Mockingbird Read Online Free Page A

missing but, judging by their color and consistency, it won't be long before they start breaking off like icicles.
      The cat piss smell is hard to miss, too.
      He's one of the tweakers. She doesn't recognize him, but that's normal – they've got a rotating bunch coming in and out of there.
      "Sup," he says, shuffling over.
      He probably thinks he's going to get some trailer-trash pussy. Either he heard about her from the others and thinks he can conquer the unconquerable, or they're fucking with him and told him she's easy. They're probably watching from the tree-line. Jokers.
      "Ahoy," she says.
      "You look nice." It's an almost sweet thing to say. But then she catches his thousand-yard stare, which looks clean through her.
      " You look like a human-shaped pile of scabs."
      "That's not a very nice thing to say."
      "There's that word again. Nice . You don't know me very well."
      He steps closer. Fingers rubbing together. "But I want to."
      "Dude. This is not a good night for me," she says. "I don't know what your basehead buddies told you, but this girl's legs are closed to the likes of you."
      "Fuck you, bitch." His eyes flash with anger.
      Now he starts walking toward her, his hands balled up into twitchy fists.
       Seems we're gonna do this , she thinks.
      He lunges.
      With spidery fingers he grabs at her wrists–
       The needle goes in what looks to be an old man's arm, dead in the center of a spider-web tattoo the nexus of which is already a cratered mess of track marks, skin like the surface of the moon. He lets the needle hang there over the bunchedup blaze-orange sleeve of his prison jumpsuit, and his head lolls back, gray hair draped over shoulders, toothless lower jaw creaking open, a slow and happy hiss leaking from the back of his throat. The heroin-horse goes stampeding through his arteries and galloping over his heart and then to his brain and the drug-beast stomps the gray matter flat. One last convulsion, a blob of pukey mouth froth, and a final slump of the head as he dies where he sits.
      –but it's not hard for her to twist out of his grip and shimmy to the side.
      He swats at her again but she ducks and weaves.
      "True story: You die in prison," she says, already panting. Shit, she's out of shape. "Pumping some of that sweet Mexican Brown into your arm."
      He kicks at her, but it's not exactly a Kung Fu move. More like a fat-kid-trying-to-hit-a-kickball move. "Fucking what? I don't–" He grunts. "Shoot that shit."
      "Not now. But in the future, you will."
      He throws a clumsy fist, and she catches it, pivots, and jams the arm into the small of his back. The tweaker cries out more in frustration than pain.
      "Funny thing is, when you die, you look like you're, what, sixty, sixty-five years old. But this happens in fifteen years, my man. Meth ain't milk, buddy. It does not do a body good."
      She underestimates him and, frankly, is basking in the glow of her own amusement. It gives the basehead an opportunity, and he takes it. The fucker is squirmy like a snake – a snake cranked up on a powerful methamphetamine – and he tosses back an elbow that happens to hit her smack dab where the bullet carved a small trench in the side of her head.
      Fresh blood runs straight into her eye.
      The tweaker shoves her. Hard. Knocks her down.
      Sand at her elbows. Grass tickling her neck. Blood in her eye. The basehead is laughing now. He tries to spit on her, but it mostly just dribbles up over his chin and hangs there. He kicks dirt.
      Scabby grabs at her ankles. She doesn't bother kicking. Part of her thinks, This could be it, this could be my last day here . After all, it's not like she knows. She can find out how anybody else is going to die, but her own doom remains a mystery. A mystery that gnaws at the ends of her fingers.
      Earlier today she thought the gunman had her. Now some meth-junkie.
      Only problem: She doesn't