Read ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) for Free Online Page A

between beckoned. On the corner opposite a Chinese Take-Out place was a windowless
pawn shop with an armed guard standing sentinel underneath a splash of neon
promising Cash for Guns, Gold and Jewelry . A few blocks south on 82nd
Avenue was the financial district and its grimy storefronts with
hand-lettered signs offering No I.D. Check Cashing , Western Union Wire
Transfers and Ninety-Nine-Cent Money Orders .
    Just beyond the storefronts, colorful banners and flags
fluttered lazily. Below the eye-catching heraldry, sunlight flared from
windshields of newly washed vehicles parked on a stretch of used-car-lots backing
up to a sprawling neighborhood consisting of multi-unit apartment complexes, double-wide
trailers, and rundown one- and two-story homes rented out by opportunist
slumlords. Save for pockets in Boring and Gresham, both far removed from inner
Portland, this miles-long enclave east of 82nd was the last bastion for the multitudes
of folks pushed out by the recent gentrification of inner Portland that sent
prices for thousand-square-foot two-bedroom homes skyrocketing into the realms
of the like-sized condos in the steel and glass South Waterfront Towers.
    The left turn arrow turned green.
    The hooker flashed some thigh.
    Shaking his head “No,” Duncan steered the Dodge onto
Southeast Flavel and slowed halfway up the block to wave at a hunched-over old
woman pushing an upright wire-basket on wheels ahead of her. She lived on the
dead-end street opposite his and was very self-sufficient for her advanced
years. And if she saw him just now, or anything else going on around her, she
didn’t let on. Those white-spoked wheels kept spinning as she trudged toward
82nd at a glacial pace.
    The drive to Charlie’s little cottage was gravel and rutted.
There were no sidewalks and both sides were overgrown to the point of
resembling a fauna tunnel. Gnarled blackberry bushes dominated at ground level,
while the long, hanging tendrils of a weeping willow cut off daylight from
above.
    Like driving out from the finishing end of a carwash, wiry
branches and sun-shocked leaves brushed the truck’s roof and thorny brambles
raked its flanks, producing a fingernails-on-chalkboard keen that always sent a
cold shiver down Duncan’s spine.
    Still chilled from the sound, he pulled the Dodge up close
to the tiny garage, leaving it skewed diagonally. Turning the bastard on the car-sized
circle of dirt and gravel here was akin to spinning a battleship around in a duck
pond. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, he supposed. The couch in Charlie’s
living room was just long enough so that his feet didn’t hang off the end. Much
better than having to find a dead-end street and cramming his carcass on the
bench seat of his truck night after night until a job materialized so that he
could afford rent for a room in an 82nd Avenue roach motel or an efficiency
apartment downtown.
    The V8 suffered vapor lock and ran on for a second even
after Duncan switched it off and yanked the key. A dying steed , he
thought glumly. First the A/C and now the engine’s going. Just what I don’t
need . He grabbed his phone and elbowed the door open.
    Boots on the ground, he was greeted by a low-throated growl
from beyond the brambles—a far sight more tolerable than the all-out bark-fest
that had been the norm. Lately, it seemed as if the neighbor’s dog was getting
used to the sound of his truck coming and going. However, the big-boned Rottweiler
had been bred and trained to keep the local riff-raff away, and the short time Duncan’s
scent had been present at Casa Charlie wasn’t nearly enough conditioning to fully endear him to the nameless guard dog.
    The animal’s growl rose and fell in volume, and in one of
the valleys Duncan heard the wail of sirens and whoosh of hard-working high-performance
engines speeding left-to-right up Flavel towards 92nd Avenue.
    As Duncan separated the door key from the tangle on the
ring, the stench of something burning was