Free The Dead Boy by Craig Saunders Page B

enough. These were fires that would burn in a deluge,
in a monsoon. The stench in the air couldn't be washed away. She imagined, even
there in the cool grass with the red and blue lighting the sky above, that she
could smell gunsmoke. But how could she smell anything but the heavy reek of
burning bodies and fuel and rubber from above?
                The
policeman lay where she'd left him.
                'Can't
go that way. Soldiers shooting anything that moves.' She wondered if she was
going to cry.
                Nope.
I'm not.
                Shock
covered any sorrow, fear overrode any compassion. Revulsion, though - that
still roiled, somewhere low down that took her breath and stole her energy.
                The
policeman said nothing. Francis knelt down and felt his pulse, suddenly sure
that he was dead. But he wasn't dead. Just passed out.
                'Shit,'
she said. She sat next to him, not worrying about dirt on her expensive
trousers, or the cold.
                What
to do?
                She
didn't know. Any action might be wrong. But she was tired, and that didn't
require any kind of mistakes.
                Lay
down , she thought. It sounded, to her, like the most sage idea she'd ever
had.
                For
a few minutes, maybe ten, she lay in the dark listening to the man's breathing,
the fire and the sirens, a distant fire alarm, random gunshots. Eventually, all
the sound went away. Francis shut down. Her adrenaline fled. She fell asleep in
the dirt.
                When
she woke her clothes were damp with rain and the night, and it was light. She
curled up, like a baby might, facing the policeman. He looked at her as she
opened her eyes. Slightly cute, she thought, before remembering why she
was nestled with a stranger among these trees, in this dirt that stank of ash
and burned rubber.
                A
slight turn of her head was all it took to completely ruin this new day. A
soldier in black clothing and black mask and a serious black gun.
                He
flicked his head. Up.
                Maybe
he couldn't talk with the mask on. The message was clear enough.
                'Fuck,'
she said.
                No
way the policeman could stand. She was sure the soldier would shoot them before
he helped. She dragged him up. He cried out. In the new daylight, his misshapen
leg became obvious.
                Broken
leg? Maybe he's tougher than he looks , she thought.
                The
soldier wasn't moved by the policeman's pain. He said nothing but spoke with
the barrel of his rifle - they had no choice but to go where it pointed. 
     
    *
     
    George
Farnham woke on his second day of captivity someplace unfamiliar. Barren walls
of crumbling plaster. Concrete floors caked with excrement, maybe blood. A
rusted metal cot bed with a stained mattress on which he had slept.
                A
bare single bulb flickered like it was on its way out.
                The
man with fire in his eyes stepped forward, so that as George looked up from the
bed the light was directly behind the man's head. It might have looked like a
halo on someone else. Instead, it threw his grinning face into shadow. George
thought maybe that grin was always there.
                'Hi
there, George! My name is Kurt William O'Dell,' he said, with a false and
frightening voice that didn't sound happy at all. 'All my buddies call me Mr.
O'Dell, though. Have a question for me, George? Mate? Buddy? Got a question?'
                George
wanted to go to the toilet. This wasn't the friendly joking thing that his Dad
sometimes did. This was the mean kind of joking.
                'Go
ahead, young man. You may speak.'
                O'Dell
sat beside George and tried to pat the boy's knee. George scooted back up the
filthy bed to get