Dead Run by P. J. Tracy Read Free Book Online Page A

narrowed into a strip of potholcd tar that intersected a road a hundred feet ahead.
    "Thank God," Annie muttered, fanning her perspiring face with a plump hand. "Damn woods is like a sauna." Then she raised her hand to shield her eyes from the bright afternoon sun and looked around. "Good heavens. Is this supposed to be a town?"
    There was an old frame house nearly backed into the woods on their right, a pair of concrete-block buildings up on each corner, and not much else.
    "At least there's a gas station," Sharon said, nodding at the rusting hulks of old cars jammed together behind the building on the left.
    "Well," Annie said, plucking at her bodice. "Good luck to us all if that's the Range Rover service center."
    Sharon smiled. "You might be surprised. Some of these smalltown mechanics can fix just about anything."
    Grace stood very still for a moment, watching, listening, trying to shake the feeling that she'd just crept uninvited through someone's back door. "All we need is a phone," she finally said, and started toward the gas station.
    Up at the intersection, they all hesitated and squinted up and down the empty two-lane road. The woods on the other side looked almost solid, like a living green glacier moving inexorably to swallow whatever puny structures man had erected here. To the left, just past the gas station, the road curved quickly out of sight into the thick woods. It disappeared just as quickly to the right over the crest of a small hill. There was no movement and no sound. Grace could almost hear herself breathe.
    Annie looked around, irritated. "Four Corners my foot. There are only two corners in this town. Talk about delusions of grandeur." The silence seemed to swallow the echo of her voice, and she frowned abruptly. "Damn, it's quiet here."
    Sharon chuckled. "You've never spent much time in the country, have you?"
    Annie snorted. "Of course I have. The country's what you drive through on the way from city to city."
    "Well, this is what it's like when you get out of the car. It's a hot, lazy, summer Saturday in a little nowhere burg, and quiet is one thing you get in abundance in a place like this."
    Grace thought about that. Sharon was the native, the country deputy from Wisconsin, and as alien as this kind of quiet was to Annie and Grace, Sharon accepted it as perfectly normal, and Sharon would know. Still, she felt uneasy.
    It wasn't just that there were no people in sight-that wouldn't have been so odd in a little town where the census takers probably counted on their fingers-but there was no evidence that there were people anywhere. No radios, no dogs barking, no muted laughter of children in the distance-no sound at all.
    She looked at the building to their right, at the sign hanging from a wrought-iron bracket with letters spelling out "Hazel's Cafe." To the left was the gas station, obviously showing its best side to the highway. The two old-fashioned pumps squatted on a concrete island between the building and the road, their metal cases polished and oddly clean. A faded blue sign hung on a tall metal post, advertising "Dale's Gas" in white block letters. At least the door was wide open, suggesting that someone might be inside, out of the heat.
    Her boots clicked on the concrete as she crossed the apron toward the door. It seemed strange not to hear the syncopated accompaniment of Annie's omnipresent high heels next to her, just the soft slap of the borrowed high-tops and the leather squeak of Sharon's laceups. It bothered her that she could hear these sounds so clearly.
    The gas station was as empty and still as the town itself. Grace stepped inside, listened for a moment, then moved toward an interior doorway that opened onto a darkened, deserted garage. Her nose wrinkled at the ripe smells of old oil, gasoline, and solvents, advertising that this was a working garage, even though the picture didn't match the smells. From what she could see in the shadowy garage, the entire place was coated