Less Than Human Read Free Page A

ribs, John could feel his mind merging with Joey's mind. He knew everything the boy knew, his deepest wishes, his darkest fears. It was fragments for the most part, pieces of nightmare coupled with dim memories. This man who held Joey in his arms was watching the boy die. And enjoying it.
    John Warrick separated from the man, separated from himself and became Joey Estevez as he was drawn down… into the dying boy's nightmare… as… Joey watched the rats crawl from the gutted dog. He knew they had seen him.
    It was impossible they could have found him so soon, yet somehow, they had. More of them spilled from the fire-gutted house on the corner. Just a few at first. But in seconds, the place was swarming with them and they watched him from the stoop, making no effort to hide, jostling each other like a crowd of anxious spectators at a parade.
    Joey would have laughed if he wasn't so scared.
    Agitation swept through their midst as though they were… expecting him, and Joey felt he should know why they had come, why they were after him. The answer taunted, an elusive secret that danced beyond his grasp, tantalizing him with its nearness, whispering words he couldn't quite hear.
    Joey felt the weight of their eyes as he moved past. His legs pistoned, a sharp turn, and the rats disappeared from sight.
    He listened for sounds of pursuit.
    All he heard was the rain drumming its fingers across the rooftops.
    And the jackhammer of his heart.
    Few people were on the streets at this late hour of the night. A man with an empty shirtsleeve pinned to his shoulder leaned against a street lamp and drank from a bottle in a brown paper bag. He began dancing, a demented Gene Kelly who stopped now and then to gesture, to whisper vague threats to companions who existed only in his mind. A hooker limped by on her way home, oblivious of the rain, cradling five-inch spike heels in one hand, a glowing cigarette in the other.
    "You better lay off that shit, Luke," she called out to the dancer. "It'll make you crazy."
    A cab cruised down the puddle-filled street, drowning the man's laughter beneath the hiss of tires.
    No one saw Joey, who was dressed in black, from his leather jacket down to the Air Jordans that hugged his feet. The dark clothes made him one more shadow on a street of shadows, and if you were a thief and hustler, that's the way it had to be.
    Especially if you were only fifteen.
    He'd been out, taking care of business. Now he was on his way home.
    Home—
    What a joke that was. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to have a real honest-to-god home, the kind that came with parents who made you eat all the vegetables on your plate, who made you do your homework, who beat your ass when you stayed out too late.
    Who said they loved you.
    A vacant smile replaced the sneer. That dream had become ancient history when a doctor up at County had walked out into a waiting room and told him his mama had OD'ed. Joey remembered a dirty white jacket and empty blue eyes that looked right through him. The guy said it like he was talking about the fucking weather. Hey kid, it's going to rain today; hey kid, don't forget your umbrella; and by the way, kid, your mama used to be a junkie but now your mama's dead.
    Before she made love to the needle for the final time, she had laid a curse on him. She made him swear he would find his dad and get him off the booze.
    Last month he'd managed to keep his promise, even though it had been by accident. Still it had been something of a tearful reunion—the old bastard had caught him on the nose with a wine bottle while Joey had been going through his pockets in an alley over on Collins.
    Joey had been about to carve his initials on some unwashed skin when something in the old man's voice had stopped him. The foulmouthed swearing had a familiar ring.
    They were together now, him and the old man, doing their best to get by. Joey did whatever he had to in order for them to eat: shoplifting, purse snatching,