Summer of Night by Dan Simmons Read Free Book Online Page B

Illinois darkness and imagining the floodlit ballfields where the grass was as green as arterial blood was red, and he listened to music-he liked classical, loved Big Band, but lived for jazz-but most of all, Duane listened for the call-in talk shows where patient, unseen hosts waited for useless listeners to call in with their rambling but fervent comments.
    Sometimes Duane imagined that he was the single crewman on a receding starship, already light-years from Earth, unable to turn around, doomed never to return, unable even to reach his destination in a human lifetime, but still connected by this expanding arc of electromagnetic radiation, rising now through the onionlike layers of old radio shows, traveling back in time as he traveled forward in space, listening to voices whose owners had long since died, moving back toward Marconi and then silence.
    Someone was whispering his name.
    Duane sat up in the darkness and realized that his earphones were still in place. He had been testing the new Heath kit before falling asleep.
    The voice came again. It was probably feminine but seemed oddly sexless. The tone was made tenuous by distance but was as clear as the stars he had seen on his way in from the barn at midnight.
    She… it… was calling his name.
    "Duane… Duane… we're coming for you, my dear."
    Duane sat up on his bed, clamped the earphones tighter. The voice didn't seem to be coming through the earphones. It seemed to be coming from under his bed, from the darkness above the heating pipes, from the cinderblock walls.
    "We will come, Duane, my dear. We will come soon."
    No one called Duane 'my dear." Not even in jest. He had no idea if his mother had when she was alive. Duane ran his hand down the earphone cord, found the cold jack on his blankets where he had pulled it free after turning off the receiver.
    "We will come soon, Duane, my dear," the voice whispered urgently in his ear. "Wait for us, my dear."
    Duane leaned out into darkness, felt for the hanging cord, and tugged on the light.
    The earphones were not plugged in. The receiver was off. None of his radios were on.
    "Wait for us, my dear."

FIVE
    Dale smelled Death before he saw it.
    It was Friday, the third of June, their second day of summer, and the bunch of them had been playing ball since just after breakfast-by midafternoon they were caked with dust made muddy by their sweat-when Dale smelled Death coming.
    "Je-zuz!" cried Jim Harlen from his place between first and second base. "What is that?"
    Dale was just stepping up to the plate to bat, but now he stepped back and pointed.
    The smell had come from the east, blowing with the breeze down the dirt road that connected the city ballpark to First Avenue. The smell was Death-corruption, the stench of recent roadkill, the bloated-to-bursting gasses of bacteria working in dead stomachs-and it was coming closer.
    "Oh, yechhh," said Donna Lou Perry from the pitcher's mound. She kept the ball in her right hand, raised her baseball mitt to her mouth and nose, and turned to look the direction Dale was pointing.
    The Rendering Truck turned slowly from First Avenue and rolled down the hundred yards of dirt road toward them. The truck's cab was scabrous red and the bed behind was shielded by solid wooden slats. Dale could see four legs protruding straight up-a cow perhaps, or a horse, it was hard to tell at this distance-the corpse obviously tossed in among others, the hoofs pointing skyward like a cartoon of a dead animal.
    This was no cartoon.
    "Aww, give us a break," said Mike from his catcher's position behind the plate. He lifted his t-shirt over his mouth and nose as the stench came on stronger.
    Dale took another step away from the plate, his eyes water ing and stomach churning. The Rendering Truck reached the end of the dirt road and pulled into the grassy parking lot behind the bleachers to their right. The air seemed to grow thick around them as the stench of dead things closed over Dale's face like a