Last Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

speed.
    "Where are we?" Kline asked.
    "Here we go," said Gous, ignoring him.
    "Smooth sailing from here on out," said Ramse. "For a while anyway."
    "But," said Kline. "Where, I don't--"
    "Mr. Kline," said Gous. "Please sit back and enjoy the ride."
    "What else?" asked Kline.
    "What else?" said Gous.
    "What do you mean what else?" asked Ramse.
    "What else comes off."
    "Besides the hands and the ear?" said Ramse. "Some toes," he said, "but they're already off. Three gone from one foot, two from the other."
    "What happened?" asked Kline.
    "What do you mean what happened , Mr. Kline? Nothing happened ."
    "We don't do accidents," said Gous. "Accidents and acts of God don't mean a thing, unless they're followed later by acts of will. Pretzel?" he asked.
    "Your own case was hotly debated," said Ramse. "Some wanted to classify it as an accident."
    "But it was no accident," said Gous.
    "No," said Ramse. "Others argued, successfully, that it was no accident but instead an act of will. But then the question came 'An act of will on whose part?' On the part of the gentleman with the hatchet, surely, no denying that, but responsibility can hardly rest solely with him, can it now, Mr. Kline?" He turned a little around as he said it, pivoting his missing ear toward Kline. "All you had to do was tell him one thing, Mr. Kline, just a lie, and you would have kept your hand. But you didn't say a thing. A matter of will, Mr. Kline. Your will to lose the hand far outweighed your will to retain it."
    Outside, the highway had narrowed to a two-lane road, cutting through dry scraggled woods, the road's shoulder heaped in dust.
    "What about you?" Kline asked Gous.
    "Me?" said Gous, blushing. "Just the hand," he said. "I'm still new."
    "Have to start somewhere," said Ramse. "We brought him along because the powers that be thought you might be more comfortable with someone like you."
    "He's not like me."
    "You have one amputation, he has one amputation," said Ramse. "Yours is a hand, his is a hand. In that sense, he's like you. When you start to look closer, well . . ."
    "I used anesthetic," said Gous.
    "You, Mr. Kline, did not use anesthetic. You weren't given that option."
    "It's frowned upon," said Gous, "but not forbidden."
    "And more or less expected for the first several amputations," said Ramse. "This makes you exceptional, Mr. Kline."
    Kline looked at the seat next to him, the open tin of sardines, the filets shining in their oil.
    "I'm exceptional as well," said Ramse. "I've never been anesthetized."
    "He's an inspiration to us all," said Gous.
    "But that you cauterized your wound yourself, Mr. Kline," said Ramse. "That makes you truly exceptional."
    "I'd like to get out of the car now," said Kline softly.
    "Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Kline," said Gous, grinning. "We're in the middle of nowhere."
    "I could count the number of people who self-cauterize on one finger of one hand," said Ramse.
    "If he had a hand," said Gous.
    "If I had a hand," said Ramse.
    They drove for a while in silence. Kline stayed as still as he could in the back seat. The sun had slid some little way down the horizon. After a while it vanished. The tin of sardines had slid down the seat and was now at an angle, the oil leaking slowly out. He straightened the tin, then rubbed his fingers dry on the floor carpeting. It was hard not to stare at Ramse's missing ear. He looked down at his own stump, looked at Gous' stump balanced on the seat's back. The two stumps were actually quite different, he thought. The end of Gous' was puckered. His own had been puckered and scarred from the makeshift cauterization; after the fact, a doctor had cut a little higher and smoothed it off, planed it. Outside, the trees, already sparse, seemed to vanish almost entirely, perhaps partly because of the gathering darkness but also the landscape was changing. Ramse pushed one of his stumps into the panel and turned on the headlights.
    "Eight," said Ramse, gesturing his head slightly