The Rapture: A Sci-Fi Novel by Nicholas Erik Read Free Book Online Page A

Dizzy leans against the counter and cranes his neck over, like he’s got a secret. “You hear about the old bank?”
    “It isn’t that old.”
    “Sure, smartass, but all the same. Someone knocked it off.”
    “Robbed?” So it’s out. Don’t know why I’m surprised. Whole town shook from the explosion, if Jasper can be taken at his word.
    “And not just that,” he says, pouring more liquid gold into my glass, “there isn’t nothing left.”
    “You sure one of these guys here isn’t just yanking your dick?”
    “I sure isn’t one for believing lies.” I say nothing. “You don’t seem to care one way or the other, I reckon.”
    “I’m just shocked those charlatans lasted at all in a town like this.”
    Dizzy snorts and pours himself a whiskey, sips it like someone in no hurry to get drunk or anywhere at all.
    “Whoever done it, they got some real big ones,” Dizzy says, grabbing his crotch with his free hand, “I couldn’t do it.”
    “Maybe they were just stupid.”
    “No more stupid than the rest of us waiting to die here.” A bombastic, bass heavy rap track surges from the sound system, much too aggressive for the current state of affairs. “Lucky,” he says, watching me sling back another drink, “my head’s got to be on right for any nonsense in the morning.”
    “Hell of a DJ you guys got in here.”
    “I tell you, where I’m from, they don’t play records like this.”
    “I knew you were from the damn moon.”
    “That reminds me,” he says with a shrug that says fine, don’t believe me , “about Candice.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “They said the whole place was ransacked, everything on the floor.”
    “Could be them coyotes you were going on about.”
    “I don’t think they can get in the top shelves and the drawers, now, you think?”
    “I don’t know,” I say, sliding the glass back and forth on the counter, “you’re the one talking about how crazy everything is getting.”
    “But the cops said,” and now Dizzy’s voice gets real low, “that the robbery looked stage. That it was fake. Just a murder, nothing more. Cold, right?”
    “Sure. I’m on the case.” I’ll drink to that—being an insufferable asshole.
    “You were the one that brought it up.” He folds his arms. “Now I was going to share some of this crazy coke I got, special blend from the Bull, imported from thousands of miles away.”
    “Sounds more like the Bullshit.” I’m on fire right now.
    “Maybe it’s just the Bull,” he says, looking off at the stage, “hell, I can’t remember. And his name may be bullshit, but there’s some insane things in this world like you don’t know.”
    “What’s a regular Socrates doing in this town?”
    He shakes his head at this, but I think I can see a grin beneath that massive beard.
    “You know what my daddy told me, just as soon as my nuts dropped?” Dizzy is focused real intense on me. I can’t take the heat. I look at the counter.
    “Nah.”
    “Our dog died. Nasty old thing, real ornery. But I loved it, and I think he loved me, in some way. And my pops, he tells me, ‘Life ain’t just handjobs and lollipops, kid. You best learn that now.’ I still remember a hand-rolled in his mouth, wagging between his lips as he talked.”
    “Yeah, yeah. Life’s tough.”
    Dizzy ignores me. “And then, I asked him, ‘What’s a handjob?’ And he just sort of stared.” I swear, Dizzy’s going soft on me here. He keeps it going. “He says, “Diz, you ain’t never had a handjob before? I got to teach you more than I thought. Better than a lollipop, that’s for sure.’ He roughed up my hair, and that was that.”
    “Sweet story.”
    “He died a couple months later, and I bounced around a lot after that. And when they found me on the streets, mumbling into a pile of my own shit, I joined up. And when they asked me to come, I was the first one to take that goddamn transport. And here we are. At a crossroads. ” Dizzy looks at me.
    “I bet