Read Online Prospero's Half-Life by Trevor Zaple - Free Book Online Page B

glass that
lined the street and sidewalks as a result. The side streets that
they’d travelled on had been cleaner; the buildings had been
shuttered and the windows were mostly intact. St. Paul Street, by
contrast, was a complete mess. It looked as though a riot had come
rolling through, and from what Richard saw that might have been the
case. Some of the blood that stained the street came from wounds
that did not originate in plague.
    The jagged
holes that had been shattered in the store fronts unnerved him as
they passed by. The light caught odd reflections in the sunlight,
and the unpredictable glitter constantly made Richard think that
there was someone moving inside. Whenever he would turn to confront
the person, though, he would catch himself on nothing. At first
Samantha reacted along with him, nervous and ready to sprint, but
after the first few times she became bored. Her slackening
demeanour annoyed him; his own nerves were tightened to the point
that he could play sweep arpeggios on them.
    “ Do you think people were trying to get out of here?” Samantha
asked after a time. They were passing by a small tattoo shop and a
body hung halfway out of the front window. Richard eyed it
critically as the walked by it; the body’s head lay at an unnatural
angle. He looked out to the street and saw a pile-up of four cars
that, given time, would eventually fuse together into an
unrecognizable mass of steel and circuit board. There were victims
inside that heap, hidden behind impact-shattered glass and twisted
metal. He shook his head.
    “ I don’t think anyone knew what they were trying to
do”.
    Samantha did
not reply and they walked on. The more he saw it, the more it took
on the view of complete chaos. There were as many beaten, murdered
corpses on the street as there were bled-out plague victims. A
large furniture store had been driven into, and the car mouldered
inside the gapped-out show window, it’s back window crazed and
bloody. The smell of gasoline lay heavy around it, and Richard
motioned to Samantha to cross to the other side of the street. He
had no wish to get close to a sudden random explosion.
    Across the
street was a tall brick-and-glass structure, more modern than most
of the other buildings on the street. The place looked completely
torn apart, and there were bodies ringing the smashed-out doors.
Richard looked up to the dark windows on the top floors with
trepidation, wondering if someone might be looking down on them as
they walked, with unknown intent. He shivered and made himself stop
imagining things. There was no movement in any of the windows,
although a small part of him whispered that he might not spy such
activity until it was too late.
    Just past the
modern-looking building was a deep courtyard; there were a couple
of bodies and a small Japanese car flipped upside down. An arm
snaked motionless out of the wreckage of the car; Richard tried to
avert his eyes but he found that he couldn’t avoid looking at such
scenes anywhere he turned his eyes to. There were restaurants on
the other side of the street, and an abandoned cinema; there was
blood and flesh and viscera on display everywhere, littering the
sidewalks, hanging out of jagged glass holes, pulverized by the
lethal impact of auto accidents. Richard could feel the abattoir
closing in around him. The copper scent was everywhere, like old
pennies that had been stored in a drawer for years and then
withdrawn grudgingly into the light. He felt his stomach roll over,
and his gorge rise. He must have looked green, because Samantha’s
hand encircled his bicep shortly.
    “ Are you going to be okay?” she asked, concerned. Richard
nodded emphatically, not really trusting himself to speak.
Everything wanted to spill out all at once, and his heart seemed to
be achieving new speed records. He breathed purposely, measuring
his inhalation and exhalation in equal intervals. He managed to get
himself under control within a short time, and got back