Read Passenger for Free Online

knew exactly what he was doing.
    “Hungry, Odd?”
    I didn’t answer him.
    “Listen,” Quinn said. “Hear that? It stopped.”
    I hadn’t noticed how quiet it was. Maybe my breathing had become louder than the rain.
    “I need to get the boat back before the water goes away. I got to leave, Odd. You coming?”
    I didn’t want to go with the kid.
    But there was nothing else I could do, and I guess he saw the resignation on my face.
    “Well, come on, Odd. You can help me get my boat back and then I’ll fix you up with some food and maybe a nice shirt you can keep. You don’t mind, do you? You ain’t got any other plans, do you? Ha-ha-ha! Come on, Odd.”
    And Quinn Cahill stood to the side of the doorway, sweeping his arm like he was saying “after you,” and he even patted my shoulder as I walked past him.
    “We’re going to be friends, Odd. We’re going to be real good friends.”
    *   *   *
    “What the fuck were those things?”
    It seemed like my voice actually startled the kid who nothing else seemed to bother.
    “What things?”
    “Those fucking black worm things.”
    “What? Did you fall out of the sky or something?”
    I didn’t answer.
    “Suckers, Odd. Suckers. They carry the bug, too.”
    “Oh. The bug.”
    Quinn Cahill looked at me like I was stupid or something. He pointed at his eyes. “Black eye. White eye. The bug. That’s the only way of getting it if you’re immune like us Odds. But it don’t matter, anyway. They crawl up inside your rig and you’re a goner in a week, anyhow. You grow spikes. You run around naked and start eating folks. That’s what the suckers do to Odds like us. Nice.”
    I sat there in the canoe while the redheaded kid pushed us across this borderless black lake using what looked like a bridge cue for playing pool. And I felt myself clenching my knees together.
    “Ha-ha! That one on you almost hit pay dirt, didn’t it, Odd? Ha-ha-ha!”
    And he held up two fingers, showing a gap of about an inch and a half, to signify how close that thing was to my “rig.”
    Quinn Cahill was unbearably annoying.
    “Stop calling me that.”
    “Well, if you’re not going to tell me your name, what else am I going to do? I think I’ll just call you Billy.”
    “Don’t.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s not my name.”
    “Well, it suits you. Kind of. Like Billy the Kid. Except I don’t think you’re a murderer, even if Fent’s after you to settle it up for that one Ranger.”
    “Nobody’s after me.”
    Quinn scooped his pool cue up from the muck on the bottom and held it out for me. “Here. You push for a while, Billy.”
    “I don’t know where we’re going.”
    Quinn slapped his thigh. It made me jump. “Ha-ha-ha! Neither do I. I was just making all that shit up about having food and a shirt for you, Billy!”
    He was fucking with me.
    I wanted to punch him again. I looked him in the eye. Thirteen, maybe, I thought. Quinn Cahill was probably only thirteen years old. Pale, white, orange-headed, and freckled, with white baby peach fuzz on his lip and cheeks, and eyes that I just could not figure out. And he was really entertaining himself with me, too.
    I put out my hand to him.
    “Jack,” I said. “My name’s Jack Whitmore. I’m sixteen. And I’m not lying.”
    Then Quinn smiled like it was Christmas morning, spit in his palm, and grabbed my hand, saying, “My brother. My brother Jack the knife boy! See? That wasn’t hard, now, was it, Jack? Oh yeah. We’re going to be real good friends, my man. Now let’s go get you that food and a nice new shirt to put on. Well … kind of new. Ha-ha!”
    And Quinn bent back to his task of pushing his boat home.
    *   *   *
    Canoes are fucking heavy.
    The water disappeared—just vanished—in less than an hour, leaving a pasty white salt, ash, and me and Quinn at opposite ends of his fucking canoe. In the constant desiccated heat of Marbury, our clothes had completely dried even before the water was gone. Quinn