Unfallen Read Online Free PDF

and steadied myself. When I opened my eyes again he was watching me, anxiously, and I wondered…
    But I tugged at him again. “Find me a vending, Maguire. Where’s this train headed, anyway?”
    “North, I think. How far do you think we’ll get?”
    I could’ve lied to him. But I didn’t. I made up my mind not to, for as long as I could help it. “I don’t know. As far as we can.”
    As far as they let us.
    It would have to be enough.

Bonus Short Story:
The Last Job
     
     
    5:04 PM
    I greeted the day bleary-eyed, heaving, and still drunk.
    Which is, really, just the way I like it.
    I had just finished yarping dryly over the commode when the doorbell’s sweet soft chime penetrated my hangover with all the finesse of a lead sledgehammer. Head pounding, heart throbbing, and kidneys aflame, I splashed cold water on my face and lifted my head to observe two bloodshot blue eyes staring out of the mirror.
    Well, that was no shock. They were mine.
    The doorbell hammered my temples again. I scratched at my armpit, lifted up the hem of my Cribbage Pie T-shirt. It didn’t smell like vomit. I sighed happily and groaned as the pounding drilled through my head.
    I made it out into the hall, kicking an empty Shivlitz bottle aside. It tinkled and broke. I stamped up to the door as the doorbell sounded again, and then I realized the pounding was not strictly in my poor aching head. It was coming from the door as well.
    I sighed, and turned the knob, lifting my gun. In my line of work, you never, ever answer the door unarmed.
    I jerked the door open and would have shot Bruce, except for the dead body. It fell face-forward and hit my floor with a dull thud, and I looked up at Bruce, who was sweating and wide-eyed in an expensively hideous sport coat and blue polyester pants. He had lost his hat, and he was unshaven, and his left eye was almost puffed closed. Someone had popped him a good one. Not as good as the guy on the floor, though.
    A chill exhaled out from the body on the floor, raising my skin into goose bumps.
    “Well,” I said after a moment. I hadn’t seen Brucie in two years. “You’d better come in.”
     
    * * *
     
    5:22 PM
    Bruce held the ice pack to his left eye while I fixed myself a drink. “You gotta help me, Izzie.”
    “You dumped a dead body on my hallway floor, Bruce. No dice.” I poured Scotch into a glass, contemplated the amber liquid, and took a long pull straight from the bottle. “Ahhh.”
    No day was so bad a good bottle couldn’t fix it.
    “Come on, be a good girl. I’ll pay you.” His mournful brown eye fixed on me. His coat was a particularly loud shade of polyester today, brown and red plaid with threads of charming neon green.
    I dropped down across from him, propping my feet up on the rickety kitchen table. A fly buzzed lazily over the unwashed dishes from last night’s dinner. A leaden bar of sunlight pressed against the wilting tomato plant in the windowsill. I contemplated my boot toes. “How much?”
    “Fifty thousand.”
    “Does it have to do with the dead body?”
    “No, just his heart.”
    “What?”
    “He needs his heart back.”
    I eyed my boots even more closely, took another pull from the bottle. “Doesn’t look like he’s missing it.”
    “He’s a vampire , Izzie. They stole his heart.”
    “Oh.” I took another pull. It exploded in my stomach. Maybe once my head stopped hurting I could find something to eat. “Where’s the heart?”
    “Church on the corner of Parkinson and Vine. A group called the Pickers is holding it for ransom.”
    “None of this explains why you dumped a dead body in my hallway.”
    “You were in the neighborhood.”
    I winced. “I don’t handle paranormal clients anymore, Brucie. I presume the dead body would be the one paying me?”
    “He’s not a dead body. He’s just resting. And his name is Viktor.”
    “What happened to his heart?”
    “I told you, the Pickers are holding it for ransom. Come on, Izzie. You’re my