Red Thunder Read Free Page A

no foot inside.
    Alicia knelt and shined the light under the truck. Kelly knelt beside her and worked her hand down into loose sand.
    She pulled up a bare foot, holding it by the little piggy that
stayed home, or maybe the one who had roast beef. A leg came up with
it, perfectly well attached to the foot. There weren't even any tread
marks on it.
    First you feel a wave of relief. Then you get angry. I wanted to kick him. What sort of jerk lies in the surf line in the dark?
    But I could almost hear my mother's voice.
Oh, yeah? What kind of jerk goes joyriding on the beach in the dark?
Okay, Mom. You're right, as usual.
    "Let's get him out of there," I said, and grabbed a foot. Dak took
the other and we slid him out, where he squinted up into Alicia's light.
    "This salt water ain't doing your undercarriage any good, hon," he said.
    "It's
my
undercarriage," Dak said.
    "Whatever," the guy said, and belched. Then he sort of passed out.
    I say "sort of" because he never went to sleep. He passed into an
alcoholic fog where he wasn't really connecting with what was
happening. He was docile as a baby, and in the morning he wouldn't
remember a thing. Right now he'd blow a perfect ten on the lush-o-meter.
    There's a good chance we saved his life. The tide could have easily
taken him out to sea where he'd drown without ever waking up.
    "What's your name, dude?" Dak was asking him.
    "This dude is down for the count, my friend," I said. "We'd better get him out of here before the crabs eat him."
    "Drag him back in the dunes?" Alicia suggested.
    "Worse than crabs back in the dunes," Dak said. "Passed-out guy could get raped back there in the dunes."
    "He'd never know it," Alicia said.
    "Maybe a certain soreness in the morning..." Dak rubbed his ass, and
we all laughed. Okay, so it wasn't so funny. I felt a little silly with
relief. You think about it, you realize how your whole life can change
in two seconds. We could have been gathered around a dead or dying man.
    Kelly might almost have been reading my thoughts.
    "We nearly killed him, don't you think we ought to try to take him home?"
    "And have him blow chunks all over my upholstery? Let him fight off the fairies his own self."
    "Gin doesn't come in chunks," Alicia said. She showed us an empty bottle of Tanqueray she had stumbled over.
    "Yeah? Say he ate one of those World Famous Astroburgers an hour ago." Dak nodded toward the bar in the distance.
    "Pretty good gin for a wino."
    "He's not a wino. He hasn't been sleeping in back alleys. Look at his clothes."
    It was true, the sneakers sold for well over a hundred dollars a
pair, and they looked new. The shirt and pants were expensive labels,
too.
    "And he don't drink wine, either," Dak said. "So what's that make him? A
gin
-o? Whatever, it don't make his vomit any sweeter."
    "So, we gonna take him home or not?"
    "Where's home?" Kelly asked.
    We all looked down at him again. He was still smiling, humming
something I didn't recognize. A wavelet hit him and eddied around our
feet, then sucked a little deeper hole under him as it ran back out.
That must have been how his legs got buried. An hour from now he'd be
under the sand, somebody else's problem. But none of us wanted that.
    So I reached down and grabbed the side of his pants and pulled him up a bit, then fished his wallet out of his hip pocket.
    It was hand-tooled leather and fairly thick. The first thing I saw
was the corner of a hundred-dollar bill sticking out. I opened it and
pulled out a wad of cash. I thrust it out to Dak, who looked startled
and took it. He counted it.
    "Eight hundred big ones," he said.
    "So take out a taxi fee and let's get him home."
    He handed the cash back to me. "What's eating you, anyway?"
    I didn't really know. Part of it was that I sure could have used the
money. Who would know? Certainly not this whacked-out jerk, lying there
pissed out of his mind.
    You'd know, Manuel,
Mom said. She had this annoying habit of speaking just as loudly when she wasn't