Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks Read Free Book Online Page B

Lychcombe,” she told us. “The village is just down there.”
    I looked down the narrow road and saw a scattering of dull gray buildings at the bottom of the valley. Apart from a lone twist of smoke coiling from a cottage chimney, there was no movement at all. The village lay mute and still in the early evening light.
    We set off toward it.
    The road led steeply all the way down to a small granite bridge that crossed a shallow river into the village. We could see for miles all around us. On either side of the road, the open moor was broken up with jutting stones and clumps of stricken oak trees, and away to our right I couldsee fat little ponies standing motionless in fields of dry grass. I could smell their horse-sweet breath in the air. I could smell other smells, too: earth, heather, gorse. A faint breeze of gasoline was wafting up from an old-fashioned filling station halfway down the hill, and on the right-hand side of the road, opposite the gas station, wood smoke was drifting over a stretch of spindly woods.
    The road led down through it all—down the hill, over the bridge, into the village, and out the other side. A large stone house stood at the far end of the village, and it was here that the road turned sharply to the left before wandering up through the densely packed gloom of a pine forest and away into the hills beyond.
    I was lagging behind Cole and Abbie now. They were about ten meters ahead of me, walking side by side. I could see they’d started talking again but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. So I picked up my pace and caught up with them.
    As I walked up behind them, Abbie was just explaining something to Cole, pointing down at the village, and Cole was nodding his head.
    “So where do you live, then?” he asked her.
    “Just over there.” She moved her hand to the left, pointing beyond the village. “You can’t see it from here. It’s about half a mile from the edge of the forest.”
    Cole nodded again. “Are you walking all the way back?”
    She shook her head. “Vince is coming to pick me up.”She looked at Cole. “Do you want a lift anywhere? He’ll be happy to drive you—”
    “No, that’s all right. We’ll walk, thanks.”
    Abbie nodded. “What are you going to do?”
    He shrugged. “Not much.”
    “The last bus leaves at eight-thirty. You’re not going to have much time. You could probably get a taxi back—”
    “We might stay over.”
    “What—here? In Lychcombe?”
    “Maybe. We’ll see how it goes. Is there anywhere to stay? What about that pub you mentioned?”
    Abbie looked at him. The fear in her eyes had resurfaced. “The pub?”
    “Yeah,” said Cole. “Or a B-and-B, something like that.”
    “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. “I suppose the Bridge might have a room…”
    “The Bridge?”
    “The Bridge Hotel. It’s the village pub. It’s not really a hotel anymore—”
    “We just need a room.”
    Abbie seemed about to say something, but then she changed her mind and just shrugged, and we continued walking in silence for a while.
    The lane was bounded on either side by low stone walls topped with stunted shrubs. The stones were encrusted with scabs of lichen, and when I looked closer I could see little white stalks with bloodred tips growingamong the scabs—Devil’s Matchsticks. I left them alone and gazed down at the village. It was directly below us now, about 200 meters away. It still didn’t look like much, but now that we weren’t so far away I could see there was more to it than just a scattering of buildings. There was a main street, a couple of side streets…cars and shops and people, bits of movement.
    There was movement over at the gas station, too. It was a run-down old place that looked as if it was closing down. The two ancient gas pumps were sealed off with tape, and the forecourt buildings were all boarded up. It was far from deserted, though. A grubby white gasoline tanker was parked by the pumps, and across the