Everything You Need: Short Stories by Michael Marshall Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

from the newsagents.
    He held up his hand. Dangling off one huge finger, Spike saw, was a large bunch of keys. The edges of the big, silver keys glinted in cold moonlight.
    ‘Come,’ the man said. ‘It’s time.’
    Believing that at last his fate had been reversed, and not realizing that — in his other hand, the one behind his back — the tall man held an axe — Spike hesitated, but then walked up the alley toward him.
    That was his final mistake.

     
    T he big man with the grey, sad eyes waited until Spike was within a couple of yards. Then he was in sudden, terrible motion, raising the old, notched axe high above his head — and then with a chop, chop, chop, the magician was dead.
    Dead and afterward meticulously dismembered, his limbs severed one from another in the quiet of the newsagents, and then left out in the tiny yard behind it — a scrap of space lost and invisible in the shadowed depths of high, old buildings around — so that cold moonlight might fall on them, after the old methods, turning Spike’s body into lengths of dry wood which the woodcutter tied into neat bundles and added to the pile in the box out in front of his shop the following morning.
    If you ever see such wood for sale, do not buy it. The bundles look pretty, but do not burn well. They look a lot like short sections of silver birch.

The Last Barbecue
    A RCHIVAL RECORD : CA/6857F
    MEDIUM: digitized CCTV
    DATE: [Labor Day, 2017]

     
    C ontextualizing statement :
    Following is a transcript of CCTV footage recovered from the LakeView Resort & Spa, 3534 Lake Tahoe Boulevard, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96150, United States (hereinafter designated “LVRS”). LVRS was a popular hotel and condominium resort on the shore of this key vacation and recreation destination until its desertion. Founded in 1962 and regularly upgraded, in its final form LVRS consisted of twenty-two blocks each holding four small wooden townhouses, arranged around paths in pine woods leading down to the lake. Six additional one-story beach houses flanked a facility at the shore consisting of a pool, children’s paddling pool, and hot tub, formerly serviced by a small café and surrounded by a terraced area. From this a wooden jetty reaches eighty feet out into the lake. On either side of the foot of the jetty were arranged a number of informal barbequing facilities, along with picnic tables on a small grassy area leading to a narrow sandy beach.

     
    L VRS remained sparsely inhabited for several months after The Death, primarily by former staff members, people either aware that their homes elsewhere in the state had already been over-run, or those who believed that the resort would provide an easily defensible location. This hope proved unfounded. The second major wave of No Longer Living Individuals exiting the Bay Area over-ran LVRS during the weekend of October 13-15. All remaining inhabitants of the resort perished during that two-day period.

     
    S ince this time the LakeView Resort & Spa, along with all other previous habitations and businesses along the South shore of Lake Tahoe, has remained deserted. A few generator-supported functions such as motion-sensitive lights and low voltage digital CCTV security imaging remain active; otherwise the resort is a dead facility.

     
    T RANSCRIPT :
    Footage is in black and white, with sound. Camera shows a fixed viewpoint of the edge of the terraced area associated with the spa café, a portion of the grassed area on the other side, and the beach, which is approximately twenty feet in depth. A basic cinderblock barbeque facility stands on the grass. The beginning of the jetty is also visible, stretching out into darkness. Initial sound consists of lapping sounds of water against the jetty supports. Visibility is limited.

     
    R ecorded events commence at 20 :38, according to time code, though there is evidence that the motion-sensitive CCTV camera failed to trigger at some earlier point, as a FIRST MAN is already in