D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,34
However, it was no wonder, considering the aged condition of the truck... And only thanks to this dust was Tony able to discern in the dark the sharp glass tooth ready to rip his throat. A wider splinter lower down was ready to stick into his belly, leaving no chance of climbing in through the narrow gap without damaging his intestines.
At this instant, Logan felt the dead fingers on his wrist weakening their grasp. But against the backdrop of the night's nightmarish events, this movement did not frighten him. On the contrary, he thought with spiteful pleasure, he had been given an opportunity. He seized the wrist of the rigidly frozen hand and used it like a stone to strike the glass splinters blocking his way. Glass collapsed with a wallop on the sidewalk. Tony had the impression that it would be heard not only in the police car, but in the neighboring blocks as well. It was, however, too late to change plans. He slipped into the store display window to the right and stiffened behind the glass between the mannequins of a young girl and a little boy. But that damned hand marked him nearly as much as his torn and dirty clothes... Tony made a new attempt to unclench its fingers and realized that they had no will of their own. Obviously, they had simply begun to thaw, making the grasp weaker... Tony wanted only to unbend them, but they started to break with a crunch, though their skin did not tear anymore. He hardly had time to fling the maimed hand somewhere deep into the dark interior of the shop, because the police car appeared from behind the garbage truck, driving directly on the black bags. And Logan was struck dumb staring at it.
It was not the car which Tony had already seen. Probably the eyeless cop really had called for reinforcements, or perhaps the arrival of this car was simply a coincidence. It had rolled off the production line, at the latest, in the early seventies, but it wasn't that which caused Tony to stare at it without trusting his eyes. The car's lights had been broken long ago and the fluctuating orange light did not come from them. The car was burning. The whole back half of it was conflagrant. Tony looked in horror at the tongues of flame licking the gas tank cover and waited for the explosion at any second. But there was no explosion. The car slowly moved forward, as if nothing was happening (even in spite of the fact that its back wheels had become shapeless charred rims, stinking of burned rubber). Its driver seemed unaffected by the events right behind his back. (This time, as far as Tony could make out through a dirty glass, it was a black man at the wheel, but Logan was not sure that it was the color of his skin from birth.) Even in the front seats the heat should be intolerable; what would happen to an arrested person in the back seat was terrible even to imagine. Tony stood not breathing, trying to resemble a mannequin more than the real mannequins.
The car slowly passed by and moved farther without stopping. But Tony understood that the danger had not passed at all–now the police car would go to the wall and turn back. The light from the flames shone through a glass door onto a dusty poster lying on the floor. Once, probably, the poster had hung on this door or in a store window nearby. Before the shimmering light dimmed again, Logan managed to discern large letters:
STORE CLOSING
EVERYTHING MUST GO!
DISCOUNTS up to 80 %!
Till February, 29th
The last February 29th was more than two years ago. However, Tony would not be surprised to learn that this shop had been closed more than four years earlier. Or eight. Or... This garbage truck alone has probably been standing here for years... If the concept of a year in general makes sense in this place, where it is always midnight.
The approaching light of a fire came again through the muddy glass at the left. The car was returning. Tony grew numb again, staring straight ahead.
Something rustled behind his back. Somewhere at floor level, not too loudly. A rat, Tony told himself. But his imagination drew another picture: the torn off hand, painfully moving its broken fingers, trying to creep towards him... And after all that he had already seen, such a thought no longer seemed delirious.