Dying for Rain (The Rain Trilog - BB Easton Page 0,27
he can approach me, eyes narrowed, gears turning.
“I know a dude who carries a gun just like this,” he says, lifting the revolver in his hand. “You know him?”
I don’t have to ask who he’s talking about. There’s a sadness in his tone, a fondness, a sense of loss that I recognize.
“Yeah.” I nod, this single ounce of compassion making my chest ache and my eyes sting.
“I saw him on TV today,” the kid says, softening his tone.
“Oh shit! The nerd?” Pinhead asks.
“No, dumbass,” the boy snaps back. “The dude from the sentencing. He was the one who used to come into the CVS all the time and pay me in hydro.”
“Ohhhh, that guy. Yeah, he cool.”
“That’s …” I clear my throat, hoping they won’t hear my voice shaking. “That’s why I need the truck. I’m gonna go to the capitol, and … I don’t know … try to …” I can’t even say it out loud. It sounds so stupid. It is stupid.
But it wouldn’t be if I had help.
“Hey … you guys could come too.” I try to smile, but it feels like a grimace. “Since you knew him. Know him, I mean. You could help me—”
The zombified clown snorts into his rubber mask as his helmeted buddy erupts into hysterics.
“Do we look like muhfuckin’ customer service to you?” The clown chuckles.
“Yeah,” Pinhead blurts out through his hyena-like laughter, clicking his heels together and giving me a salute. “Do we look like fuckin’ Captain America and shit?”
As his friends keel over, laughing, the kid shakes his head and levels me with a sympathetic stare. “Listen, I’m sorry your man caught a case, but we ain’t exactly in the helpin’ business.”
“We in the stayin’ the fuck alive bidness, and bidness is gooood.” The clown flicks his tongue at me again.
“Tell you what … I keep the bag, you keep the truck, and if anybody fucks with you”—the kid sets the purse and the gun on the hood of the GMC and picks up a can of orange spray paint one of them had tossed aside—“just tell ’em you’re reppin’ Pritchard Park.”
I stand, petrified by a potent mixture of fear and shock and gratitude, as this Bony kid spray-paints stripes across my chest and down my arms to match his.
Dropping the can to the ground, the boy grabs Mrs. Renshaw’s purse and climbs onto a motorcycle parked in front of the truck. He slides his Scream mask back into place and motions with his head for the two guys who had to be twice his age to follow.
“Dude”—the clown elbows Pinhead, and they walk over to their bikes—“did you see somebody spray-painted the highway sign to say Bitch-Ass Park?”
“Fuck yeah! I did that shit, man.”
As the Bonys cackle and pull out of the parking lot on squealing tires, I stand like a newly decorated Christmas tree and wait for Quint and Lamar to come out from their hiding places.
When the door beside me finally squeaks open, Lamar is the one who speaks first, “I just want you to know, we totally had your back, Rainy Lady.”
“A hundred percent,” Quint chimes in.
“Just shut up and get in the truck,” I snap.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Wes
The Green Mile. That’s what Officer MacArthur called it when he came to get Doug for his execution a few hours ago. After he sobbed all over his shitty fucking beef Wellington.
“Time to walk the Green Mile, buddy.”
Who says that? Heartless motherfucker. That must be why they sent him instead of Hoyt or Elliott. Those two still have some shred of humanity left. But Mac? He’s older. Harder. His tightly cropped gray hair tells me he’s probably ex-military, and the trench-deep lines around his eyes and mouth tell me that he’s definitely seen some shit. That asshole looks like he eats nails for breakfast and tacks for snacks.
Speaking of nails, I’ve spent the last hour feeling around under my cot and the sink-slash-toilet unit in my cell, trying to find one.
As it turns out, I do not know how to pick a lock with a plastic fork.
I mean, I do—I had to do it all the time in foster home number ten. Or was it eleven? My foster mom wanted to keep her whole government check for herself, so she used to keep a lock on the fridge and the pantry to keep me from eating the good shit. All she left out was a loaf of generic white bread and a jar of government peanut butter.