Read Online The Straw Men by Michael Marshall - Free Book Online Page A

hair, turned her face so she could see into the Barnes and Noble. There were plenty of people in there, too. Reading. Standing. Chatting. Why would you look outside, when you’re in a bookstore at night? Even if you did, would you see more than a couple of dark figures on a bench? Why would that seem exceptional?
    “I should do you here and now,” the man said, in a tone of quiet indignation. “Just to show it could be done. That nobody really cares. When you’re surrounded by people you don’t know all the time, how can you tell what’s wrong? In five square miles of disease, who cares what happens to one little virus?”
    Sarah realized there was going to be no get-out-of-this-free question, not now or ever, and gathered herself to scream. The man felt her chest expand, and his hand quickly looped over her face. Two fingers grabbed her upper lip from above, tugging it hard. The scream never made it out of her throat. Sarah tried to struggle, but the hand held her in position, coupled with the weight of his arm, pressing down on her head.
    “Nobody watching,” the man assured her, with the same hateful calm. “I made it this way. I can walk where nobody sees.”
    Indistinct noises came out of the girl’s mouth, as she tried to say something. He seemed to understand.
    “No they’re not,” he said. “They’re not on their way. They’re at home. Mommy’s a Jackson Pollock in thekitchen. Daddy’s in the garden, with little sister. Both naked. They make an interesting tableau. Some might even consider it obscene.”
    In fact, Melanie and Sarah’s mom were watching a Simpsons rerun at that moment. It was, as Zoë Becker would always remember, the episode where George Bush moves into Springfield. Michael Becker was typing furiously in his den, having found, he fervently hoped, a way of making everything all right. If he could just fix the opening ten minutes, and find a way of selling the idea that some of the characters had to be older than teenagers, then everything would be okay. Failing that, fuck it, he’d just make them all teenagers—and reinstitute all the sodding pans down the front of the high school, the way Wang wanted it. A few miles away, Sian Williams had just picked up Sarah’s message, and was feeling a little envious of her friend’s Out Alone adventure.
    “If you keep wriggling,” the man said, “I’ll pull your teeth out. I will. I promise. Not easy, but it’s worth it. It’s really a very unusual sound.”
    Sarah went completely still, and for a moment neither of them moved. The man seemed to take a pleasure in sitting that way, the girl’s mouth pulled up to a point of screaming pain, as if they were sharing a private moment in the middle of a busy street.
    Then he sighed, like a man reluctantly putting aside an absorbing magazine. He stood, pulling Sarah up with him. Her minidisc player slipped to the ground with a brittle clatter. The man glanced at it, and let it lie.
    “Good-bye and good night, good people,” he said, in the general direction of the other end of the street. “You’ll all rot in hell, and I’d love to lead you there.” His right arm rotated around Sarah’s head until his hand was clamped firmly over her mouth. With his other hand he picked up the bag of books. “But I have a date, and we must go.”
    Then, with quick, long strides, he dragged Sarah acrossthe street and into an alley where his car was parked. She had no choice but to accompany him. He was tall and very strong.
    He threw open the back door, then grabbed her hair again and peered closely into her face. The close presence of his face scared all useful thought out of her head.
    “Come, my dear,” he said. “Our carriage awaits.” Then he head-butted her just above the eyes.
    As Sarah’s knees buckled, her last thought was matter-of-fact. In her bedside table was a notebook in which she had written down many thoughts. Some of the most recent were about sex: breathless musings on a part