Blood and Silver - 04 by James R. Tuck Read Free Book Online Page A

step toward the car, then spun and threw her thin arms around my neck in a hug. She squeezed with all she had, let go, and then ran to the car. I watched her, wiping hot wetness from my eyes. The car door closed behind her and I heard the click of the lock. With a deep breath I stood, stepped over the crackhead mother, and walked up the steps.
    Pulling out the oily rag, I smeared it over the camera lens, turning it into a greasy blind eye. For extra measure, I tossed the rag over the camera. It draped and hung, covering me from sight. My fingers swiped down my denim-clad thigh to wipe away the oil again and then closed on the slide of the shotgun.
    The door was steel. It opened to the inside and was secured with a giant dead bolt. I shoved the breeching shroud just above the lock, leaning into it. Steel met steel in a soft clang. The barrel was aimed down toward the lock, stock pressed securely into my shoulder.
    One deep breath in. Hold. Release.
    Pull the trigger.
    The end of the shotgun exploded, shooting fire out through the tiny gaps between door and shroud. I rocked back through my knees. Taking the kick of the gun. Absorbing it. Pushing back toward the door. The world closed down around the blast, my ears gone silent behind the roar.
    The lead-covered steel ball blasted through the lock. Shoving metal apart. Ripping a tunnel through. I pivoted left, jacked the slide, squeezed the trigger, and blasted another round through. Pivot right. Jack the slide. Pull the trigger. Absorb the shock.
    The lock was gone. Smashed to smithereens. A fist-sized hole glared out at me.
    Spinning to the side of the door, my fingers pulled extra rounds off the stock and shoved them into the breach. With the gun fully loaded again, I turned to the door, leaned back, and planted a size thirteen boot beside the doorknob. The steel door flew in, smashing against a crackhead holding a pistol. The skinny man yelled out in pain and grabbed his arm that held a gun. I shouldered in, twisted, and slammed the stock of my gun across the side of his head, right across the temple. He bowled over into the wall, dropping the pistol, and crumpling into a heap. My fingers flicked on the light mounted to the tactical rail. A halogen beam cut through dim shadows as I started walking down the unlit hallway.
    The hall was narrow and short. Walls closed in toward me, made dingy by a sickly sweet haze of crack-pipe smoke that hung in the air. I tried to breathe shallow and keep as much of that poison out of my lungs as possible. That shit is corrosive, which is why crackheads have train wrecks for smiles. The crack smoke erodes enamel and dissolves the tooth. A lot of crackheads suck the pipe the same way, time after time putting it in the same place as they smoke. Those crackheads will have a perfect hole eaten through their smile like it was etched in acid.
    Trash carpeted the floor. Paper, bottles, rotten food, discarded clothing. It all lay on the floor in piles and heaps, kicked to the side, shoved against the baseboards. I stepped carefully, sweeping the light back and forth. Inside the house, the hot itch was almost unbearable, so choking that the back of my throat was dry and scratchy. My stomach gurgled, roiling around on itself.
    My hearing was clearing up, sounds coming back to me. Yelling. Screaming. I kept moving, clearing the first room by the door quickly. It was empty except for filthy broken-down couches occupied by filthy broken-down people. Most of them stared at me, openmouthed. Two were so far gone they didn’t wake up, dead asleep or just dead, wasted away again in Crack-a-ritaville. One stared at me while still holding a small butane lighter to the glass tube stuck between desiccated lips, held by corroded teeth.
    They were no threat; I moved on.
    Noise came from the end of the hall, where it turned to the rest of the house. Moving quickly, I closed the gap. Two gangbangers rounded the corner. Pants sagging, shirts three sizes too big, with