Drought by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page A

your ass moving!’ said Big Puppet. ‘What’s all this sloppity-slippety-slop? You supposed to be the knight in shining armor, riding to the rescue! How about you ride a little
harder
to the rescue?’
    Tyler could feel himself shrinking inside her. He tried to keep going, but he simply fell out. Big Puppet said, ‘What’s happening, bro? Don’t tell me you a
faggot
or something? Don’t go for girls?’
    Big Puppet stood up. He was clearly bored with this game now. He took the shotgun from Joker and pointed it directly at Tyler’s face. He held it so close that Tyler could smell the burned cordite from the shot that had killed Maria’s father. He started to cry. He couldn’t help himself. He had wanted to be brave but it had been impossible. There were too many of them, eleven against one, and now they were going to kill him. He had never imagined that his life would end this way, kneeling on the floor in some neighborhood store, with his head blown off his shoulders,
    â€˜
Dad
?’ he sobbed: but at that instant a police siren let out a high, weird whoop right outside the store, and Tyler saw red flashing lights shining against the window.
    Immediately, there was a mad scramble for the door. Big Puppet threw down the shotgun so that it clattered and bounced across the floor and then he barged his way toward the door, too, pushing his fellow hoods out of his way. From the parking lot outside, Tyler heard a cop shouting out, ‘Stop! Hold it right there! Stop! All of you!’
    He reached over and picked up the shotgun. All he could think of was Big Puppet forcing himself into Maria’s mouth, and taunting him while he did it, and making him feel completely emasculated. Now he had a chance to get his revenge for Maria, and Maria’s father, and to show Big Puppet and all the rest of these punks that he was a man, and an angry man, too.
    He pulled open the door and stepped outside. A silver Caprice was already squealing away from the parking-lot in a cloud of burned rubber. Big Puppet was about fifty feet away, running toward a red Toyota pick-up. Three other hoods were close behind him, but Tyler didn’t care if he hit all of them. He raised the shotgun, but as he did so a cop yelled, ‘Drop it, kid! Drop it! Drop it, or else I’ll drop you!’
    Tyler hesitated. His hesitation was long enough to allow Big Puppet to clamber into the pick-up, followed by the other three hoods. They roared off along West 33rd Street with the passenger door still swinging open.
    Tyler was left alone, standing in the doorway of Dan’s Food & Liquor.
    Two cops came toward him, crouching slightly, both of them pointing guns at him. He raised his left hand as a sign that he was surrendering, and then he bent down and carefully laid the shotgun on the ground. He had some fragmentary memory of a movie in which a criminal had dropped his shotgun on to the sidewalk and it had gone off, prompting the cops immediately to shoot him.
    â€˜Assume the position!’ shouted one of the cops. ‘Face down, arms and legs spread!’
    â€˜Officer – I was only trying to stop those guys from getting away.’
    â€˜I said, assume the position!’ the cop almost screamed at him.
    Tyler lay down on the hot, gum-speckled sidewalk. One of the cops came up and picked up the shotgun, while the other gingerly pushed open the door with his shoulder and checked inside the store.
    There was a moment’s pause, and then he called out, ‘Rick! We need back-up! Plus a bus and a meat-wagon! We got ourselves a dead guy in here, plus a two-six-one by the looks of it!’
    â€˜Don’t you move,’ said the cop who was standing over Tyler. ‘Don’t even fucking
breathe
, you got it?’

FIVE
    W hen Martin walked around to the back of the Murillo house, he found the whole family sprawled out under the shade of their verandah.
    The four younger Murillo children