Wolf Flow Read Free

worn round in back from working out on the accelerator and clutch pedals; it took him a moment to catch his balance when he stopped from the last chrome rung to the ground. From the open cab door above, the yellowed Robbins paperback and miscellaneous trash spilled and fluttered down.
        The trucker walked stiffly toward the rocks a few yards from the edge of the road. His spine felt as though it had been welded together into one straight rod. He was getting too old for this shit. Maybe-he'd been thinking about it a lot lately-maybe he could line up a dispatcher's job with some outfit. Sit in some air-conditioned office somewhere, letting his ass grow wide and horsing around with whatever divorcee did the bookkeeping… That'd be nice. A lizard peeped at him over the top of a rock, then scurried away, leaving an S-shaped trail in the dust.
        Over by the big rocks, he unbuttoned his fly. A little river formed at their base, flowing past the toe of his right boot. The piss rounded like a thin black snake, crawling a couple of feet before sinking into the dust. His bladder eased, signaling its gratitude. He looked around, scratching the side of his face with his free hand. He had time; this was a long one.
        He drew his squint down tighter when he spotted something lying by the side of the road, some twenty, thirty yards up from where he'd pulled the truck over. He couldn't make out what it was-just a shape sprawled out in the dirt-but he had a good idea. He'd come across shit like this before, out here. He finished his business, then did up his fly. He ambled toward the thing, whatever it was, in no hurry. It wasn't going anywhere.
        As he figured-some poor sucker had been laid out here. Or thrown out: there were skid marks in the gravel, leading up to the body. The guy's arms were spread out, his face cocked into the dirt, ankles bound together with rough jute rope, a loop of the same stuff dangling from one wrist. A fly lifted from one of the red and black patches on the face and buzzed angrily away as the trucker squatted down and rolled the body over on its back.
        The guy didn't look too good, but he was still alive. Barely. The trucker could see the shallow rise of the chest, and a bubble of red at the corner of the mouth. A young guy, though you could barely tell, he'd been worked over so good. He had on jeans-the bottom few inches of one leg seam ripped open, the denim fabric darkened where the blood had soaked through-and some kind of greenish shirt without a collar. The shirt's thinner fabric had torn, showing the bruises and abraded skin across the guy's ribs. It wasn't all from getting thrown out of a car. The guy had been in bad shape before he got here.
        The trucker stood back up. His shadow fell across the guy's face. The eyes in the battered face fluttered open. They looked up and pulled into focus for a moment, then drifted back into unconsciousness.
        "Hey." The trucker prodded the guy in the ribs with the toe of his boot. Likely a couple of cracked ribs there, at the least. Maybe the new pain would bring the guy around again. "Hey, you with us, buddy?" Another poke. "Knock-knock, anybody home?"
        He didn't get an answer. The eyes stayed closed, and the guy's shallow breathing slid over the red wetness filling his mouth.
        "Well, hell…" The trucker dug out his pocket knife, bent down and cut the rope around the man's ankles. The guy's feet-one bare except for a dirty white sock, the other with a scuffed Adidas running shoe on-flopped disjointedly, as though they were held to the rest of the body by nothing but the jeans legs.
        "Come on, buddy. Let's go for a walk." He pulled the guy upright by the arms, managing to get the body's limp weight onto his own shoulders. He held the wrists in front of his chest, with the arms draped across his neck. The guy's face, open-mouthed, with a string of red spittle dangling out, lolled against his head.