Five Days Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

beaten, instead of because he was happy. It was murky in his mind.
    But the memories about his mother weren’t quite so murky. He remembered her vividly. He muttered her name while he slept fitfully in the bathtub, because he missed her and knew that he had not done right by her and that he should change that before it was too late. She was still on the reservation, and he hadn’t spoken to her in more than four years. She was all alone there unless she had hooked up with another deadbeat and if she had she was worse than alone. He remembered going to work with her at a little country store and he sat on the floor behind the counter while she worked. He spent most of his day just sitting there on the floor watching his beautiful mother with long, black hair and the sad eyes, thinking that when he was bigger and stronger he would take care of her and make sure none of the bad men ever beat her or cursed her again. But in the end he had grown up and left her and the reservation behind. In the end, he had become a bad man himself.
    When he woke the storm was still raging, but it had lost its fury and he knew it would die soon enough. He was hungry but wasn’t sure he could get food through the Link with the Rages underway. He thought about going next door to eat some more of the chicken, but the sight of the dead woman on the floor might make him lose his appetite. Instead, he went downstairs and rummaged through the hotel diner. The freezers were still working and the water was still on but the tap puked dirty brown for several minutes. While there wasn’t much in the freezer to interest him, he found some vegetables that he thawed and steamed and ate at the reception desk, looking out the windows at the flooded streets. The cats and the coyotes had all run away when the storm hit. Harley counted himself lucky that he found cover before the Rages. The desert between Price and Huntington would be rivers of mud now. 
    The wind and the rain finally lifted as morning turned to afternoon. Harley took a moment to slip on his eyeset and track the weather on the Link. It was moving east, a broiling black cloud that sparkled with lightning. He was heading north and there were no other storms on the horizon. While he was linked he made a quick scan of Price. He didn’t know Price as well as he should. He had passed through it for years and years but never bothered spending much time in the city. There just wasn’t much of a reason to bother. Even when people cared to try, the city had been gasping its last breaths. But now he needed to know it well enough to find a ride. There wasn’t any sign of animal activity, but in the daylight he wasn’t terribly worried anyway. Once he started through the mountain pass he would have to be more alert because the mountains were thick with deer and elk, mountain lion and bear. They would be on the hunt.
    There were still almost 1,200 people living in Price. At one time the city had been home to 18,000, but most had left in the Exodus. Of those who were left he wasn’t surprised to find most were pilgrims, but there were also more than 200 blinkers, which he found a little odd. Blinkers wanted the comforts of a Hub. A blinker looking for the country life was an oddity.
    “Intrestin.” Harley put his eyeset back in his pack. Most pilgrims wore their eyeset throughout the day to be in constant contact with the Link. Harley used his sparingly. He didn’t need that much information flooding into his mind. He certainly wasn’t interested in sharing his thoughts with the rest of the world.
    He buttoned up his pack and slipped it on his shoulders, picked up his saddlebag and left the hotel in search of a ride. 
    The storm had done its damage. Water still trickled down Main Street, and there was now a small lake in what used to be the parking lot of Wal-Mart. Harley knew as he approached the river things would get worse and hoped the flooding hadn’t washed away the road. There was a cottonwood