Road of the Dead Read Online Free Page A

let things ride for a while. Cole just sat there looking out through the window, and I just sat there sharing his silence. I was with him now, and I could feel the presence of Dad in his heart. It was a good feeling, good and strong, and it made me feel safe. But I could also feel the lack of feeling that Mum had mentioned earlier. The deadness. The missing stuff. The stuff that neither Dad nor Cole seemed to have—the stuff that makes us care about ourselves and whether we live or die. I knew it was a necessary deadness, the kind of nerveless detachment you sometimes need in order to get by in the world, but I also knew what could happen if the deadness took over, and it worried me to feel it in Cole.
    I could feel him thinking about Rachel, too. He wasn’t aware that he was thinking about her, because he’d been thinking about nothing else for the last three days and his thoughts had become automatic. Like breathing. Like walking. Like living. When he thought about Rachel now, he thought with something that didn’t belong to him. He thought with the core of his mind. It thought for him. Searching the darkness, trying to find her, trying to picture her face—her eyes, her hair, the way she once smiled and lit up the world…
    But it was no good. It was all too far away. The pictures wouldn’t come to him anymore. The only thing he could see now was the naked corpse of a girl he didn’t know.
    He couldn’t see Rachel anymore.
    I wondered if that’s what was driving him.
    As the train passed through Exeter and on toward Plymouth, the surrounding countryside began to change. The brown earth became red, brick became granite, and the sunlight seemed to lose its brightness. Sad-looking hills loomed in the distance, casting cold gray shadows over the passing fields, making everything look mournful and empty.
    “It’s a long way from Canleigh Street,” I said to Cole.
    “It’s not so different,” he murmured. “It’s just another place.”
    “You reckon?”
    He turned away from the window and stretched his neck. “What time is it?”
    I looked at my watch. “Two-thirty. We should be in Plymouth in about half an hour.”
    Cole stretched again. “I’ve been thinking…”
    “Yeah?”
    He looked at me. “About Rachel.” He rubbed his eyes. “This girl she was staying with—Abbie Gorman. Do you know much about her?”
    “I thought you knew her. She was at school with Rachel. They were only a couple of years above you, weren’t they?”
    “I was never at school, was I? And even if I had been, you know what it’s like at school—a couple of years is a lifetime. Rachel wouldn’t have been caught dead talking tome. Come on, Rube—you must know something about Abbie. You were always talking to Rachel about her friends and stuff.”
    I hesitated for a moment, waiting to see if he’d realize what he’d just said about Rachel not being caught dead…but thankfully he didn’t. So I told him what I knew about Abbie Gorman.
    “She used to live on that big estate at Mile End. Rachel met her in grade school, then they went on to secondary school together. I don’t think they were best friends or anything, but they used to hang around together a lot. Abbie came around to our place quite often. I think she even stayed over a couple of times.” I looked at Cole. “Are you sure you don’t remember her?”
    He shook his head. “What’s she like?”
    “I’m not sure, really. I only spoke to her once or twice. She seemed OK—friendly enough, pretty, a bit edgy…”
    “What do you mean— edgy ?”
    “Like she could take care of herself if she had to. You know…she had that look about her.”
    “Like Rachel?”
    “Yeah…come to think of it, she looked like Rachel in lots of ways. Same height, same size, same kind of face. They could have been sisters.”
    Cole ran his fingers through his hair. “How did she end up living on Dartmoor?”
    “Her mother lived there. Abbie was brought up by anaunt or