The Killing Machine Read Online Free PDF Page A

no sound intruded on the silent yard. Sometimes you get a sense of places you’re unfamiliar with. Some instinct allows you to take a reading. Danger or not danger. But I got no sense of the place. The house could be empty or there could be an army inside.
    From here I couldn’t see the front door, only the pine rear door. Ten feet away was the well. A small cross had been jammed into a tiny hill of dirt some time ago. A small animal of some kind. My brother and I had always been partial to animals. One of the quickest ways to be favored with a Ford punch in the face was to display any kind of cruelty to an animal.
    I hefted my carbine. I told myself that I was estimating the amount of time it would take me to reach the back door from my present position. What I was doing was stalling, of course. I was thinking about what six or seven bullets tearing into me would feel like. I’d been wounded in the war. I didn’t look forward to being wounded again. Even if I could trust David, I didn’t know anything about the men with him. Maybe they’d shoot me and worry about David later.
    But at this point, I wanted to get close enough to stand in front of him and make my case. It’s a lot harder to shoot a man who’s standing right in front of you. You have to take into account his humanity. Even the worst of us has a little bit of that left in us. I never assassinated anybody from close range. I couldn’t afford to think of them as men with wivesand children and lives. If I did, a lot of them would still be walking the earth. That was why I got sick of men on both sides bragging about the war. A lot of good men, wearing both colors, had died.
    I crouched down and began a zigzag run toward the back door of the house. Even in the cool night, I was sweat-soaked by the time I ducked just below the doorknob. I was also out of breath, which was why for three or four full minutes, I just haunch-sat there, letting my body repair itself. I didn’t need another reminder that I was no longer young. But there it was.
    I reached up and put my hand on the doorknob. My fingers anticipated a mechanism that would not give. I was right. I spent five minutes on it.
    I stood up, took several deep breaths. I was still sticky with sweat and my breathing was still somewhat ragged. I needed to piss, but now was not the time.
    The door creaked and croaked as I opened it. I paused every time the door advanced an inch, expecting a blaze of gunfire. I planned to pitch myself to the ground left of the door at the first hint of trouble from inside.
    But no such hint came.
    The door was as noisy as one of those root cellar doors that remain closed for months at a time. Loud as coffin tops after a decade or two with the worms.
    But no response from inside.
    The interior was much larger than I’d assumed. Pale moonlight displayed good oriental rugs, solid furniture of mahogany and dark leather, even a few paintings more serious than big-eyed dogs and doe-eyed children covered the walls. The booze was ofgood quality; that would be David’s doing, of course. Same with kitchen, both bedrooms and the workshop David had fashioned for himself on the large back porch—all neatly laid out and organized.
    I went through drawers. I turned up nothing. The only things I found of note were photographs of David’s children. There must have been twenty pictures. I’d had the sense that he’d left them behind mentally, as well as physically. But you don’t keep this many pictures unless the kids are actively on your mind. Holding the photographs, seeing those sweet little earnest faces, I liked my brother much more than I had in years.
    I heard something, or thought I did, and swung around, Colt ready.
    The gray kitten with the tiny white paws looked at me and I looked at her. She mustn’t have found me terribly interesting. She meowed once and then walked with a great deal of flounce and dignity out the back