Before Cain Strikes. Joshua Corin

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ short, Timothy needed to think younger, and he found his ideal in, of all places, his mother’s veterinary clinic. As the first snow fell Friday morning, he walked the familiar two miles from their house to her clinic, which was in the same strip mall as his father’s travel agency. He enjoyed the taste of the snowflakes, and made sure to catch as many as he could with his tongue.

      On his way to the clinic he passed the middle school, where the rest of his peers (and that was the right word—as loath as the old Timothy had been to admit it, these were his peers; he was not a young god) were crowded inside. Timothy hadn’t stepped foot in that building in more than a year, ever since that incident in the cafeteria with Mr. Monroe’s earlobe. His parents had filed the appropriate papers for him to be homeschooled and that was that. Still, as Timothy passed by it, his heart filled with a sense of longing. He was, after all, the new Timothy, person of the world, no different from anyone else. Well, hardly different.

      The purpose for his snowbound stroll to Mother’s clinic was to get his wrist reexamined. It had been three days since Lynette had bit him, and although his wound had been properly mended and treated, a bite mark was a bite mark. Perhaps Mother was going to give him a rabies shot.

      The other businesses in the strip mall, besides the vet clinic and the travel agency, were a take-out Chinese restaurant, a discount shoe store and a nail salon. The nail salon always had its front door open and emitted such an overpowering reek of ethyl acetate that one whiff of it made Timothy gag. He had tried in the past to circle around and approach the strip mall from the back, but somehow that stench waited for him there. Lynette’s fingernails hadn’t smelled like that. He’d made sure to check each one before removing her hands.

      As it happened, he still had the Taser C2 in the left pocket of his coat. He carried it around with him now wherever he went. It was soothing to hold and squeeze. He’d bought it with his father’s credit card from a website in Hong Kong that Cain42 had recommended. The soldering iron, which he’d used to cauterize Lynette’s stumps, had just been a purchase at the local Home Depot. He’d left it in the Weiner house. The soldering iron hadn’t been nearly as soothing to hold and squeeze as the Taser C2, which actually resembled the electric razor he used to trim his peach fuzz. Timothy had once used Father’s manual razor to shave, and had ended up slicing open his chin. He still remembered the blood droplets plunking into the sink—drip…drip…drip—like from a runny faucet. He had a tiny scar there now, a pale white hash mark, and late at night he sometimes ran his fingertips across it. That was soothing, too. He wondered what restful archaeology would be left by the teeth marks on his wrist.

      These were Timothy’s aimless thoughts as he crossed First Street at the light and ambled into the parking lot. He held his breath but it did no good. The nail salon’s pungency attacked him, anyway, nauseated his stomach, sent acid up into his throat. He would be safe once he entered the vet clinic. The animals had a safe smell. He would be safe once he—

      And then he saw her. Lying there alone in the backseat of a brown station wagon. The station wagon’s engine was still running. Its owner undoubtedly had some kind of pet emergency; otherwise, why leave the engine running? Why leave such perfection alone in the backseat? She was sleeping there, so peaceful, her oversize head listing a bit to the left. A few tufts of blond hair covered what was otherwise a bare scalp. A soft scalp. Because the human skull took a while to completely harden, and this beauty, this wonder, this perfect pet of his, couldn’t have been older than three weeks.

      Timothy swooned. Love at first sight.

      He had to be swift and very, very careful. He had two options: try to steal her out of her car seat or simply slip behind the wheel himself and drive off to a more secluded location. Given the complexity of buckles and belts and snaps he beheld crisscrossing his new pet’s little body (most of which was swathed in a blue onesie that depicted a name—Marcy—outlined in red sailboats), he decided to pursue the latter course of action. His gaze danced to the clinic door, and then he moved, swiftly, carefully, to the driver’s door. This he knew would be unlocked; the keys, after all, were still in the ignition. He slid into the front seat. It didn’t need much adjusting. The infant’s mother must have been around his own five foot five. The old Timothy may have scoffed at such pedestrian concepts as coincidence, but this new Timothy offered up a thanks to the Powers That Be for his height and for giving him this perfect pet and for his uncle teaching him how to drive when he was twelve. He shifted the brown station wagon into Reverse.

      He drove off to his secret place, his special place. His new pet, Marcy, slept through the entire trip. Every ten seconds Timothy would peek at her face in the rearview. The eyes were closed, but Timothy knew what color they would be. Blue.

      He parked near his secret place. By now an inch had accumulated on the ground, and his sneakers crunched powder with every step. That was fine. The time for stealth was almost over. He went around to the side of the car, studied those buckles and belts and straps for a good five minutes and then went to work unfastening them, which took another fifteen.

      Behind him, traffic passed. No one paid much attention to what they saw. They were too eager to return home before the snowstorm really hit.

      Then Marcy awoke. Her eyes were more green than blue, and they searched Timothy’s face for the semifamiliar features of her mother or father. Her eyesight could discern shapes and colors, but details would be a mystery for another few weeks. This wasn’t her mother, she concluded. So it must be her father.

      She wanted her mother.

      She cried.

      Timothy picked her up out of the car seat. Marcy’s face scrunched up and she cried some more. “Shh,” he told her. She ignored him. He held her at arm’s length. Snowflakes dissolved on her round reddening face. “Please stop,” he said. But she didn’t. They were not far from downtown, and although everyone was hurrying home, a crying baby would still draw attention. Had he chosen poorly? Was she maybe not his perfect pet?

      “Please,” he begged her.

      Silencing Marcy would actually have been relatively easy. All he had to do was cradle her head with one hand and then smash that head, forehead first, into the roof of the station wagon. Her soft skull probably would explode like a piece of citrus, all pulp and juice and ripped ripe peel.

      But that was the old Timothy. He was fourteen now. He was a man. He was more patient. The new Timothy held Marcy against his shoulder and bounced at the knee. He’d seen people do this in the mall. It seemed to work.

      It had to work.

      It worked. Marcy’s face and body relaxed. Her cries stopped. Her eyes recommenced their exploration of the world around her. The sky seemed to be falling. How pretty.

      Timothy didn’t waste any time. He hurried her, still on his shoulder, to his secret place. Nobody would find her here. Nobody would hear her. She would be safe and warm and his. He settled her into her new home, made sure she was secure and then rushed back to the brown station wagon. Its engine was still running. He thought about Marcy’s mother. By now she must have returned to the parking lot. By now she must have realized her child was no longer hers. He drove up to the university campus and parked in one of the more populated lots. He unrolled all of the car’s windows, tossed the keys into a sewer drain and caught the next bus back to town.

      He bought his new pet some supplies: formula, a pink blanket, diapers, a plush smiling antelope. The stores were beginning to shutter their doors for the day. People in line were talking accumulation. They were talking one to two feet. They paid no mind to a fourteen-year-old boy running an errand for his baby sister.

      Once he had returned to his secret place, once he fed his new pet and played with her СКАЧАТЬ