About the Author J. Knight is a writer working in Los Angeles. He began selling strange stories to the magazines Creepy and Eerie in college, wrote underground comix, and somehow ended up working for Disney. He's written live action television and cartoons for most of the Hollywood studios including Warner Bros., Universal, Sony, MGM and others. His first novel, Risen, appears in January 2004 from Pinnacle Books. He's working on another novel and more short stories, and he contributes articles on classic horror films to Horror-Wood.com. Links to Knight's work available on the internet can be found on his website at www.atombrain.com. Do Overs is his first story in Nuvein.

One autumn week in the small Midwestern town of Anderson, the dead began to rise. They appeared, not as shambling corpses, but in a state of perfect resurrection. Were the Risen the work of God or the Devil? Opinion divided sharply.

Many stories emerged during this singular week. This is one of them.

Some people, it seems, have to learn everything the hard way. Waylon Durgg was one of those people.

He knew better than to drive drunk, but only an accident that cost him a hand could drive the point home. He knew he should wear safety glasses when operating the power saw, but it took a hot sliver from a lurking nail flying into his good right eye to make the argument convincing.

He also knew that you never put your finger on the trigger until you were ready to shoot.

Still, he was picking his way through the field of milo with the .22 pistol in his non-prosthetic hand, in the mood for a little target practice, and he wanted to be ready in case he scared up a rabbit or got a clear shot at a crow. He didn't plan to stumble, but he did, and he didn't mean for the .22 to discharge its load into his chest, but it did, and in his last moments among the living he certainly didn't expect to wake up in that same field shortly after midnight with the wound in his chest fully healed, his right eye clear and a spanking new hand growing where the plastic one had been the day before. But he did.

Waylon was not a learned man, and he did not possess a keen, natural intellect.

Most of the people of Anderson regarded him as a dunce and Waylon knew it, which is why he lived in a ramshackle house on the outskirts of town, kept pretty much to himself and devised his own simple amusements, such as going out with a gun and filling a small animal with #6 shot.

At this point in his hunting career, Waylon had done it all. He'd stalked the wild turkey, punctured the quail, pierced the rabbit, and he'd even trekked through the wilds of furthest Wisconsin to test his mettle against the ruffed grouse. He felt himself ready for bigger game, the most dangerous game of all, man.

For anyone but Waylon, the leap from small game to human without passing through intermediate prey such as jaguar, tiger and Cape buffalo would have been a stretch. Resurrection had enabled Waylon to bridge that gap in one mighty stride.

For one thing, returning from the dead had put Waylon keenly in touch with his hatred for his fellow Andersonites, the ones who taunted him and made jokes that he didn't comprehend, the ones who felt themselves superior to Waylon because of their high school educations and ability to work the Daily Jumble. Waylon's hatred ran deep, like magma seething beneath stolid rock. Resurrection had freed the molten flow of Waylon's resentment, freed it to rain fire upon an unsuspecting populace.

For another, immortality conveyed upon Waylon the one advantage he so sorely needed, the ability to make mistakes. Waylon made mistakes, he knew that, but he was able to learn from them, though the lessons inevitably came too late to spare him grief. His blind eye and severed hand were testimony to the fact that Waylon was what his teachers called "an experiential learner." Hunting man would involve risk, and Waylon might very well find the tables turned upon him. He might even die. But, so what? His new-found ability to regenerate himself would see to it that no lasting harm was done, and Waylon would chalk up useful experience which he could apply to the next hunt. He could play the game over and over until he came out on top.

Poised in a field of stubble under the midnight sky, Waylon studied his new hand. The pink flesh was devoid of blemish, the muscles were strong and supple. Waylon smiled as he curled his freshly minted fingers into a fist.

*

As much as he longed to stalk his fellow townsmen, Waylon realized that it would be best, at first, to choose his victims randomly. It wouldn't do to have Sheriff Clark hit upon his actions too soon, not until Waylon was skilled enough to challenge the sheriff himself. Better to draw his victims from the isolated travelers who found themselves, usually because they missed a turn, on the highway that ran just outside the city limits.

He waited until dark to drag the dead tree limb onto the asphalt. He hunkered down in the ditch beside the branch and waited. An hour passed without traffic. The old road in this post-turnpike era was as dead as Waylon himself had been, and it would take a similar miracle to bring it back to life. Waylon was working a kink out of his left leg when he saw the cold blue headlights of the BMW approaching. The car's high-beams hit the branch and the tires squealed and the front wheels crunched wood and the car came to a halt with the branch stuck fast to the undercarriage.

A young man stepped out of the car, cursing. He gave a few useless tugs on the branch and uttered a few more expletives. AAA would be more than an hour away, most likely, if he could even get a signal on the cell phone. He jumped at the bark of Waylon's voice behind him.

"Move away from the car," Waylon said. He tried to suppress the quiver of excitement in his voice.

The young man turned to face Waylon and his 20-gauge over/under Browning.

"This is how it works," Waylon said. "I give you a twenty-minute head start. That way lies the town." He gestured with the shotgun. "You reach town before I kill you, you win. You're safe."

The young man help up both hands shoulder high.

"Look," he said, "I don't know what your problem is—"

"I ain't the one with the problem," Waylon replied. He spit for emphasis.

The young man reached for the billfold in his back pocket. He opened it and pulled out a sheaf of bills. In the brightness of the BMW's dome light, Waylon easily made out the portrait of Ben Franklin on the top bill. He wondered how many more there were.

"It's all yours," the young man said, stepping forward. He extended the bribe to Waylon. "Take it. Just don't do this...thing."

Waylon was indeed going to take the young man's cash, but there was no hurry. Time enough to collect his winnings when the game was over.

The young man took another step toward him, pleading. He was beginning to get on Waylon's nerves.

"Time you started running," Waylon said. Or rather, it's what he would have said if the edge of the young man's hand hadn't crushed the words in his throat.

Waylon was not sure exactly what happened next. He dropped the gun, he knew that, as he gasped for breath and the air rattled in his shattered windpipe. The young man appeared to be in three places at once as he kicked Waylon in the stomach, then slammed Waylon's head twice against his knee as Waylon doubled over, and somehow or another he spun around and grabbed Waylon's arms and there were a pair of loud snaps, and then Waylon's leg was bending backward at the knee in a way God never intended, and by the time it was over and the BMW was driving off dragging the tree limb, Waylon was back in the ditch where he'd started the encounter, unable to move and in indescribable pain.

Waylon struggled through a red haze toward the Browning that lay just out of his reach. It might have taken hours, maybe just minutes, but eventually he hauled himself into position and managed to get one finger on the trigger and to lay his face down by the muzzle.

"Do over," he said. He didn't even hear the explosion that took off the top of his head.

He awoke at midnight, lying by the side of the road in a puddle of his own blood, feeling like a million bucks. He stood, gripping the shotgun tight. He gazed into the distance in the direction the BMW had taken hours before.

"You beat me this time," he said, "but I can do this over and over. Over and over until I get it right."

He headed home to make plans for the following night.

*

His mistake, obviously, had been to get within the young man's reach. He would be more careful tonight. He'd keep his distance. And he'd be choosier about the victim, maybe hold out for someone older, someone who wouldn't be likely to know karate or nintendo or whatever it was the young man had pulled on him.

The branch barricade had been a partial success, but Waylon needed a more refined technique for stopping travelers, something that would let him discriminate. He parked his pickup on the shoulder at dark, got out the flares and waited.



Headlights appeared down the highway. Waylon stepped out of the truck and lit a flare. He stood in the middle of the road and waved the burning torch, conscious that he might be driven over but fearless in the knowledge of his immortality.

The headlights slowed and the vehicle revealed itself as a fifteen-passenger van. Stenciled on the side was the name of a Baptist Church. The driver stopped. As he opened the door, the lights in the van came on and Waylon could see that it was packed with teenagers.

Waylon felt his head go light with the prospect of stalking terrified teenagers through the woods, picking off his victims like huckleberries from a shrub. As giddy-inducing as the thought was, however, he realized that it was too much. Too much, too soon. Another night, maybe, if he was lucky.

"You need help?" the driver asked.

Waylon waved him away. He turned his back on the embarrassment of victims like an overeater prying himself from a smorgasbord of desserts. "No, no," Waylon said. "I'm fine."

The driver shook his head, and soon the Baptist van was a pair of red taillights disappearing over the horizon.

Waylon waited and waited. He gradually lost his patience with the notion of selecting a proper victim. Whoever he could lure into his trap tonight would be good enough. He should have gone with the teenagers, ready or not. He'd have gotten some sport out of it, and if they eventually overwhelmed him, who cared? He'd come back, killing himself if he had to to avoid being taken alive to Sheriff Clark.

Once he dozed, only to awaken as an eighteen-wheeler roared past, horn blaring. His heart practically stopped, and Waylon fretted that he'd just slept through his last chance of the night. He turned to look back down the road. Like a miracle, another set of headlights was coming his way.

He pulled out a handful of flares and lit them one by one. He dropped them in a line across the highway and took up his position in the ditch. He'd had time to reconsider his modus operandi and didn't want to waste an evening being run down by some clown over-driving his headlights.

A black Lincoln Continental coasted to a halt in front of the flares. The driver leaned forward to peer into the glare, then he shut off the Lincoln's engine and stepped out.

Waylon was on him in an instant. The driver was middle-aged and obviously well-to-do. His suit was hand-tailored silk, his hair dyed jet black, his shoes Italian and shiny and spotless. He was a man of character, a man who did not frighten easily, one who was used to issuing orders, not obeying them. It would be an enormous pleasure to see him brought sniveling to his knees.

"You have twenty minutes," Waylon said, and he laid out the rules of the game. The man did not reveal a glimmer of emotion. Apparently, years of boardroom combat had taught him to conceal his fear. But he would break, Waylon knew. He would break when the game was up and Waylon had him at the point of the Browning. The man would muddy the knees of that silk suit as he fell to the ground to beg for his life. He'd offer Waylon anything—his money, his car, his fancy shoes. But Waylon would just smile and pull the trigger.

"Don't I get a weapon?" the man asked.

"I'm not stupid," Waylon said.

"No. I can see that." Was the man smirking ever so slightly?

"Twenty minutes," said Waylon. He gestured with the shotgun. "Clock's tickin'."

The man turned his back on Waylon and strode into the woods. The way he walked with confidence, as if he had all the time in the world, ticked Waylon off. The man vanished into the darkness between the trees.

"Cocky bastard," Waylon muttered. The more he thought about the man, the madder he got. Five minutes later he set out.

Waylon paused as he entered the forest. The night was still. He should be able to hear the man's footsteps crackling in the dark. No sound came his way. If anything, the air was uncommonly quiet. Then there was a hiss, a spitting sound from behind Waylon's ear. Bits of skull flew out of his forehead and landed with a patter in the grass. His body hit the ground with a thud.

"Amateur," the man said. He unscrewed the silencer from the Ruger Mark II favored by many in his profession and replaced the .22 in the holster slung under his arm. He smiled. The boys at Luigi's would get a kick out of this one. He brushed a smudge from his lapel and then drove on to Kansas City where the boss had a job for him to do.

*

Waylon was leaving nothing to chance tonight. He started before dawn and spent the day preparing the woods for his victim. He set leg traps designed for coyotes, not that they'd kill a man but they'd slow him down, sure enough. He fashioned snares and chopped out a tree fall that would crush a man flat. He dug a pit and fitted it with pointed stakes, then covered it with loose branches and leaves. He rigged a log to swing down from the trees on a rope and smash a man's skull. He mashed down a trail that led straight to the traps, and at dusk, just beyond the traps, he hung a gas lantern, pumped it up and lit it. His victim would see the light through the trees and surely run in that direction.

"Over and over," Waylon said as he laid his traps. "If they don't work this time, I can make 'em better. I can learn, I can. I just have to do things..." he grunted with exertion as he positioned a dead log across the trail, "...over and over."

Night fell and Waylon waited by the road. He was learning patience, and he'd learned to bring a Thermos of coffee along to keep himself awake. He was relieving himself of two hours' worth of caffeine when the headlights appeared.

Waylon zipped up hurriedly and laid out the flares and hid in the ditch. The car came to a stop. A Miata. Out stepped a pair of shapely legs followed a year or two later by the shortest skirt Waylon had ever seen in real life. Boyish hips gave way to a thin waist nestled below a promontory of breasts. The woman's lips were full, the eyes darkly outlined, the hair swirled around her head like a tempest. Waylon felt a stirring in his undershorts.

A woman! The notion had never entered Waylon's mind that his prey might be a woman. He turned the idea around inside his head and decided that it appealed to him, but considering the question consumed valuable time. The woman was already inserting herself back into the car when Waylon emerged from the ditch and introduced himself with the shotgun. He explained the woman's situation to her.

"I still don't get it," she said after Waylon had finished going over the rules for a second time. "I mean, like, what's in it for me? I run through the woods pursued by a madman, no offense, and for what? What's the pay-out?"

"You get to live," Waylon said. "It's simple. You run, I chase. You escape, you live. You don't escape, you die."

"So this is, like, a stalker thing."

"Yeah. It's a stalker thing."

"Well, I guess we'd better get started then."

"Yeah. I guess so."

Waylon watched the woman's buttocks contend with one another as she ran for the woods. Her spiked heels would leave an unmistakable trail. Waylon wondered if the game might prove to be a disappointment after all, like shooting deer from a Barcalounger. He toyed with giving her the full twenty minutes' head start he'd promised, but after five minutes he grew restless and gave chase.

He hadn't gone far before he encountered the shoes with the spiked heels. Maybe the woman wasn't as dumb as she seemed. She'd had the sense to kick off her shoes. The trail grew fainter but Waylon realized that all he had to do, really, was to follow the scent of the woman's perfume.

"Follow the scent," he said. The very thought made his organ stir. He doubled his speed.

Ahead of him, something waved in the breeze. It wasn't the woman, but something about it struck Waylon as decidedly feminine. As he drew closer he realized what it was: the woman's shirt hung on a low branch where it fluttered like a flag of surrender. He glanced around, alert for an ambush like the one that had done him in the night before, but he heard and saw nothing. He pressed on.

One by one the objects presented themselves on the trail like offerings: the tiny skirt, the bra, the panties. Waylon could not believe his extraordinary fortune. The woman was panicking, tossing off every last vestige of her humanity, reverting to the primitive state of a savage, albeit a savage wearing perfume and silicone breasts.



Waylon's member was already stiff as a soldier when he spied her a short distance away. She leaned against a tree, breathing heavily, her perfect breasts heaving. Her legs were scratched and bleeding. Her hair was a tangle of knots and twigs. She glared at him with pure animal hatred, and Waylon glared back with pure animal lust.

He raised the Browning to his shoulder and took aim. His hand shook. Sweat trickled into his eye. He couldn't do it. Not yet. Not until he had a piece of the splendid forest creature before him. He lowered the shotgun and stepped forward, bridging the dead log in his path.

He felt the trip wire and looked up to see the log swinging at him from the tree above. An unwary victim would have hesitated, trying to make sense of the dark, impending shape, but Waylon realized immediately that he'd stumbled into his own trap.

He leaped aside as the log flew past his head, clipping his ear. He landed on the ground with a crash. The loose branches and dry leaves gave way and Waylon plummeted into the pit. Stakes pierced his torso and legs. A stake penetrated his right bicep. He lay on his back, pinned, and felt his consciousness drain away with his blood. The last thing he saw was the woman looking down at him from the edge of the pit, laughing.

"Do over," he whispered.

For the fourth time in as many days, Waylon died.

*

Something, Waylon realized immediately, was wrong.

Midnight had come, bringing with it renewed life. But before, Waylon had awoken feeling refreshed, energized. This time all he could feel was...pain. Agonizing pain. Everywhere.

He raised his head to see his body still impaled on the stakes. Stakes protruded from his chest and stomach, stakes nailed his legs and one arm just as before. He tried to free himself but found that, already, he had lost too much blood and couldn't summon the strength. He had been healed, but only for the purpose of dying again. His body began to spasm. Blood flowed from a dozen wounds.

He would die again, and the next midnight he would Rise, but only metaphorically, for his body would remain firmly in the grasp of the impaling stakes. In his brief waking moments, Waylon would know only immobility and torment. Then he would die and wake again, and die and wake again, and die and wake again. Over and over.

Over and over.