Anything Can Be Dangerous Read Online Free PDF Page B

the property, but the land dropped off in the next yard,
and Greg suddenly found himself nine feet in the air.
    He hit the ground with a growl of pain
but rolled with his fall, got up, and kept going. He shot across
the street at the front of the house, passing through two more
yards before reaching the next street. There a car and a minivan
sat in the middle of the cross streets, mangled together in a
head-on collision. Greg didn’t notice anyone in the minivan, but a
withering, twisting mass of plastic bags filled the interior of the
car, and he continued running at full speed across the street and
through the next set of yards without slowing.
    He had to find some
transportation.
     
     
    9.
     
    Greg eventually needed to slow his
pace, but he kept moving, still cutting through yards, heading
south. He was at least five blocks from the pool house now,
although the distance did little to separate his thoughts from the
sight of the blood-splattered solar cover and its indiscernible
contents. He’d been ultra cautious in his selection of which yards
to travel through since then, and he visually scanned each new area
with paranoid apprehension. The size and value of the properties he
encountered here were rapidly decreasing, and he guessed that he
was nearing the highway.
    Minutes ago, a helicopter had roared
past, skimming the rooftops. Greg wasn’t positive, but he thought
it might’ve been a military aircraft. Since then, all had been
quiet—save for a faint, smoky-smelling wind that rustled the
treetops.
    He squeezed through the branches of a
dry hedge and emerged in the weedy back lot of a dilapidated
three-story apartment building surrounded by trees.
    He wasn’t familiar with this end of
town, and he hoped he was still moving in the right direction. He
had no idea how to hotwire a car, and he didn’t trust knocking on
the doors of homes that could be crawling with plastic bags, so
he’d been hoping to find a ride once he reached a major artery of
traffic.
    He jogged around the side of the
building.
    Just as he did, a balding middle-aged
man with a mustache and goatee flew around the corner at precisely
the same time, followed closely by a half-naked woman wearing only
the charred remains of a short yellow bathrobe. They saw Greg and
both screamed, eyes wide with fear and surprise. The man skidded to
an abrupt halt, slipping on the grass, and Greg didn’t see the gun
in his hand until he heard the loud crack of the shot that exploded
against a tree trunk less than two feet from his head.
    Greg slid to a stop himself, slipped,
regained his balance, spun around, and dashed back the way he’d
come, leaping through the hedge even as the woman screamed, “Wait!
Come back!”
    Rather than answer, he turned left and
raced down a shallow creek bed, putting a solid three blocks of
ground between himself and the couple before slowing to a quick
walk. By then, his lungs burned in protest again.
    He climbed up the creek bank and found
himself on a cracked and littered street that terminated about
fifty feet away in a cul-de-sac rimmed by a duplex and several
other old houses. Beyond it, Greg could see the land rose at a
sharp grade, coming to a height that brought it level with the
roofs of the houses. Through the trees, he spotted the telltale
noise barrier created to help reduce the roar of traffic coming off
the highway.
    He tried to tell himself it was doing
a hell of a job, because he couldn’t hear any noise at all, not a
single engine, but he knew the terrible truth: there were no cars
on the highway to hear.
    Nevertheless, he had to
check.
    He located a dirt path probably made
by teenagers to access the barrier wall, then walked another six
blocks west before coming to a spot where he could get on the other
side. Twice he heard gunfire from separate areas of town, but
neither bout lasted long.
    The highway looked like something out
of a war movie.
    He’d been wrong with his initial
thought that there were no cars