Free The Storm Giants by Pearce Hansen Page B

pictures where if you stare at the jumble just right the hidden image comes clear, Everett became aware of the redneck Frankenstein girl. She stood unobtrusive amongst the trees about twenty feet away. She had a big sack of something or other draped over her shoulder and a full length shovel in her hand. The AK was slung on her other shoulder.
    “Heard t he gun fire,” she said, in a surprisingly melodious voice. “Thought I’d be neighborly.”
    The r edneck girl still scowled, but that was just the way her face was put together. She looked pugnacious no matter what was going on behind the front of her skull.
    She approached and dropped the shovel and the sack in front of him. The sack was labeled as containing quicklime, perfect for hastening the Shooter’s decomposition.
    Everett quipped, “If you are feeling neighborly, could take a turn at deepening the hole.”
    The r edneck girl snorted as she squatted at the grave’s edge. “Don’t push hospitality, friend.”
    She inspect ed the driver’s progress at digging the grave: “You’re not very good at this, are you?”
    The Widow’s d river stared up at her. “I’ve dug a hole or two,” she said.
    The redneck girl lau ghed and handed her the shovel, which really made a difference. It only took a few minutes more until the Widow’s driver flung the last clump of dirt from the hole.
    The driver made to climb out of the armpit deep grave, looking owlishly at Everett. The redneck girl looked at Everett as well, and he shrugged. She extended a work calloused hand and pulled the driver from the earth, easily as she would have plucked a long root from her vegetable garden.
    “ Cheese it while you can,” Everett ordered the driver, waggling the shotgun. She didn’t have to be told twice.
    “How’d yo u happen to have quicklime around the house?” Everett asked the redneck girl.
    “Oh , some of us go through a lot of quicklime,” she said.
    Everett grabbed the shooter’s body by the shoulders and started dragging it over to the grave, but the corpse’s legs snagged on a cluster of roots. Everett bent to free the body from the obstruction.
    “Men ,” the redneck girl said, but grabbed the legs to help.
    Together they dragged it sideways across the roots and tumbled it into the hole. The shooter’s corpse landed face down at the bottom, with one arm behind its back like a ghost had it in a hammerlock.
    Everett ripped open one end of the quicklime and upended it into the grave. The corpse being face down, no one had to watch the quicklime getting on its face. When the bag was empty, Everett tossed it into the grave and it spread across the shooter’s head and shoulders like an impromptu shroud.
    He began shoveling dirt into the grave. The redneck girl grabbed the e-tool and helped. Between the two they finished filling the grave quickly.
    Everett patted the top with the flat of the shovel. He started scattering the left over dirt around.
    The r edneck girl cocked her head and walked around the grave, examining it from different angles. “You’re different from the men around here,” she said as she swept the grave’s surface with a branch and scattered leaves and twigs across it. “You strike me as the kind of man that’s never pointed a gun at anything with more than two legs in his life.”
    She faced Everett with only a couple of feet between them. A wind sighed through the trees, and Everett was very conscious that no one else was around but the Widow’s driver.
    “I know I’m ugly in the face ,” the redneck girl said.
    “Wouldn’t go that far ,” Everett replied.
    “You’re sure a romantical kind of guy,” she said with a snort.
    S he unbuttoned her baggy work shirt and took it off. She wore nothing underneath but faded jeans and down at the heel work boots. Everett was washed over by a ripple of lust, it poured right through him by surprise. Her tanned body was that of a goddess.
    She wasn’t built like one of those anorexic