Stepping past her, he picked the pen up off the desk. Without so much as a glance at the pages of extensive legalese, he signed where indicated. He could have misspelled his name, could have signed “George Washington,” could have done any number of things to render the process legally invalid. Instead, he wrote “Marcus Wright” in clear, legible letters. A deal was a deal, and he felt he had gotten his money’s worth.
Putting down the pen he turned to the corridor and turned his hands palm upwards, showing them to the guards. The one whose grip had never left the door handle now pulled the metal barrier wide while his partner hefted the leg shackles he was carrying. No explanation was necessary.
It was time.
Stepping out of the cell Wright stood stolidly, staring at the far wall of the corridor. It was a relief to be out of the cage. Even if it was just to be in the corridor. Even if it was for the last time. He did not move, nor offer any resistance as the guard methodically snapped the shackles shut around his ankles. Their weapons and training notwithstanding, he knew he could have taken both of them. They probably knew it too, just as all three of them knew that if he made any kind of hostile move he would never get out of the corridor alive, and that his demise would assuredly be less swift and probably more painful than the one that had been adjudicated by the State.
While his legs were being secured, Kogan was studying the papers. At once satisfied and relieved she tucked them carefully, almost reverentially, into her carry case. Only then did she exit the cell and stand to one side, gazing at the stone-faced Wright.
“You’re doing something very noble.”
He looked back at her. “I’m dying for my sins and letting you slice up my body until there’s nothing left of me. Not that there’d be anybody to visit a grave if I was going to one. Yeah, I’m a regular hero.”
“You don’t understand. This is the beginning of something wonderful.”
“No. It’s the end of something miserable.”
The guard who had put on the leg shackles made a final check of each before straightening. He and his colleague exchanged a glance. Then the other man nodded at the prisoner.
“Let’s go. It’s time.”
Since there was no way to disguise the death chamber, and no reason to do so, no State had ever made the attempt. Pastel colors would have seemed out of place, any kind of décor beyond what was necessary and required would only be condescending. The room was spare, empty, as functional as a coal bin or a crankshaft.
There was a bulletproof glass partition. One side featured seats reserved for the invited: witnesses, the media, family members of the condemned’s victims. The other side was reserved for death.
Many executions were attended only by those necessary to carry out the will of the people. Not Marcus Wright’s. While not drawing the fervor of a seventeenth-century public beheading, it was the capital punishment equivalent of a full house.
Serena Kogan was among the spectators. Not because her presence was required, but because for reasons known only to herself she felt incumbent to be present.
Flanked by the ever-attentive guards, the prisoner shambled in on his own power. Too many had to be dragged, or sedated beforehand.
Not Wright.
Aided by the guards, the execution team took over. Guiding him firmly, they positioned him on his back on the gurney. As wrist and ankle shackles were removed, thick leather straps were buckled across his body and carefully tightened. At the moment of truth, powerful men who had been calm and even boastful beforehand had been known to fly into violent, uncontrollable convulsions. It was why the straps had been made strong enough to hold down a bucking steer.
As the team continued its silent, methodical work, Longview’s warden spoke from where he was standing nearby. He did not say much. This was neither the time nor the place for idle chatter.
“Final words?”
Lying on the gurney as others labored silently and efficiently around him, Wright considered. He never had been very good with words. Maybe if he had been better with them than with his fists.... Too late for that now. Too late for any sort of recriminations. He would have shrugged, had the straps allowed it.
“I killed a man who didn’t deserve it. Fair’s fair. So let it rip.”
In his years at Longview the warden had heard it all. It was not an eloquent farewell, but neither had the prisoner given in to hysteria. For that the warden was grateful. The process was no less distasteful for having become rare. It was always better when it was not messy.
A technician swabbed Wright’s arm with alcohol. Turning his head to watch, he wondered about that. What, were they afraid he might get an infection? There was barely a twinge when the IV was inserted. The tech was very good at his job and the needle going in didn’t hurt at all. Wright was unaccountably grateful.
His eyes began to move rapidly, taking in his surroundings and the rest of the chamber. Everything appeared suddenly new and heightened. The color of the technicians’ coats. The blue of a guard’s eyes. The intensity of the overhead lights. There was something else new, too. For the first time in the prisoner’s eyes, fear.
Off to one side a technician adjusted a valve. Fluid began to flow through the tube that now ran into Wright’s arm. The tube was plastic, the liquid transparent. It looked like water.
His eyes moved faster. Monitors showed that his heart rate had increased sharply, along with his breathing. There was no pain save the pain of realization. Along with the chemicals, he suddenly realized how badly he wanted to live. He wanted to fight back, needed to struggle. But he could not. The lethal cocktail was already taking hold, doing its work, shutting down system after system. Nervous, respiratory, circulatory, end of story.
He would have screamed but could not.
Overhead, the light was bright and white. Clean, cleansing. Faintly, as thoughts and mind and the remnants of consciousness slowly slipped away, he fought to compose a final, last thought. It was not about the things he had done that had led him to this place and this point in time. It was not of happier days, or of how his life had gone astray and might have been changed for the better. It was not of food or of sex or laughter or sorrow.
It was of that last kiss, and how he might have done it better.
CHAPTER TWO
Animals appear and thrive and then go extinct. Plants cover ground like a green blanket, retreat, and return with greater fecundity. Life expands, contracts, shatters and recovers, sometimes falling to the margins of survival.
But the Earth endures. No matter the number of species that swarm its surface or fall victim to flood, earthquake, plague, tectonic drift, or cosmic catastrophe, the planet continues its methodical swing around its unprepossessing yellow star. The waves of the ocean roll on, the molten iron at its core seethes and bubbles, winds fitful or steady continue to scour its surface. Ice forms and retreats at the poles, rains drench the equator, and heat shimmers above its deserts.
One such desert in the south-central part of the continent called North America was about to receive a momentary upsurge in heat that was not normal.
The missile came in low and fast on a trajectory designed to evade even the most advanced detection systems. The warhead it carried contained considerably more bang than would have been suspected at first glance. Guided by both its programming and its internal sacrificial intelligence elements, it skimmed along the surface so low that it was forced to dodge the occasional tree and still-standing power transmission tower.
Its target was a flat, burnt-out plain from which dozens of huge satellite dishes rose like shelf coral on a reef. The only sign of life in this technological forest of parabolic growths was a single bipedal figure. Marching at a steady, untiring pace among the dishes, it occasionally reached up to reposition the oversized rifle that was slung over one shoulder.