Kill the Dead

Kill the Dead
Richard Kadrey

Supernatural fantasy's best antihero returns, in the high-octane follow-up to Richard Kadrey's acclaimed Sandman SlimJames Stark, a.k.a. Sandman Slim, crawled out of Hell, took bloody revenge for his girlfriend's murder, and saved the world along the way. After that, what do you do for an encore? You take a lousy job tracking down monsters for money. It's a depressing gig, but it pays for your beer and cigarettes. But in L.A., things can always get worse.Like when Lucifer comes to town to supervise his movie biography and drafts Stark as his bodyguard. Sandman Slim has to swim with the human and inhuman sharks of L.A.'s underground power elite. That's before the murders start. And before he runs into the Czech porn star who isn't quite what she seems. Even before all those murdered people start coming back from the dead and join a zombie army that will change our world and Stark's forever.Death bites. Life is worse. All things considered, Hell's not looking so bad.

Copyright

HarperVoyager

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

First published by Voyager US 2010

Published by HarperVoyager 2012

Copyright © Richard Kadrey 2010

Richard Kadrey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Songs quoted: “Ballad of Thunder Road” by Don Raye and Robert Mitchum © 1958 Universal MCA Music, ASCAP. All rights reserved.

“I’m Waiting for the Man” by Lou Reed © 1967 Oakfield Avenue Music, Ltd. (BMI). Rights for Oakfield Avenue Music, Ltd. (BMI) administered by Spirit One Music (BMI). All rights reserved.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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Source ISBN: 9780007446001

Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007446018

Version: 2017-09-08

For G and K

Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds

Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things

Abominable, unutterable, and worse …

– PARADISE LOST, Book 2

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my

work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

– WOODY ALLEN

Table of Contents

Title Page (#ub69c077f-11ff-5040-8e4a-bdc1e0ee4104)

Copyright (#u67319e5b-b593-5ba7-aee4-bd7cd171364d)

Dedication (#u1b48b27a-5009-59dd-b28f-4b13c44d126b)

Epigraph (#u95a09b63-87b7-5fbe-b564-26a2cd630a73)

Imagine shoving (#u4453f6b6-7064-564a-a000-966e72aa3cbe)

A Courier delivers (#litres_trial_promo)

I’m sitting in bed (#litres_trial_promo)

I get up (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Richard Kadrey (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

IMAGINE SHOVING A cattle prod up a rhino’s ass, shouting “April fool!”, and hoping the rhino thinks it’s funny. That’s about how much fun it is hunting a vampire.

Personally, I don’t have anything against shroud eaters. They’re just another kind of addict in a city of addicts. Since most of them started out as civilians, the percentage of decent vampires to complete bastards is about the same as regular people. Right now, though, I’m hunting one that’s trying for a Nobel Prize in getting completely up my ass. It isn’t fun work, but it pays the bills.

The vampire’s name is Eleanor Vance. In the Xeroxed passport photo Marshal Wells gave me, she looks like she’s about seventeen. Probably because she is. A pretty blond cheerleader type with big eyes and the kind of smile that got Troy burned to the ground. Bad news for me. Young vampires are all assholes. It’s part of their job description.

I love older vampires. A hundred and fifty, two hundred years old, they’re beautiful. The smart ones mostly stick to the El Hombre Invisible tricks that urban monsters have worked out over centuries. They only feed when they have to. When they’re not hunting, they’re boring, at least to outsiders. They come off like corporate middle management or the guy who runs the corner bodega. What I like best about old bloodsuckers is that when you’ve got one cornered and it knows it’s coffin fodder, they’re like noble cancer patients in TV movies. All they want is to die quietly and with a little dignity. Young vampires, not so much.

The young ones have all grown up watching Slayer videos, Scarface, Halloween, and about a million hours of Japanese anime. They all think they’re Tony Montana with a lightsaber in one hand and a chain saw in the other. Eleanor, tonight’s undead dream date, is a good example. She’s got a homemade flamethrower. I know because when she blasted me back at the parking garage, she fried one of my eyebrows and the left sleeve of my new leather jacket. Ten to one she found the plans on the Web. Why can’t vampires just download porn like normal jailbait?

It’s Sunday, about a quarter to six in the evening. We’re downtown. I follow her along South Hill Street toward Pershing Square. I’m about half a block behind her. Eleanor is wearing long sleeves and carrying an umbrella to keep the sun off. She strolls along happy, like she owns the air and everyone has to pay her royalties whenever they breathe. Only she’s not really relaxed. I can’t read a juicer’s heartbeat or breathing changes because they don’t have them. And she’s too far away to see if her eyes are dilated, but she keeps moving her head. Microscopic twitches left and right. She’s trying to look around without looking around. Hoping to catch my shadow or reflection. Eleanor knows she didn’t kill me back at the garage. Eleanor’s a smart girl. I hate smart dead girls.

At the corner of Third Street, Eleanor shoulder-butts an old lady and what’s probably her grandkid into the street, in front of a flatbed truck carrying a backhoe. The driver slams on the brakes. The old lady is on the ground. Cue the screaming and squealing tires. Cue the sheep who stand around pointing and the Captain Americas who run to help. They pull the old lady and the kid back onto the sidewalk, which is great for them, but it doesn’t do anything for me. Eleanor is gone.