The Call by Bill Myers

Author:Bill Myers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC042060;FIC042020;FIC031070
ISBN: 9781441231451
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

8

I wanna make it clear, I’m no pushover. Just because some kid I don’t know gets into something over his head doesn’t make it my business. It happens all the time. Hookers, gang members, drug runners . . . if they can get out, fine. If not, it’s called survival of the fittest.

Despite Cowboy’s whining and Miss Do-Gooder’s pleadings, I’d had enough. And for the first time I could remember, me and the professor agreed. Of course we’d called the cops, and of course they said they’d look into it, which of course they wouldn’t. Not with all the money the Institute had to throw around.

I dropped Cowboy off at his place around six. Took the professor and Andi to our best (and only) motel around six forty-five. I was dead-dog tired but hung in the parking lot just long enough to hear the professor rant and rave about the accommodations. After all the drama, I figured I was entitled to a little entertainment. Of course, we’d all exchanged phone numbers (my mistake) and agreed to contact each other if someone had an idea, but I wasn’t holding my breath.

I got to bed but didn’t sleep good. Way too many dreams. First it was the usual suspects—making rent, shop troubles, Mom, a guest appearance by Jimmy Jack, who knocked me up at fifteen, and little Monique. Sweet, baby Monique (who I secretly named and held for five minutes before the Brady Bunch couple showed up and swept her away). A day doesn’t go by that I don’t hate myself for that decision, worry about where she is and how she’s being treated. She’ll be eleven next month. Same age as the boy I tatted on Cowboy’s arm.

The boy who never showed.

But the dream that wrecked me was about Sridhar. He was in one of those cattle chutes they drive sheep through on their way to slaughter. In my version it led to the Institute’s auditorium where we all sat watching. Slick was up on stage in his three-piece suit holding shears. When Sridhar got to him, he shaved off the kid’s clothes like wool. And the kid? He just stood there looking at me like I’m supposed to do something.

Once Slick finished and the kid was butt naked, two security guards showed up. They tied his feet and hands and hung him up on a conveyer belt with hooks. It carried him off stage through curtains spattered with blood. I knew what was coming next and forced myself awake . . . both times.

There might have been a third if Cowboy hadn’t called.

“Did you get it?” he asked.

“Get what? What time is—”

“The dream. The one me, Andi, and the professor got.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where Sridhar is getting butchered?”

Ten minutes later I was in the car driving to pick them up. Besides the dream, a picture kept forming in my head. More like a pattern. I kept pushing it away but it kept coming back. A sign it might be legit.

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