Hunter's Run Read Online Free PDF

gear,’ Ramon said.
‘I could live out there forever if I wanted.’ He was surprised at the wistful,
even yearning, tone that he could hear in his own voice.
     
    There was a moment’s silence
before Griego spoke again; words that made Ramon’s nerves shrill with sudden
fear.
     
    ‘You hear about the European that
got killed?’
     
    Ramon looked up, startled, but
Griego was sucking at his teeth, his expression placid.
     
    ‘What about him?’ Ramon asked
warily.
     
    ‘Governor’s all pissed off about
it, from what I hear.’
     
    ‘Too bad for the governor, then.’
     
    ‘The police came by. Two
constables looking real serious. Asked if anyone had been in, getting a van in
shape to head out fast. You know, someone who was maybe trying not to be found.’
     
    Ramon nodded, staring at the van.
His throat felt tight and the thick beer in his belly seemed to have turned to
stone.
     
    ‘What did you tell them?’
     
    ‘Told them no,’ Griego said with
a shrug.
     
    ‘There wasn’t anyone?’
     
    ‘A couple,’ Griego said. ‘Orlando
Wasserman’s kid. And that crazy gringa from Swan’s Neck. But I figured, what
the hell, you know? The police don’t pay me, these other people do. So where do
my loyalties lie?’
     
    ‘Man got killed,’ Ramon said.
     
    ‘Yeah,’ Griego agreed,
pleasantly. ‘A gringo.’ He spit sideways, then shrugged, as if the death of a
gringo or any other kind of European was of no great consequence. ‘I’m just
saying it because I’m not the only one they’re asking. You taking off, they may
take that the wrong way, give you a hard time about it. Just keep that in mind
when you supply up.’
     
    Ramon nodded.
     
    ‘They gonna catch him, you think?’
Ramon asked.
     
    ‘Oh yeah,’ Griego said. ‘They’ll
have to. Bust a gut to do it, if they got to. Show the Enye that we’re a
justice-loving people. Not that they care. Shit, fucking Enye lick each
other hello. Probably lick the governor and get pissed off if he doesn’t lick
them back. Anyway, he’ll make a big show out of the trial, do everything to prove
how they got the right guy, then put him down like a fucking dog. You know,
whoever it is they decide did it. No one else, there’s always Johnny Joe
Cardenas. They’ve been looking for something to hang on him for years.’
     
    ‘Maybe it’ll be good that I get
out of the city for a while, then,’ Ramon said. He tried a weak smile that felt
as obvious as a confession. ‘You know. Just to avoid misunderstandings.’
     
    ‘Yeah,’ Griego said. ‘Besides,
this is the big one right?’
     
    ‘Lucky strike,’ Ramon agreed.
     
    When he started up the van, he
could feel the difference. The lift tubes seemed to chime as he lifted up into
the sky, all of Diegotown, with its unplanned maze of narrow streets and
red-roofed buildings, below him. Elena was down there somewhere. The police too.
The body of the European. Mikel Ibrahim and the gravity knife Ramon had handed
to him, just handed to him. The murder weapon! And slumped in a bar or a basement
opium den - or maybe breaking into someone’s house - Johnny Joe Cardenas, just
waiting to hang.
     
    And Lianna, maybe, somewhere in
the good section by the port, who didn’t think of Ramon anymore and probably
never would.
     
    Ramon’s thoughts were interrupted
by the pulsing hum of a shuttle rising up into the thin and distant air.
Another load of metal or plastic or fuel or chitin for the welcoming platform.
Ramon spun the van north, set it for proximity avoidance, and headed out alone,
leaving all the hell and shit and sorrow of Diegotown behind.
     
    * * * *

 
    CHAPTER THRE
     
     
    It was a warm day in the Second June. He flew his beat-up old van
north across the Fingerlands, the Green-glass country, the river marshes, the Océano
Tétrico, heading deep into unknown territory. North of Fiddler’s Jump, the
northernmost outpost of the metastasizing human presence on the planet, were
thousands of