Deadside in Bug City Read Online Free PDF Page A

wound in his throat, making obscene slurping sounds as he imbibed Pakistani blood.
    Joe’s stomach lurched. Lurching seemed like a good idea, so he lurched away from the counter. And tripped over the fallen rack of chips. A twelve-ounce bag of nachos cushioned his face and probably saved him from a broken nose. Slightly stunned, he stayed on the floor for a long moment, wondering if he’d taken a fall, knocked himself silly and imagined the brutal knife attack. But that awful slurping sound and the bong…bong…bong of the church bell brought him back to reality, and he pushed up and got back on his feet. Waves of dizziness were breaking on his brain. He felt seasick, just the way he’d felt on his one and only deep-sea fishing trip. The Jiffy-Quick had somehow set sail and was riding big swells of a stormy ocean. He draped himself over the top of a shelf of canned vegetables and hung on, waiting for the dizziness to pass.
    “Your turn, Bubba,” said Rat Face as he hopped over the counter. The lower half of his face was smeared with gore. Blood dripped from the frizzy tips of his wild hair. He grinned the snaggle-toothed grin of a true maniac. His eyes burned with dark fire.
    Joe unfolded himself from the stack of shelved cans and tried to run, but the sloshing storm inside his head threw off his equilibrium and he reeled into a tower of canned cola, knocking a life-sized cardboard NFL quarterback on his flat ass.
    “Sacked the sumbitch,” said Rat Face, spraying a mist of the Pakistani’s blood. “Heh-hah-hah.”
    Joe was still on his feet, but he was swaying and disoriented like a drunk in a funhouse. As the grinning madman walked toward him with the knife, Joe latched onto the pealing of the church bell. It seemed the only sure thing in a world gone mad. No matter what happened, it would go on ringing.
    Then Joe looked at the bloody knife in Rat Face’s hand, and he smiled and said, “It tolls for thee.”
    * * *
    Todd Sarkanian saw her first. She was running out of the Jiffy-Quick Mini-Mart, waving her arms in an obvious attempt to flag them down. “Hold up,” he told the driver, Sergeant Fuller.
    “What?” Fuller growled.
    “Stop. She’s waving at us,” said Todd.
    Sergeant Fuller grumbled incoherently, something about “goddamn rookies” as he eased off the gas and swiveled his big head around to see what Todd was talking about. “Whoa, check them tits. Good call, rookie.”
    Fuller cut the wheel and pulled the Druid Hills Police cruiser to the curb. Todd let his window down and leaned his head out to hear what the girl in the red halter-top was saying as she came running up to the car. Fuller was right, she did have nice tits, but Todd could see by the expression on her face that he should get his mind off the young woman’s anatomy and try to decipher her rush of words. The frantic look on her face told him they would have to delay the investigation of the ringing bell in the condemned church—which was fine with Todd, because he knew Fuller would send him up into the belfry to run off the bored teenagers who were likely to be the culprits. Sergeant Fuller delighted in breaking Todd’s balls. The fat bastard’s favorite game was Ride the Rookie. But this was Todd’s last day to be stuck with the sarge; tomorrow the training wheels would come off and he would be allowed to sign out his own squad car and patrol on his own. For now, the girl with the nice tits was a welcome diversion.
    “What’s the problem?” he interrupted her shrill babble.
    She pointed back at the convenience store, took a breath and said, “Two guys are fighting over a gun. I think one’s been shot. I dunno, I guess it’s a robbery.”
    Todd glanced at Fuller. Fuller said, “Call it in. Think you can handle that?” Todd bit back his anger, grabbed the mike and called in their location and reported “shots fired.”
    Roger, unit three , the dispatcher’s voice crackled from the radio. Do you need assistance?
    Todd