Wild Thing: A Novel by Josh Bazell Read Free Book Online Page B

Sensei Dragonfire tell us, “Control rather than hurt, hurt rather than maim, maim rather than kill, kill rather than be killed”? Ought not I, of all people, to take that admonition personally? And did I not inject myself into this conflict in order to
keep
a child from being injured?
    I decide to bluff it out. “That’s
Doctor
Dumbass to you,” I say, standing up with the injured kid in my arms.
    The kid with the Commander blocks my way. “I thought you had to have brains to be a doctor.”
    I step around him. “That’s a common misperception.”
    “It’s none of your business!” he whines.
    “You’ve made it my business.”
    I’m almost past him—and by extension, I’m guessing, past the rest of them too—when he steps in front of me again, this time jamming the Colt into the left side of my neck.
    It’s a very stupid move. The thing it causes to rise up in me doesn’t give a
fuck
that everyone around me is a child, or that so many of them have guns. The thing wants me to throw the kid in my arms to one side, pull
this
kid’s gun past my head, step on his left foot while kicking his right knee out sideways, then palm-strike his throat and hold on. So that when I stomp his chest and he goes backward, both his gun and his larynx come off in my hands. Take it up with Sensei Dragonfire later.
    The thing scares me more than the gun. Particularly since Colt Commanders are single-action, and this kid’s neglected to pull the hammer. I shrug past him, causing him to jump out of the way of the feet of the kid I’m carrying.
    When I’m almost to the edge of the building, Violet Hurst appears from the other side. Holding her cell phone up and yelling “Nobody move, you fucking cocksuckers! I’ve got the cops on the phone
right now
.”
    “You get
reception
here?” one of the kids behind me asks. He sounds genuinely astonished.
    I hear the kid with the Commander say “Fuck!” as he tries to pull the trigger on us. Then I bowl into Violet, taking us and the kid in my arms back around the corner just as gunfire tears open the plaster, showering it all over our backs.
    Violet’s a badass about it. She lands on her feet, turned around and already running. We pass Debbie, who’s standing in front of the plywood door, one hand shading her eyes, and screaming “Don’t shoot the fucking restaurant, you assholes!”
    “Give me the keys,” I say to Violet.
    “They’re in the ignition.”
    Like I say: badass. I throw the kid in the back and start the car with the gas so flat we jump the curb in front of the parking space before we fishtail out of the lot.

    Sport-driving always reminds me of Adam Locano, who was my best friend from the time I was fifteen until I was twenty-four—the ages at which a man does most of his sport-driving, unless he goes on to be a professional racer or a dipshit. Adam and I were
already
dipshits. We both worshipped his father, whose advice on cars was to treat them like women: steal them, strip them, dump them when they get too hot, don’t overly rely on them. I’m sure he had other cheap metaphors I’m forgetting. *
    Not that the rental’s all that sporty. I’ve still got the gas pedal all the way down, and the automatic transmission keeps tryingout new gears and then realizing they suck and going back to try gears it unsuccessfully tried earlier. I pull the emergency brake through the first right turn, and it doesn’t affect things at all.
    Just before the second right I see a pickup truck enter the rearview. Rifle barrels like bristles.
    At the third right turn Violet says “Where are we going?”
    I’ve just turned us away from the highway and back toward Debbie’s. “Shake these fuckers off.”
    At Debbie’s I cut diagonally through the lot, heading out again on the street I took three minutes ago.
    In the rearview, I see the pickup truck wrench to a stop in front of the plywood door. Now that they know we’re willing to come back to their home base—for whatever