Read Online Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks - Free Book Online

left it alone and got out of his head.
    As we approached the three gypsies, they continued watching us. Their eyes were impossible to read.
    “Did they see you hitting the big guy?” I asked Cole.
    “Yeah.”
    “Do you think they know who we are?”
    “Probably.”
    We were just about level with them now. I could hear the baby making quiet gurgling noises. I could see the shine of the girl’s jet-black hair. I could feel her eyes studying Cole as he nodded his head almost imperceptibly at the stocky old man. The old man didn’t move for a second, then he, too, nodded his head.
    And that was that.
    We passed them by without a word and continued on down to the village.
    The way Cole said it, it sounded quite simple. “We’ll check in to this Bridge Hotel, get something to eat, then first thing in the morning we’ll start looking around the village.”
    I thought about asking him what we were supposed to be looking around for , but I decided to keep mymouth shut. I was too tired and hungry to think about it now. All I wanted was to get some food inside me and go to bed.
    Unfortunately, things didn’t quite work out that way.
    The trouble started on the narrow stone bridge that led into the village. We were about halfway across, and I was just telling Cole how the bridge was made from huge slabs of granite, and how it had probably been here since the fourteenth century, and he was doing his best not to yawn, when suddenly we heard the sound of a car roaring up fast behind us. We both turned around and saw the Toyota pickup racing toward us across the bridge. The big guy was slumped in the passenger seat and Red Suit was at the wheel, grinning like a lunatic as he put his foot down and headed straight for us. My belly lurched and my legs turned to ice, and for a fleeting moment I thought we were dead. I really thought we’d had it. And the weird thing was, it didn’t seem to bother me. I might have been petrified, but I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t anything, really. It wasn’t until Cole grabbed my arm and yanked me back onto one of the stone supports at the edge of the bridge, and the car flashed past us in a hail of laughter and shouting voices…it wasn’t until then that I started to feel anything at all. And even then I didn’t know what it was.
    It might have been fear, or shock, or sickness…
    Or it might have been some kind of love.
    Cole had his arms around me, and we were balancedon the very edge of a narrow pillar of granite about ten meters above a fast-flowing river. The shallow waters looked cold and coppery. Cole had his back to the river and was struggling to keep his balance. I went to step back onto the bridge, intending to give him some room, but he suddenly grabbed hold of me again and pulled me back.
    “What—?” I started to say.
    But then I heard it—the sound of motorbike engines—and I looked up to see the two metalheads screaming their bikes down the hill toward us.
    Cole started edging around me, his eyes fixed coldly on the approaching bikes.
    “What are you doing?” I said.
    He didn’t answer me, but it didn’t matter. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to get back on the bridge. He was going after the bikes. I shuffled around to block his way. He shuffled back. I blocked him again. He stopped shuffling and looked at me, his eyes telling me to get out of the way.
    “Don’t be stupid, Cole,” I said. “Stopping them’s not going to help us, is it?”
    The bikes were starting to cross the bridge now. Cole looked up at them. I watched his eyes as they roared toward us, swerved halfheartedly, then straightened up and sped off into the village.
    After a couple of long seconds, Cole turned back to me.
    “It’s all right,” he said. “You can let go of me now.”
    I hadn’t even realized I was holding him.
    Five minutes later we were standing outside the Bridge Hotel. It was a big old stone building about halfway up the main street. White paint was flaking off the walls,