The List (34 page)
Bert nodded. “Eating jumbo omelets.”
“Might be something to consider.”
Tom noticed that the small hospital room was becoming a bit cramped, but he felt his heart rate increase when one more person joined them.
“Oh my God, is that Abe Lincoln?”
Joan came into the room, and Abe gave her a big hug.
“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Arc.”
Joan closed the door and faced them, looking serious. “I’m glad you’re all here. We need to talk.”
Tom noted the manila folder Joan was carrying, with
CLASSIFIED
written on the side.
“Is that from Stang’s?”
“Yes. It’s the only file I managed to save. You all need to look at this.”
Bert opened the file and flipped through it. As he read, his face became progressively grimmer.
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Roy said. “Spill.”
Bert held up a paper. “This first page. It’s a list of the ten clones Dr. Harold created. Me, you, Abe—the others with numbers on their heels.”
He handed it to Tom. “Yeah. These are the ten. So?”
Bert handed him the next page. Tom stared at it. The first name that stood out was Jerome Huntington, the crazy Navy SEAL Stang had working for him. Printed next to his name was “
clone of
GERONIMO
.”
Tom scanned down the page, seeing many other famous names, some of them real doozies. And just like the first page, there were numbers next to them. Eleven through twenty.
“Let me see.” Roy took the paper and read through it. “You mean to tell me there are ten more clones of famous people running around?”
“Nine more.” Tom frowned. “Minus Geronimo.”
“Nine more?” Abe reached for the page. “Tell me one of them is Marilyn Monroe.”
“So what do we do about this, Tom?” Bert asked.
Roy nodded. “Yeah, Tom?”
Tom shook his head. “The FBI can take care of it. I’m done. I did my part. This is no longer my business.”
“There are some very bad people on this list, Tom.” Joan put a hand on his shoulder. “Who knows what they could be doing in the world?”
Tom couldn’t believe that came from Joan.
“Don’t you want to go back to living a normal life? A safe life?”
“Can anyone in the world be safe with number 17 running around?”
“Number 18 is even worse,” Bert said. “And 20 is pretty bad too.”
Tom’s shoulders slumped. “It’s not our fight.”
“You know,” Abe grabbed his lapels and rocked back on his heels.
“There were a lot of people who didn’t want to stand up to King George in 1776. A lot of them said it wasn’t their fight. But a few of them did. One of them was a guy named Thomas Jefferson.”
Tom sighed. Corny as it sounded, Abe was right. Ultimately, it didn’t matter why Tom was the way he was. It might have been genetics. It might have been the way he was raised. It might have been something totally unique to him. Tom had no choice but to follow his nature, wherever his nature came from.
“Okay,” he said, standing up and taking Joan’s hand. “Who should we try to find first?”
End
About the Author
Joseph Andrew Konrath was born in 1970, in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, IL.
He’s written twenty-two books and short story collections, but only a few of these have been published. The published ones include
Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, Rusty Nail, Dirty Martini,
and
Fuzzy
Navel.
The unpublished ones include
Hardboiled: A Collection of
Harry McGlade Stories, Private Dick: A Collection of Harry McGlade
Stories,
the story collections
Bullshit, Miscellany, Some Stuff I Wrote,
J. Andrew Haknort: The World’s Worst Poet,
and
55 Proof
, and the novels
Dead On My Feet, Three Way, Ragged Claws, Insidious Intent,
Everybody Dies, A Shot of Tequila, Origin, The List, Disturb,
and
Afraid.
Most of these unpublished books suck. Don’t ask Joe for copies.
He won’t give them to you. But he holds out hope for the last five novels, and two of them are available as free downloads on his website.
The List
is also, technically, unpublished. Joe printed this book himself for sale exclusively through JAKonrath.com.
Joe has been married for eleven years. He has three kids and three dogs. He writes a blog called A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, which can be found at jakonrath.blogspot.com.
