The Return Man
Language: English
Pages: 448
ISBN: 0316218286
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The outbreak tore the U.S. in two. The east remains a safe haven. The west has become a ravaged wilderness. They call it the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead and delivers peace.
Now Homeland Security wants Marco for a mission unlike any other. He must return to California, where the apocalypse began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again.
But in the wastelands of America, you never know who - or what - is watching you.
Pages Torn From a Travel Journal
the previous morning. The two men had sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the chapel, sharing respects for the dead; the grief in the American’s heart had briefly touched his own. Wu had tried to ease the man’s suffering. But I will kill him now, Wu reaffirmed. I will take the vaccine and kill him. An unexpected memory leaped across his thoughts. His first mission so long ago. Tenzin Dawa, the monk who had protested the railway, dying at Wu’s feet. The shaved head, the wizened face, eyelids fluttering
say, in the interests of national security. However…’ and here his tone darkened again, instantly ominous, ‘your refusal to accommodate me has been noted.’ The implied threat lingered in the stale air for several seconds. ‘Fuck you,’ Marco said. ‘I don’t want your jobs.’ He strode from the room. Osbourne’s cruel laugh clawed at his back. ‘You will, Doctor,’ Osbourne called. ‘You will.’ 13.4 Three hours later the truck was packed with clothes, firearms, camping gear, suitcases, maps, MREs,
adjusted a light, and there Marco saw a man in his late fifties, seated at the table. The stranger was attired in a blue dress shirt with a white collar–the telltale wardrobe of an asshole, in Marco’s experience. The man’s hair was white as well, mid-length, combed behind his ears; his eyes were an inch too far apart, his mouth too wide for his jutting jaw. He looked vaguely like a piranha. Marco instinctively disliked him. ‘Henry Marco,’ the man said, pronouncing each syllable and letter
‘Meaning, what the hell are we doing?’ ‘I was told that you’d been apprised of the target.’ Marco scoffed. ‘Target? Yes, Roger Ballard–a friend of mine, by the way. But I’m sure your director told you that.’ ‘You and the target were co-workers, yes.’ ‘Jesus, stop calling him that.’ ‘Ballard.’ ‘Yes, Ballard.’ Marco sighed. ‘We worked at the hospital.’ The comment seemed to interest Wu. ‘And how did—’ ‘Shit,’ Marco interrupted. In the rear-view mirror he’d seen motion. Seven or eight
through his ears, and he cried out in pain as the locomotive erupted in a volcano-blast of flame–a tremendous ball of fire that grew and grew, giant and terrible, as if the sun had finally descended to swallow the desert. The locomotive rocked on the rails, and shockwaves tore down the hill to suck the air from Marco’s lungs as a huge chunk of fire snapped off into the sky. Glass rained over the tracks. And then it was quiet again. The blackened shell of the locomotive settled into the earth, its
