Read Online Crawlers by John Shirley - Free Book Online

People don’t like to talk about it when they go off antidepressants— or on them either. He could be having a kind of withdrawal from medication.”
    “You know what, I thought maybe he hadn’t been taking his meds. You’re probably right. I’m going to see if I can get him to start again. See how you make me feel better? I need you around here to straighten me out when I get crazy.”
    Lacey smiled. “Whoa, you must be worried, admitting I might know something you don’t. I’m coming, ‘Sister Act.’ ”
    Suze laughed at the allusion to the time they’d dressed up like twin nuns for a Halloween party.
    “Okay, we’ll be there. Call us if the train’s delayed.”
    “I will. Bye.”
    Lacey switched the cell phone off, looked out at Los Angeles. A boulevard unreeled below the elevated freeway like film from a canister, and she wondered if she could really let L.A. go.
    She thought she probably could. Her life was taking a sharp turn, and the cab was taking the exit for the train station.
    November 24, 11:30 P.M.
    Larry’s dad had gone to a Civil War reenactment planning session after work, calling to tell Larry to heat up a frozen pizza and do his homework. But Larry Gunderston had been playing this particular computer game for three and a half hours, with pizza crusts still littering his desk. His back ached in the desk chair; his fingers had stiffened up. But whenever his Jedi character broke through to another level—killing a great many of the enemy to get there—the feeling that came seemed to suck him onward like a slipstream.
    It would’ve been four hours, but he’d paused to go on-line, to the
Trek
chat room, where they’d talked more
Star Wars
than
Star Trek
, and now he was thinking about going back on. He’d try again to talk his on-line friend Allison into sending him a picture, if she was in the ROM-exchange chat room. She was reluctant, hinting she was no
Vogue
beauty. He didn’t care, even if she was overweight like him. He needed to think that maybe there was a girl somewhere who—
    “Larry? What the heck there, boy, you said you were doing your trigonometry!” His dad was suddenly there in the doorway, a man with narrow shoulders and wide hips, the same thick round glasses as Larry. “I’m gonna call your mom and have her come over and talk to you. I know how you love her lectures.” Mom and Dad were separated; she lived in Oakland.
    “I finished the trig,” Larry lied. “It didn’t take very long. I thought you were going to have a beer with those guys after the meeting.”
    “Only two guys showed up. Nobody seems to know where the other ones are. The whole thing is—never mind, dammit, do you know what time it is? You’ve got finals, kid. This really
does
go on your permanent record.”
    “It’s just preliminary credits till I get into San Francisco State, Dad.”
    His dad had come to stand scowling over his chair, staring into the game. “Larry, if you make big swings with your lightsaber that way, the Sith’ll get you. You have to make short, aggressive swings. Here, move, let me show you.”
    Larry sighed and got up, let his dad sit down. His dad could waste as much time on a computer game as he could. “I guess I’ll . . .”
    Dad was already hunched over the screen, his mind projected into the computer-animated world of the Jedi.
    “Yes. Take the dog out, Larry, before you go to bed. Buddy needs to . . . uh . . . See, you have to—hell, I died, but you know what I mean. Did you save that game?”
    Larry found the poodle sitting tensely by the front door. He attached the leash and let the poodle drag him outside and down the sidewalk. Most of the houses were dark, except for some TV glow in the occasional picture window. There was a shiny row of silent cars along the curb; boats in some of the driveways were covered with wet tarps. Nothing else. Yet the night seemed almost alive.
    It was funny how vivid things seemed outside for a few moments when you first