Read Online The Last Tomorrow by Ryan David Jahn - Free Book Online Page A

beat the mugger to a pulp and left him on the front steps of the police station with a note pinned to his shirt.
    After creating his superhero and spending two stories developing him, Eugene introduced the villain who was to become Don Coyote’s arch nemesis.
    His name was Reginald Winthrop. He was a heartless businessman whose plane had crashed on a remote island. For months he was presumed dead. His brother took over his business, married his wife.
But Reginald wasn’t dead. After the crash, a witch doctor found him in the wreckage and nursed him back to health. He’d lost an arm in the crash, but the witch doctor replaced it with
an airplane propeller.
    He returned to the city. But he was no longer Reginald Winthrop. He now called himself the Windmill. When he tried to reclaim his old life, his brother had him declared insane. He was put into
an asylum, but could not be contained. He broke out, smashed the wall to smithereens with his propeller arm – and anyone who got in his way. He went after his brother, demanding his wife and
business back. His brother broke down crying and admitted he’d lost all the money. His wife refused him. The Windmill burned down their house with them inside it. He started robbing banks,
convinced he could rebuild his empire. He just needed a little capital.
    At the end of the last story, Don Coyote, while walking home from work, turned a corner and saw the Windmill leaving a bank with a sack of money hanging from his fist. The Windmill turned on
him, propeller spinning. Don stepped back. The Windmill raised his propeller arm and took to the sky like a helicopter, escaping. Don Coyote went into the bank to make sure everyone was all right.
His mother was there. She’d been killed, sliced to pieces. Don Coyote swore to himself then and there, and to his dead mother, and to God, that he would stop the Windmill at all costs.
    Even if it was the last thing he ever did.
    Eugene was immoderately proud of his creation. He flipped through the pages again and again, looking at it. He’d worked harder on this comic book than on anything else he’d ever
done. He believed it might be his escape from poverty.
    He knew people liked to say that in America anyone could do anything. With enough hard work a man born in the gutter could become a millionaire, or president. But the truth for most people was
different. Poverty was a room with no doors. There were windows, you could see outside, but the windows didn’t open. If you hoped to escape you had either to break through the glass and into
a life of crime or else dream a doorway into existence. If you could do neither of those things you’d be stuck in that room no matter how hard you worked. He believed Rabid! might be
his doorway, and he planned to walk through it if he could.
    The day after he finished the comic, he took the train into the city, determined to find a publisher. The first two weren’t interested. Then he walked into the offices of E.M. Comics on
42nd Street. After waiting for twenty minutes he was called into the publisher’s office. The publisher’s name was Michael Leonard. He was a thin man with prematurely gray hair, a nose
like a snowplow, and a loose-skinned neck.
    Eugene’s stomach was a knot of anxiety.
    He handed the pages over.
    Leonard flipped through them quickly, like someone browsing a catalogue with nothing of interest in it. Seeing Leonard scan the pages, seeing his bored expression, Eugene prepared himself for
rejection. He prepared himself for another no, sorry, it just ain’t our thing. He started thinking about where he might go next. He’d made a list of comics publishers before leaving the
house. As soon as he was down on the street again, he’d look it over, see what was close by.
    But when Leonard flipped the last page he looked up and said, ‘Not bad. I’ll give you two hundred bucks for the idea, twenty bucks a story, and fifteen dollars a page for the art.
I’ll tell you now you