The Map of Moments by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online Page A

more shots came. It was from somewhere to his left, a rapid
crack-crack
that echoed quickly away between buildings.
    He remembered Corinne speaking to him on the phone, during those brief but frequent calls when he'd been organizing his trip.
This isn't a good place right now,
she'd said.
You won't recognize it anymore.
    Max had never owned a gun, and never would. Now, though…
    “Where the fuck am I going?” he mumbled. He'd left the area where there had been a few people and vehicles, and his surroundings looked as though someone had fought a war here and lost.
    His impending hangover was already seeding itself, thrumming in his head and sending pain stabbing into his eyes.
    There were no more gunshots.
    He waited there for a while, sweating, craving a drink of water, when a pickup screeched out of a driveway several hundred yards along the road, coughed dirt across the street, then came his way.
    Max edged closer to the curb behind the abandoned car.
    The vehicle streaking toward him was old, rusted, and ruined, and it trailed clouds of thick gray smoke behind it. The sun reflected from the windshield, and he could not see who was driving, nor how many others were inside.
    He'd heard about the looting and lawlessness, the attacks and burglaries, and the more extreme crimes that rumor dragged out of the water and laid bare for the tabloid press to relish.
    The pickup truck sped by, and the passenger glanced at him, then down at the bike. Guilt hit Max, sobering him with images of the vehicle screeching to a stop, the passenger climbing out and pulling a gun, asking,
Where the fuck did you get that bike?
    But the truck went on and so did Max, and he knew exactly where he was going. Lakeview. The house, the attic where Corinne had found Gabrielle's body. The last place Max had seen her alive.

    It had been hot and airless that day, the heat lying slumped in the bowl of New Orleans like a sleeping thing. Gabrielle had not called him for four days, and when he tried her cell, she never answered. He'd felt cast adrift, and the only person he'd felt able to speak to was Corinne.
    Not my business,
Corinne had told him on the phone.
But, baby, if she's sending you a message, listen to it and stay away.
    But he couldn't stay away. So he'd driven down here, down the very street he was cycling along now, to the place where he thought he might find her. Back then there had been trees lining the sidewalks; now there were only stumps. Back then the cars had looked at least serviceable, as opposed to the heaps of mud and rust that were here now. And they had been parked, not slewed across the street, and front lawns had been neat, flower beds planted, porches painted and manned with people content to watch the world go by. Now everything was a uniform gray, the color of dried silt, and there were few people other than Max. Some walkers, a couple of bike riders, and the occasionalcar full of the dispossessed and lost, curb-crawling for trouble.
    Once upon a time, Lakeview had been a quiet, upper-middle-class neighborhood. Now it was a crumbling ghost town, like so much of what had once been New Orleans. The silence of a place so used to noise and bustle, the immobility of somewhere always on the move, was shocking. A pall of emotional dread coated the whole area, as thick and noticeable as the dirt.
    If I were sober, I'd get the fuck out,
he thought. But there was a comfort zone in alcohol, a numbing of the sense of danger …or perhaps an acceptance of it. Either way, he was too far gone to turn around now.
    As if to confirm this, he came upon a street sign, one of the few still intact, and saw he'd arrived at Landry Street. As he cycled toward Gabrielle's aunt's house, he seemed to be seeing two views of the same scene. One had Gabrielle waiting for him up in that sweaty attic, wearing nothing but her socks and a welcoming smile. The other gave him nothing but death.
    There was a house blocking half of the street. It had been lifted