The Carrion Birds Read Online Free Page A

his hand, he gave them over to Ray.
    Sanchez pushed the bolt back on the rifle, looked
into the chamber, and then pushed the bolt forward again. The rifle took .308s,
almost two inches in length and shaped like miniature missiles. Each of them big
enough to take down a four-hundred-pound mule deer, and powerful enough to rip
through skin and muscle and snap bone. “Did you see me wing the old man?”
    “I saw it,” Ray said.
    Sanchez took a few steps toward the ditch where
Burnham had fallen and the soft gurgle of his breath could be heard. “He’s still
alive.”
    “I can see that, too,” Ray said, following Sanchez
to where Burnham lay.
    Sanchez turned around, looking for approval.
“Pretty good, eh?”
    “You better get going. That kid’s just out there
running and you’ve got less than a thousand meters on that scope,” Ray said. He
was holding the spare shotgun shells in his palm, and he started to feed them
down into his pocket, waiting to see what Sanchez would do. “Memo wanted me on
this job because he wanted Burnham to recognize me, didn’t he?”
    Sanchez nodded. He was looking toward Burnham where
he lay in the dust.
    “I told you it was going to be a mess,” Ray
said.
    “No mess,” Sanchez said. The flash of a smile and
the brief pride Ray hated to see on the younger man’s face. “My uncle set this
up pretty good, didn’t he?”
    Ray paused, letting that sink in.
    “There’s a shovel in the back of the Bronco.”
    “Why would there be a shovel?” Ray said, refusing
to believe what he was hearing.
    Sanchez didn’t seem to register what Ray had said.
He was already moving away toward the edge of the road and the high thicket of
locust, with the rifle in his hand.
    Ray raised his voice; loud enough that Sanchez
couldn’t ignore him. “Why would there be a shovel in the back of the
Bronco?”
    “For messes,” Sanchez said over his shoulder,
taking the bank feet first, sliding down till he came out on the wash.
    The truth was that as soon as he’d seen Burnham,
Ray had known this would be the way it would go. There never was going to be a
talk on the side of the road. He’d pushed that all away now. He’d pushed it deep
down inside of him along with everything else.
    All Memo’s talk had been just an excuse, a way of
getting him here so that he could do what he did best, what he hated to do, and
what he’d thought he was done with. They weren’t there for a simple shakedown.
They were there to get rid of the competition. Now he watched Sanchez go,
disappear into the brush with the rifle held out in front of him like some sort
of divining rod, chasing down Gil’s path.
    Ray turned and looked at Burnham’s truck. Both
doors hung open and the light from the flashers pulsed over everything. The old
man lying in the shadows at the edge of the road. His body thrown out along the
ditch, turned over on his back, the air in his chest barely moving his lungs,
still alive. Blood pooling slowly beneath him in the dirt. It’s a terrible way
to die, Ray thought, buckshot like that.
    Ray knew this man. He’d known him almost his whole
life and he crouched next to Burnham and watched the old man’s wet eyes begin to
cloud over. The slow labor of Burnham’s breath ticking away at Ray’s feet as the
focus went out of his face. Ray shifted to one knee, watching Burnham where he’d
landed after being blown a yard off his feet, little gurgling sounds coming up
out of his throat. Buckshot all down the right side, he held one of his hands
tight to his body, trying to hold back the blood. And with the other he gripped
the earth near his hip as if he might lose his hold and spin loose.
    The old man must have been nearing his seventies.
Blood showing on his face where the wound in his cheek leaked a deep ruby color
into the white of his beard, his face tight with the pain as he tried to move
and the skin of his forehead drawn white and clean as fresh paper.
    Burnham closed his wet eyes and then