Until You Are Dead Read Online Free Page B

his tongue. He glanced around at the weathered old frame house, the leaning barn with only traces of red paint on it, the old green John Deere tractor sitting near the perfectly aligned rows of head-high cornstalks. "You about to plow or harvest with that thing?" Zinc asked, pointing at the tractor.
    Freddy laughed at his friend's ignorance and winked. "You gotta forgive us, old man. We're city boys and don't know country ways."
    "Yup, I could tell that right off."
    Freddy cocked his head to the side and seemed to consider whether he'd been insulted. Apparently he decided not to take offense. "We came here to get something," he said.
    "What I wish you'd get," Willis said, "is to the point." Not really so sure he wanted to hear the point, only that he wanted to know where he stood so he could formulate some kind of plan, even if it was a desperate one.
    "Teaching the boy how to play chess?" Zinc asked. "He doesn't need much teaching," Willis said. "He's always been the sort that thinks ahead."
    "Runs in the family, I'll bet," Freddy said with a sneer. "Sorta."
    "Nothin' runs in my family but noses," Zinc said.
    "Wanna play a game?" Andrew asked hopefully, as if perhaps a friendly game of chess would somehow set things straight with these intruders.
    "No," Freddy said, "but chess is a good game. It teaches you to think, like your grandpa said. Making plans, that's what life's all about. Thinking ahead is what separates winners from losers."
    "Right now," Willis said, "let's think back to when I wasn't home five years ago on July fifteenth."
    "Okay," Freddy said. "That's when the money from the Hopkinstown Bank robbery was buried in your cornfield."
    "You guys the bank robbers?" Andrew blurted out in awe.
    "Not us," Zinc said. "That ain't our game."
    "But we did get acquainted with certain people in a certain institution whose game it was," Freddy said. "And under a kind of pressure, they told us where they hid the Hopkinstown Bank money when they were on the run after the robbery. They're still in the institution, and will be for the next fifteen years, but here we are."
    "We came for the money," Zinc said. "We been thinking and dreaming about it for a long time. We ain't gonna leave without it."
    "Just in case somebody should happen to come by this godforsaken dump," Freddy said, "we're your nephews from the city, come for a visit. Got that, Uncle?"
    "Sure."
    "What about you, kid?"
    "I've got it, sir — cousin."
    Zinc stared at him curiously, flexing a bicep and scratching it simultaneously. "He got that right?" he asked Freddy.
    "Once removed or something," Freddy said. "Directions to the money say it's buried fifty feet due north of a big tree, some hundred paces from the northeast corner of the house." He glared at Willis. "The thing is, I don't see any tree there. Nothing but corn."
    "Lightning struck the tree four years ago and killed it, and I cut down what was left."
    "A tree big as we were told, there must be a stump or something in there among that corn," Freddy said.
    "No, I pulled the stump out with the tractor. That ground's been turned four times since then. I'd never be able to find exactly where that tree was now, even if I went looking for it."
    "If we were in the big city," Zinc said, "I'd start doing things to the boy, and you'd find where that tree was in a hurry."
    "In a New York minute," Freddy said. "But we're here in the heart of America where hard work's what people worship, so what's gonna happen is this, old man: You, Bobby Fischer there, and me and Zinc are gonna to some digging in the cornfield. We're gonna dig until we find the money."
    "Hey! Looka the size of that fly!" Zinc yelled, and swatted at a huge black fly that had set down on his forearm. He watched the fly drone away, then stared at Willis in astonishment. "There one of them nuclear plants around here?"
    "It's only a horsefly," Andrew said.
    Zinc looked around. "I don't see no horses."
    "They hang around cows and such," Freddy said.