Read Nobody Move for Free Online

yourself in the mirror lately? I’m lucky now.”

    Gambol was able to see, but nothing he saw made sense. Yet it wasn’t quite like dreaming. He closed his eyes.
A woman’s voice spoke some words, then the same words once more, and again the same words.
He said, “Fuck off.”

    He seemed to have fallen from a narrow bed and now found himself jammed in a space even narrower. He sighed.
A woman said, “Jesus. Well—at least you’re moving. Can you sit up?”
He said, “Leave me alone.”
“At least get back up here and lie straight.”
He said, “No. Fuck off.”
He realized he was staring at the roof of a car’s interior. Every time he breathed, he heard the slight creaking of plastic.
Later he deduced he must be lying on a plastic sheet inside a car.
The woman was talking again. “Yeah. You’re a major mess today. Can you sit up?”
“Fuck off.”
“If you can move, I want you inside.”
“Inside.”
“Sit up. Sit up. One stage at a time.”

    He was sitting on a couch, his injured leg stretched out on an ottoman. He was looking at a television in a small living room with a woman who said, “Wow, do you ever feel like you’re just in the future? I mean, like science fiction?”
“Shut up. Who are you?”
“I told you who I am.”
“The fuck you did.”
“Then who have I been talking to for the last half hour?”
“I didn’t hear us talking.”
“How’s the pain?”
The pain, though it belonged to his right leg, radiated in astounding waves out to his toes and up to his jaw. “Real bad.”
She put a bowl beside him on the couch. “I want you to suck on some ice. Just to keep your throat lubricated.”
Some of the pain made it all the way to his right eyeball and also the tip of his nose.
“Are you there?”
“I’m somewhere.”
“It hurts,” she said. “I know. It hurts.”
“You got any dope?”
“Not yet. It’s coming.”
“Fuck.”
“Hang in there.”
“Fuck. Jesus Christ.”
“Don’t choke on that ice.”
“Fuck. Fuck.”
Fighting the pain only made it worse. Gambol paid attention to the pain, to its shape, its location, and its travels, and tried to stay relaxed.

    A doorbell rang. Voices spoke in another world, where people had thoughts worth voicing. Laughter. Silence.
She came to him with a hypo and said, “The cavalry has arrived.” By this time the pain had conquered every physical part of him and had begun to involve his soul. Then the sensations flattened out and got hard to locate, and as long as he didn’t try moving, things were pretty jolly.

    “You ready for some water?”
“Yeah.”
She brought him a glass with a straw. He could hardly swallow, but it was sweet. “Drink as much as you can. Watch your IV, hon. Don’t move that hand around. Other hand.”
He hadn’t noticed the drip in his left wrist. “I feel paralyzed.”
“I couldn’t give you any blood.”
“Yeah. A person can’t live on horse blood, right?”
“What?”
“You’re a vet, right?”
She laughed and said something he couldn’t hear.

    She woke him and fed him some pills and held the glass while he sucked at the straw until the glass was empty. The light around them seemed like morning light. But it might have been evening. “You got any coffee?”
“Coffee won’t help right now.”
“Just give me a cup of coffee.”
The smell was wonderful, but it tasted wrong coming through a straw. “Just let me drink it.”
“Sure.”
His hand felt like a senseless mitten. She helped him hook his finger through the cup’s handle.
“Give me the fucking thing.”
“I just gave it to you. Relax.”
She turned on the television. He sipped his coffee and stared at the colorful screen.
After a while he said, “I need a car. And I need a gun.”
    PART
TWO

    JIMMY LUNTZ woke at the Log Inn Motel and spent twenty minutes sitting upright in his bed, smoking a Camel and staring at the woman asleep beside him. Just watching her breathe. Very gently he lifted the covers. She was dark-skinned all