Read Online The Dead Boy by Craig Saunders - Free Book Online Page B

No
witnesses and no survivors - a happy circumstance which coincidentally suited Kurt
O'Dell just fine, too.
     
    *

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    V.
    The Mill
     
    In
three or four days, the fire along the motorway would cool. Cars would fuse to
the tarmac, as would the bodies of the dead. Ordinarily, parts would be sent,
piecemeal, to the bereaved as they were slowly catalogued and identified.
                ENGLAND
MOURNS , O'Dell imagined. He should know. He wrote the headline.
                That
England - countryside, unseen in the darkness, or motorway haunted by
disembodied white lights, or cityscapes with their different hues, lights and
buildings and people, too - all scrolled by as O'Dell drove north in his quiet
black car.
                The
English would rally. People would cry. But he didn't think they would have all
that long to mourn all those poor dead they would never know.
                That
was how he thought of people. As 'them' . And only when he considered
humanity at all.
                Himself,
his boss?
                Us.
                Them
and us, us and them. No way both were going to be around when the fire started.
                Somewhere
far behind O'Dell and the clever child in his charge, a road accident he'd
caused, and not the kind a clean-up crew simply scraped up and covered with
dirt and sawdust. Their pain didn't touch O'Dell. Their pain. Not his.
                Old
news.
                The
kid slept sprawled over the back seat of the sedan. He wouldn't wake until he
was safe in his new home.
                O'Dell,
his ever-present damaged grin on his face, wondered about the boy - like how
he'd known where to find him. How the boy (no...his power ) called out to
him.
                A
boy, thought O'Dell, who was much like himself. Not just talented, like the
others he'd taken over the years. The boy was different.
                The
Mill was the best place for different people like George Farnham.
                George
grunted something, just like kids talk in their sleep. O'Dell glanced, convinced
the kid's eyes would be open, and he would be staring at O'Dell. Reading him.
                But
no. The kid was done. He wasn't coming back.
                'No
one's coming back,' he said. Then, his hand jittered on the gear stick and his
eyes drifted - but the movement only small, and quick, and as ever O'Dell was
unaware.
                'They're
sheep. Baa baa bleating sheep.'
                O'Dell
didn't need the radio or news to see the picture they saw. Sheep saw
what they wanted to see, and if the picture didn't fit, their minds made it fit. Their own fucking minds, jamming facts into a comfortable box they
could manage to hold.
                The
country in horror . Reporters, shocked . Ticker tapes on Sky News,
or the BBC, updating housewives all day long with the same inescapable blather.
                As
long as the idiot masses got the message that it was a terrible accident and that people could die in their beloved England...well, they'd be
happy enough. People loved a tragedy far better than stories about ducks and
babies and wonderful gadgets and miracle cures for cancer that weren't real.
                None
of it is real for them...not really. Just us.
                O'Dell
had his own ticker tape that updated him on the real news (though just as
unimportant, perhaps). Red text against the windshield up and to the right, the
phrasing just as angular as the glowing display. It didn't distract him. O'Dell
was very good at concentrating.
                The
car rolled.
                Tenants
of a farmhouse a mile from the epicentre: Debtors flee country. The inhabitants
of five houses to the east: Carbon monoxide deaths. Seven teenagers hanging out
in the park found