Read Online Hold the Dark: A Novel by William Giraldi - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William Giraldi
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dropped near their car and Slone stood above them and shot each again through his earhole, then braced the handgun in his belt. Cheeon passed him a flashlight and Slone saw fragments of skull and brain stuck frozen to the side door of their car. He bent with the light to gather the fallen papers on Medora—a black-and-white photo of her face drizzled with blood and specked wet with snow—and slipped them back into the file folder. He looked again at the bodies, hardened blood like rubies scattered across a canvas of white.
Cheeon took the flashlight and folder from him and started the truck. Slone reentered the morgue through its rear loading door—inside an unlit hallway and the red glow of an exit sign. Minutes later he emerged with a body bag in his arms like a bride. At the back of the pickup, tailgate lowered, Cheeon held one end of the boy. They set him lovingly into the bed of the truck, where he sank several inches into a one-foot pad of snow.
An hour’s drive to Keelut and the men did not speak. Cheeon smoked and drove as Slone reclined, his head turned to the bleached world he knew: houses, cabins, buildings, outside of town the numberless acres of land, not even the pledge of light in miles of such sable stillness.
The memory of alien sand, that slamming sun, the sheer exhaustion of those memories. Slone slept, the truck’s tires a lullaby on asphalt.
* * *
Those first days towns or sectors of the city were always in smolder. Planes gave ruin. After, teams wheeled in block by block to find what still had breath. They crept door to door while buildings burned, smoke like night that made moon of sun. The men they sought seemed never to be where they should. Most were not in uniform. It was hard to know who should be shot, who would shoot. Families huddled in basements. Street dogs deafened and concussed, their ribs hunger-sharp. Gunfire on the next block, east or north, impossible to know.
Slone turned and found himself separated. Ducked into a doorway, squatted there for air. He swilled from a canteen, wiped sweat and filth from his brow. Voices, American, in a rubble-packed alley. Smoke like walls in the street.
When he stood in that entranceway he saw into the glassless window, through one rounded room into another: a soldier with a scalp of honey down, wearing Slone’s own colors, his flag, from his company or not—his eyes still burned from sweat and smoke. A girl beneath this man’s weight on a table, her bottom garb twisted aside. Slone watched him, a tattooed piston between her legs.
He entered the house with a voyeur’s crawl. And he watched. The girl was very young, he saw now, sixteen or seventeen. Umber skin aglint with both her sweat and his. She did not struggle. She did not yell. She could not look away. She studied the soldier’s face as if needing to remember it for some future use. Or else stunned by this adder, astonished that this shaitan could have honey-colored hair and such straight teeth. But for the quiet drip of tears she seemed almost partner to this.
More gunfire on the street. Rapid explosions nearby that sent a tremor through the floor of this house. The hissing of steam he could not guess the source of.
And then Slone was behind them. He saw nonsense hieroglyphs etched into the soldier’s biceps. A medieval cross inked into his nape, and inside the cross a question: Why hast thou forsaken me?
He unsheathed the knife from his belt. The hand, the forearm, the shoulder—they can know their aim independent of mind. He stabbed this soldier through the right ear. A centimeter of the knife’s tip poked through his left temple and Slone felt the body go limp on the blade. He held the man’s drooped form upright with the knife so he would not topple onto the girl. He then thrust him quickly back and yanked free the blade in the same even motion. The serrated side of the knife was crammed now with bone and brain. On the dusty stone floor the man’s blood puddled about his
Cheeon took the flashlight and folder from him and started the truck. Slone reentered the morgue through its rear loading door—inside an unlit hallway and the red glow of an exit sign. Minutes later he emerged with a body bag in his arms like a bride. At the back of the pickup, tailgate lowered, Cheeon held one end of the boy. They set him lovingly into the bed of the truck, where he sank several inches into a one-foot pad of snow.
An hour’s drive to Keelut and the men did not speak. Cheeon smoked and drove as Slone reclined, his head turned to the bleached world he knew: houses, cabins, buildings, outside of town the numberless acres of land, not even the pledge of light in miles of such sable stillness.
The memory of alien sand, that slamming sun, the sheer exhaustion of those memories. Slone slept, the truck’s tires a lullaby on asphalt.
* * *
Those first days towns or sectors of the city were always in smolder. Planes gave ruin. After, teams wheeled in block by block to find what still had breath. They crept door to door while buildings burned, smoke like night that made moon of sun. The men they sought seemed never to be where they should. Most were not in uniform. It was hard to know who should be shot, who would shoot. Families huddled in basements. Street dogs deafened and concussed, their ribs hunger-sharp. Gunfire on the next block, east or north, impossible to know.
Slone turned and found himself separated. Ducked into a doorway, squatted there for air. He swilled from a canteen, wiped sweat and filth from his brow. Voices, American, in a rubble-packed alley. Smoke like walls in the street.
When he stood in that entranceway he saw into the glassless window, through one rounded room into another: a soldier with a scalp of honey down, wearing Slone’s own colors, his flag, from his company or not—his eyes still burned from sweat and smoke. A girl beneath this man’s weight on a table, her bottom garb twisted aside. Slone watched him, a tattooed piston between her legs.
He entered the house with a voyeur’s crawl. And he watched. The girl was very young, he saw now, sixteen or seventeen. Umber skin aglint with both her sweat and his. She did not struggle. She did not yell. She could not look away. She studied the soldier’s face as if needing to remember it for some future use. Or else stunned by this adder, astonished that this shaitan could have honey-colored hair and such straight teeth. But for the quiet drip of tears she seemed almost partner to this.
More gunfire on the street. Rapid explosions nearby that sent a tremor through the floor of this house. The hissing of steam he could not guess the source of.
And then Slone was behind them. He saw nonsense hieroglyphs etched into the soldier’s biceps. A medieval cross inked into his nape, and inside the cross a question: Why hast thou forsaken me?
He unsheathed the knife from his belt. The hand, the forearm, the shoulder—they can know their aim independent of mind. He stabbed this soldier through the right ear. A centimeter of the knife’s tip poked through his left temple and Slone felt the body go limp on the blade. He held the man’s drooped form upright with the knife so he would not topple onto the girl. He then thrust him quickly back and yanked free the blade in the same even motion. The serrated side of the knife was crammed now with bone and brain. On the dusty stone floor the man’s blood puddled about his
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