Walkers by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page A

behave
just like you. I laugh, but all the time it’s false. And that’s how you’re laughing. I knew something was
wrong the moment you walked into the store.’
    ‘God protect me from an
understanding father,’ said Gil. ‘Do you think that’s enough ham? There’s about
three and a half pounds there, in half-pound batches.’
    ‘That’s enough; you can always slice
some more later.’
    Gil’s mother came in, carrying two
cartons of Coco-Puffs from the storeroom at the back. ‘Oh, Gil, I’m glad you’re
back. You can stack these on the shelf for me.’
    Gil took the cartons, and carried
them around to the cereal display. His mother followed him, and stood beside
him. She was a small woman, still handsome at forty-four. Phil said she
reminded him of a statue, a Greek statue, not the one without the arms but the
other one, with the classic face and the classic figure. She was smiling as she
watched Gil cut open the cartons and take out the boxes of cereal.
    ‘Who’s the girl?’ she asked him.
    ‘You mean the girl who came around
looking for me?’
    ‘There’s another girl?’
    ‘Well, Dad told me about her, but I
don’t know who she is.’
    ‘She’s very pretty,’ said Fay
Miller, looking at her son closely to see if he was telling the truth.
    ‘That’s what Dad said.’
    ‘And you really expect us to believe
that you don’t know who she is?’
    Gil slapped his hand over his heart.
‘Mom, believe me, I wish I did.’
    About ten minutes later, Gil’s
friend Bradley came in. Bradley’s father ran a fishing-tackle store in Encinitas,
a few miles up the coast. Bradley was lanky and funny and almost invariably
wore Hawaiian-style beach shirts and Bermuda shorts. He and Gil had been
classmates in grade school, and although Bradley was now studying to be a
computer programmer, while Gil was taking business studies, they saw each other
practically every weekend and all through the summer vacation, and went
fishing, and swam, and told each other absurd jokes.
    Bradley lifted the new issue of Hustler off the revolving rack and
appreciatively leafed through it. Gil’s father had made sure that his general
store had an adult magazine rack. He derived benign amusement out of watching
teenage boys pluck up enough panicky courage to buy themselves a copy of Chic or Penthouse, paying for it red faced and then rushing out of the
store as quickly as they could. The adult magazine rack was part of a general
store’s mystery and excitement, along with the strange bottles of Japanese
cooking ingredients, the lurid candies and the peculiar kitchen gadgets.
    ‘How’re you doing, Bradley?’ asked
Gil. He took a quarter from a small ginger-haired boy who had carefully been
counting out eight liquorice whips, and gave him a penny change.
    ‘Oh, bored, pretty much,’ said
Bradley. ‘Did you hear about what happened at the beach?’
    ‘Yeah, I heard. They’ve still got it
cordoned off. Jellyfish warning, that’s what they’re saying now.’
    ‘Oh, yeah?’
    Bradley opened up Hustler’s centre-spread. He was silent
for a very long time. Then he said, ‘Do you know something, it isn’t fair. It
just damn well isn’t fair. Some guy got paid for taking this picture. Paid, can you imagine that? And I
couldn’t get to see a girl like that with her legs wide open if I crawled all
the way to Mount Palomar and back pushing a rat’s turd with the end of my
nose.’
    ‘Well, that explains it,’ Gil told
him. ‘Girls like that don’t really go for guys who push rat’s turds up and down
mountains with the ends of their noses. Didn’t anybody tell you that? Your
social science teacher?’
    Bradley swatted at Gil with the
rolled-up magazine.
    ‘Hey, you take care of that,’ warned
Gil. ‘Some jerk-off is going to want to buy that.’
    ‘I’d buy it myself, but I just
couldn’t stand the unfairness.’
    Gil shook his head, and said,
‘You’re a real dork, sometimes, Bradley. I hate to think what the inside