Red Thunder by John Varley Read Free Book Online Page A

a shotgun, has the amazing ability to clear your mind. It sure
helped with this bunch. All six hands reached for the sky. I moved away
from the door and motioned to the two on the bed. They got up slowly,
the girl reaching down to get some of her clothes from the floor.
    "Uh-uh!"
I shouted, scaring her badly. "Kick 'em over
here." She did, and I could see there was no weapon in them. The guy
did the same. I kicked the stuff back at them, and they started to
dress.
    In no more than thirty seconds they had their stuff together, which
was just a little clothing, the pound of coke, and some free-basing
equipment in a cardboard box. They slunk out the door, giving both of
us a wide berth. We followed them out and watched them down to their
car, an unbelievably rusty '60s model Oldsmobile station wagon almost
full of bald tires and packrat junk. Aunt Maria came out of room 206
with a pair of sneakers wrapped in a dirty shirt. She threw it over the
railing and it landed on the hood of the car. Homer glared up at us and
gave us the finger, then backed out recklessly, put it in forward and
tried to burn rubber on the way out. The car was too old for that, but
it did put out an impressive cloud of white smoke.
    "Now can I have the gun, Mom?"
    "Where are you boys... sorry, where are you young men going?"
    "Somewhere else to study," I told her.
    "It better not be some bar full of snow bunnies."
    "No way, Mrs. Garcia."
    "I'm serious. You guys come home plastered and you can sleep it off in a pool chair, 'cause I ain't letting you in."
    "We'll be good."
    "Manny, you clean that desk and flush the paper towels before you go."
    "I was just about to suggest that myself." She looked at me hard,
trying to tell if I was kidding her again. Mom doesn't have the world's
greatest sense of humor. At last she snorted, reached up and tousled my
hair—and I wish she'd stop doing that—then took the
Mossburg and headed back for the office and the gun safe.
    "Hang on just a minute, Dak." I took a roll of paper towels from the nearby maid's cart and entered 206.
    It still smelled of Homer and friends. I swear, there is a junkie
smell, and if you'd smelled it as often as I have you'd never mistake
it for anything else. It happens when they've been dusting or spiking
for several years. I don't know if it's from lack of washing or
something in their sweat. I'd smelled it on Homer, but if we turned
away every person who might be using the room to fix in, we'd lose half
our income. We have to pretty much overlook personal drug use, unless
you get violent behind it. No selling, and no refining, that was our
rule.
    Twice we'd had to take down meth labs after they'd been running a
few days. That's a total disaster to a motel operator. Both times we'd
had to simply seal up the room and never use it again. After those
chemicals soak into the walls for a bit, you need a permit from the
Environmental Protection Agency to open the room again. It cost
thousands of dollars in cleanup, which we just didn't have.
    I went into the bathroom—every towel and washcloth filthy, and
to look at them, you'd never have guessed they ever used a shower at
all—where I soaked a handful of paper towels. Dak was looking
down at the powder-covered desk.
    "Don't even think about it," I said.
    "I wasn't." He pretended to be offended. "That was some shooting."
    "Don't tell her that, I have enough work keeping her out of trouble without you telling her what a great vigilante she is."
    "No need to get snippy."
    He was right. But I was feeling pretty awful, as I usually do when a
thing like that is over. Mom doesn't seem to have any fear in her at
all, but I sure do.
    There was half a dozen baby Ziplocs scattered on the floor, what
they called dime bags. All of them had a pinch of powder in them. I
gathered them up and Dak helped me move the desk to be sure there
wasn't anything illegal back there. I flushed the bags and the paper
towels, waited to be sure it was all gone.
    "You better make