Read Online Something of the Night by Paul Cave - Free Book Online

jaws opened and the bloodied body slipped silently off the hood.
    Alice gripped the torn steering wheel. She turned her head
and looked out of the rear window. A scream threatened to form. The shell of an
abandoned car lay directly in their path.
    “Look out,” Squirrel warned.
    Too late.
    The truck hit the wreckage.
It came to an abrupt halt and both Squirrel and Alice were thrown back
violently in their seats. Scratch found himself pushed unexpectedly up against
the rear seat.
    “Are you okay?” Squirrel
asked Alice .
    “Yeah … Yeah …” Alice responded, slightly dazed.
    “Jeez, the truck’s totalled,”
he said.
    The mechanic turned his
attention to the outside world. An eerie silence had fallen all about them.
“Where’d they go?”
    Alice peered through the shattered window. She could find
no sign of the dark horde. “Maybe the sound of the crash scared them away.”
    Squirrel nodded hopefully.
“What the hell do we do now?”
    “I’m not sure, but we can’t
stay in here. It’s too exposed.”
    “We’ll never reach the
underground on foot. They’ll tear us to pieces before we get over that hill.”
    “You’re right, but we may be
able to make it into the town,” Alice said, looking in the opposite direction, and at the
nearer, desolate streets.
    “The town? I don’t like the
look of the town.” The words came out like a plume of vocalised dread.
    “It’s our only hope,” Alice explained. “Don’t worry, there’s nothing to be scared of. I’ve scouted through
it many times on salvage runs. It’s dead.”
    “Dead?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    Squirrel breathed out a sigh
of resignation. “Okay, you’re right. Wait a minute.” He reached across her,
popped open the glove-box and retrieved a handful of shotgun shells. Alice slid
along the cabin, then climbed out from the passenger side after Squirrel. She
bent back inside, ran her hand under the passenger’s seat and retrieved a
pistol.
    “This may come in handy,” she
said.
    They left Old Betsy to lie in
peace.
    They moved away from the
stricken vehicle and headed towards the outskirts of town. Squirrel stayed in
the lead. The shotgun traced left and right, as the mechanic watched out for
any sudden movements. None came. “Where the hell have they all gone?”
    “I don’t know,” Alice replied.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
    They entered the town and
left the highway behind them. Dark structures stood on either side. Instead of
taking refuge in one of the first uninhabited buildings, Alice led them
into the heart of the settlement. The heart was still. Nothing moved,
thankfully.
    “Let’s get inside,” Squirrel
suggested.
    “Just a little bit further,” Alice insisted.
    “Where are we going exactly?”
he enquired.
    “The jailhouse.”
    “What?”
    “We’re going to the
jailhouse. It’s the strongest structure. Plus, there’ll be provisions inside.”
    “Provisions?”
    “Trust me.”
    “So what happens once we’re
there?” he asked.
    “We wait.”
    “For what?”
    “For our rescue. I hope,” she
said.
    “You hope?”
    “Nobody knows we’re here,
remember?” Alice explained, dismally.
    He remembered how he had
talked her into taking him on Old Betsy’s secret test run, and groaned
miserably. “Shit, I’m sorry,” he apologised, realising it was his eagerness to escape the confinement of the underground that had put them here.
    “It’s not your fault,” Alice reassured him.
    Woof! Scratch disagreed.
    After a short while they
turned onto the street where the jailhouse stood.
    “Almost there,” Alice said.
She led them across the empty road onto the opposite sidewalk before climbing a
short flight of stone steps.
    The squat, square-shaped
building of the jailhouse stood at the top. Although all the glass from the
windows had been blown out long ago, they were still secured by rows of iron
bars. As Squirrel approached the first step, he noticed that some of the bars
had been worked on from