Read Online This Is Not The End: But I Can See It From Here (The Big Red Z Book 1) by Thomas Head - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Thomas Head
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shiver.
It’s not the thought of mom and dad screwing. It’s Gene. She went through soldiers like tampons. But it’s not exactly that either. Prostitution had not made her an unkind woman. Just weird, I used to think. Nothing typical about her. I quiver to think that she came to live with us a while, busted me jerking off once and didn’t flinch. We’re not talking mid-stride. I mean puckered lips and bared teeth and eyes rolling back.
Gene just shut the door. She waited a second or two and told me to holler when I was done on the toilet.
I felt beneath her for years. Seeing her take it on a pool table in front of crowd didn’t change that. She was a good woman.
I don’t think about her much. Yet.
That’ll come.
***
We get going, following the sounds of distant Shado. I start to smell that muddy fish smell unique to the rivers around here. You can feel the odors. Like a warmth. I hear the water running now.
We start dropping down toward the smell and feel and sound of a river but I can’t see it yet. I feel like we’re on top of it when we start going back uphill again. We get up a little rise and the last bit of daylight cataracts across some water and I see it’s a swift little river. Several flat bottom, aluminum boats protrude, half hidden, from a vine-strewn tin shed.
I’m blessing the boats and looking at Early and asking him if he knows what this means.
He’s right, not much. I feel a little better though. A river will lead us to the coast, and it feels better to have something to follow. Plus there’s the smell of water and the bit of noon sun poking through the clouds, and the tiniest spark of something like hope has me strip-club giddy all the sudden, and we dare to climb down in the shallow edge of the surprisingly cool water.
Running over my ankles is all it takes to cool me off. Early is drinking the hell out of it. Then, me too. It’s stupid to drink it unfiltered, but delicious. We’re looking up as we’re drinking, all around, in case shado come at us while we have our faces stuck in the water. I realize we’re a pack, Early and me, because he’s watching when I’m not, and vice versa, for someone coming for the boats or emerging from the little shed.
Water is dripping down our chins. I was far, far thirstier than I realized. In a quarter hour he and I have drunk much and seen no one. We move slow, full of life now, and come down the water’s long curve.
No one in the shed. I’m looking at a sharper bend where there are rocks. No one. It looks like we might get a boat without a fight. Impossible, I know, so I bring the M4 to my eye. My heart instinctively slows. Breathing steadily, looking down a winding, crumbling snake of a river. It slides to the left, downhill, to an old building with nine or ten lumps of vine that probably had cars underneath.
No death’s head faces looking at us. No people. No glare from a scope. When Early gives the all clear with a kiss on my hand, and I lower the gun. Swallow.
Just plain luck.
Sometimes that’s what it boils down to. That, and one other thing. I cluck my tongue, and me and Early are climbing in a boat. The side of it says Basstracker.
There’s oars. A tank full of gas. Storage compartments full of saltines and canned meat. A full complement of bottled water. We stay looking and watchful before we dare to start it up, the sun ever lowering, the dark closing in. It starts on the fourth try.
Early and I set out. Turn off the engine.
Always looking.
Time and jungle, passing slowly.
Darker now.
Drift sluggishly, ever so slowly down river. The sky is mostly open to the stars and Early is looking up at them occasionally as if a matter of scientific curiosity.
We encounter nothing. No one. No resistance, no price. Just going without having to walk, on my ass, until I’m seeing the ocean. The ocean
It’s not the thought of mom and dad screwing. It’s Gene. She went through soldiers like tampons. But it’s not exactly that either. Prostitution had not made her an unkind woman. Just weird, I used to think. Nothing typical about her. I quiver to think that she came to live with us a while, busted me jerking off once and didn’t flinch. We’re not talking mid-stride. I mean puckered lips and bared teeth and eyes rolling back.
Gene just shut the door. She waited a second or two and told me to holler when I was done on the toilet.
I felt beneath her for years. Seeing her take it on a pool table in front of crowd didn’t change that. She was a good woman.
I don’t think about her much. Yet.
That’ll come.
***
We get going, following the sounds of distant Shado. I start to smell that muddy fish smell unique to the rivers around here. You can feel the odors. Like a warmth. I hear the water running now.
We start dropping down toward the smell and feel and sound of a river but I can’t see it yet. I feel like we’re on top of it when we start going back uphill again. We get up a little rise and the last bit of daylight cataracts across some water and I see it’s a swift little river. Several flat bottom, aluminum boats protrude, half hidden, from a vine-strewn tin shed.
I’m blessing the boats and looking at Early and asking him if he knows what this means.
He’s right, not much. I feel a little better though. A river will lead us to the coast, and it feels better to have something to follow. Plus there’s the smell of water and the bit of noon sun poking through the clouds, and the tiniest spark of something like hope has me strip-club giddy all the sudden, and we dare to climb down in the shallow edge of the surprisingly cool water.
Running over my ankles is all it takes to cool me off. Early is drinking the hell out of it. Then, me too. It’s stupid to drink it unfiltered, but delicious. We’re looking up as we’re drinking, all around, in case shado come at us while we have our faces stuck in the water. I realize we’re a pack, Early and me, because he’s watching when I’m not, and vice versa, for someone coming for the boats or emerging from the little shed.
Water is dripping down our chins. I was far, far thirstier than I realized. In a quarter hour he and I have drunk much and seen no one. We move slow, full of life now, and come down the water’s long curve.
No one in the shed. I’m looking at a sharper bend where there are rocks. No one. It looks like we might get a boat without a fight. Impossible, I know, so I bring the M4 to my eye. My heart instinctively slows. Breathing steadily, looking down a winding, crumbling snake of a river. It slides to the left, downhill, to an old building with nine or ten lumps of vine that probably had cars underneath.
No death’s head faces looking at us. No people. No glare from a scope. When Early gives the all clear with a kiss on my hand, and I lower the gun. Swallow.
Just plain luck.
Sometimes that’s what it boils down to. That, and one other thing. I cluck my tongue, and me and Early are climbing in a boat. The side of it says Basstracker.
There’s oars. A tank full of gas. Storage compartments full of saltines and canned meat. A full complement of bottled water. We stay looking and watchful before we dare to start it up, the sun ever lowering, the dark closing in. It starts on the fourth try.
Early and I set out. Turn off the engine.
Always looking.
Time and jungle, passing slowly.
Darker now.
Drift sluggishly, ever so slowly down river. The sky is mostly open to the stars and Early is looking up at them occasionally as if a matter of scientific curiosity.
We encounter nothing. No one. No resistance, no price. Just going without having to walk, on my ass, until I’m seeing the ocean. The ocean
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