Read CRYERS for Free Online Page A

drag the howler into the dark by its ankle. He helped his
gagging brother the other way towards the flames.
    Willem sat and drank more of the
warm water. “Not so sure I wanna keep running from Burn,” he gasped. “Maybe it
would be better if we took our chances with Lode. I don’t think I can do this.”
    “We don’t have a choice no more.
The lawman’s got us and we gotta do what he says and go where he goes.”
    “We don’t got to,” Willem whispered
as he wiped strings of puke from his chin. “We can run back once he’s sleeping.
We could bash his head in with a rock.”
    Another howl sounded in the night.
    Lawson appeared out of the shadows,
his revolver drawn once again. “More out there,” he whispered. He ran to Dust
and pulled his rifle free from a holster that was strapped to the ugly horse’s
side. “I’d think twice before beating my head in with a rock. You’re lucky you
made it this far on yer own. Turning back now, without me, would be a tragic
thing.”
    He returned to the fire and dropped
the revolver in Willem’s lap. Willem gasped at the cold weight resting between
his legs.
    “Either pick it up and start
defending yourself, or hand it to yer brother and keep yer mouth shut.”
    Cobe reached down and made the
choice for him. He lifted the massive gun in both hands and pointed the barrel
end out into the dark.
    Lawson was on one knee, his rifle
aimed in the same direction. “You’re gonna shoot the ground twelve feet in
front of you. Lift the barrel up and keep a good grip. Move yer face to the
side. Wouldn’t want it to kick back and bust yer nose.”
    Cobe had a thousand more questions.
He didn’t get the chance to ask one. Something big and white was moving towards
them. It started to make a high-pitched crying sound. Cobe clenched his eyes
shut and turned his head. He pulled the trigger.
    Cobe’s ears were buzzing. Something
or someone was yelling at him. He pulled the trigger again. A big hand gripped
his wrist and forced the gun down.
    “Quit shooting!” Lawson yelled. “It
ain’t no howler.”
    The gun fell from his fingers, and
the lawman slipped it into the holster at his side. The air smelled funny and
Cobe’s ears were still ringing.
    A man emerged out of the dark,
crawling along on his knees. His hands were held high above his head. “Don’t
shoot! Don’t shoot!”
    The lawman chuckled. It sounded
like glass being crushed deep in his chest. “How many times you got to be told
in one day, Trot? Pull up yer gawdamn pants.”

Chapter 7
    2099
    2,655 meters underground
    253 kilometers northwest of
Winnipeg, Manitoba
    Lothair was thinking about a boy
named Samuel he had frozen in 1944. He pictured the fat ten-year-old’s buttocks
sliced and frying in a skillet, the grease bubbling and popping away in a mix
of minced onions and garlic. Lothair had imagined eating the boy’s rear-end for
two years straight. Lothair never slept. He never thirsted for water, but his
stomach continued to rumble, like a distant storm on the horizon that never
moved. The gnawing hunger never went away.
    Lothair wasn’t insane. The freezing
process had worked. Something inside his body had changed. He reasoned a
foreign agent had been introduced into his DNA sometime during the period he
first went under to the moment he awoke twenty-nine years ago. Some brilliant
mind—or a team of brilliant minds—had discovered the method to bring a frozen
human being back to life. They may have even cracked the cancer code, and
started replacing old, diseased hearts with new, four-chambered mechanical
organs.
    If so, it didn’t answer the
question of why Lothair was still lying in his freeze tube. If he could awake
into blackness and think of eating children for decades on end, then surely the
tumor in his brain was no longer an issue.
    Something rumbled, and Lothair felt
the cylinder tremble. That wasn’t his stomach. A minute later, he felt the
sensation again—the cushioned bed formatted to the