Truckers Read Free

rushing lights, the stars. Torrit said the stars were very important. Right at the moment, Masklin didn’t agree. You couldn’t eat them. They weren’t even much good for seeing by. The stars were pretty useless, when you thought about it. . . .
    Somebody screamed.
    Masklin’s body got to his feet almost before his mind had even thought about it, and sped silently through the scrubby bushes toward the burrow.
    Where, its head entirely underground and its brush waving excitedly at the stars, there was a dog fox. He recognized it. He’d had a couple of close shaves with it in the past.
    Somewhere inside Masklin’s head the bit of him that was really him—old Torrit had a lot to say about this bit—was horrified to see him snatch up his spear, which was still in the ground where he had plunged it, and stab the fox as hard as he could in a hind leg.
    There was a muffled yelp and the animal struggled backward, turning an evil, foaming mask to its tormentor. Two bright yellow eyes focused on Masklin, who leaned panting on his spear. This was one of those times when time itself slowed down and everything was suddenly more real. Perhaps, if you knew you were going to die, your senses crammed in as much detail as they could while they still had the chance. . . .
    There were flecks of blood around the creature’s muzzle.
    Masklin felt himself become angry. It welled up inside him, like a huge bubble. He didn’t have much, and this grinning thing was taking even that away from him.
    As the red tongue lolled out, he knew that he had two choices. He could run, or he could die.
    So he attacked instead. The spear soared from his hand like a bird, catching the fox in the lip. It screamed and pawed at the wound, and Masklin was running, running across the dirt, propelled by the engine of his anger, and then jumping and grabbing handfuls of rank red fur and hauling himself up the fox’s flank to land astride its neck and drawing his stone knife and stabbing, stabbing, at everything that was wrong with the world. . . .
    The fox screamed again and leaped away. If he had been capable of thinking, then Masklin would have known that his knife wasn’t doing much more than annoying the creature, but it wasn’t used to meals fighting back with such fury, and its only thought now was to get away. It breasted the embankment and rushed headlong down it, toward the lights of the highway.
    Masklin started to think again. The rushing of the traffic filled his ears. He let go and threw himself into the long grass as the creature galloped out onto the asphalt.
    He landed heavily and rolled over, all the breath knocked out of him.
    But he remembered what happened next. It stayed in his memory for a long time, long after he’d seen so many strange things that there really should have been no room for it.
    The fox, as still as a statue in a headlight’s beam, snarled its defiance as it tried to outstare ten tons of metal hurtling toward it at seventy miles an hour.
    There was a bump, a swish, and darkness.
    Masklin lay facedown in the cool moss for a long time. Then, dreading what he was about to see, trying not to imagine it, he pulled himself to his feet and plodded back toward whatever was left of his home.
    Grimma was waiting at the burrow’s mouth, holding a twig like a club. She spun round and nearly brained Masklin as he staggered out of the darkness and leaned against the bank. He stuck out a weary hand and pushed the stick aside.
    â€œWe didn’t know where you’d gone,” she said, her voice on the edge of hysteria. “We just heard the noise and there it was you should have been here and it got Mr. Mert and Mrs. Coom and it was digging at the—”
    She stopped and seemed to sag.
    â€œYes, thank you,” said Masklin coldly, “I’m all right, thank you very much.”
    â€œWhat—what happened?”
    He ignored her and trooped into the darkness of