The Spartan

By Adam Bryant

He came out of nowhere. The mysterious Spartan, as named by a new famed reporter, showed up just in time to save the city's local high school students from being completely slaughtered by a Columbine-like incident. Since then, he has taken the law into his own hands, brutally assaulting anything that decides to harm a fellow citizen. But just who is the Spartan and where did the masked hero come from? Five people, who have never met, are about to be connected by the search to answer this question, but the answer may not be the one they wanted...

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456721800

Adam Bryant

Adam Bryant is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed. He writes the popular “Corner Office” feature in The New York Times’s business section and has served as the newspaper’s senior editor for features, deputy national editor, and deputy business editor. He was previously a senior writer and business editor at Newsweek. He and his family live in New York City.

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Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER FINAL

You will not like me…

After listening to all of the things that I’ve done

Or thought of doing

And when the details of the blood

That has soaked my hands

Stains the pages you hold now…

…you will not like me…

…you will scorn me.

PROLOGUE

(Eric Adams)

This is it.

The end all to end all.

The apocalypse.

And it’s so damn depressing.

No aliens.

No Godzilla.

No fucking zombies.

Just this giant, electrical vortex of death and destruction sucking up everything in its path and completely vaporizing it into nonexistence. The buildings that once stood so tall are now being completely consumed by this godly force, here to punish us for the one sin we all have in common…

Being human.

The current of the winds from the storm this electrical field emanates is swallowing everything we have stood for…

Cars to transport our lazy asses.

Buildings to house our cancer spreading corporations and money stealing government officials.

Street lights to illuminate our shitty streets at night so the world can never be blinded by our hideousness.

I guess I was expecting the end of the world to be more awesome and something I could actually survive...but this…this is absolutely terrifying.

I breathe in the sent of the hailing storm and look up at the thunder and lightning short circuiting the gray sky. Below those blackened clouds is the vortex, floating preciously through the city, eating everything it can take.

So many people dead and if not dead, dying from the destruction.

I’m trying to think back as to how this all happened, but I can’t seem to comprehend it. The events that led up to this point were almost ridiculous.

And it was all made possible by people…

Stupid…STUPID people…

CHAPTER I

Introduction To Madness

(Eric Adams)

You inhale.

During this time the instructor writes two words on the Smart Board with the red marker and underlines it.

CRIMINAL MIND.

The psychology book in front of you shows two big text book pages of fat paragraphs written in large font and pictures of prison life with little subtext underneath them. Most of the prison pictures are perfectly, racially profiled to show you the largest, scariest looking African American, completely disregarding the child molesting Caucasian next to him.

Out of all the words on the page, only a few stand out.

Murder.

Suicide.

Death.

Killing.

Rape.

Violence.

Your eyes only skim the page, tapping your pen in your free hand because the other stops your head from collapsing of boredom. Everyone, except for a select few, look up at the clock, a clock they haven’t switched to digital because the school blows too much money on other useless things like premium made lunches crafted from real Alpo dog meat. They all watch five seconds go by, not nearly enough time for the class to end.

The only ones not watching the clock is the kid in the soccer shorts texting his girlfriend three classrooms away about how he can’t wait for psychology to end so they can skip next class together and go home and have sex while his parents aren’t home. The girl behind you is looking in her cosmetic mini-mirror, reapplying her make-up for the fourth time today. The Asian kid in the front row, close enough to give the instructor a blowjob, has three perfectly organized pages of notes already with his fiesta of colored pens and three-ring binder color-coordinated for each subject. You only have the word psychology written with a doodle of Batman fighting the Joker in the corner of your page.

To your left, this kid with greasy hair and glasses wearing high-water jeans and a videogame t-shirt is drawing a half-naked Japanese anime character that makes your Batman doodle look like the work of a child with a mild case of down-syndrome. He’s going to go home and masturbate to it with his collection of World Of Warcraft merchandise and Lord Of The Rings action figures. You turn to the window and wonder, what the fuck am I doing with my life?

You exhale and a furry of submachine gun bullets fly through the windows.

CHAPTER II

Ringing

(Bill Bethards)

My job consists of three major tasks.

Drinking coffee

Chatting with co-workers

Answering the phone

The drinking coffee task takes about 40% of my time for the morning. The chatting with co-workers task takes up about 50% of the time. The actually answering the phone task takes up 10% of the time. 70% of the time the call is something minor that the police can take care of. 29% of the time it’s a prank phone call. The small one percent, just one percent, it’s something serious.

Most of the time, people don’t understand how serious one percent really is. You see it everywhere with cleaning products. Mr. Clean will kill 99% of all bacteria. Hand sanitizer always kills 99.9% of germs. But what about that point one percent? Do you know how fast germs actually spread? A single bacteria cell has the ability to divide and multiply within seconds from touching an unsanitized object. In a matter of seconds, just seconds, that point one percent has enough time to come back for revenge and possibly kill you. The same goes for serious phone calls.

Sitting.

Waiting.

But no call.

Sometimes that’s the best feeling in the world. That overwhelming feeling of absolute silence. No sound comes from that phone and it’s a feeling of safety.

Sound travels at 1,236 kilometers per second. That’s 768 miles per hour meaning a mile every five seconds.

Telephone line signals travel somewhere around the speed of light.

The phone rings.

70% of the time I transfer it over to the police.

Ringing.

29% of the time it’s some little shit pulling a cheap prank.

Ringing.

One percent...

Hello?

...

Shit. I’m on my way.

Depending on how serious the call, every patrolling officer vehicle will stop whatever they are doing and report to the scene as soon as possible.

Depending on how severe the call, all EMT vehicles within the area will report to the scene as soon as possible.

Depending on how dangerous the call, all fire emergency vehicles will floor it to the scene as soon as possible.

Several armored S.W.A.T. vehicles fly down the street as I make my way to the car. They’re all flocking to the same building.

This is serious.

CHAPTER III

We Interrupt This Program…

(Andrea Silversun)

A good journalist knows what to write about and what people want to read. They know where to place the words in a news article, they know which photograph catches the most attention and they understand the power that verbs have on the reader. Verbs like:

Murder.

Dying.

Kill.

Rape.

They understand the power of adjectives like:

Suicidal.

Violent.

And threatening.

A good journalist understands the competition between the television and the newspaper. They understand that words that personalize the article like I, me, my, we, and us make the article weak.

The idea behind making the perfect story is to not show fear by expressing emotions, but rather advise fear by giving whoever is looking, something to be scared of. That feeling of fear intensifies everything. People love it. That’s why poorly rated horror films make so much money