The Walk Read Online Free PDF Page A

masturbating into a cup in their tastefully appointed hospitality rooms. At first, it wasn’t so bad. There were worse ways to spend a lunch hour than jerking off with an X-rated DVD.
    But one day he stepped from his hospitality room with his sample cup and bumped into Freddie Koslow, a studio development guy, coming out of the hospitality room next door. The two infertile executives stood there, holding their cups of sperm, casually discussing projects in development as if they’d just bumped into each other at the Bistro Garden.
    That was the last time Marty visited the clinic. But he didn’t tell any of this to Molly. It was bad enough half the television industry knew about his shiftless sperm.
    “We weren’t trying for anything except some fun,” Molly said. “We did it just once, and that was all it took. Roy disappeared right away, and I couldn’t stay in Thalia, not like that. So I left before she was born. I was heading for San Francisco, but the car broke down as I was passing through LA. So I stayed. See? Another accident.”
    Molly’s face suddenly crunched into an agonized wince, her eyes closed tight, squeezing out tears of pain. She reached out and grabbed his wrist, squeezing it hard, digging her fingers into his skin until he had to stifle a cry of his own.
    Her grip eased, and when she opened her eyes again, he saw just how scared she was. No amount of talking was going to distract her now.
    “She’s at Dandelion Preschool in Tarzana,” Molly said in a rush, “you’ll call the school from the hospital, let them know what happened?”
    “Sure,” he said.
    And then Marty heard it, the unmistakable rumble, like a stomach growling below his feet. Molly’s eyes went wide.
    “What is it?” she cried out in that one, hanging instant before the inevitable.
    “Aftershock!” he yelled.
    “Aftershock?”
    Marty realized his mistake too late, and just as he saw the betrayal and confusion registering on her face, the shaking started, the giant, unseen waves rolling under the street.
    He gripped Molly’s hand tight, tucked his head down, and closed his eyes to ride it out. The rumbling grew louder, the subterranean thunder mixing with the sounds of concrete cracking, glass breaking, metal grinding. The two wrecked vehicles rocked back and forth, creaking like rusty hinges. The car slid away, jerking her hand from his grasp.
    Marty reached out for her again, but was driven back into a fetal curl by falling masonry that shattered on impact, exploding into dusty shrapnel that pierced his skin in tiny pin-pricks.
    And then it was over. The rumbling receding like a fleeing stampede.
    Marty unfurled slowly, stinging all over, and surveyed the damaged. The Volvo had slid a few feet, and so had the truck, gasoline gushing out of its ruptured tank and surging towards the live wire dancing on the street.
    He ran to the car and leaned into it. Molly stared up at him with desperate eyes, one hand reaching out to him, blood gurgling out of her mouth, drowning the words she tried to speak.
    She was trapped and so was Marty, confined by a few dwindling seconds, forced to choose between her plight and his own survival.
    Marty looked from her to the wire. The fingers of gasoline were only a few inches from contact with the wire. He had seconds.
    Molly grabbed him, pulling him down.
    He whirled around, and for one horrified moment, thought he’d have to fight Molly off to escape. But she immediately let go, opening her hand to show him the picture she clutched in her palm, offering it to him, her eyes pleading.
    “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and ran.
    He heard her yell one, last, desperate time, something that sounded like “Angel,” and then the truck erupted behind him, the force of it lifting him off his feet and hurling him onto Alameda Street, the fireball rolling over his head.
    Marty hit the pavement face-first, too hard and too fast to do anything to break his fall, knocking the air out of him, crushing