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.