Read Online The Spider Inside by Elias Anderson - Free Book Online Page A

watched Chester rummage through
some boxes. A minute or so later he held the black contraption up in triumph,
getting another laugh from his goons. Nik smiled, but he was about fake-laughed
out for the morning.
    “Here, put this on,” Chester said, helping Nik adjust the
straps. “You wear that coat over this man, no one gonna know you packing unless
you go through a metal detector or you draw down on em.”
    Nik put his coat back on over the holster, put the gun in,
and looked down at himself. The gun was hanging beneath his left arm, right
against the ribs.
    “Perfect,” Chester said. “Fifteen if you want it.”
    “And I think you have something else for me, too?” Nik
asked, handing over the money.
    “Yes, Gomez said you could take care of this for me. You can
drop this envelope off?” Chester turned and lifted his coat off the back of the
chair he’d been sitting in, and from the inside pocket took a sealed
business-sized envelope. “The address is on the front.”
    Nik studied it for a moment. “And it isn’t too early? If I
were to go over there now?”
    Chester shook his head. “Mouse will give you directions.”
    Nik nodded, tucked the envelope into his own coat pocket.
    “You need a bag for that?” Chester asked with another laugh.
He stuffed the ammo into a small duffel bag that Nik judged would fit just
right into the compartment on his bike.
    “Appreciate your help,” Nik said, and they shook hands once
more. He wanted badly to ask what was in the envelope but resisted. Too many
questions were a terrible thing.
    Nik took the highway even though he knew there would be more
traffic, another forty minutes and it would be gridlock for cars. Not him
though. Even when everyone else was at a standstill he could zip down a center
line or along the shoulder, blowing by people so fast they wouldn’t even be
able to tell what color his bike was. He was pushing his bike up to about
ninety when a huge curve came up and he made it around but almost laid it down.
Just as he felt his rear wheel go he gunned it and the bike finished the rest
of the curve like it was on rails. He took the next exit and had to keep
checking his speedometer, he wanted to go faster faster faster, but he also
didn’t need to get pulled over with a freshly purchased illegal firearm and
whatever was in the envelope Chester had given him.
    He got off his bike and checked the faded numbers against
those on the envelope and they matched up. There was a young woman in the front
yard, pregnant, another kid on her hip sucking a pacifier. The kid on her hip
was a dead ringer for Chester. Frog approached her slowly, holding the envelope
out.
    “From Chester,” he said. He tried to find his Spanish and
couldn’t. He could barely speak. The woman’s eyes opened like the mouths of
tunnels through a mountain and seemed to swallow him. Her face was stone,
blank, bored. It gave away nothing. Her eyes though, they held all the contempt
in the world, and for the world, and for Nik, who imagined himself looking to
her like some crazy gringo, walking through her yard, stammering, trying to
hand her a dirty envelope. She snatched the envelope from him and seemed to
recognize the writing on the front. She just stared at him, putting all the
hate and disgust from her heart into her eyes.
    Nik turned and started back toward the gate and then heard
her speak.
    “You’re coming to a bad end,” she said. Her soft voice rang
in his ears like a gypsy curse thousands of generations in the making. Nik
turned back and her eyes were no longer dark brown but black, her body
shimmered in the light like a mirage and her true form rippled beneath the
skin. She was Death, she was Legion. The ground began to shake and shadows
dripped off everything like dirty motor oil. On her hip was not a child but a
demon, Nik could see where the horns would burst through the fleshy disguise any
moment. The diaper bulged and was full but not from needing changed, Nik had