The Black Death by Aric Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

bottles.
    Nothing worth grabbing there. Matt turned to his right, entering a kitchen and hearing the skittering noise of the slipping limbs of a man running on all fours hitting the wood porch.
    The first drawer Matt threw open was full of towels, but there was a
thunk
from the back of it, so Matt stuck his hand in as the footfalls disappeared on the filthy carpet inside the trailer. Matt felt a wooden handle, grabbed it, and pulled out a rolling pin as the man, looking much worse for wear now, stumbled into the kitchen.
    Matt held the rolling pin like the club that it was as the man growled, black eyes staring through him, and then drove toward Matt.
    Matt circled away again, just as he had the last time he’d put hands on the man, only this time when the man rushed past him, Matt laid the rolling pin on his neck, hard enough to make the handle break and to produce a sound like a .22 long round going off.
    He dropped the pin, leaned back onto a filthy countertop, and stared at the man-beast. Blood was leaking out of the man’s ears, nose, mouth, and black eyes, and his neck was twisted at an angle that vertebrae typically made impossible. Just as fear had come racing through him at the sound of the unnatural running noises, rage came now, cold and awful, and Matt high-stepped over the dying man to leave the kitchen.
    Matt left the trailer with caution in every footstep, feeling the twin headlights from the van cutting through and around him, and also momentarily taking his vision.
    Free was hanging his head out of the passenger window, and there was no shotgun in sight. He spit onto the ground, and then Matt saw him take a drink of a beer before disappearing, only to pop back a moment later with another longneck. He tossed it to Matt, who caught it one-handed.
    “You stay right there,” said Free. “We gots to talk for a minute, and you look like you might still have your hackles up. First things first, so we can all be safe: Randy dead in there?”
    Matt opened the beer and stuck the cap in his pocket, then took a long drink of beer. It was cold and wonderful, and the relief made him hate Free all the more.
    “Yeah,” said Matt, “he’s dead.”
    “Well, that sucks.” Free said it in a way that even though Matt couldn’t see his face, he knew that Free was upset, even if only in his own way. “He suffer much?”
    “That shit he’s been smoking is what caused the suffering. All I did was put him down like a sick dog.”
    Matt had another swallow of beer, still cold and delicious, but nowhere near the relief that the first drink had been. Free disappeared for a moment, then audibly grunted from inside the van. Matt tensed his now-quite-sore legs and got ready to dive out of the way of those sawed-off barrels. Without knowing the type of load Free had equipped it with, it was impossible to know if the gun would be wildly inaccurate or just plain old useless, even at just fifteen feet or so. When Free returned without the gun, Matt felt himself unwillingly relax, his tired body already betraying him.
    “Well, you’re right,” said Free. “Something in that flake makes some folks lose their shit pretty much entirely. Randy, as it turns out, was one of them. To be perfectly honest, it’s almost enough to make me want to give up the stuff altogether. That probably sounds crazy, after what you just seen, but trust me, it’s an unbelievable buzz, a real fucking gut buster.”
    “I’m not much of one to turn down a good time,” said Matt, trying not to sound tired or furious with himself for getting involved in the first place, “but I also don’t want to be hopping around like some bloodthirsty bullfrog. I’ll stick to beer and grass, maybe some of the regular flake that doesn’t turn your eyes black.”
    “You still pissed?”
    “Less so by the minute.”
    “Come get back in the van so we can get out of here,” said Free, “and not spend the rest of the night screaming at each other. After all, we