Read Online Vamp-Hire by Gerald Dean Rice - Free Book Online

cleaned up.”
    Nick wasn’t sure if his legs were working
yet. He chanced a step; so far, so good. He took another, then
another and he was on his way.
    At first, the only physical signs of the old
man’s age were his hair and some minor lines at the corners of his
eyes and mouth. Then he slid on a pair of bifocals and Nick would
have placed him closer to seventy than sixty.
    “Nothing’s too bad,” he said, dabbing at
Nick’s neck with a cotton ball doused with alcohol. “You are going
to need a stitch or two on your cheek. Either I can do it for you
or you can go to a hospital where they’ll ask for identification
and once your name pops up in the registry you get a phone call and
have to explain what you were doing here.”
    A chill ran through Nick. Obviously, Pop-Pop
knew what he was.
    “What are you, looking for work?”
    “Yeah,” Nick said honestly. He left out the
part about him actually living here.
    “You said your name is Nick, right?”
    He nodded and winced when the man poked too
hard into his neck.
    “I’m Colonel Adolph Stone, retired. The way
you acquitted yourself out there, you have earned the right to call
me Dolph.”
    “Okay. Dolph. Sir.” Dolph smiled with one
corner of his mouth and Nick got the hint. “Okay, Dolph.” He didn’t
know exactly what he’d done to ‘acquit himself’. Dolph had done
almost all the work, coaching Emilio into putting himself in a
vulnerable position and then knocking him unconscious. If that was
the way the man wanted to see it, Nick wasn’t about to correct
him.
    Dolph had sterilized his hands and was
wearing latex gloves that looked like he couldn’t have had much
feeling left. At first Nick had assumed it was to prevent the risk
of his cuts getting infected but then he realized Dolph had known
what he was. There was a great deal he couldn’t recall from his
time in the Center, although he did remember his condition wasn’t
contagious. Scientists didn’t know exactly how one percent of the
world had gotten infected; fluid exchange of any kind wasn’t it,
though.
    That didn’t stop people from taking
precautions.
    He pushed the thought away. Not all people
were that way.
    Dolph picked up the needle and thread off the
plate he had on the table. It was an actual sewing needle and an
actual dinner plate. He steeled himself for what was coming.
    “You’re gonna feel a little pinch. Try your
best not to flinch.” It hurt more than a little pinch. He felt the
needle sliding through his cheek and it also felt like he was being
poked in the eye. Maybe it was a sympathetic nerve thing, he didn’t
know if there were such a thing. Dolph moved unhurriedly. He tied
off the stitches and snipped them with the pair of scissors on the
paper towel.
    “Those will stay in for a week and then you
can cut them out. Maybe you can get a friend to do it for you if
you’re too squeamish. I made them as tight together as I could so
you have as small a scar as possible.”
    “How many stitches?”
    “Four.” Dolph was already packing things
away. He threw the cotton ball, gloves, needle and remaining thread
all in the trash and took out the bag. He walked it out to the bin
in the garage, came back in, and washed his hands.
    “It’s getting too late. I’ll drive you.
First, you need some chow. You hungry?”
    “No.” Nick shook his head.
    “Sure you are. Your stomach and your brain
just aren’t on talking terms. How long you been out?”
    “Three months,” Nick said uncomfortably.
    “Where are you staying?”
    “With a friend. Only until I can find work
and move into my own space.”
    Dolph nodded. He had put a pot of something
on the stove before he’d stitched Nick up and the smell was
permeating the air.
    “I learned to cook in the Marines,” he said.
The words military and culinary didn’t seem as if they belonged in
the same sentence, so Nick had held out hope the food was going to
be any good. As it warmed it actually smelled okay. “I made it