Drawing Dead Read Online Free PDF

“All units. Go! Go! Go!”
    Percy was behind the wheel of the unit’s war wagon, cruising the highway closest to the prison. The human war-machine had picked up the blond man’s message and stomped the gas pedal, simultaneously hitting the red button on the dash that kicked in the twin turbochargers.
    Tiger and Tracker were already in the shadow cast by the prison wall. They moved in from different directions.
    Tiny black splotches began to reassemble inside the gas chamber. If the poison gas had any effect on this process, it was not apparent. Adapting its shape to circumstances, the blackness flattened itself to micro-thinness. Then it slowly began to probe the seals of the death chamber’s door, seeking an opening.
    Nyati, near death, was trying to stand, using a wooden spear as a crutch. Banner stood with him, still slashing with a prison-built sword. But he, too, was fading.
    Cross wasn’t doing much better. He opened his eyes just as the chamber door began to crack at one of the top seals, pushed open by something blacker than darkness. That blackness told him the Evac Team was going to be too late. He sensed the shadow calling to whatever pieces outside the chamber were still unattached.
    Calling them home.
    Ortega and the Hmong attacked the thickening blackness from either side of the door, but their knife thrusts no longer had any effect.
    Suddenly the shadow-mass stopped writhing. A tiny blue symbol glowed briefly on Cross’s right cheekbone, just below the eye. As the blue mark crystallized into what would be a permanent brand, Cross plunged into unconsciousness.
    The online edition of the
Chicago Tribune
screamed:
    RACE WAR AT FEDERAL PRISON!
    277 CONVICTS KILLED IN PRISON RIOT!
    “WORST IN HISTORY” SAYS BUREAU OF PRISONS
    “Tell me again, goddamn it!” the blond man said, almost incoherent with rage.
    “By the time we got there, they were gone,” Tiger repeated. “Maybe back to wherever they came from. The only trace they left behind was the body count.”
    “I’m done with this,” Percy said. “Taking one alive, yeah, that was a brilliant idea. Look what it cost! And all for nothing.”
    “As long as I’m the head of this outfit, I don’t give a damn what you think,” the blond man responded, back to his bloodless self-control. “Get out of my sight, all of you. I’ve got to work up another capture scenario.”
    Except for Wanda, all the others walked away.

    “WE COULDN’T pull it off—even that sealed gas chamber couldn’t hold it. A lot of men died. I didn’t. But that wasn’t some random thing, wasn’t just luck.
    “Luck, that’s like when a plane drops a bomb. It’s not aimed at any one man—it kills some, cripples others, and some just walk away. This…This was a choice. So that means there had to be a
reason
for it.”
    “You have any ideas?” Tiger asked.
    “Not a damn one. It wasn’t race—there were plenty of other white men down there.”
    “I mean this not as offense,” Tracker added. “But it could not have been some kind of moral judgment, either. You were not guilty of the crime that allowed you to enter that prison to hunt that…thing. That was a ruse. But you are not an innocent man, Cross. By law, none of us are.”
    “Princess is,” Tiger snapped. “He hasn’t got one evil molecule anywhere in that scary body of his. He’s like a huge child—”
    “I said ‘by law,’ ” Tracker interrupted. “Princess has no bad
motives,
but many things he has done would be crimes if judged by a jury. Rhino is no different. Had Cross not protected him when they were both very young, I don’t know what would have happened in his life, but if he’d had a choice,
any
choice, his would not be the life of an outlaw.
    “Ace kills for money. Buddha has no moral compass. Still, I feel that, somewhere back in their early lives, each was sent down a path from which no retreat was possible.”
    “Ace stabbed a man who was beating his mother,” Cross said.