Scorpion Shards Read Online Free PDF Page A

UGLY!”
    â€œWhat was so ugly?” shouted Mama. They passed her room downstairs, on the way out the back door. She was already scrambling out of her bed and into her wheelchair.
    â€œDon’t worry, Mama, I’ll check it out.”
    â€œDon’t you go out there, Winston, if it’s a prowler, we’ll call the sheriff!”
    But nothing she could say would stop him now. At first he had been terrified, but the terror was quickly boiling itself into full-blown fury. He had his fighting fury up, and no one messed with ’Stone Pell when he was in a fighting frenzy.
    The kids around town knew that you didn’t fight that little freak ’Stone, unless you wanted to be laid out by the count of five—because now Winston’s touch was more than just numbing. Every punch Winston threw was guaranteed to paralyze whatever it hit. First your right arm would go senseless, then your left, then your chin, then your gut, and before long you were lying on the ground, your body limp and useless for hours—maybe even till morning. Maybe longer.
    It left Winston with no one to fight, and that was a horrible thing, because lately all Winston wanted to do was fight.
    Winston and Thad raced through Mama’s stunted garden, hopped the fence, and followed the thing out into the pasture at the edge of a field ripe with cotton.
    The moon was on the rise now, making the cotton shinelike snow. There was enough light to see the shape of the thing as it lumbered behind the octopus tree, an ancient live oak with a dozen limbs perfect for climbing. The thing tried to get up into the tree, but Winston swung the bat. He missed, but the creature slipped on some Spanish moss, and fell to the ground. Thaddy pushed at it once, and then ran to hide behind the octopus tree.
    â€œParalyze it, ’Stone,” yelled Thad. “Paralyze it good!”
    Winston threw the bat down and cornered it against a hedge thick with sharp thorns. He moved in for hand-to-hand combat.
    The beast wasn’t as big as he had thought—but it was certainly bigger than he was. Winston dove on the thing, fists flying. It struggled, and Winston grabbed onto its arms—but the thing pulled away, and they both fell over the fence into the cotton. He couldn’t paralyze it, no matter how hard he tried. All he could do was fight it, and so Winston and the beast rolled in the cotton, fighting one another, until the beast spoke.
    â€œStop it,” it screamed in a voice that was wet and raspy, but still not evil enough for a nightmare beast. “Or I’m really gonna have to beat you silly!”
    The thing threw Winston off, and he landed hard against a fence post with a thud.
    By now Thaddy was scratching his arm—the one that had touched the thing.
    â€œWhy aren’t you paralyzed yet?” Winston demanded. “What the hell are you?”
    â€œI’m a freak,” it said. “I’m a freak like you.”
    Winston took a good look at its face. It was pocked and cratered, like the face of the moon—full of peeling sores and swelling boils, as if it had been bathing in nuclear waste. Itwas what Winston imagined leprosy might be like—only worse.
    That’s when Thaddy made an amazing observation.
    â€œI think it might be a girl,” he said.
    A girl? Winston regarded the grotesque face. It was hard enough for Winston to figure what color its skin was, much less its sex. The straight blond hair gave away that it was white, but the fact that the hair was short and matted didn’t reveal what sex it was, if any.
    â€œAre you a boy or a girl?” demanded Winston.
    â€œA girl,” it said, disgusted.
    By now, Thaddy was scratching his arm like crazy.
    â€œWhat did you do to him?”
    The she-thing smiled. “He shouldn’t have touched me. Guess I gave him cooties.”
    Thaddy looked at Winston and the pizza-faced girl in horror, as if to say You mean there really is