Brambleman Read Free Page A

which
he’d left at the house. Damn it. He’d have to go back inside and
use the pay phone to call 911, which meant facing those
assholes.
    He debated the issue for a moment, looking
back at the diner, then into the night. Out of the corner of his
eye, he saw signs of life. The victim’s fingers drummed the
concrete. Shave and a haircut, two bits . The body folded in
on itself, fetus-like, and then jackknifed open with alarming
speed. Charlie watched in amazement as the once-dead creature
rolled over on his back and started to rise, yawning and stretching
as he did so. His eyes fluttered open, showing rolled-up whites.
Charlie yelped in horror at the zombie-thing, now standing in a
crouch.
    “Do not be afraid. I’m here to help,” the
fellow said in a raspy voice crackling with static.
    “I’m not afraid,” Charlie claimed as a deep
chill swept through his body. “Just curious.”
    The guy he’d given up for dead held out his
arms as if to suppress applause, then coughed out smoke. Shaking
his head, he wavered unsteadily on his feet. He was short, with
long, unkempt, iron-gray hair, and looked old beyond his time, like
a wizened drug freak, scrawny old biker—or jazz trumpeter Chet
Baker near the end of his days. He removed his jacket and examined
the hole, which was bordered by a circular scorch mark. He sniffed
it, said a rueful goodbye, and tossed the garment over his back
into the Dumpster.
    The stranger staggered around briefly but
wouldn’t let Charlie touch him, contorting to avoid a helping
hand—as if he was an extraordinarily clumsy Neo dodging bullets in The Matrix . “You do not want a piece of me,” he
warned. “Not when I’m fully charged.”
    Charlie caught a whiff of the fellow and
nearly gagged at the stink of homelessness—and something worse. The
lightning must have triggered multiple excretory functions,
yielding a horribly vile stench that could knock out a skunk at
thirty paces.
    As he stood with mouth agape, the stranger
stared at Charlie with coal-black eyes. “What do you want, a
friggin’ wish for saving me?” He broke out cackling. “Go ahead.
Make my day.”
    Charlie, nonplussed, managed to say, “I
should call 911 and get help.”
    The stranger waved off the idea. “No cops.
We’ll handle this ourselves. That’s the rule.”
    Obviously, the guy’s brain was fried. Charlie
shook his head. “I’m confused. Didn’t you—”
    “Walk here? Yeah. ” He pointed toward the
Interstate. “From there. Nearly had a wreck. Truck driver saw some
fool asshole about to jump off the bridge and lost control of his
vehicle. My job to come in and save the guy. Trucker, that is. Used
all my power.”
    He looked at Charlie knowingly, but the fool
asshole had no response to that.
    “So I was looking for food,” the stranger
continued. “But it takes days to build up energy that way. Mighty
inefficient. Just when I’m feeling low—voltage, that is—I get
myself a charge, and I’m good to go. Circuit breaker boxes work
too, but you rarely get useful instructions from ’em. Less natural,
I guess you’d say. Plus, you don’t want to do what the power
company tells you, do you?” He studied Charlie’s blank face. “Well,
maybe you do. I don’t.”
    The rain started coming down harder. Charlie
shook his head and said, “Let’s get you out of the weather.”
    “Let’s get me out of this weather,” the
stranger agreed.
    “What I can’t get over is, is … how the hell
did you survive?”
    “Two things. Survival is never the issue for
me.”
    Charlie waited, but there was no second thing
coming. “OK,” he said. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. If they’ll
serve us, that is.” He bent down and picked up his jacket, which
now smelled of smoke and homelessness in addition to already being
tattered, with a busted zipper. He tossed it in the Dumpster to
keep the other jacket company and gestured for the stranger to
follow. The old fellow started walking. It appeared to be