Desolation Read Online Free PDF Page A

him?”
    Milo shook his head. “You catch his name?”
    Amber hesitated. “Elias Mauk,” she said.
    “I’ve heard of him,” said Milo, “and I got the impression we’d been friends once.”
    “Friends? He wanted to kill you.”
    “We must have had a falling-out. Hell, for all I know, maybe we were partners. Serial killers in cahoots.”
    “His face didn’t spark any memories?” she asked. “His voice?”
    “Nothing,” said Milo. “My life is still as blank as it’s been for the last twelve years.”
    “He, uh, he seemed to know that Milo isn’t your real name.”
    “Yeah.” They got to a dark and empty crossroads, and the Charger creaked pleasantly as they turned right. “I wonder what it is.”
    The phone in her jacket rang. Amber held up her bandaged hands.
    “Oh yeah,” Milo said. She twisted slightly and he reached into her pocket, took the phone out, and thumbed the answer button. He set it to loudspeaker.
    “Uh, hello?” said the voice on the other end. “That Amber?”
    “I’m here,” she said.
    “Oh, Amber, hi. This is Jeremy?”
    “Hi, Jeremy.”
    “The guy you gave that hundred bucks to?”
    “I know who you are, Jeremy.”
    “Right,” Jeremy said, “yeah, sorry. Anyway, you wanted to know if a group of bikers turned up?”
    Her mood turned cold and plummeted. “Yes, we did.”
    “Well, they just passed through town,” Jeremy said. “Not more than two minutes ago. Five of them. Long hair, leather jackets, beards, the works. Rode straight through without stopping. Didn’t look left or right, just kept looking ahead.”
    “Thanks, Jeremy,” said Amber. “Don’t spend that money all at once.”
    Milo hung up and slipped the phone back in her pocket. She looked at him.
    “How far back is Jeremy?”
    “Twenty hours,” said Milo. “Maybe twenty-two.” He glanced at her. “We knew we couldn’t shake them.”
    “I know,” she said. “But still … It’d be nice if something went our way for once, that’s all.”
    “Astaroth can send whoever he likes,” said Milo. “The fact is, the Hounds are at least twenty hours behind us and we are ten hours away from Desolation Hill. No one’s going to stop us.”
    “You need to sleep.”
    “I will. We’re on a straight blast into Alaska. Once we sneak across the border, I’ll take a few hours’ rest. When we get where we’re going, I’ll sleep a full night.”
    “That’s providing everything we’ve heard about Desolation Hill is true.”
    “You think Buxton was lying?”
    “No,” said Amber. “But just because Gregory hid there for a few weeks doesn’t mean we can.”
    “We don’t have a wide variety of options available to us,” said Milo. “He thinks we’ll be undetectable to the Shining Demon and the Hounds once we’re inside the town limits, and I trust him to know what he’s talking about. That’ll at least give us time to get our breath back and formulate some kind of plan.”
    “Because our plans always work out so well for us.”
    He didn’t respond to that. She didn’t expect him to.
    They drove on in comfortable and familiar silence. The knob for the radio remained, as ever, untouched. Even if she’d wanted to turn it, her bandaged hands would have made that impossible. Besides, she’d grown out of her fear of quiet moments. She didn’t need music to fill the silences anymore.
    She took a few more pills and the rising pain faded to a manageable throb as she looked out at the endless parade of trees. She wondered what kind they were. It was hard to tell in the dark, but she thought they were spruce, although she was no expert.
    “What kind of trees are those?” she asked Milo.
    “Green,” he said, and that’s how the conversation ended.
    They passed sleeping houses and sleeping cars and an impressive array of parked pickups with slide-in campers that reared up and over like one dog humping another. It got ridiculously cold in the car and Amber wrapped herself awkwardly in a blanket.