Selection Event by Wayne Wightman Read Free Book Online

“Every one I euthed. I wrote 'em down while they checked for vitals. I always carry this.” He looked at the unfolded paper a moment. “I remember almost every one of 'em, man. Like this one here.” He pointed one out. His fingernail was broken and black with dirt and grease. “Foley, Linda C., November ten. She was about twenty-eight, light brown hair, funny overlapping teeth. I remember I could smell cigarettes on her breath. I gave her the nitrous and she said something like, 'This won't hurt, will it?' A lot of 'em said that. Then she said, 'I used to be pregnant.'” Diaz closed up the little tablet. “I gave her full nitrous and then shot her up. She never even blinked. Died looking at me. A lot of 'em did.”
    Neither said anything. In the expanse of the supermarket, nothing moved, but they could still hear the busy chewing of rats.
    “You deal with it okay?” Martin asked.
    “Mostly. At least I know the names of my ghosts.”
    Isha groaned peacefully in her sleep and rolled over on her side.
    “What're you going to do now?” Martin asked him. “Since you lived?”
    “Travel. Get the hell away from the scene of my crimes. Check things out. I was on my way to New York when I saw you drivin' through town. How about yourself? Gonna re-establish civilization?”
    “When I came up from underground, I knew one thing: wherever I was, I wanted to eat up every moment of being here. Corny.”
    “Like 'be here now.' By the way, nothing's corny anymore.”
    “But I thought I'd be here now with some of the people I used to know.” Martin checked his wristwatch. It was almost noon. He was thinking of Delana — could she be alive, out wandering around, looking for food? “I guess I'll figure things out a day at a time. First thing, I want to check on Delana. She lived... lives over on the east side of town. How safe is it to be out and around?”
    “Moderately safe. Fascist Erectus over on the north side has only got maybe a dozen survivors with him. It's pretty safe. If you're armed.”
    “You're telling me I should always be armed when I'm out?”
    “You're learnin,'” Diaz said.
    Diaz poured a bottle of distilled water on the hibachi. The ashes and coals sizzled and ran across the floor. When the hissing stopped, they heard the approaching thum -thump of a car stereo.
    “I heard that last night,” Martin said. “Thought I was so lonely I was hallucinating.”
    “I heard it too. And I can tell you one thing — anybody who advertises himself like that, one of these days is going to get something in his mouth he ain't gonna be able to spit out.”
    The music got loud, then louder, until Martin thought it had to be a flatbed truck with a load of amps and speakers, not a car.
    “Should we take a look?” he yelled to Diaz.
    It was a car, a long, wide, white Cadillac convertible, the top down, and the curly-haired kid who slouched in the driver's seat grinned at them, touched his black sunglasses, then whipped a fast circle in the street, bumped up over the opposite curb, and came to a stop a dozen feet away from them. He had a fabulous grin.

Chapter 9
     
    The deafening music boiled out of the convertible like an invisible storm. Isha stood behind Martin, head lowered, and stared at the car.
    The kid behind the wheel was no more than nineteen, wearing a billowy white shirt and a big grin on his face, like he could have been stopping by to pick up his date. His right arm lay across the back of the white leather seat, and he looked in their direction, thrusting his head forward in time with the music, having a great time. At such a volume, it didn't exactly sound like music; it was more of a deafening throb, punctuated by distorted crashes and the vocalization of several people, possibly in language.
    “Now that,” Diaz shouted in Martin's ear, “is really stupid.”
    The kid put his hand to his ear and Martin read his lips saying, “What?”
    “I said you're stupid,” Diaz said in his