinking maybe she should date again, that maybe she should begin the application process for, let’s face it, a father for her son. Deep down inside, she knows that’s what it would be. She can’t imagine loving someone else the way she loves Caleb. She can’t fathom somebody else sharing space in their lives, or a place in her heart. She doesn’t need a man in her life, but she worries that her little boy just might. Terri knows all too well how hard it was for her, growing up without a father. She has to assume it’s even more difficult for a boy.