The Big Reap

1.

Even before the Welshman drew down on me, I was pretty sure I was in trouble.

I’d spent the morning minding my own business, paying my respects to a dead friend. A friend I thought I’d long since lost — over a girl, because that’s too often how these things go. We had the kind of falling-out that feels like it’ll last forever, and in the case of folks like me and Danny, I suppose it could have. Only it didn’t last forever. We patched things up just in time for me to lose the boy for good.

Least he didn’t die for nothing. Hell, technically, he didn’t die at all, or at least, not recently. The sack of meat and bone that was Danny’s mortal vessel was three decades in the ground before I ever met the guy. Danny, like me, is a Collector. Was, I should say, since he ain’t much of anything anymore.

That girl I mentioned? She — another Collector by the name of Ana — took Danny for one hell of a ride, which culminated in the destruction of his immortal soul. Sucks, huh? Only Danny got the last laugh. If her batshit scheme had gone to plan, she would have broken her bonds of servitude to hell, but at vulgar cost. Last time any of my kind pulled that sort of juju, it triggered the Deluge — you know, Noah and a big-ass boat — and damn near wiped humankind off the map. This time woulda done the same, had Danny not stepped in. So I guess you could say the poor bastard died, or whatever the hell you call it when the dying guy’s already dead, saving the world. If that ain’t worth a few moments of quiet graveside reflection, I don’t know what is.

So that’s precisely what I did. Went to Danny’s mortal grave — a humble, weather-beaten headstone already draped with moss in a quiet, half-forgotten corner of a quiet, half-forgotten cemetery deep in the Kent countryside this fallen hero’s only monument — and said my piece. I didn’t figure the universe would begrudge me a few minutes’ mourning.

I didn’t figure, but I should have.

You wanna know what really irks me about being damned? It’s not the big stuff — the guilt, the torment, the recriminations; those I figure I’ve got coming. It’s the little things that get me. Drop a hundred slices of toast, and none of ’em will land butter-up. Flip a hundred coins, and not once are you gonna call it right. Take a bad beat from the cosmos, lose a friend, and need one goddamn morning to yourself to get your head straight? Well too bad, because that’s precisely when the Welshman in the Bentley’s gonna show.

I’m not talking metaphorically or anything. I mean I was standing in the cemetery, the chill November mist beading up on my meat-suit’s pea coat, when this dove-gray Bentley — mid-Sixties, if her curves were any indication, and in fresh-off-the-floor condition — splashes up the rutted drive, and out steps this big bruiser of a guy with arms like trees, no neck, a crooked nose, and a suit he probably coulda bartered for a second, lesser car. Black worsted-wool and well tailored, it somehow only served to accentuate his massive frame, his cauliflower ears, and his meaty boxer’s face. A pewter cravat hung around what passed for his neck — how it looped around and tied, I’ll never know — and a matching scarf was draped across his shoulders. Black leather gloves stretched tight as he flexed his ham-hock hands. He eyed me a moment in my borrowed meat-suit, a rail-thin teenaged boy who’d been struck down by an aneurism just last night. Then, in a heavy Welsh accent — all odd angles and hairpin turns — he said, “Sam Thornton?”

“Never heard of him,” I replied, in my best attempt at cockney.

“Your accent is bloody rubbish,” he said. “And anyway, you are him.”

“Okay, I’m him.” I was aiming for nonchalant, although inside, I was reeling. When you make your way through the world in stolen bodies, hidden behind borrowed faces, you come to expect and even value a certain level of anonymity. Collectors ain’t the type to get bumped into by old classmates at the grocery store. “And you are?”

“Just the hired help. The boss would like to meet you.”

“Who, exactly, is the boss?”

“That’s really for the boss to say, isn’t it?”

“So I’m to come with you right now?”

“That’s right.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

The big man shrugged. His gloved hands tightened into fists. “Find out,” he said.

I thought about it. Decided not to.

“No,” I said. “I’ll come.”

And so I did.

We drove for just over an hour, first on country roads, puddles gathering in the hollows of the tire-buckled tarmac and reflecting back a dotted line of cold gray sky, and then on roads with proper lines, and pale brick homes on either side. Eventually, we hit the motorway and headed north-west toward London. The whole time, my driver never said a word. My only company was the clatter of the tires against the pavement, and the swoosh of the wipers clearing the constant drizzle from the windshield. For a time, I tried to question him as to who his employer was and where, exactly, he was taking me, but the big mook just smiled at me, gap-toothed and crooked, in the rearview. So eventually, once his choice of roads tipped London as our likely destination, I gave up, settling into my leather seat back as warm and supple as first love and sleeping fitfully. It’s rare I find myself in such refined environs, and wherever he was taking me, there was no point in being exhausted when we got there.

When the Bentley rocked to a halt, I woke with a start, unsure at first what continent I was on, or what meat-suit I’d dozed off wearing. But the swank interior of the Bentley’s cabin and the pale gleaming pate of my taciturn companion brought me back to the here and now right quick. If only I had a better handle on where here was, or what was gonna happen next. This steroided-out hunk of lab-grown meat didn’t seem too likely to fill me in on either.

“We’re here,” he said. “Get out.”

I got out. Looked around. Saw nothing familiar, not that that surprised me any. London wasn’t really my beat. In all my years as a Collector, I’ve never been able to suss out any geographic rhyme or reason to the assignments on which I’ve been sent, but for whatever reason, I’ve never snatched a soul in London proper. Oxford, sure. Manchester once or twice. Snagged a couple dozen sinners in Ireland in my day, a Scot or two — and one very surly Welshman. But never London. So unless this suited ape had dropped me on the banks of the Thames within spitting distance of Big Ben, it may as well have been Sheboygan for all I knew.

But what I did see suggested Sheboygan might’ve proven a step up.

The driver and I stood on a narrow strip of weed-split sidewalk hemmed in on one side by the low-slung curves of his boss’ vintage Bentley, and on the other by a crooked, handbill-plastered plywood construction barrier whose panels zigged and zagged as though tacked up by a cadre of impatient drunkards, none of whom had any facility with a hammer. The building beyond was gargantuan — occupying an entire city block, as near as I could tell — but its shape and purpose were lost to me behind layers of sheet plastic and scaffolding and yet more plywood, which was tacked over what few windows faced the street. Truth be told, it was a hard place to pin down; it seemed to resist being looked at. And when I tried to force myself to do so, I got the disquieting impression those blank plywood eyes were looking back at me.

Spooked, I diverted my gaze. The feeling passed. I tried to play it off like I was taking in the neighborhood at large, but from the smug grin on the driver’s face, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t buying it.

Across the street from us sat an ugly yellow brick building stained gray by exhaust and tagged here and there by artless vandals. Its tired façade and the makeshift curtains that showed in its windows — a tapestry here, a beach towel there — suggested low-income housing. Despite the chill and the escalating rain, several of the building’s windows were open, and from them poured an olfactory cacophony of discordant yet not altogether unpleasant spices representing at minimum three continents’ cuisine, and the song and conversation to match.

To my right, across a narrow side street, was a shuttered convenience store, its dented stainless steel overhead doors down despite the fact it was scarcely midday. The cars that lined the street’s low curb were old and cheap and not worth stealing. The Bentley aside, of course, since it was parked along the curb as well — its driver had somehow managed to not only find a space that accommodated this beautiful behemoth of an automobile with scant inches to spare, but to parallel-park said behemoth without disturbing my beauty sleep until the deed was done. An impressive feat, to be sure, but not half as impressive as simply having the balls to leave such a stunning work of automotive art parked in a dodgy neighborhood without so much as locking its doors.

I stretched, then, working the sleep and tension from my limbs, and turned to ask the driver, “What now?” But the words never passed my lips.

Because that’s when I noticed the gun in his hand.

For such a big guy, it was a dainty, slender little thing. A Ruger Mark Two, unless I was much mistaken — and believe me, I’ve been on the barrel-end of enough firearms in my time, I know most of ’em on sight. A good half the bastards who pointed ’em at me even pulled the trigger, which is how I knew the dinky little .22s that baby was packing were unlikely to put me down on the quick. But unless my buddy here’d shot off a few rounds on his way to picking me up, he had ten rounds in the mag and one in the chamber, and, dinky or not, that was plenty to put this meat-suit in the ground once and for all. So I showed the guy my palms, and sent out my best we’re-all-friends-here vibes. Of course, I spend my days killing people at hell’s behest, so I confess, the happiest vibes I’ve got at my disposal are pretty fucking far from cheery. But if it means not getting my ass shot, I’m willing to, you know, fake it.

“C’mon, man, is that thing necessary? I came here willingly, if you recall.”

But he just tossed me a key ring and gestured with a twitch of his gun barrel. “Unlock that and head inside. Do it.”

The that in question was a fist-sized padlock looped through the lock-hole of a two-dollar gate latch — what it cost in Pounds Sterling, I couldn’t say — which was in turn affixed via four Phillips-head screws to the sole hinged plywood panel in the row. Why people bother putting decent locks on shitty doors and latches I’ll never know. Sure, the padlock could take a bullet — at least if the old Super Bowl commercials were to be believed — but who needs a key when a Phillips-head screwdriver could get you in just as quick?

The door was marked as such by the laminated pressboard sign affixed to it that read:

Though by the look of the project’s perimeter — a buckling plywood security wall discolored with age and papered with layer after layer of handbills — it didn’t look like much renewing had been going on for quite some time.

I unlocked the lock. Handed it to the mook. He gestured with his barrel yet again.

I took the hint, and pushed open the plywood door — or tried. The moment I touched it, my body was suffused with sudden, crawling dread. It slid down my arm and coiled around my heart, my lungs, my stomach. Like a litter of pythons, freshly hatched and hungry — tightening, choking, crushing my will as they contracted. And, though I’m certain now it was only in my mind, I felt as much as heard a low, raspy whisper in my ear accompanied by hot swamp breath that reeked like rotting flesh, uttering perhaps the most compelling command I’ve ever received: “Leave.”

The driver’s Ruger jabbed into my back, a cold hard finger between my shoulder blades. I shoved the door open and staggered through. He followed close behind, careful not to touch the door along the way. The rusty spring affixed to the hinge protested as the plywood door swung closed and the city outside disappeared.