The Boat Read Online Free PDF

saved your life.” He knew it was a gamble because she was very obviously a woman with a mind of her own, but the slow smile on her face had convinced him that his gamble just might pay off.
    They’d found they had a good deal in common. Each had no immediate family. They’d both never married. Neither of them wanted children anymore. In the big things, they were eerily compatible. He had been planning to ask her to marry him and had already started shopping for a ring.
    He looked at her flushed features as she sipped the tea. She wiped a hand under her nose and sniffed hard. She must have sensed his gaze and she turned and smiled, then shrugged. “Too sexy for you, right? It’s killing you, isn’t it?” Her eyes were red-rimmed and the left was crusted at the corner.
    He laughed and nodded. “I think it’s the quilt that’s doing it, actually. All that down…it’s making me really horny…all those ducks…mmmm.” He fingered a corner of the quilt and gave her a lecherous wink.
    Now it was her turn to laugh but it turned quickly to coughing. “I might go back to bed. I’m not due in to work until four.” She was an artist and worked at a local screen-printing shop. “I feel awful.”
    He took her cup and turned back to the sink to wash it. “Good idea. I might come with you. Maybe I’ll just call out today, what do you think?” He put the cup in the dish drainer and glanced out the window. “Maybe we could–hey, that’s weird, Jerry is in the yard. What the hell is he doing?” Alarm filled Steve’s stomach with sluggish butterflies as he noticed three things at once:
    Jerry, his neighbor, was running full tilt toward the back door.
    He was in pajamas and one slipper, and had a small axe in his hand.
    Jerry’s wife, Carol, was running behind him…chasing him?
    “Jesus Christ, what’s going on out there?”
    Now Jerry was closer and Steve could hear him through the old, single paned windows.
    “She’s trying to kill me! She’s dead! She’s trying to kill me! Help! She’s dead! She was dead! Help! Help me!”
    “Guy’s lost his mind,” Steve said, his voice dropped almost to a whisper. His eyes switched to Carol and his blood ran cold. The side of her neck had been laid open and a blackish sludge coated her shoulder and arm. She seemed unable to lift her head completely. She was running clumsily, listing badly to one side and he saw that her foot was gone. She was running on the ragged stump, bumping clumsily along.
    “Jesus, Steve, what happened to Carol?” Amelia had crowded up against his back and she was looking over his shoulder. Steve could feel the heat coming off of her even through the blanket.
    He shook his head. “I don’t know–oh shit!”
    Jerry had glanced over his shoulder, perhaps to judge the distance between himself and his rampaging wife, and he stumbled over a plastic lawn chair. He struggled to right himself, but he must have sprained his knee, or even broken it, because even as he stood, his leg collapsed back under.
    Then Carol was on him.
    She never slowed, just ran right into him and they both toppled forward over the chair. Carol’s mouth was on Jerry’s neck as if she were kissing him, but then a grimace of panic and pain split Jerry’s features and Carol’s head came up. Her mouth was covered in fresh red and a stringy material jittered as she chewed. She was biting him. No, not biting…she was eating him.
    “Carol, don’t bite Jerry!” Steve said; his voice was a startled roar. He banged the window with a fist. Even in his cold haze of shock, he realized how ridiculous he sounded. He went for the back door. He had to do something…help out.
    Amelia stood with her back to the door, covering it. The comforter had puddled around her like heavenly clouds and her white face glowed with color. She looked like a feverish angel. She was shaking her head. “You can’t go out there. I won’t let you.”
    Steve stopped, nonplussed. “What? Why not? I have