Until You Are Dead Read Online Free Page A

they worked down in the coarse grass.
    The boy, who was eight years old and named Andrew, looked at the old man, who was his grandfather. He was a thin, dark-haired boy with a narrow, symmetrical face and bright but sad blue eyes. The old man swiveled slightly in his chair to watch the car, and the boy's calm, intelligent gaze followed.
    The grandfather, who was sixty-seven and whose name was Willis Sharp, watched the car brake to a halt next to the cottonwood tree near the barn. Beyond it, all around the farmhouse and barn, the cornfields spread for acres and acres so that only the water tower at Centerville, fifteen miles away, was visible from the house. Wavering in the heat, it looked like a drab gray lightbulb supported by a spindly framework. Andrew, who had quite an imagination, had once told Willis he'd dreamed the water tower was an alien spaceship that had landed so its occupants could learn chess.
    The car was a dusty black Chrysler New Yorker with a rental decal on its front bumper. Both its front doors opened simultaneously, and the two men inside climbed out. One was short and broad, the other tall and broad. The shorter one had on faded Levi's and an sleeveless red T-shirt. When the two men got closer, Willis saw that the T-shirt had one of those yellow smiley faces on it, only this one had a bullethole seeping blood in its forehead. The blood was the same red as the rest of the shirt.
    "Whaddya know?" the short one said by way of greeting, when the two men were about ten feet from the old man and boy.
    "Not much," Willis said.
    "I don't doubt it," the tall one said in a voice that cut. He had pale eyes like diamond chips, thin, cruel features, and was beginning to go bald on top. The breeze whipped the long, sandy hair above his right ear out away from his head as he lifted a hand and smoothed it back with a look of irritation. "Kinda isolated out here in Dullsville, aren't you, old-timer?"
    Willis thought he recognized his accent. "We like isolation."
    "You didn't ask us what we know," the short one said with the same accent as his companion. He had greasy black hair slicked straight back, a coiled snake tattooed on one bulging bicep, and two glittering rings on each hand.
    "You two don't need to be asked, being from New York."
    The two glanced at each other, thrown off a bit by that.
    The tall one grinned meanly, not sweating at all in the heat even in his dark suit, and said, "Wise guys, putting down the big city. Smart guys. Chess players." He aimed his predatory smile at Andrew, who was staring up at him without fear but with a trace of uneasiness. "You're Andrew," the tall man said, "and you, old man, you're his grandfather, Willis."
    "Who are you?" Andrew asked.
    Without hesitation the tall man said, "I'm Freddy Clark. My friend here's called Zinc."
    Willis didn't like it that they'd given their names so readily.
    "They used to call me Snake," Zinc said, "then some yardbird that couldn't talk right made it sound like Zinc and I was stuck with it. Prison's like that."
    In the corner of his vision Willis saw Andrew stiffen.
    "What we know that you didn't ask us about," Freddy said, "is that Andrew here is staying a month at the farm till school starts, like he's done the last two summers. You grow a little corn here, but you lease out most of this land to a big co-op. And except for Andrew's visits, you live all alone in that dump of a house since your wife died six years ago." Freddy and Zinc traded grins, proud of the fruits of their research. "Oh, and you weren't home five years ago on July fifteenth."
    "That last I wouldn't know about," Willis said, wondering who these two were, but knowing they were the worst kind of trouble. When the trouble came, maybe there'd be some way to get Andrew clear of it.
    "The important thing is, we know," Zinc said. He popped a stick of gum in his mouth, tossing the wrapper to the breeze, and began chewing rapidly and grinning, now and then displaying the wad of gum on