Page 7 of Johnny

Why the hell would I want to remember anything about the day I stopped being me and just

accepted my fate as a cold-blooded killer?

I don’t.

So I just keep walking towards the western edge of the island. There’s a footpath—lots of

footpaths crisscrossing the island. I recall there being several entrances to the underground facilities,

but I opt for the closest one, which is a cave. When I came here years ago there was already a door in

place but it was ajar. No locks of any kind had been installed yet.

And when I find the steel door now, I find it the same way. Open.

I should go back. If anyone is left down here, they’re dead. There is no possible way that I will

find anything good down in these man-made caverns.

But I don’t go back. Curiosity and all that good shit, right? Secrets are so fucking seductive. All

those questions burning inside. All those mysteries waiting to be solved.

The answers are almost never the kind you want to know. It’s just the journey, I think. That inner

detective inside me that needs to solve things.

That’s all I’ve been doing really. My whole life I’ve been trying to solve things. Like some fixer

with all the right solutions. So many balls in the air. Every moment is just another opportunity to drop

one, just another possibility that the whole act will come apart.

Just get on with it. Just forget what you’ve seen, and done, and will do in the future, and deal.

Just fucking deal with the here and now.

I push the door open. There’s no creepy squeak of hinges. This is a class III vault door made of

special concrete poured into a stainless-steel mold. It’s made with anti-friction bearings that perfectly

balance the door so it will open smoothly with a touch of a finger.

I stop for a moment to wonder at that knowledge. Wonder if it’s normal for a guy like me to know

things like that about vault doors. Decide it is. And then continue forward.

It’s pitch dark but my Kel-Tec is equipped with a flashlight and my finger finds the button to

activate a super-bright circle of light as I make my way forward.

There’s no obvious smell. No rotting corpses down here, then. It wasn’t blown up. Just looks like a

very hasty evacuation. Things scattered along the hallways. A few empty gurneys on this level. Some

glass-walled rooms lining each side. I walk down the long hallway, illuminating walls and rooms

with my single beam of light.