The Brigade by John Shirley

Author:John Shirley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Brigade
ISBN: The_Brigade
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2015-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Monday, May 22, 9:02 p.m.

It had been a long patrol. They were all sodden with the whiskey from Messenger’s thermos. Harry’s stomach burned with the alcohol. He wanted to eat but he was afraid he’d vomit. He was carsick, he was drunk, he was tired. And he had had his fill of Messenger and Realte and Culpepper.

Messenger’s enthusiasm had dampened down, too. But he regained his eagerness when the call came on the CB. A burglar somewhere—Harry didn’t quite catch the address. He heard them mention Ernie Ratchet. He knew Ratchet. Someone was breaking into Ernie Ratchet’s house? Why?

Harry didn’t much care. He groaned inwardly when Messenger said, “Hey, c’mon, let’s get it—”

But the voices bantering tinnily from the CB declared the proximity of another patrol car. “Somebody else has got it, Messenger. Forget it. Let’s go home.”

Messenger pulled up at a stop light and sat rigidly, his back to Harry—but Harry sensed Messenger’s fury. “I think we ought to back them up,” Messenger said throatily. “If it’s a burglar the guy could be armed.”

“No. Forget it, Messenger,” Culpepper said wearily. “I want my dinner;”

Messenger shrugged. But he emanated disappointment.

“What about that kid hitchhiking over there?” Realte said, pointing. “Maybe it’s one of the suspects. That could be that Brodyboy guy. Looks like this hitchhiker’s hair is red.”

Rolling his eyes heavenward, Harry said, “They’re on the run, Realte; they aren’t going to be hitchhiking on a main road like this out in the open. Not even if they split up. This kid is someone else.”

Messenger had slowed the station wagon to a crawl, the blue Buick station wagon crawling through the southern Oregon night, passing through the luminous auspices of the harsh streetlights. The boy stood under the next streetlight, twenty yards ahead, hitchhiking toward them on the other side of the road. Cars whizzed past him; a lot of people stared, but no one so much as slowed.

“We’re inside the city limits,” said Messenger gleefully. “Hitchhiking is illegal here.”

Culpepper and Realte had perked up and were glaring out the window at the boy with his back to them. There was something odd about the hitchhiker. “No,” Harry was saying, “that kid don’t fit the description—”

But Messenger abruptly accelerated, dodging across the road, pulling up short on the gravel strip behind the boy.

Harry hesitated, not wanting to get up to oversee the others. He watched as they got out and trudged up the gravel strip to the boy with his back to them. The boy—late teens, Harry judged—glanced over his shoulder, dropped his thumb, and turned to watch blankly as the vigilantes approached.

Harry opened the door, but as he was on the traffic side he waited for a truck and a sports car to slide by; it was a logging truck, en route to the mill, thundering, followed by a Lotus, the gargantuan preceding the miniature, as if the semi-truck were the Lotus’ bodyguard. The semi roared past and into the night-charred hills, shedding flakes of bark from the massive logs on its trailer, confusing the air with its scents of forest mixed with diesel.

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