Skin Deep (Gray Zone) by Wilder Adrienne

Author:Wilder, Adrienne [Wilder, Adrienne]
Language: nld
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

WHILE I knew Joe was only gone for a couple of

minutes, it might as wel have been hours. Every laugh

or note of music up the block, every bit of trash

skittering across the street, made me jump. I saw flesh

dealers everywhere. Only in my mind, they’d been

transformed from the average street-dweling asshole to

ten-foot-tal ogres, complete with yelowed broken

teeth and bloodshot eyes.

It was ridiculous. I told myself how ridiculous it

was. And yet they were there, in every crack and

corner, where daylight failed to reach. I shut my eyes

and wiled my body to quit shaking, for my gut to

unclench.

“Tay?”

The sound of Joe’s voice made me jerk back. He

caught me before I could topple over. I blinked against

the late-morning sun that backlit him into a darkened

figure. My brain had fun with that too, superimposing

nasty teeth and hard gold eyes.

He pressed something cool into my hand. My

fingers closed around it. The keys.

“Can you drive?”

Could I? I didn’t answer. I was afraid if I opened

my mouth, the only sounds I’d be able to make were

sobbing noises and smal helpless whimpers. Joe puled

me to my feet, and the ghosts of strange hands brushed

against my thighs and my privates. One step and I

realized why. My boxers were al skewed and only

puled halfway up, jammed them around my thighs while

the crotch of my trousers tried to push everything back

into place. I tried to fix them, but the broken fingers on

my right hand were so swolen I couldn’t get them

down the front of my pants.

Joe put something in my other hand, then quickly

straightened out my clothes while I blinked at the smal

leather square I held and waited for my brain to catch

up. My walet. I opened it up. The cards had been

replaced, my license, even my cash.

He led me around the passenger side. I didn’t

resist when he pushed me in and took the keys. A

moment later Joe was behind the wheel. It took him

two tries before he found the right key. The engine

turned over, and the sound made every muscle want to

rip clean off my bones.

A gentle pressure on my thigh made me open my

eyes. Joe petted me up and down before putting his

hand on the steering wheel. “It’s okay.”

I nodded.

“I think you may be in shock.”

I nodded again. Shock sounded better than the

alternative. Scared shitless. And I was. I’d never been

so helpless in my life as I’d been just moments ago.

Helpless, defenseless. God help me, did Joe go through

this every time he’d been brutalized in school? I stared

at him in wonder, trying to get my mind around how

he’d ever survived. Survived and not falen apart.

Because just one time on the receiving end and I was in

a milion pieces.

Joe guided the car out into the street, moving way

too slow. Of course, at this point anything under a

hundred would have been too slow for me. Our

passage into the Zone was marked by the

disappearance of cafés and smal shops and the

reappearance of burned-out warehouses and crumbling

apartments. Joe slowed down to a crawl as the road

became almost impassible in front of the brick building

where Pavel and Gabriel dictated we live.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.