Burn by Peter Heller

Author:Peter Heller [Heller, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2024-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

They had not waited for him to raise his cap. They had heard the shots, and he guessed that they thought he might have been dumb enough to get himself plugged. So they came. Storey would do that. He might think Jess was lying injured somewhere and needed his help. They came straight down the road, as he had, and now Jess stepped into the yard of the house and waved his hat and yelled. The two stopped for two seconds, came on. Jess picked up his gun and ran to meet them.

They convened on the cobbled plaza and scared up a crowd of crows and ravens and gulls and Jess remembered the bodies of the boy and the man and he pointed away from the wharf and saw Storey’s thumbs-up as he steered the girl’s sightline up the hill. She was on his back and she had both arms around his throat, and still she craned her head back to stare at the figures lying there.

“What the hell,” Storey said as they met on the first block of Main Street.

“Telling me.” Jess did not want to laugh but he did. They were in a serious shitstorm, but still. “Take it you met Robert Frost.”

“Sonofabitch did look like Robert Frost. Fuckin’ A, spitting image. I had the same thought.”

“What happened?”

“Came right up the road—you saw, I’m sure. Right on up, with his shotgun sticking out of the scabbard like it was any other Saturday and he was going partridge hunting—”

Storey was straining against the girl’s grip, which was half choking him. He turned his head. “Wanna get down?” he said.

“No” was all she said. She said it definitively, like she was refusing a forkful of peas.

“Suit yourself.” Storey turned back to Jess. “So, anyway, here he comes, and I thought about shooting out the engine but then I thought, Hey, we could use the damn thing. I mean, at least until the gas ran out. I guess I wasn’t thinking about the cars here in the village. And then I thought, Well, I’ll just step out, raise my hands. So I did. Bastard screamed, ‘Outta my way!’ and hit the horn, slammed my leg, veered around, yelled, ‘I got nothing to say!’ and tooled off down the road.” Storey’s hand came down and he rubbed his left thigh.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just bruised. Goddamn.”

Storey turned his head back to the girl, whose head was at last out of the lion hoodie. Her hair was soft and fine and it stuck out in all directions, as if she’d rubbed a balloon on it. Her pale cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shiny. Stress, Jess thought. Yep, her lips were compressed tight again.

“Did you know that old man?” Storey said.

She nodded.

“Do you know his name?”

Silence. Then she said, “Are the bad men coming back?”

Storey winced. “No, honey,” he said.

“Why is Cody lying down there with the birds?”

No answer. Then she started to yell. She yelled, “Crystal! Crystal! It’s me!” Screaming it over and over.

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