Dragon City by James Axler Read Free Book Online

his very bones. “I f-f-feel…” he began, but a stream of saliva threatened to choke him, blurting from his mouth in a wave.
    Yasseft’s grip slipped but slightly, and Mahmett tumbled to the chalky cobbles of the street. He hit hard but made no cry of pain. It was almost as if he was anesthetized, or more likely that whatever pain was driving through him required more attention than a simple blow to the knees.
    Mahmett lay shuddering on the ground, his mouth widening, tears streaming down his cheeks.
    “What is it?” Panenk asked frantically. “What is with him?”
    “I don’t know,” Yasseft admitted. “It’s like a fever.”
    They stood there, aware of how helpless they must appear in the face of this. They were the eldest of their little group, they had played together almost since birth and they had had it drummed into them that they were to keep little Mahmett safe. Suddenly a hundred near-misses were remembered: climbing by the power lines, when Mahmett had fallen from an olive tree, and when they had climbed over the neighbor’s wall for a ball, only to come face-to-face with his mean-tempered mastiff. And now Mahmett was collapsed on the ground in a strange city with not a soul in sight.
    “Shit.” Yasseft spit. “We need to get him back. I don’t know what’s got into him but we can’t stay here.”
    “I didn’t even want to come here in the first place,” Panenk reminded him, looking at the younger lad with worry. He wanted someone to blame now, and it wasn’t going to be him.
    Yasseft crouched and placed his hands beneath Mahmett’s shoulders. The glistening, sunlit water at the side of the street sparked and shone like a polished mirror at the edges of Yasseft’s vision. “Just grab him,” he ordered. “Help me. We’ll carry him.”
    Though dissatisfied with the arrangement, Panenk at least had the good grace to raise his complaints while lifting his cousin’s ankles. “It took three hours to get here,” he said. “It’ll take twice that to get back if we have to carry him, and it’ll be nightfall long before that.”
    Yasseft didn’t answer. He stood there, his hands clenched beneath his brother’s armpits, wincing as a tremble ran through his own body.
    “You okay?” Panenk asked.
    Yasseft shook his head wearily. “Just…” He stopped. “Feel like I’m going to…”
    He dropped Mahmett, the younger man’s arms slipping from his grip as he staggered backward. Yasseft’s hands reached for his guts. It felt as if he urgently needed the toilet, as if he had diarrhea. He stumbled for a moment, bashing against a wall in the shadow of the looming saurian head and neck.
    “What is it?” Panenk asked again.
    “Going to…” Yasseft began and then he belched, a watery spume blasting from his mouth.
    Panenk let Mahmett’s legs drop to the ground, apologizing automatically as he rushed over to Yasseft’s side. “My grandfather told me about this,” he said fearfully. “Airborne weapons that get inside you, eat you up from within.”
    Yasseft was not listening. He stood propped against the bone-white wall of a single-story building, vomiting an odorless mix of saliva and water.
    Panenk looked around him, searching for some clue as to where this attack had started. “We’ll leave,” he shouted to the empty buildings. “We’ll go. Just leave us alone, please.”
    His voice echoed back to him, its fear magnified.
    In the road at his feet, Mahmett shuddered where he lay in a puddle of water he himself had created with tears and vomit, and Panenk watched incredulously as the lad vibrated faster and faster before finally shimmying out of existence.
    “Please,” Panenk cried, stumbling away from the pool of water his cousin had been. There was no sign of Mahmett; he had simply ceased to be.
    Behind him, Yasseft was clawing at his clothes, pulling his shirt away from his belt as his guts threatened to burst loose. Panenk looked at him, the fear making him shake like a