The Rapture: A Sci-Fi Novel Read Online Free

down and shook her with my hand. It dwarfed her waifish shoulder. “Tell me who it is.”
    “The Rapture,” she whispered, “I can feel it. Can you?”
    I couldn’t feel anything. Her breath grew ragged, and I could see she was in pain. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.
    The Rapture. I sure hope it was nice, whatever that was.
    I wiped the blood from my hands and walked back to the truck. In the cab, I entered a report. Hostiles in transport. Smith—that was Bruiser’s real name—found to be working in coordination with hostiles. Three terminated.
    That was it. Someone else would be out to clean up the mess, and next time I came back, it’d be like it all never happened.

7
    Withdrawal
    There were other incidents like that over the years—to be expected, since I started working for the Syndicate once I hit twenty. Which is why it’s kind of funny that this one moment sticks with me.
    My mind ratchets forward, back to the present.
    “It isn’t about the money,” I say, flicking the ash from my cigarette with a well-rehearsed finger tap, “it’s the goddamn principle. This life owes people something more, and if it isn’t going to hand it over, I’m taking it for them. For us.”
    Isaac, Lenny and Mitch, they’ve been at the bar for an hour, two, maybe more. Tonight was big. I was still struggling with the magnitude. The two of them, Lenny and Mitch, they were dumb as bricks: they thought the robbery was about the money.
    They could have the money. I wanted what was inside Sheriff Henderson’s security box. The switchbox . Henderson, after that murder in the canyon, hadn’t let the New Chicago thing go. He’d found out what was going on, and he got his piece.
    He ran this end now. Just the type for middle management: ambitious, dirty, but stupid enough to ensure that he wasn’t a threat to the real folks in charge.
    “Well aren’t you just a regular Robin Hood,” Little Lenny says from behind the bar, “all lofty with your principles.”
    “You know I’m in it for the money,” Mitch says, “and I ain’t going to share none of my loot.”
    “Fellas.” I pause to sip some vodka for dramatic effect. “You never felt that life screwed you? We all could have done so much more—”
    “Yeah, think of all the bitches I could’ve slammed out if I’d been born in Miami,” Little Lenny says, “you seen some of them broads, the ones down by the beach? Gorgeous.” He smacks his lips together and Mitch snickers.
    “You guys are too damn stupid to realize what you’re missing.”
    “We’re robbing a bank, Damien,” Mitch says, staring at the whiskey before him, “this ain’t some sort of humanarian—”
    “Humanitarian, Mitch.”
    “Yeah, that charity stuff, we ain’t doing it. I want the money, Lenny wants the money, and you’re a bullshitter if you say you don’t too.”
    “What about Isaac, does he want the money?”
    “Damn right he does.” He didn’t. He got me into this Rapture movement, and while I don’t agree with the religious weirdness of it all—and I sure ain’t looking for absolution—they got a decent message. They want to help people. Even if it’s with the opiate of the masses.
    Mitch slams back his third whiskey, the shot glass hitting the table with a loud thud. I’d tell him to slow down, but I feel he has the right idea.
    I pace back and forth, trying to calm down, but the nervous energy doesn’t dissipate. I flash back to Bruiser, his nervous energy. This is my first time messing with the Syndicate. I glance over at Lenny, who’s cleaning like a damn demon. Under normal circumstances, he couldn’t be convinced to do that by a bare-assed supermodel.
    “Vodka, on the rocks,” I say. The Lucky Lady’s interior looks elegant in the dim light. One would think that this town could use a little modernity, with Phoenix not even a buck ninety away.
    But no, it’s been five years since I opened this place—after getting the boot—and I’ve gotten my