Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town - Cory Doctorow (best classic books to read .txt) 📗

of her and walked quickly to the heap of winter coats and boots in the corner and dug through them for the flashlight he used to do his homework by. It was a hand-crank number, and as he squeezed it to life, he pointed it at Marci, her face wan and scared in its light. He gave the flashlight a few more pumps to get its flywheel spinning, then passed it to her.

"Just keep squeezing it," he said. "It doesn't need batteries." He took her hand again. It was limp.

"You can put your things on the pile," he said, pointing to the coats and boots. He was already shucking his hat and mittens and boots and snow pants and coat. His skin flushed with the warm vapors coming off of the sulfur spring.

"You live here?" she said. The light from the flashlight was dimming and he reached over and gave it a couple of squeezes, then handed it back to her.

"I live here. It's complicated."

Davey's eyes were open and he was staring at them with squinted eyes and a frown.

"Where are your parents?" she said.

"It's complicated," he said again, as though that explained everything. "This is my secret. No one else knows it."

Edward-Frederick-George tottered over to them with an armload of toy cars, which he mutely offered to Marci, smiling a drooly smile. Alan patted him on the head and knelt down. "I don't think Marci wants to play cars, okay?" Ed nodded solemnly and went back to the edge of the pool and began running his cars through the nearly scalding water.

Marci reached out a hand ahead of her into the weak light, looked at the crazy shadows it cast on the distant walls. "How can you live here? It's a cave, Alan. How can you live in a cave?"

"You get used to it," Alan said. "I can't explain it all, and the parts that I can explain, you wouldn't believe. But you've been to my home now, Marci. I've shown you where I live."

Davey approached them, a beatific smile on his angelic face.

"This is my brother, Daniel," Alan said. "The one I told you about."

"You're his slut," Davey said. He was still smiling. "Do you touch his peter?"

Alan flinched, suppressing a desire to smack Davey, but Marci just knelt down and looked him in the eye. "Nope," she said. "Are you always this horrible to strangers?"

"Yes!" Davey said, cheerfully. "I hate you, and I hate him," he cocked his head Alanward. "And you're all motherfuckers."

"But we're not wee horrible shits, Danny," she said. "We're not filthy-mouthed brats who can't keep a civil tongue."

Davey snapped his head back and then forward, trying to get her in the bridge of the nose, a favorite tactic of his, but she was too fast for him and ducked it, so that he stumbled and fell to his knees.

"Your mother's going to be very cross when she finds out how you've been acting. You'll be lucky if you get any Christmas pressies," she said as he struggled to his feet.

He swung a punch at her groin, and she caught his wrist and then hoisted him to his tiptoes by his arm, then lifted him off the floor, bringing his face up level with hers. "Stop it," she said. "Now."

He fell silent and narrowed his eyes as he dangled there, thinking about this. Then he spat in her face. Marci shook her head slowly as the gob of spit slid down her eyebrow and over her cheek, then she spat back, nailing him square on the tip of his nose. She set him down and wiped her face with a glove.

Davey started toward her, and she lifted a hand and he flinched back and then ran behind their mother, hiding in her tangle of wires and hoses. Marci gave the flashlight a series of hard cranks that splashed light across the washing machine and then turned to Alan.

"That's your brother?"

Alan nodded.

"Well, I see why you didn't want me to come home with you, then."

Kurt was properly appreciative of Alan's bookcases and trophies, ran his fingertips over the wood, willingly accepted some iced mint tea sweetened with honey, and used a coaster without having to be asked.

"A washing machine and a mountain," he said.

"Yes," Alan said. "He kept a roof over our heads and she kept our clothes clean."

"You've told that joke before, right?" Kurt's foot was bouncing, which made the chains on his pants and jacket jangle.

"And now Davey's after us," Alan said. "I don't know why it's now. I don't know why Davey does anything. But he always hated me most of all."

"So why did he snatch your brothers first?"

"I think he wants me to sweat. He wants me scared, all the time. I'm the eldest. I'm the one who left the mountain. I'm the one who came first, and made all the connections with the outside world. They all looked to me to explain the world, but I never had any explanations that would suit Davey."

"This is pretty weird," he said.

Alan cocked his head at Kurt. He was about thirty, old for a punk, and had a kind of greasy sheen about him, like he didn't remember to wash often enough, despite his protestations about his cleanliness. But at thirty, he should have seen enough to let him know that the world was both weirder than he suspected and not so weird as certain mystically inclined people would like to believe.

Arnold didn't like this moment of disclosure, didn't like dropping his carefully cultivated habit of hiding this, but he also couldn't help but feel relieved. A part of his mind nagged him, though, and told him that too much of this would waken the worry for his brothers from its narcotized slumber.

"I've told other people, just a few. They didn't believe me. You don't have to. Why don't you think about it for a while?"

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to try to figure out how to find my brothers. I can't go underground like Davey can. I don't think I can, anyway. I never have. But Davey's so... broken... so small and twisted. He's not smart, but he's cunning and he's determined. I'm smarter than he is. So I'll try to find the smart way. I'll think about it, too."

"Well, I've got to get ready to go diving," Kurt said. He stood up with a jangle. "Thanks for the iced tea, Adam."

"It was nice to meet you, Kurt," Alan said, and shook his hand.

Alan woke with something soft over his face. It was pitch dark, and he couldn't breathe. He tried to reach up, but his arms wouldn't move. He couldn't sit up. Something heavy was sitting on his chest. The soft thing -- a pillow? -- ground against his face, cruelly pressing down on the cartilage in his nose, filling his mouth as he gasped for air.

He shuddered hard, and felt something give near his right wrist and then his arm was loose from the elbow down. He kept working the arm, his chest afire, and then he'd freed it to the shoulder, and something bit him, hard little teeth like knives, in the fleshy underside of his bicep. Flailing dug the teeth in harder, and he knew he was bleeding, could feel it seeping down his arm. Finally, he got his hand onto something, a desiccated, mummified piece of flesh. Davey. Davey's ribs, like dry stones, cold and thin. He felt up higher, felt for the place where Davey's arm met his shoulder, and then twisted as hard as he could, until the arm popped free in its socket. He shook his head violently and the pillow slid away.

The room was still dark, and the hot, moist air rushed into his nostrils and mouth as he gasped it in. He heard Davey moving in the dark, and as his eyes adjusted, he saw him unfolding a knife. It was a clasp knife with a broken hasp and it swung open with the sound of a cockroach's shell crunching underfoot. The blade was rusty.

Alan flung his freed arm across his body and tried to tug himself loose. He was being held down by his own sheets, which had been tacked or stapled to the bed frame. Using all his strength, he rolled over, heaving and bucking, and felt/heard the staples popping free down one side of the bed, just as Davey slashed at where his face had been a moment before. The knife whistled past his ear, then scored deeply along his shoulder. His arm flopped uselessly at his side and now they were both fighting one-armed, though Davey had a knife and Adam was wrapped in a sheet.

His bedroom was singularly lacking in anything that could be improvised into a weapon -- he considered trying getting a heavy encyclopedia out to use as a shield, but it was too far a distance and too long a shot.

He scooted back on the bed, trying to untangle the sheet, which was still secured at the foot of the bed and all along one side. He freed his good arm just as Davey slashed at him again, aiming for the meat of his thigh, the big arteries there that could bleed you out in a minute or two. He grabbed for Davey's shoulder and caught it for an instant, squeezed and twisted, but then the skin he had hold of sloughed away and Davey was free, dancing back.

Then he heard, from downstairs, the sound of rhythmic pounding at the door. He'd been hearing it for some time, but hadn't registered it until now. A muffled yell from below. Police? Mimi? He screamed out, "Help!" hoping his voice would carry through the door.

Apparently, it did. He heard the sound of the small glass pane over the doorknob shatter, and Davey turned his head to look in the direction of the sound. Alan snatched up the pillow that he'd been smothering under and swung it as hard as he could at Davey's head, knocking him around, and the door was open now, the summer night air sweeping up the stairs to the second-floor bedroom.

"Alan?" It was Kurt.

"Kurt, up here, he's got a knife!"

Boots on the stairs, and Davey standing again, cornered, with the knife, slashing at the air toward him and toward the bedroom door, toward the light coming up the stairs, bobbing, Kurt's maglight, clenched in his teeth, and Davey bolted for the door with the knife held high. The light stopped moving and there was an instant's tableau, Davey caught in the light, cracked black lips peeled back from sharp teeth, chest heaving, knife bobbing, and then Alan was free, diving for his knees, bringing him down.

Kurt was on them before Davey could struggle up to his good elbow, kicking the knife away, scattering fingerbones like dice.

Davey screeched like a rusty hinge as Kurt twisted his arms up behind his back and Alan took hold of his ankles. He thrashed like a raccoon in a trap, and Alan forced the back of his head down so that his face was mashed against the cool floor, muffling his cries.

Kurt shifted so that his knee and one hand were pinning Davey's wrists, fished in his pockets, and came out with a bundle of hairy twine. He set it on the floor next to Alan and then shifted his grip back to Davey's arms.

As soon as Alan released the back of Davey's head, he jerked it up and snapped his teeth into the top of Kurt's calf, just above the top of his high, chain-draped boot. Kurt hollered and