The Black Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

and signs of death came into focus much more quickly. Finally, Free took his hand out of his vest, and Matt forgot all about the wound.
    In the center of Free’s offered palm was a small ziplock baggie filled with writhing, pitch-black maggots. It was all Matt could do not to show some sign of disgust, but instead, he forced a smile onto his face and took the bag from Free. Matt thought for a moment before he spoke. If he described the crystal wrong, they would think he was insane, but he had no idea what he was actually looking at, and surely no one else could see the maggots. The flake was pure evil.
    “It’s so black. It’s almost like it eats all the light that should be passing through it,” Matt said as he held the bag aloft. “How’s it smoke?”
    “Like you wouldn’t believe. It’s like you’re a fucking virgin all over again, like you never smoked so much as a joint before.”
    The man next to Free leaned over to chime in. “Free wouldn’t fuck with you, either, man. That there is the real deal. You smoke that, you’ll be so high that you won’t just forget all your problems. It’ll be like they were never there in the first place.”
    Matt took a sip of his whiskey, then handed the bag back to Free. Feeling the maggots fighting that bag against his skin was making his stomach do somersaults.
    “No way, buddy,” said Free, hands aloft and flat, the rot in his neck stretched taut. “That’s a little taste for you to try. You tell me what you think, but I guarantee you’re going to tell me that busting your ride was the best thing that ever happened to you after you puff on that black glass. You got a pipe in the van, Danimal?”
    “Yup,” said the man sitting next to Free, apparently Danimal. “Torch, too.”
    “Well,” said Free, “let’s go fire it up, then.”
    Unsure what to say, and desperate to buy time, Matt felt Free’s hand on his back, shoving him out the door. Free was calling to Mort as they left, “Throw it on my tab!”
    ***
    Danimal’s van was exactly how Matt had expected it to be: short on looks, long on dents and rust. It was the sort of model that had probably started life as a housewife’s dream vehicle for hauling the kids to the grocery store, and just slowly meandered down the path to where ithad wound up, purchased very used by a man like Danimal. Matt felt ushered, almost, as they rounded the bar to the back lot, and he saw the as-yet-unexplored shed that Kenny had given him a key to. Sparing the building a long look, Matt clambered into the vehicle behind Danimal and before Free and his yet-to-talk buddy.
    Danimal quickly made his way to the one of the two front seats, the only seats left in the Dodge, in fact. The back was just stained carpet, empty brass, and cigarette butts, along with mounts where seats would have once been attached. Free made a glass pipe rippled with the striations of white resin appear from nowhere and placed it in Matt’s lap.
    “Better pack that bowl,” said Free, and any pleasant look the man might have had in the bar had been sucked from him like juice from a grape. No more rotten spots, at least none that Matt could see, Free’s throat notwithstanding, of course, but the remnants of a half-fried worm were still writhing in the glass bowl. Matt pulled two of the maggots from the bag and shoved them into the pipe atop the half-dead one, gave a look to Free and then to Danimal.
    “My boy needs a spark,” said Free. “Where’s the MAPP, Danny Boy?”
    “I told you not to call me that. I hate it,” said Danimal, and Matt smiled despite himself. He was about to suck down burned maggot flesh, and somehow these idiots could still be funny.
    There was no question that frying the bugs might kill him, or possibly even do something worse, and for the first time, Matt began to consider the van as an environment for a fight. The thought died as a yellow tank was passed to the backseat. Free took it and ran a lighter over the top, and a