Free The Rainy Season by James P. Blaylock

path through fallen debris and rocks, slowing down only as much as he had to.
    Soon he angled toward the road again. There was no sound of pursuit, no more gunfire. Without boots his progress was painfully slow; on the open road, at least, he could run. And in fact there was no one on the road when he got there. Whoever had chased him out of the house hadn’t followed him. It was a safe bet, though, that they would roust out someone who
would
follow him, and without hesitation, he ran again, pacing himself, thanking God for the darkness. It was only when he had gotten safely to his buggy and was away down the road, out of Vieja Canyon, that he considered his success. He found that his hands were shaking almost uncontrollably, though, and that fact alone took the edge off any possible exultation—that and his lost boots. His lost boots, he realized, might easily hang him.

13
    JEREMY AND NICK watched the path from a stand of bamboo out in the arroyo. The sack lay among broken stalks and leaves, and Nick glanced at it nervously, as if it contained a coiled snake. He looked back out through the thicket, but the darkness of the night and the rise of the bank made it nearly impossible to say for sure whether anyone was waiting for them. Jeremy had been crying, which was embarrassing for Nick, although he was more fearful than embarrassed, and he glanced at his friend now, hoping that he was over whatever it was he had seen.
    “I guess he’s gone,” Nick said. Jeremy’s slack face seemed drained of emotion, as if whatever had entered him had taken part of Jeremy with it when it had departed. “Are you okay?”
    A moment passed before Jeremy nodded.
    Relieved, Nick said, “We better go. I saw him walk back into the trees a long time ago.” This was a lie, but it was necessary. It was getting late. He stood up, and then Jeremy stood up, waiting for Nick to pick up the sack and step out into the moonlight before starting out himself. Nick climbed the bank first, ducking before he reached the top, keeping low and out of sight, crab-stepping along while he scanned the edge of the grove. He motioned to his friend and waited for him before he jogged down the path, toward the neighborhood and their bicycles, holding the sack out away from him so that it wouldn’t brush his body. The thing in the sack was worth fifty dollars, and yet part of him wanted to throw it way to hell out into the arroyo, just to get rid of it, whatever it was.
    The tiny saucer had appeared to him to be crisscrossed with a thousand cracks, like a spiderwebbed windshield. By now it was probably broken to pieces anyway—in which case they would never get their fifty dollars, and Jeremy would have gotten scared witless for no reason at all.
    Eucalyptus trees loomed up on their left, and the creekbed narrowed on their right, separated from the marshy lowlands by a hill of sandstone now. The shadows were deep in among the trees, which pushed up against the redwood fence of someone’s backyard. The ground was littered with scaled-off bark and broken limbs, and the air was heavy with the perfume of eucalyptus gum and sodden leaves. Nick slowed to a walk, looking hard in among the trees. He realized suddenly that his friend had stopped, and was standing still some distance behind him.
    Nick followed Jeremy’s gaze and saw, a few feet back in among the ragged tree shadows, the figure of a man, which disengaged itself from the tree shadows and moved out toward the path.

14
    BETSY WAS AWAKENED at seven by the sound of the big jets firing up at Mueller Airport half a mile to the east. She had never gotten used to the sound of the engines, a roar that vibrated through the cinder-block walls of the house in Austin where she had lived all her life. On any given morning, she would drift off to sleep again, and the engine noise would become part of her dreams. She was aware that it was raining, too, and in the silences between the jets roaring to life, she could hear