Free The Long Fall by Lynn Kostoff Page A

basic, like one of those electroconvulsive dog collars, say, and modify it so that it can be put to any number of interesting new uses.”
    Ray hands the remote to Limbe and goes back to his sandwich. Next to him, the woman palms and tilts a compact and readjusts the lines of her lipstick.
    Jimmy takes three steps back, and he’s off his feet again. It feels like someone’s taken a hammer to his spine. He rolls around in the dirt for a while.
    Then he’s on his feet and running. West. Toward the Estrella Mountains. Away from them all. The ground keeps shifting under his feet and he’s dizzy and it’s hard to maintain his balance because his hands are tied behind his back, but he’s doing the only thing that makes sense: running.
    This time it’s insects.
    He feels like a dense roiling swarm of bees has replaced his skin, and they’re clustered on and crawling over his nerve endings.
    Jimmy’s lying flat on his back with the sun in his eyes. It takes a long time to get back on his feet.
    He’s conscious of the dog collar and of each step he takes now. He braces himself, trying to anticipate the moment when space and light will collapse into pain, but he’s walking blind, no idea anymore how long he’s been out there, the heat squeezing him, reference points starting to melt, the landscape hiding from itself, a snake catching ahold of, then methodically swallowing, its tail, the twisted yucca and creosote around him losing definition, thin lines now, like stray pencil marks against the light, Jimmy moving carefully across the hardpan, sweat in his eyes, muscles jumping, everything in the landscape fleeing or melting or shrinking except Jimmy, who’s stuck in his skin.
    They’re watching him from under the umbrella, all of them except Newt Deems, who’s standing off to the side and flipping his buck knife into the air, where it disappears into the light and then magically reappears in his hand.
    Aaron Limbe raises his arm, levels it at Jimmy.
    Jimmy stops, hesitates, then takes another step.
    This time it’s like getting thrown through a windshield.
    Jimmy’s breathing glass, choking on it, flailing about on the ground, trying to find his center of gravity and get upright again.
    His right cheek is scraped raw from the fall, and his vision’s distorted, eyes almost swollen shut, thin slits now, full of dirt and sweat.
    He’s reduced to a howl of outrage and pain. A howl intended to fill hundreds of square miles of desert and bring the sky down. A raw, protracted howl that comes from some place deep inside him that Jimmy never knew existed.
    He senses movement, that Ray and the others have moved closer, and still howling, he rushes them.
    Space and light refuse to yield. He’s knocked down over and over again.
    He hears Aaron Limbe saying something about doing judgments.
    Jimmy’s eyes have swollen shut.
    He staggers in wide, sloppy circles, the howl having leaked away into a dry rasp.
    He stumbles, stops to regain his balance, and then the ground is pulled out from under him.
    Ray Harp’s voice searches him out. It seems to come from all directions at once.
    “You ever have a pet, Jimmy?”
    The insides of his eyelids are burning. His body feels like pain has moved from rental to homeowner status.
    “I asked you a question, Jimmy. Did you ever have a pet?”
    Jimmy croaks out an affirmative.
    “I thought so.” Ray’s voice is disembodied and cloudy. “I bet it was a dog, right? A mongrel, one of those loveable mutts, a United Nations of breeds, a little of this and that, we’re establishing the dog’s cute and adorable, a boy’s best friend, right?”
    When Jimmy nods, the pain simultaneously runs the length and width of his body.
    “I figured so. We got this established then. You had your basic mongrel, a loveable pet, but we still don’t know his name.”
    “Trevor,” Jimmy rasps.
    Aaron Limbe’s voice barrels down. “That’s a real asshole name, Trevor.”
    “My brother named him,”