Pray To Stay Dead Read Online Free PDF

more step and overtook her.
    “ Oh, God,” she said, her chest heaving.
    “ What?” Asked Guy. “Are you going to throw up?”
    “ No,” she said, turning in her seat. “Daniel.”
    He didn’t respond. He was asleep again.
    “ Daniel, oh my god.” She was going to pass out. Guy pulled over and the jerk was enough to shake Richard from his vacancy long enough to turn in his seat and push Daniel once, hard.
    Daniel’s eyes sprang open. He jerked away, frightened.
    “ Daniel,” Colleen said once more and wondered if maybe she was going to throw up after all.
    “ What?”
    “ Mom,” she said.
    Kimberly gasped.
    “ Damn,” Richard said.
    “ Lord,” said Guy.
    And then it just hung there for a moment.
    “ I know,” was all Daniel said, slumping into himself once more.
    Colleen wept. Guy snapped off the radio and held her. After a few minutes, she pulled away, palming tears from her face. “We should keep going,” she said, turning on the radio. She felt everyone else’s gaze on them, on her.
    “ I know.”
    “ So let’s keep going.”
    He checked his side-view mirror and took off.
    “ Where?” Daniel asked.
    “ There’s a little town at the bottom of this hill,” Guy said. “And a bigger one about twenty miles east.”
    “ Do we really want to go where people are?” Colleen asked.
    “ What else can we do?” Guy said, giving her a reassuring smile. “We need to get to a phone. I need to talk to Chris.”
    “ Oh, God,” Colleen said, punching her thigh. How had she not thought of Chris? Guy adored his little brother, a charming and hilarious six-year-old who was the spitting image of his big brother, right down to the ridiculous dimples, and she was too busy assembling fears about her dead mother for the boy to even cross her mind. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even—”
    “ He’s going to be okay,” Guy said, more to himself than to anyone in the van with him, and Colleen lost it. Her tears came fast and hard, her shoulders rocked.
    “ Brock,” Kimberly said, reaching for her friend. “Come here, honey.” Colleen crawled into the back seat, sat beside Kimberly, who peeled away from Richard’s embrace and settled into hers. They held each other until they got to town.

 
     
     
     
    Five
     
    Harlow was little more than a mostly-straight stretch of road bounded on both sides by redwood forest and located in the dip between two large hills. There were no houses visible through the trees, though several dirt roads broke off from the main road, marked by mailboxes perched atop leaning posts.
    There was an old Baptist church that seemed to have been abandoned at some point, a small garage whose fading sign proclaimed it to be the location of Mr. Kim’s Mechanic and Towing Services, and nothing else. Nothing else and no sign of life until they drew near the end of the mostly-straight stretch of road.
    “ Here,” Guy said. “Good. They’re open.”
    The parking lot was empty. A pale blue rust-spotted Crown Victoria sat on the side of the two-story building. The sign in the door was turned to OPEN.
    An old man of forty or sixty (his wild beard, unkempt hair, and densely wrinkled face made it difficult to tell) sat on a bench next to the door leading into MISTY’S FOOD AND GAS. A large brown dog of no particular breed slept near his feet. In the shade of a tin overhang, the old man watched their approach from beneath bushy eyebrows. As they crunched into the gravel parking lot and past the two pumps (they were probably older than the Crown Vic), he raised his right hand, held it there, beside his head, for just a second before allowing it to drift down to his lap.
    “ I don’t think he’s dead,” Daniel said, and Richard gave a chuckle that started as a grunt and died as a sigh.
    “ You see what I see?” Guy asked.
    “ No,” Kimberly said. “What?”
    “ He’s got a gun,” Colleen said. A rifle rested behind him on the bench, its butt and barrel visible to the left and