End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3) - Stephen King Page 0,116

the money and made the purchases; Z-Boy delivered the equipment to Freddi Linklatter’s cheesedog of a crib.

She really deserves an apartment upgrade, Brady thought. I ought to do something about that.

Z-Boy also brought her the rest of the Zappits he’d pilfered from the library, and Freddi amped the Fishin’ Hole demos in all of them … for a price, of course. And although the price was high, Brady paid it without a qualm. It was the doc’s money, after all, the dough of Babineau. As to what he might do with the juiced-up consoles, Brady had no idea. Eventually he might want another drone or two, he supposed, but he saw no reason to trade up right away. He began to understand what contentment actually was: the emotional version of the horse latitudes, where all the winds died away and one simply drifted.

It ensued when one ran out of goals to grow.

This state of affairs continued until February 13th of 2015, when Brady’s attention was caught by an item on News at Noon. The anchors, who had been laughing it up over the antics of a couple of baby pandas, put on their Oh Shit This Is So Awful faces when the chyron behind them changed from the pandas to a broken-heart logo.

‘It’s going to be a sad Valentine’s Day in the suburb of Sewickley,’ said the female half of the duo.

‘That’s right, Betty,’ said the male half. ‘Two survivors of the City Center Massacre, twenty-six-year-old Krista Countryman and twenty-four-year-old Keith Frias, have committed suicide in the Countryman woman’s home.’

It was Betty’s turn. ‘Ken, the shocked parents say the couple was hoping to be married in May of this year, but both were badly injured in the attack perpetrated by Brady Hartsfield, and the continuing physical and mental pain was apparently too much for them. Here’s Frank Denton, with more.’

Brady was on high alert now, sitting as close to bolt upright in his chair as he could manage, eyes shining. Could he legitimately claim those two? He believed he could, which meant his City Center score had just gone up from eight to ten. Still shy of a dozen, but hey! Not bad.

Correspondent Frank Denton, also wearing his best Oh Shit expression, went blah-de-blah for awhile, and then the picture switched to the Countryman chick’s pore ole daddy, who read the suicide note the couple had left. He blubbered through most of it, but Brady caught the gist. They’d had a beautiful vision of the afterlife, where their wounds would be healed, the burden of their pain would be lifted, and they could be married in perfect health by their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

‘Boy, that’s sad,’ the male anchor opined at the end of the story. ‘So sad.’

‘It sure is, Ken,’ Betty said. Then the screen behind them flashed a picture showing a bunch of idiots in wedding clothes standing in a swimming pool, and her sad face clicked off and the happy one came back on. ‘But this should cheer you up – twenty couples decided to get married in a swimming pool in Cleveland, where it’s only twenty degrees!’

‘I hope they had a hunka-hunka burning love,’ Ken said, showing his perfectly capped teeth in a grin. ‘Brrrr! Here’s Patty Newfield with the details.’

How many more could I get? Brady wondered. He was on fire. I’ve got nine augmented Zappits, plus the two my drones have and the one in my drawer. Who says I have to be done with those job-hunting assholes?

Who says I can’t run up the score?

Brady continued to keep track of Zappit, Inc. during his fallow period, sending Z-Boy to check the Google alert once or twice weekly. The chatter about the hypnotic effect of the Fishin’ Hole screen (and the lesser effect of the Whistling Birds demo) died down and was replaced by speculation about just when the company would go under – it was no longer a matter of if. When Sunrise Solutions bought Zappit out, a blogger who called himself Electric Whirlwind wrote, ‘Wow! This is like a couple of cancer patients with six weeks to live deciding to elope.’

Babineau’s shadow personality was now well established, and it was Dr Z who began to research the survivors of the City Center Massacre on Brady’s behalf, making a list of the ones most badly injured, and thus most vulnerable to suicidal thoughts. A couple of them, like Daniel Starr and Judith Loma, were still wheelchair-bound. Loma might get out of hers; Starr,