The Z Club Read Online Free Page A

to his soaked boots.  He undid the laces and pulled them off before setting foot on the carpet.  “Running a special today,” Fred said.  “So that’s gonna be…”
    The black man glowered down at him.
    “…no charge,” Fred said as he hauled the dolly up the stairs and walked back to his truck in his stocking feet.  He didn’t put his boots on until he was safely in the truck.

Chapter 4
     
    Ryan Carver exited his squad car and began the long walk over to Sheriff Branagan, who waited on the other side of the snow-covered field.  After a two year stint as a detention deputy in the Coldwater County Jail, and now going on five years in patrol, he hadn’t ever seen anything like this.  A couple of years ago, they’d responded to a plane crash in neighboring Woodbury County.  Miraculously, both the student pilot and his instructor had walked away with only minor injuries.
    That was the closest Ryan’s mind could come to relating the current situation with past experience.  But this wasn’t a plane, and judging by the still-smoldering wreckage strewn out over a quarter mile radius, Ryan wasn’t optimistic about finding any survivors.  This wasn’t the kind of accident a person just walked away from.
    As he closed the hundred yard gap to Branagan, he took in the scene from a distance.  Trudy’s two fire trucks were parked next to each other; an ambulance was parked a little farther back; there were two patrol cars in addition to the Sheriff’s white Yukon.   Capt. Randy Aldo and Lt. Nathan Finnigan stood next to Branagan.
    When he reached Branagan, he said, “That what I think it is?”
    Branagan nodded, absently kicking away a rock with his boot as he watched the firefighters search the wreckage.
    “Don’t know what they’re lookin’ for,” Finnigan said.  “Sure as hell ain’t gonna find any survivors in that barbeque.”
    Aldo said, “Isn’t one of ours.  American, I mean.”
    “How do you know that?” Ryan asked.
    Aldo pointed at a twisted sheet of metal that had been lodged upright into the ground during impact.  “That look like English to you?”
    Ryan followed Aldo’s sausage-sized finger.  There was lettering on the chunk of metal, and even through the scorch marks, he could tell it wasn’t in English.
    “Looks like a bunch of chicken scratch to me,” Finnigan said.
    “ Chink writing,” Branagan said.  He spoke with a watered-down New England accent.  He’d moved to Trudy thirty years ago, but a little of the hometown Jersey boy remained.
    Ryan winced.  Branagan was a racist.  Not the hardcore, let’s-go-lynch-somebody variety, but comfortable enough that he didn’t feel the need to hide it.  The sad fact was, in a town like Trudy, that kind of thinking was still tolerated; for some, the old ways were alive and kicking.
    “You know Chinese now?”
    “Don’t any of you watch the news?  The Chinamen lost themselves a space ship.  Last I heard, that’s not a common occurrence, so I reckon this is the one they was talkin’ about.”
    They stood watching for twenty minutes while the snow fell softly and the firefighters put out the remaining flames.  After the smoke had cleared, Ryan followed Branagan, Finnigan, and Aldo over to the shuttle’s forward fuselage where it had snapped from the ship’s central body.  Wreckage was strewn everywhere, and paramedics were loading what was left of the ship’s crew into body bags.
    “I don’t get it,” Ryan said.  “How does a Chinese space shuttle crash land in Iowa?”
    “Bad fuckin’ luck,” Branagan said.  “That’s how.”
    “Worst kind,” Finnigan agreed.
    “Um huh,” Aldo grunted.
    A medic was dragging one of the ship’s cushioned seats.  An astronaut was still strapped in it.  As the medic passed, Branagan said, “Hold up a sec.”  Branagan approached the body and studied it for a minute.  “What happened to him?”
    “You’re going to have to be more specific,” the medic said.