Thirst Read Online Free Page B

any of the cars on the ramp. It rose and turned sharply, and beneath him, Eddie could see a long stretch of the Beltway. Traffic stood still in both directions, and dome lights blinked on and off as doors opened and closed. Laura drove a blue Civic, but it was impossible to tell what color was which from where he stood. He knew its shape—compact, wedgelike, too sporty for her. They’d bought it used from a lot.
    He walked down the ramp as it twisted and leveled off again with the Beltway, and crossed the median into the westbound lanes where Laura would be coming from. People were walking through the cars—maybe walking home into the city. It would take them all night from here. He looked for the Civic. There were a few he passed, and he looked inside them, but they weren’t hers. People pushed by him in the space between driver’s-side and passenger doors. A father held his child at his chest. Eddie thought about calling Laura’s name, but no one else was talking. The strange silence acted on him like a rule. It made him feel deaf. He began looking into the windows of all the small cars he passed.
    He walked for half an hour, maybe more. Suddenly, he felt the pavement shiver beneath him, and then the breath of a runner’s body so close that he stumbled, catching himself against the hood of a car. The heels of his hands made a muted pock. A second and a third person ran by. He looked at the backs of their heads. Laura had jet-black hair, and so he looked for heads that were only barely visible in the darkness.
    The highway rose in the distance, and headlights shone at its apex. As he approached, he saw a clog of people standingthere, the headlights crisscrossing to illuminate them. Even in the relative calm of where he stood, the crowd charged the air with current. It was like walking toward an electrical storm. Eddie thought to turn around, but didn’t.
    He walked. The group seemed to be standing together just to keep from falling over—their limbs hanging dopily with fatigue.
    Somewhere down the hill behind him, a door slammed. The sound was like a bag popping in the night. Eddie imagined a boy grinning and holding the blown-out plastic. Another pop and another. The bleating of interior alarms—keys still in ignitions. Someone shouted, but Eddie couldn’t make out the words. Closer, doors opened with a rhythmic clicking. He turned to look down the hill behind him where car interiors illuminated and extinguished like fireflies, more and more of them in the night.
    People were coming up behind him—jostling him into the crowd ahead. He was caught in the center lane and had to shoulder his way through the bodies to get to the side of the road, where a woman was encircled. She was sitting on a bucket. A man was grabbing at the long bottle of water she held, but she hung on with both hands.
    “That wasn’t even two !” the man yelled.
    The woman yanked and rose a little off the bucket. She swayed back and forth.
    Someone in the crowd was responding to a question, or simply narrating the event. “She wants to charge five dollars for three sips,” he said.
    “Just give it to him,” came a voice. “He’s thirsty. He’s got a kid.”
    “ I’m thirsty.”
    The woman didn’t respond. The skin around her eyes and nose looked like old newspaper. She gripped her lips against her teeth and tugged on the bottle. The man grabbed her by the arm and pulled her off the bucket, and she landed on the road. She wasn’t there for more than a second before Eddie’s view was obstructed by bodies lunging for the bottle, and she was lost in them.
    “Laura!” he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted into the riot. “Laura Gardner!
    Glass broke behind him and someone yelled, “He’s got a hammer . ” Then a hand was on his shoulder, pressing him forward, and a flash of pain went off inside his knee where it banged into a fender. He grabbed at the person behind him, but whoever it was had disappeared into the