Lizardskin Read Online Free Page A

whirrings.
    Chunk!
    Chunk!
    Joe Bell felt the need to respond. The three of them heard Bell pull his slide back.
    “No!” McAllister shouted. Ron and the J. B. Hunt driver were already running for the ditch at the side of the road.
    “I’m just gonna—” That sound again, and the whistling whirring. Joe Bell was up and leaning across the pump. The shaft came in like judgment, sliced into his left shoulder. Beau could see the plaid shirt open up and the vivid red flesh underneath.
    Bell stood up and bellowed once. He still had the shotgun in his right fist. That gun had everybody’s full attention now, the arrow stuck in his shoulder. Round and round she goes, thought McAllister, not able to drop, just watching the barrel and watching Joe Bell stagger around the end of the pump island, watching him come forward now, blood running from the slice in his upper arm—Christ, that would hurt. Everybody in the area who could see what was going on tried to dig a little farther into the dirt or tiles on the snack-bar floor or the bottom of the truck cab—but Bell wasn’t dropping that goddamned Winchester.
    Bell squeezed one off. The big gun kicked back in his hand.
    A swarm of fat black bees hurtled off into the blue.
    Jesus, thought Beau. He’s got double-ought in there. Twelve steel balls as big as marbles.
    So it came to McAllister that maybe he should just plain shoot Joe Bell. Otherwise they were all going to die.
    “Bell! Put the gun down!”
    Bell was out there, beyond control. His face was sweaty and bright as a road flare as he came out in the open now, bringing that big barrel around one more time, leaning back in his Tony Lamas, his big white belly out over the top of his jeans, his shirt ripped and flapping in the wind, his mouth wide open in the middle of that huge red beard.
    Beau pulled the Browning out and lined the red foresight up over Joe Bell’s right foot.
    “Bell! You gotta stop firing!”
    Boom!
Bell got off another shell. Maybe he had visions of Wyatt Earp in his head. Maybe he was seeing it all on
Eyewitness News
. This one zipped and zanged into the gravel about ten feet to one side of the propane tank. Steel shot skittered crazily off across the highway.
    Beau saw a couple of things in a crystalline bubble of hallucinatory intensity.
    He saw the way Bell’s blue jeans had faded to white along the top of his right leg and the darker indigo color along the rumpled sideseam.
    He saw the frayed threads on the cuff of his own right sleeve and the sheen of silicon grease on the dull black slide of his Browning.
    And in his mind, he saw Lieutenant Eustace Meagher in front of a line of his fellow cops, McAllister standing there while Eustace pulled off McAllister’s stripes and somebody off to the left beat an accusatory rattle on a little muffled drum.
    McAllister breathed out slowly and squeezed off one round, aiming for Bell’s right foot. The Browning bucked in his hand, and his ears rang from the blast.
    Damn, thought Beau, watching in a cold detached way as the round hit Bell in the muscle of his ass, square in the middleof his wallet. Why do they make these things so goddamned
loud
?
    Bell jerked, reeled, and staggered left. He looked across at McAllister, his face the very picture of outrage and injured dignity. He twisted to regard the damage in his back pocket, then looked up at McAllister again.
    “You god-
damned
asshole! You
shot
me!”
    “
Somebody
had to, Bell! You were gonna—”
    And now Bell felt the muscle give, and he started to go down to his right. As he came down he brought the shotgun around and he was trying to …
     … get that barrel lined up …
     … on what?
     … on me, thought McAllister.
    Now what? Do I kill Joe Bell?
    When Bell hit the ground, the shotgun bounced out of his hand and clattered across the pavement. McAllister was out around the J. B. Hunt trailer and halfway to Bell when he remembered that somebody had been shooting arrows at him only a