Free Crazy Dangerous by Andrew Klavan Page B

truck came. A battered old green Ford pickup. Looked like it was about a hundred years old. Came slowly, slowly, slowly up the hill from town, heading home to some farm or other, I guess.
    I don’t know how long the thugs had been working me over by then. I could hear their labored breaths above me, so I could tell they’d been at it for some time and were getting tired.
    After a while the blows stopped altogether. I peeked up through my arms to see what had happened. I saw Jeff and Ed P. and Harry Mac puffing away, gazing off down the road. They looked concerned. I peeked down the road myself. That’s when I saw the old green pickup trundling toward us from a distance.
    There was a long pause. Then:
    “What do you think?” said Harry Mac, breathing hard. I could hear by the tone of his voice that he was worried. Obviously, if you’re going to beat a guy up, you don’t want any witnesses.
    Jeff took a moment before he answered. “Aw . . . ,” he said reluctantly. “I guess that’s enough. We don’t need any trouble.”
    I saw him look down at me. He was already getting a black eye from where I’d punched him, and there were still bloodstains on his chin and his teeth. I could see the anger flashing in his eyes. He would have liked to go on punching me awhile longer.
    “You ever tell anyone what you saw with us, this is gonna be like nothing,” he said. He spat. “I thought you were gonna be one of us, punk, but I guess you don’t have what it takes.”
    He was right about that, I have to admit. I knew that now. I didn’t have what it took to be like him. And I was right in the middle of thinking, Thank you, God , for that, when Jeff gave me one last kick in the stomach. Then he and the others swaggered off to the waiting Camaro.
    I lay there at the edge of the road, curled up on my side, clutching my stomach. Blood dripped out of my nose and down from a cut in my head. I saw the red drops falling onto the gray pavement and gathering there in a little pool.
    I heard the Camaro’s engine roar to life. For a second or two I was afraid that Jeff was going to drive the car right over me—just his little way of saying, “So long, and thanks for the memories.” But no, I heard the tires screech, and when I dared to look, I saw the Camaro tearing away down the road, sending up a cloud of dust behind it.
    I groaned. Then I groaned some more. I uncurled my body and lay flat on my back, trying to breathe. I stared up at the blue sky. I thought about my parents. I thought about how I was going to explain what had happened. I almost wished Jeff had finished the job. Almost.
    My plan just then was to go on lying there for—I don’t know—maybe a week or two—at least until the pain stopped, if it ever did. But I knew that the green pickup was still crawling up the road toward me. I thought if the driver saw me lying there, he might call an ambulance or something. I didn’t want an ambulance. I didn’t want to go to the hospital. I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to climb into bed and ache and bleed.
    So—after throwing in a few more groans for good measure—I started moving again, rolling over, pushing up off the ground, trying to get to my feet.
    I had just made it when the pickup finally pulled alongside me and stopped. The farmer behind the wheel looked to be as old as the truck, which, like I said, looked to be about a hundred. Peering out of his round, wrinkled face, his dark, sparkling eyes went up and down me. He had his tongue in his grizzled cheek as if he thought I was playing some kind of joke, standing there bleeding like that.
    “Well,” he said, “I’d hate to see what the other guy looks like.”
    I would’ve laughed, but it hurt too much. “The other three guys,” I told him. “And don’t worry: they look just fine.”
    The old man gave a hoarse chuckle. “I bet they do. What about you? Need a lift to the hospital?”
    “No, thanks. I got my bike. I just wanna go