Read Online Thirty Miles South Of Dry County by Kealan Patrick Burke - Free Book Online

has in the very core of our bein’. It took away the fantasy and left you scared and alone and desperate to find your friends.”
    I shook my head. “And how can you prove this is anythin’ but a game to you people?”
    Cadaver lowered his head and looked again at the single penny sitting there, alone. “If they were buried, they’ll have graves.”
    * * *
    I don’t rightly recall much about walkin’ out of there, or my passage down the hill, only that Moses weren’t there. Through the panic, I felt a twinge of sadness at that. I realized I’d wanted the company now more than ever. The thought was followed by anger at the notion that for all I knew, maybe even the dog had been part of the madness. Maybe they’d drafted the starvin’ mutt in so I’d lower my defenses just enough for them to do as Cadaver said, find my weakness and use it against me.
    But what weakness? My friends was alive. I clearly remembered the day before, the heat, the low breeze, passin’ the time with Dick, Sven’s anger at findin’ the store overtaken by the vines, him stormin’ off hell-bent on takin’ Kirkland to task, all of it. It were real, I’d felt it, everythin’ about it from gettin’ up in the mornin’ and puttin’ in my dentures, to watchin’ the Volkswagen kickin’ up dust as it headed off to Milestone. And if the store were ruined, then why had folks stopped by to get beer as if they’d expected it to be open for business? None of it made a lick of sense, so I weren’t goin’ to believe it. And although it gave me pause, I knew the fact that the Volkswagen were no longer all busted up on the border of Milestone, weren’t there at all in fact, proved nothin’ more than just how far the mad people of the town was willin’ to go to change my mind.
    * * *
    I drove, my mind a blur, heart a dull thump in my chest as if it were considerin’ quittin’, and stopped some time later at a crossroads. To the left and up the ways a bit stood the liquor store, and about eight miles past it, the graveyard. To my right, the way home. I sat there with the engine idlin’ for a long time, until the sun started to get as old as the blood flowin’ through my veins. The radio were quiet, the windows was down. The heat had returned. The fog, it seemed, were content to stay back in Milestone where worse things needed to be hidden.
    What if? I thought over and over again, alternatin’ between cursin’ the mere idea of believin’ anythin’ I’d been told and a naggin’, alien uncertainty. But it persisted. What if? What if they’re right? The only thing that made such a nightmarish idea even simmer for more than a second was the memories of my wife and the things she’d often said to me about me spendin’ my life runnin’. But what happens when the body gets old and loses the strength to run any further? Couldn’t the mind do it instead? But dammit, I felt all right, didn’t feel as if my brain was busted. But then again, if the mind does somethin’ it thinks is right, just so’s it can protect you, why should it hurt? Wouldn’t that give the game away?
    I flipped on my turn signal, the little green arrow pointin’ away from the liquor store and the cemetery beyond. I reasoned that there weren’t much point in pursuin’ the madness any further, no matter who were right. If I found that my friends was buried, then there weren’t nothin’ to say that it weren’t just another trick by the people of Milestone. Would hardly be any great feat to plant some fake headstones, now would it? And what were I gonna do to prove it a trick? Dig them up? If Kirkland had the power to destroy a liquor store with vines, then he could probably conjure up some dead bodies too.
    But again: why? Why go to so much trouble for an old man who meant nothin’ to no one? And he sure hadn’t looked like he were lyin’. Unless he were just pretty damn good at hidin’ it.
    And now that doubts had started to creep in, if I found no