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    Fatal Mistake: A Harry Hell Novella
    Fatal Mistake: A Harry Hell Novella
    Fatal Mistake: A Harry Hell Novella
    Ebook147 pages2 hours

    Fatal Mistake: A Harry Hell Novella

    By Mark McNease

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    About this ebook

    The year is closer than you think. The world has collapsed under the weight of its own insatiable needs, leaving shattered cities where those who still have anything fight to keep it that way, and those who don't are a constant threat. It's a danger that must be contained through a tightly controlled society where everyone is observed and everything is kept in its place.

     

    Harry Hellerman and his twin brother, Elliot, enter this world three minutes apart. By the time they're teenagers, they've been surrendered to Control to be molded into the perfect assassins. A boy named Harry Hellerman enters, and a man named Harry Hell emerges: a killing machine of the highest order.

     

    Harry's life takes a drastic turn when he finds himself teamed with a man named Raul, who becomes his partner in every way. Enter the lethal, dreaded Nectar, queen of the Ruins and slayer of hopes and dreams. Even Harry had them once, but no more. His life soon revolves around one mission only: to take his revenge against Nectar, and die someday with Raul's name still on his lips. It was all he had left to live for.

     

    Enter Eastward, and the Ruins, and the Slopes beyond them. Make your way to the river's edge, misted in darkness, where many have tried to escape but none have ever returned to prove their success. 'Fatal Mistake' begins the journey of a man whose heart had not always been stone. Will it beat again, or will he use it to sink his enemy down, down, down, straight to hell?

     

    Two-time Emmy winner and Mystery Writers of America-NY board member Mark McNease takes us on a journey unlike anything he's written before.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMark McNease
    Release dateMay 3, 2024
    ISBN9798224941711
    Fatal Mistake: A Harry Hell Novella
    Author

    Mark McNease

    NEW! I'm now also writing under the name M.A. McNease, as well as my full name. Nothing up my sleeve, no sleight of hand, I just felt like something fresh. I'm the author of the Kyle Callahan Mysteries, three of which have been best sellers on Kindle. My Linda Sikorsky Mystery, 'Last Room at the Cliff's Edge', was called a winner by Publishers Weekly. I released 'Murder at the Paisley Parrot: A Marshall James Thriller' in 2017, with its follow-up, 'Beautiful Corpse' in March, 2020, and the third book, 'Final Audion' set for release in December, 2022. 'Black Cat White Paws: A Maggie Dahl Mystery' came out in 2018, followed by my supernatural chiller, 'A House in the Woods.' Maggie Dahl returned in 'Open Secrets' in 2022 and is currently resting up for a third adventure. I started the Mark McNease Mysteries podcast (markmcneasemysteries.com) in 2020 to narrate my own mysteries and fiction, My short story 'Stop the Car' was selected as a Kindle Single and is now an audiobook narrated by the amazing Braden Wright. It was selected twice to be included in the Amazon Prime reading library. I have 9 audiobooks in total, available for your listening pleasure. Fasten your headphones! I've also won two Emmys for Outstanding Children's Program for 'Into the Outdoors', a television show I co-created that is now in its 21st year. I live in the New Jersey woods with my husband, Frank, and our two cats, Wilma and Peanut. You can find me at my website, MarkMcNease.com, as well as on Facebook (MarkMcNeaseWriter) and Mastodon (@mamcnease@mastodon.world)

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      Book preview

      Fatal Mistake - Mark McNease

      ONE

      THE ONLY LIGHT in the Slopes was the burn from Echo’s cigarette floating midair in the passenger seat of the abandoned car they’d been sitting in for the past two days. The interior had a lingering corpse odor to it, which Crater attributed to the decomposed body they’d found in the trunk. Whoever it was had met their death a long time ago and had become a tangle of bones, dried flesh and rat-eaten cloth. Crater guessed it had not found its way into the trunk on its own.

      They ate in the front seat, slept in the back seat on rotation, and only left to relieve themselves in a nearby alley that smelled like the open toilet it was. The area’s daily ration of power had been provided and consumed well before midnight, leaving this entire section of the island in darkness. Nobody cared what happened after that, or really what happened at all, in this part of what had once been a great city. People who lived in the Slopes were several steps down from the ones who lived in the Ruins, which was like going from lower to lowest. Life in either place was comparable to an overcrowded prison without walls. Everybody lived by their wits, if they had them, and even those who did could expect a short run.

      Harry told you not to smoke, Crater said. Put it out.

      Nobody can see us, Echo replied, taking another defiant drag. He’d snatched the pack of cigarettes, considered treasure, from a body they’d come across on a recent scavenge. Sometimes the deceased had been living people before they met Crater and Echo, but someone had already taken the pleasure of killing this one: it stank from several days of rotting, and the clothing did not make it clear if it had been a man or a woman. Echo didn’t care; there was a half pack of crushed cigarettes in the back pants pocket that might as well be gold. That he’d made them last this long was a testament to his willpower, or to his desperation, depending on how you saw it. Cigarettes were hard to come by, and seldom acquired without violence.

      I’ll let Harry know you don’t mind what he says, you don’t follow instructions.

      You do that.

      Demonstrating that his bravado was not as sure as he’d wanted it to be, Echo tossed the cigarette out his open window.

      Fuck Harry anyway, Echo said, his impatience getting the best of him. He was tired of waiting for their elusive prey to show herself. She’s not here. We’re wasting our time.

      Crater, so named because of the facial acne scars he’d had since his teenage years, ignored his partner. He knew without Harry Hell they would both be dead, killed long ago by someone stronger, meaner, quicker. Harry had recognized their usefulness and given them purpose: to serve him without question. In exchange, he let it be known in all the Slopes, and from one side of the Ruins to the other, that Crater and Echo were his men. Do not touch them. Do not cross them, for to cross them was to cross Harry himself, and that was as certain a death sentence as any they could receive.

      They’d been on stakeout at Harry’s orders. Word had gotten to him that Nectar was seen coming and going among the buildings on this block. And she’d been alone, a queen venturing out from her hive for reasons only she knew. The large woman who was usually seen shadowing her—a protectress or a servant, or both—had not been with her.

      The directive had been simple: find Nectar and confirm to Harry immediately that she was there. They’d been given a cell phone with only one number to dial, recharged each day during the power share and kept off at all other times except when they watched and waited. Harry would do the rest, and end her life after trying for five years to get close enough for the kill.

      Why can’t we do it ourselves? Echo asked. Think of what people would say about us then! Echo and Crater caught the mighty Nectar. Maybe we could tie her up, torture her a little. I’ve got my pick. A thousand little punctures would do the trick, nice and slow.

      She’s never been caught and she’s never been tied up, except by fools who didn’t live to brag about it.

      She’s a chick.

      And you’re a moron, Crater said. Calling Nectar a chick is like calling a cobra a garden snake.

      What’s a cobra? Echo asked, leaning his head out the window to get a whiff of his still-burning cigarette.

      It’s a killer, said a voice.

      Startled, Echo lifted his head to peer into the darkness outside just as a knife slit his throat. It happened so fast he didn’t know what had been done to him. He tried to speak as he felt a wet gush of blood surging from his neck.

      Crater shifted in the driver’s seat, staring at Echo as he tried to pull his head back into the car. The gash in his throat caught on the window’s ledge, sending a thick stream of blood down the inside door.

      Panicking, Crater reached for the phone they kept on the dash.

      Don’t, said the voice, this time from just outside Crater’s window.

      She’s so fast, he thought, his hand stopped short of the small black phone.

      A second later he felt the tip of a very sharp knife pressed into his neck just below his left ear.

      Let me guess. Harry Hell sent you.

      Crater nodded, afraid that if he spoke the words would be his last.

      His eyes shifted slightly, trying to get a look at the woman outside his window.

      Don’t look at me, she said. Most people who look at me don’t live to describe what they saw. I’m kinda like God that way.

      Crater thought of praying, but who would he pray to? And who would listen? The souls of the men he’d killed? The Devil? That was impossible: she was holding a knife to his neck.

      You’re slow and stupid, she said. Tell Harry I said that.

      His eyes widened slightly. Was she going to let him go?

      Tell Harry to come himself next time. I’d rather kill him than some lackey foolish enough to smoke a cigarette in a pitch black car. Not a smart move.

      Goddamn you, Echo, he thought, and for a moment his fear was mixed with sadness. He’d been with his dead, witless friend for many years, their lives together concluded with a slit throat on a cold, dark, empty street in the Slopes. It was bound to end this way, though, wasn’t it? Had Nectar not finished them, someone less deadly—for there was no one more deadly except Harry—would have done the job.

      Does that mean—

      I’m not killing you, yes, that’s what it means. I’d torture you but I’m on a schedule. I need you to give Harry a message.

      Sure thing.

      "Sure thing, she said, mocking him. Tell him you met Nectar face to face—or knife to throat—and she saw you coming long before you got here. Tell him Raul is still dead and I enjoyed killing him, like I’ll enjoy killing Harry when we finally meet again. But that will be on my terms, in my time. And tell him not to send any more losers looking for me."

      He felt the knife withdraw from his flesh.

      I can’t be found.

      He did not hear her leave. She was too quick, too silent. She was as terrifying as her legend, a ghost among the living.

      He waited several minutes, staring straight ahead into the darkness.

      Finally, his hand trembling, he reached for the phone. This would not be an easy call. Depending on Harry’s reaction, it may be his last.

      He pressed a button and listened as a phone rang.

      Harry, the familiar voice said. It was a cold voice, the voice of a man who’d survived against the odds and grown harder for it, hard as rock, hard as frozen lava.

      Echo’s dead, Crater said. We failed.

      He passed on the message from Nectar, feeling, imagining, the chill when he repeated her words about Raul.

      Harry asked no questions and offered no response. He’d been given the message.

      The phone went dead.

      TWO

      HARRY SAT IN his loft in the Ruins thinking about the call he’d just received. He’d wanted to be told something else, that they’d verified her location with a sighting and the time of reckoning had come. That’s not the message Crater had conveyed, nor was Harry surprised to find out it had ended so differently. If he was honest with himself, and he always was, he’d known there was a good chance Nectar would see them before they saw her. She had eyes everywhere, devotees anxious to please their master, in the Slopes, in the Ruins, everywhere. The only real surprise was that she hadn’t killed them both.

      It had taken five years just to get this close to her again. She relied on her legend as much as her skills to stay ahead of him. The only thing as dangerous as crossing Nectar was crossing Harry Hell, and that pressure of equal and opposing forces had sustained their stalemate. It would not, could not, last forever. His one promise left in life, his mission, was to extinguish her like a candle blown out with his own breath, to watch her die as he spoke one word, one name, Raul. His only soulmate in a lifetime littered with souls, the real reason he’d stayed alive this long. For the truth is that Harry had tired of living long ago. The world he existed in had refused to save itself, and he was weary of inhabiting it. There were no morals, no hope, and absolutely no redemption. He had not committed to killing Nectar for anything as grand as justice. There was no justice and never had been, except in the minds of people for whom the futility of life was unbearable. Rather, his determination was for revenge and the satisfaction of it. Raul had given him comfort in a world devoid of it. Raul had made him feel human when humanity had abandoned the planet and the people on it. Raul had made him laugh. He had not laughed since Raul’s death; he had not even smiled. But he would smile as he watched Nectar’s eyes go dull, and as he heard her gasp a last breath, and as he smelled her fear. People imagined she had none, but Harry knew better. Everyone fears.

      These are things he’d promised himself, and they were why

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