Deadlift Read online

  Daft, she told herself, and stepped into Mr. Harmon’s top-floor suite to do some business and he closed the door behind her.

  IV. Deadlift/00.00.45

  Forty-five seconds, holding the cable and all the weight attached to it.

  And his wife.

  A gun at his temple.

  David Lowe was a simple man, but not a stupid man. He was wondering if he had enough breath to hold the elevator like this and speak.

  If he didn’t speak, he couldn’t hold the elevator forever, anyway. No one was that strong. No one.

  If he did speak, maybe something would change. Because if it didn’t, the only result would be his wife dying in an elevator. If that happened, he’d throw himself in afterward.

  He couldn’t see a way out, and his muscles were starving his brain of oxygen already. He really didn’t have much to spare.

  But he didn’t have a choice, either.

  “She dies, you won’t get your money…”

  David figured, same as he’d paid a guy to kill his cheating wife, she’d paid a guy to kill him. He didn’t know the ins and outs of murder for hire, but he thought it was probably pretty standard. Half up front, half when the other half was dead.

  If the guy (who stank of stale tobacco) shot David, the elevator would fall. If that happened, Freya was dead, the guy with the gun would be out of pocket.

  Right?

  David Lowe’s face was red, his head pounding, his chest heaving and his muscles burning. The cable slipped just a little more, taking with it some skin.

  “What?”

  For fuck’s sake, thought David. He didn’t have the energy to talk again.

  The man’d have to figure it out, and David would have to hope he wasn’t utterly stupid.

  At around one minute, the gun no longer felt cold against his temple.

  “Oh…okay. I get it. You think your wife paid to have you done, right?”

  David barely managed a nod.

  “You’re dumber than you look, buddy. Otaku paid me, and you’re still fucked.”

  One minute and thirty-six seconds, in total, when Lowe heard the hammer on the gun click, actually click, just as the entire weight of the elevator shifted suddenly. He didn’t, daren’t, let go.

  He held it, more than willing to let it drag him to his death, too. His feet, outstretched, slipped, too. He hit the floor, the gun went off, and missed his brain by inches. It took off some hair, and more hair caught light in the explosion of gases that propelled the bullet into the wallpaper and the wall.

  Sliding along the floor, David braced his legs as best he could and hit the door feet first. The cable tore most of the flesh from his hands and then the governor kicked in on the elevator with a metallic screech. He let the cable go, took a second to cry out in agony at his stripped, bloodied hands, and with a grunt pushed himself up again just as the man fired his revolver a second, third, fourth time into David Lowe’s chest.

  * * *

  David Lowe didn’t stop moving, even though all three bullets hit their mark. He was a big man, with a lot of muscle, and very thick bones. He was also so full of adrenaline that at first, he didn’t even realize he’d been shot, other than to register the pain in his chest as something distant, like a muscle fiber tearing as a man benches a big weight cold.

  If a man holds something heavy for a time, there’s a moment or two after release that the muscles don’t know they’re free. They kind of carry on right up into the air, on their own. Push down on a person’s arms for a minute or two, let them resist. Tell the person to shut their eyes, even, so there’s a kind of detachment from the muscle and the brain. Then, let go.

  Their arms will drift up.

  Three bullets in David Lowe, and a final two in the revolver. The revolver was a .38, with a two-inch barrel. Useless, pretty much, over about ten, maybe twelve feet.

  The guy was a good shot, and the fifth bullet, maybe, would have stopped a man who hadn’t just held roughly 1,000lbs for over a minute and a half.

  Lowe moved constantly. His hands were still held low down, in roughly the position that he’d held the cable. His fists were both closed, because the flexors in his big fingers hadn’t yet realized they were free of their burden. But his heavy, round shoulders, the deltoid muscles there, posterior and lateral, his trapezius, his spinae erector, for maybe two seconds, stuck.

  Then, in front of the man with the gun, the majority of David Lowe’s muscles remembered to move, all at once.

  The opposite, almost, of 1,000lbs in an upward moment when he screamed because of the sudden pain of release in his joints, tendons, ligaments, muscles, and his madly pumping heart.

  His bunched fists flew upward with such force that his own feet left the ground. His left arm caught the tobacco-smelling guy’s right arm at the elbow. David Lowe’s hyper-charged, thick-boned radius connected at exactly the point of the smaller man’s elbow. Instantaneous dislocation, shattered radius, ulna, and humorous, burst capsule, torn ligaments, cartilage, biceps and triceps useless, gun, dropped.

  Lowe’s right thumb joint connected with the underside of the smaller man’s chin.

  Teeth, upper and lower mandible shattered. A portion of tongue cleanly removed, and the head snapped back with such velocity that none of the other injuries mattered at all, because the man’s spine was destroyed at the fourth, fifth and sixth vertebrae.

  The little guy left the ground dead and hit the floor the same way.

  * * *

  For a moment, David Lowe had no idea where he was, what he was doing, who the man dead at his feet was, why he was bleeding…

  Elevator.

  Wife.

  The Other Man.

  These thoughts flitted across the man’s oxygen and nutrient-starved mind like skaters on ice, leaving sharp trails in the brittle, frozen synapses.

  My wife’s in the elevator.

  He looked at the man on the floor. He was dead. There was a gun somewhere, but he didn’t know where. He could barely turn his head. He hurt everywhere.

  There was a man standing a way down the hall, watching him.

  Can’t be watching me, thought David, and dismissed the man.

  What the fuck am I doing here?

  Something important, he figured.

  Little guy on the floor shot me…

  David Lowe, finally, was getting angry. A man slow to anger. Glacial. But with the same kind of power when he shifted. This time he was angry with himself, because he couldn’t think.

  Why can’t the man at the end of the hall be watching me?

  He wondered, couldn’t, still, grasp any kind of coherent thought.

  His chest heaved and he was seeing small white spots dancing, flitting, in his vision. Man can’t see me because he’s wearing a hood.

  A suit, and hood?

  A sack?

  Aye. The man’s wearing a sack on his head.

  What the fuck, David’s beleaguered mind managed, when he remembered, his great lungs and his powerful heart finally beating the depletion that robbed his mind of thought.

  “Fuck,” he said, ignoring the weird lunatic with the sack on his head and turning back to the elevator shaft behind him. Dead guy, Halloween freak, didn’t matter.

  His wife was in the elevator.

  He leaned out, head over the shaft.

  “Freya! Freya!”

  “David?”

  Confused. Frightened.

  “Frey…” David called, but was all he could manage. A sudden blast of fire, debris, cable, metal blew past him with enough force that even a man like Lowe couldn’t stand against.

  His breath was gone, he was flying among the shards, rubble, shrapnel, blown by the percussive wave from the explosion at his head and torso into the air with such power that he hit the ceiling before he hit the ground.

  V. Dinner with the Woman in Red and the Other Man

  Mr. Harmon, the man who belonged to a sackcloth mask, offered Freya Lowe a seat in his room. A low seat tha
t looked comfortable, so they would be opposite each other. He offered with a smile and a slight wave of his hand. She sat on the edge of the seat, careful not to seem overly confident, overly relaxed.

  Freya placed her briefcase on the floor beside her. Mr. Harmon’s briefcase was on the seat next to him. On a table to his right, a drink.

  “Would you like a drink, Mrs. Lowe? The hotel has almost anything you could wish for…”

  “I’d like a water, sparkling, if you have it?”

  He nodded and took a bottle of French sparkling water from a refrigerator designed to look like a cabinet. He took a glass from the sideboard above it, and with a twist of the cap opened it. It hissed, but did not spill.

  “Thank you,” she said as he placed the drink beside her, on a small, round, old-looking wooden table, polished to a sheen.

  “I apologize for the unusual request. I don’t usually conduct business in a hotel room, but there have been some threats against my person recently. I am maintaining a low profile, you might say.”

  “That’s awful,” said Freya, leaning forward a little, simple concern on her face.

  “Yes,” said Harmon. “Yes. But, no matter. Shall we get to business? No doubt you’re eager to see the color of my money…”

  “Mr. Harmon…”

  He held up a perfect, long-fingered hand. Mr. Harmon smiled, showing his gleaming white teeth.

  “I’m kidding. I’ve already decided to place some money in your care. In the care of your company. It’s a done deal already. I do my research.”

  She couldn’t contain the smile that lit up her face.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “Well, I don’t want to rush things, but shall we sign on the dotted line?”

  “I’d be delighted,” said Freya. She took her briefcase on her lap, unclasped it, and opened it so that the contents were hers alone to see.

  Mr. Harmon did the same.

  Not yet, said the sackcloth mask.

  “Would you do me the honour of dining with me to celebrate?” said Harmon, closing his case.

  Freya smiled, a little uncomfortable, but happy to oblige Harmon with dinner. And the Regal was a good hotel. The food would be good. David wouldn’t mind waiting.

  “I’d love to,” she said.

  Harmon smiled, took his pen from the briefcase and closed it.

  * * *

  Earlier in the day, Otaku had placed a small camera within Harmon’s suite. He watched it now. Waiting, eager to blow something up, impatient, but in a strange way enjoying the anticipation. He watched the smooth, rich, Other Man move around the room. Envied the perfection, the crisp precision of the man’s assault on the Woman in Red. She was a stunning woman, all right. More at home, to Otaku’s mind, with this man than the brute who’d paid to have her murdered.

  “Come on,” he whispered, watching the other man and the woman in red eating their dinner so fucking slowly.

  * * *

  Freya declined a starter, and Harmon followed her in choosing a main meal and sharing a coffee with her, rather than champagne. Nothing showy, nothing flash. A good steak for both of them, him with mushroom sauce, her with stilton and cream. Potato chips that, it seemed, had been parboiled, roasted, and then deep fried. A simple side salad.

  The food was perfect, the conversation easy.

  Harmon was confused, though.

  Not yet, the mask had said. But the meal was done. She was dabbing her lips. He could tell she was preparing to excuse herself. He had no doubt she would do so with impeccable manners and the grace that seemed to flow from the woman effortlessly.

  He could jam her hand to the table with his steak knife. Hit her with the heavy, hot skillet the steak came in. Probably concuss her, knock her senseless. Don the mask and let the mask do what it wanted.

  But it was silent, there, in his briefcase.

  He was ready. He wanted to put it on, to be blind to her flesh. To lose control.

  And the mask didn’t.

  * * *

  Freya did make her excuses, and Harmon couldn’t force the mask.

  He smiled broadly, covering his disquiet, and saw her out.

  “Thank you, for the business and the dinner, Mr. Harmon. You’ve been very kind.”

  “It was truly my pleasure,” he said.

  They spoke a few more words. He closed the door behind her and strode immediately to the sofa where he’d placed his briefcase. Shortly, the mask was in his hands.

  “Why?” he said. “Why?”

  The mask, eyeless and mouthless, did not reply, but lay inert across Harmon’s soft palms.

  The hotel seemed to shake. Almost like an earthquake, which Harmon had experienced before in Osaka and Los Angeles. A sense of sideways movement…akin to something immeasurably large and drunk bashing the tall building. A sense of settling, immediate.

  Harmon waited maybe less than a second for the room to shift again before realizing it was no earthquake, but an explosion. The bang barely registered with him, confused as he was. A moment more passed and he heard a screech, like metal on metal.

  Now, said the mask in his hands.

  Harmon put the mask on, and then, nothing. Nothing at all. No thought, no sight, no sensation at all.

  Harmon wasn’t a person anymore, but a mannequin, a scarecrow, an automaton. He was the mask.

  The mask did not sit loosely on the man’s face, as it should. It was far more animate than a simple sack should be.

  In an instant, it shrank down to fit his face, to become his face, fitting perfectly around the contours and features of the man. The mask took Harmon to the door, opened the door, stepped into the hallway and watched the man, the big man, run toward the elevator, wrench the doors wide with immense strength. Unbelievable strength.

  Enviable strength.

  A man, in fact, more desirable than Harmon.

  The mask watched as the man snatched a whipping steel cable from the air, like a man wrestling a snake. It saw the man brace his legs against each side of the door and his entire body shudder as he took the sudden weight of the dropping elevator on his shoulders, his arms, hands, spine, legs.

  And the mask knew it wasn’t the Woman in Red that it wanted, after all.

  It was this man.

  VI. Creating a Monster

  David Lowe was six feet two inches tall at the age of fifteen, when he began to lift weights. When Lowe was fifteen, Harmon was five years old. It was at five years of age that Harmon was given the sackcloth mask by the man who murdered his parents.

  * * *

  Most anyone can build muscle through repetition and punishment. A scrivener of old would be building muscle in the hand and fingers that held and dipped a quill. A blacksmith, hammering iron upon an anvil, a factory worker during the war creating bombs to be dropped on Dresden.

  Repetition builds memory into muscle. Weight breaks muscle fibers.

  Break muscle fibers, build them back stronger and bigger through diet, supplements, steroids, even.

  Most anyone can build bigger muscles, barring injuries, illnesses, genetic disorders.

  A man or woman of average health, lifting weights, eating right, could achieve much. But it is genetics that makes the monsters, the true strongmen of the world. Take a big man with good bones to begin with, nurture him, along with work, dedication and great big lumps of iron, lifted over and over, to destruction. To the burn in both the muscle and the lungs, to the ache in the ligaments and the tendons stress to just before breaking point, and sometimes beyond.

  David Lowe, genetically speaking, had been born a monster, and then he’d trained that monster into something remarkable. Power lifting, from a young age. From the age of fifteen, even before his body’s foundations were fully formed. Building immense strength and resilience into not just muscle, but lungs, heart, joints.

  Never for competition, but because within David Lowe there was a beast, and when it tired, it slept. It backed off.

  When it woke, h
e broke people.

  He began working with weights because he needed to send that beast to sleep. Before he hit the weights and slept heavier, he held an eighteen-year-old two-hundred-thirty-eight-pound bully by the neck until the boy had blacked out and he’d been expelled from school and beaten black, blue, yellow and purple by his father.

  * * *

  David Lowe’s father was a man who loved with his fists. A big man with a broad strap he wore around his waist.

  David Lowe had never stood up to him. Maybe given time, and his size, he could have caught that strap and turned it on his father, but he was just a kid. A big kid, yes, but kids love their fathers, or they’re terrified of them, maybe, if their father’s not exactly the right man for the job. Some kids are born tough, true—same as some kids are born big. David Lowe was a giant even at a young age, but he’d never been cold or hard.

  When he was fifteen years old, David’s father began to waste away.

  Never a man to visit a doctor, Mr. Lowe, the senior, didn’t even know he had pancreatic cancer until he was taken to the hospital.

  David Lowe was a man fighting against a dead man. A fight he couldn’t ever win, but he didn’t know that. David Lowe didn’t think deep, or hard. He wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t dumb.

  He was just a thing, a strong, great, loving, kind monster.

  A mostly gentle giant that could bench 700lbs, squat 800lbs, and hold a 1,000lb lift with bloodied hands and a stub-nosed .38 at his temple.

  * * *

  At five years old, Harmon hadn’t known hardship. He’d never been hit. He was happy, loved, and had most everything he wanted in two loving parents. They had money. A lot of money. Enough that they never had to drive but had staff that took them places.