Dark Advent by Brian Hodge Read Free Book Online Page B

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6
    Throughout a world history characterized by change and turmoil, there was at least one unchanging given. Mark Twain knew it. So did Charles Dickens, and certainly the wise sage who said it best: Boys will be boys…
    “You don’t have the guts to.”
    “I do too. Just not tonight, that’s all.”
    Corry’s face screwed up with suppressed laughter. “Chickenshit!”
    Chuck smacked his friend’s shoulder. “Hey, I got plenty of guts. More than you’ll ever have.” His voice, perched on the precarious ledge of puberty, cracked on the ever.
    “Then prove it.” Corry held up a rock the size of his eyeball. “C’mon. Right through his window.”
    “What if I miss?”
    Corry rolled his eyes. “You got your slingshot. You’ll never miss, not the way you practice with that thing.”
    Chuck twisted his mouth one way, then another. Flexed a hand through his red hair in concentration. Ripped up a tuft of grass by his elbow and pitched it across the street, showering dirt. He finally sighed. “Okay, okay. But tomorrow, you do something big.”
    Chuck and Corry had grown up together in Potosi, Missouri, and so far as they knew, they’d always be there. Neither could remember a time when he didn’t know the other, so surely it would be that way the rest of their lives. Theirs was a friendship that had evolved over the years, from the days of early childhood when much affection sprouted between them and they would hug each other freely, to their near-paranoid avoidance of contact these days. Only queers touched other boys. No, these days the true tests of friendship were proved by feats of daring, and the boundaries were limitless.
    “C’mon,” Corry said. “Now.”
    Chuck slipped the stone into the slingshot’s pouch to check its fit. Plenty comfy. He had no ordinary slingshot, no hunk of wood carved into a Y-shape, with a rubber strap. No Tom Sawyer Special for Chuck. He owned a wrist rocket, lightweight fiberglass and metal, well balanced, with a brace extending back to fit over the forearm for improved accuracy. He’d saved up for it from four months of allowances, the longest-term plans he’d ever made in his life.
    Corry’s eyes gleamed, as they usually did whenever he talked the Chuckernaut into a show of guts. And was this ever gonna be good. Tonight’s target was an old fat fart named Mr. Huffman, ormore specifically, the plate glass window of his grubby old gas station. Two or three days ago they’d stopped by to air up their bike tires and the air was off, and all they’d wanted was for him to turn it back on. Corry had been toting around his jambox, with Def Leppard the music of choice, and no doubt that’s what had pissed Huffman off. He’d come charging out of the garage bay, screaming some nonsense about jungle music while waving a crescent wrench in the air. His hair was as greasy as the pans he drained oil into, and he always combed it up from the sides, swirling it together into a wet little curlicue. Had his coveralls been white instead of their usual cruddy blue, he would’ve resembled a stout Dairy Queen cone.
    Chuck hopped onto his Predator bicycle and fit the wrist rocket onto his hand. Wiping summer sweat from his forehead, he scanned the three-quarter-block distance down to the station. No customers. The coast was as clear as it would ever get. Now…
    Corry started to cluck like a chicken.
    …or never.
    His feet attacked the pedals and the bike arrowed down the sidewalk. Other than the gas station, it was a residential neighborhood, and no one had ventured beyond their doors. Just a quiet little street in a sleepy little town, and nobody ever did much of anything, and the only notable thing about the place was that it had become the new U.S. center of population as of the last time they studied such things. He was safe. Next week might be a different story, with the Fourth of July and all, and everybody would be out guzzling beer and scarfing