The Dead Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

excruciating.
                Blood
ran along his scalp, tickling and wet.
                Maybe
brain damage, he thought, but in an idle way, addled by his injuries. The
thought passed by without even a hint of panic.
                He
shifted a little, trying to feel the edge of his pain, and found it. Still
short of breath, his scream gurgled in his throat, dragging bile up. The edge
he found was something deep inside his lower leg. The smallest movement stabbed
at every nerve ending in his leg, and more besides, up his back and through his
guts, even.
                Frightened
tears welled in his eyes.
                Then,
after laying still and too scared to move again, he realised that his back
couldn't be broken.
                I
can move. It's going to hurt...but I can.
                He
remembered, hazily, that he was a policeman. Policemen had radios. Gingerly, he
checked his body for a radio, but found nothing.
                Somewhere
above him, torn loose, the radio lay by a dead paramedic.
                North
didn't remember the paramedic right then, and he couldn't see far enough to
recognised the crumpled shape of Damien Cobb.
                Nothing
for it.
                North
jammed his teeth together, stood and took some weight on his legs. Something
popped low down in his left shin. It carried right on popping - all the way
through the muscle and skin at the side of his calf.
                This
time, he had enough breath for a real scream. 
                When
he could think again, he wondered if he hadn't passed out for a while. This
time around he remembered more. The paramedic he'd tried to save. The traffic
accident just above him, and the explosion, and the awful heat.
                The
fire burned, still.
                Ben
thought he'd known fear, facing down drug addicts and tattooed lunatics with
mean dogs. He didn't know...he hadn't known. Never could he have imagined just
how deep fear could be. He felt it in his stomach, and then in his
bladder.
                If
I pissed myself, would it smell like fear?
                People
were dead or dying up there in the flames, and he was too afraid to even shout
out for help. Right then, he hated himself worse than ever.
                If
he could make it from the dark in the trees even as far as the reach of the
supermarket lights in the distance, then someone would find him. At least then
he could just get away. A hospital. Pension. Disability.
                If
he was lucky, he'd have a limp for the rest of his life.
                Something
else blew, up on the motorway, and Ben's bladder finally gave in.
                Maybe
his father had been right. The elder Mr. North always said Ben had a streak of
yellow in him.
     
    *
     
    The
clicking sound was the dead woman trying to settle her false teeth back in her
mouth. Francis felt like laughing, for the same reason people sometimes laugh
at funerals. Some weird response to shock, she guessed.
                I
can just walk the fuck away. This circus now officially sucks.
                But
the old woman latched onto her arm and pulled Francis close enough to clamp her
false teeth on Francis' sleeve.
                For
a moment, Francis' confusion ruled, and she couldn't understand that the old,
dead woman was actually attempting to bite her.
                It
didn't last long. Francis hit the woman with an open-handed slap and bounced
back on her heels - away. The only direction she was worried about right then was away . The woman dropped and kind of slid out, arms and legs losing
weight and strength and animation, so she looked just about as dead as any
corpse Francis had ever seen.
                'You
okay?' a man beside her asked. She swore, startled, before her