Free Brothers and Bones by James Hankins Page B

your clothes.”
    Having lived my life primarily as a man of intellect rather than action, my first instinct was to try to talk my way out of this. Then I looked into the eyes of the Sultan of Swat and didn’t like what I saw—a combination of cruelty and apathy, a look reflected in the eyes of each badass around me. I realized they had no intention of letting me out of that alley in one piece. I had no choice. I had to take bold action. I had to go on the offensive, hopefully taking them by surprise, then run like hell. I sucked in a deep breath, then threw a big roundhouse punch, sending my fist into Babe Ruth’s chin with as much of my weight behind it as I could manage.
    My plan had been to start running as soon as the guy hit the ground. Sadly, I hadn’t had time to come up with a backup plan in case the guy barely felt my punch, which was what happened. And any such plan certainly would not have included me falling to my knees beneath an avalanche of punches and kicks, which was also what happened.
    I’m not sure how long they beat me before they took a break, but soon the Babe was standing over me, smiling again.
    “That punch was a stupid idea, buddy.”
    “I see that now,” I mumbled through rapidly swelling lips.
    “Want to give us your stuff now?”
    My response was a bad one, the worst I could have given, I think. I vomited on his lily-white sneakers. A split second later, it was raining pain again.
    After a while I opened my eyes. A fog seemed to have descended on the alley, making everything a little hazy. The fists and boots pummeling me looked blurry now. Fortunately, I was growing numb. Couldn’t feel a thing anymore. I could just quietly slip into sleep, or a coma, or death. I closed my eyes again.
    Soon I became aware of a new quality to the sounds around me. The sadistic chuckles were replaced by surprised grunts. There were some angry words. Then shouts. Then scuffling, more grunts, cries of pain, wooden boards snapping sharply—though they might have been bones cracking.
    Slowly I realized that no one was hitting or kicking me anymore. I willed my eyes to open. Everything was still fuzzy. The first thing I saw through the fog was a body on the ground beside me, writhing in apparent pain. The sounds of a wild, frenzied struggle still echoed off the walls of the alley.
    I was on the verge of drifting off. I fought to keep my eyes open, to focus on the figures around me. All I could see were indistinct shapes, people falling, jumping, dodging, kicking. At the center of it all was a single silhouette, a shadow dancing, moving like a blur, arms and legs flying, connecting with the figures surrounding him, dropping them one by one to the pavement.
    The sounds around me were beginning to fade away and the images had lost focus. I saw the shadow dancer twirl one last time, sending the final figure spinning to the ground, and I heard what sounded like a baseball bat bouncing across the pavement. Just before I closed my eyes, knowing I’d never open them again, a shadow loomed over me. Then darkness dragged me down into its depths.

 
     
     
     
    NINE
     
    Jake is alive. I’m eight years old and he’s ten, and he’s defending me against a dozen bullies that have surrounded me on the playground at school. They’re all bigger than me, bigger than Jake even, but he isn’t the least bit scared. I’m dreaming, though. I know it. The age difference isn’t right between us—in reality, he’s eleven years older than I, not two—so I know it’s a dream. But it’s wonderful to see him again anyway. One by one the bullies advance, and one by one he pushes them away until we are alone. He turns to me and smiles and suddenly he isn’t ten anymore; he’s thirty-six, the age he was when I last saw him alive. The sun is setting quickly behind him now, though it was noon recess only a moment ago, and he soon becomes a silhouette against the blood-red sky of the horizon, but though I can no longer see his