Endless Night by Richard Laymon Read Free Book Online Page B

know.”
    “Anyway, you didn’t tell ’em nothing.”
    “Didn’t have to. You call 911, the computer gives ’em the address. They’ll send out a car.”
    “Do you think they will?”
    “They might. If those bastards think they’re coming, that’s what counts. They don’t wanta be chasing us around if cops’re on the way.” Seeing that she had passed the comer of the pool, she glanced over her shoulder. The wall was only ten or twelve feet away. “We’re gonna make it,” she muttered.
    “Here they come,” said Andy.
    The words turned her insides cold and squirmy.
    They were coming, all right. The two from the balcony—silhouettes backlit by downstairs windows, one waving his saber overhead, the other sprinting ahead of him. The one in the lead must’ve put away his knife, maybe so he could run faster. They raced toward the pool from off to the left.
    At least it’s between us.
    At least the ax guy isn’t with them.
    Things could be worse ...
    Jody’s back hit the wall. She twisted around, swinging Andy, then shoved him at the gray barrier, lifted him, rammed him upright against the blocks. His body shuddered and he cried out. She grabbed the waist of his jeans, stuck her other hand under his crotch and heaved him upward.
    He seemed to spring into the air.
    He flung his arms across the top of the wall.
    The moment Jody saw that he had a purchase, she leaped clear. He kicked up his good leg. She looked back and saw the one guy—the one who’d caught her in the front yard—tilt sideways as he rounded the pool’s comer. He was way ahead of the saber man.
    Jody flung herself at the wall. Leaping, she grabbed its top. Her body made a smacking sound as it struck the blocks. She pulled with her arms, climbed with bare toes digging at the vertical face. Higher, higher, the rough blocks scuffing the bottoms of her toes, snagging her nightshirt, and then the edge of the top row scraping the undersides of her breasts and moving down her ribs and belly like a rasp file.
    “Hurry!” Andy gasped.
    He was sprawled along the top of the wall, his face only inches from Jody’s right wrist.
    In front of her, just beyond the wall, she glimpsed dark limbs and leaves.
    Good. Not just somebody else’s back yard or pool. A field?
    Maybe we can lose them in the trees.
    “Go!” she told him. “Don’t wait.” She threw her left leg high to the side and caught the edge with her foot.
    Her right leg still hung down, knee and toes against the wall.
    “Watch out!” Andy cried.
    And Jody cried out, herself, when her ankle was grabbed.
    “Gotcha!”
    First one hand, then two. One clutched her ankle while the other rubbed upward on the side of her leg, stopped only a bit below her groin and squeezed her thigh so hard that tears flooded her eyes.
    She knew that wasn’t where he wanted his hand to be.
    Just couldn’t reach any higher.
    “Leave her alone!” Andy yelled.
    Jody looked at the boy. He was blurry through her tears.
    He was pushing himself up. And she knew that he meant to leap on the man and save her.
    She shot out her right arm and shoved the side of his face, ramming his head away. His body twisted, started to tumble off the wall.
    Without her arm to prop her up, Jody plunged forward. The hands tore at her leg, trying to jerk her down, but all her weight and the momentum of the push at Andy’s head threw her toward the other side of the wall.
    Probably snap my leg off.
    She tensed every muscle in her right leg.
    Down below, Andy crashed through foliage, thudded and grunted.
    The edge of the top row of blocks dug hard into Jody’s thigh.
    And into the fingers clutching her there. The man yelped and the hand let go.
    The edge acted like a fulcrum.
    She felt her leg shoot backward and up, ripping her ankle from the man’s grip. The heel of her foot pounded him somewhere. An instant later, her leg flipped high and cleared the top.
    She was upside-down, dropping headfirst, her face only inches from the back of