Mildred Pierced Read Online Free PDF Page A

short-cropped blond hair and was wearing a black short-sleeved pullover T-shirt and denim slacks tucked into army boots. He held a bow in his right hand and a quiver of arrows bounced on his back.
    Following him were a man, a boy, and a woman.
    The boy was about seventeen, the woman in her forties. The fellow with them was steel-gray-haired, bronzed, with a craggy face, and around fifty. He had a holster and gun strapped under his left arm. They were all dressed like the man they were following. As they came closer, I could see that the boy had pink-fuzz cheeks that told me he had never shaved. The woman was heavy, her dark hair tied back with a tight band. The boy’s hands were empty. So were the woman’s, but she had a leather sheath on her hip that contained a knife just short of being called a sword.
    When they arrived at the gate to face me, I could see that the blond man’s face had a leathery outdoor look and that his eyes were unsure about what they were looking at. One eye—his left—looked directly at me. The other eye looked off to the right. He reminded me of a lizard I’d seen in the Griffith Park Zoo.
    “We help you?” asked the lizard, his voice low.
    “I’m interested in the Survivors for the Future,” I said. “I’m looking for Lawrence Timerjack.”
    “You just found him,” he said. “You interested in joining us?”
    “Might be.”
    “Mind showing me your wallet?”
    I took out my wallet and handed it to him.
    He flipped it open, looked at it with one eye, then back at me. The woman and boy and the other man hadn’t stopped staring at me expressionlessly.
    “Private investigator,” he said.
    “We like to survive, too.”
    “We’re not a joke, Mr. Peters,” said Timerjack.
    “Okay,” I said. “One of your members was arrested yesterday for murdering his wife with a crossbow. He said he learned how to shoot it from you.”
    “Pigeon Minck,” Timerjack said.
    He pronounced it “Pidg-ion.”
    “He called me a little while ago,” Timerjack went on. “From the jail. Said you might be coming to see me. You carrying a weapon?”
    “No,” I said.
    “You should. Come in.”
    He nodded. The boy and the woman lifted the log and pulled it toward them so I could enter. Then they put it back.
    “Come,” said Timerjack.
    I followed him to the center cabin with the boy, the woman, and the other man behind me. With gravel crunching under our feet, we passed a green Ford sedan with dark windows. No one spoke till we got inside and the door was closed.
    The room we were in was large. A desk with a blackboard behind it stood facing us across the room. A dozen metal folding chairs in two rows added to the schoolroom look. Detracting from it, however, was the array of weapons hung on hooks around the walls. There was a painting of an archer in green with a little green pointed cap. He had his bow pulled back and he was aiming at a boy with an apple on his head.
    “William Tell,” said Timerjack, moving to the desk and putting his bow and quiver on it. He had followed my gaze. “One of our patron saints.”
    The painting looked as if it had been copied from a poorly drawn comic book.
    “Legend has it that after Tell shot the apple from his son’s head, he went into the woods and defended himself from all attempts to capture him,” said Timerjack, moving behind the desk and sitting.
    I sensed the boy and woman behind me.
    “What about the painting next to it?”
    That one was of a man in a tan leather jacket and pants. He had an old rifle on his shoulder aimed at war-painted Indians running toward him. Their tomahawks were raised.
    “The Deerslayer,” Timerjack explained. “The ultimate Survivor.”
    “Impressive,” I said.
    “No, you are not impressed,” Timerjack said. “But I’m not trying to impress you. If you had been trying to assassinate me or attack our compound, you would have been dead before your gun came out.”
    Timerjack nodded his head, and I heard a shuffling at