After the Bite Read Online Free

the revolver out,” Jack said in the living room. He looked out the window to make sure nothing had followed them, and saw only the empty street.
    “It ’s pretty old,” Henry said. “I hope it still works.”
    “It probably works better than a broken baseball bat,” Jack said. The y made their way to their father’s closet.
    “It ’s on the top shelf,” Henry said. “In a little black box.”
    Jack found the box, barely reachable, and lowered it from the shelf. He opened it, and there lay the revolver, as well as a few boxes of ammo.
    “Know how to load it?” Henry asked.
    “I think so,” Jack said. He took the gun from the box and opened the chamber, which was more difficult than it looked in the various TV shows or movies or games he’d seen. He loaded it with six rounds and tried to close the chamber. It didn’t move at first, so he pushed harder. The chamber snapped shut, and the gun fell from his hand and onto the floor. It fired, and Jack flinched at the deafening sound and kept his eyes sealed shut as he felt drops of warm liquid splash his face.
    The next few seconds were a blur.
    He opened his eyes, unable to breathe, unable to hear, wishing he was unable to see. There lay Henry with a large chunk of his head missing, slumped against the wall. One of his eyes was gone and the other was open, staring forward at nothing, to Jack it looked permanently accusing. A trail of blood ran down the wall from a splatter where the bullet had entered Henry’s head, and bits of blood and bone and brain were everywhere.
    Jack screamed. He couldn ’t hear himself for the longest time, but it didn’t matter. He cradled his brother’s body, hated himself for this thing, this stupid, pointless thing. He wanted everything to be all right; he wanted to gather the bits of brain and bone, scrape them back up and put them together, to believe that Henry would be okay if he held it long enough. But he knew it was too late, and in a way had always been too late. His brother was gone, his family and his hope and his life and that day at the river and the closeness that had followed were all gone, left summarized by a stain on the wall of his parents’ bedroom.
    Jack grabbed the revolver and put it to his head. He didn ’t hesitate to pull the trigger and be with Henry, but nothing happened. The fall had broken the gun, the hammer wouldn’t move and the trigger wouldn’t pull all the way. Jack threw it across the room, still screaming. He held his brother’s body, rocking back and forth, and screamed until he couldn’t, and then he cried, and then he sobbed, and eventually he fell asleep.
     
    ****
     
    A few days went by before Jack felt like he had gotten a hold on himself, though he knew deep down that he never really would. He made no sound, he ate very little and drank even less, and he thought about everything.
    He wrapped Henry ’s body in the bedsheets that had adorned Henry’s bed for as long as he could remember. Very carefully, he carried his brother’s body out of the house, across the yard, and all the way to the river.
    When he got there, he stepped into the water. It only came up to his waist, now. He let Henry ’s body float on top of the water, holding it with an almost taunting ease.
    “Brothers until death,” he said. It was his final goodbye, and he stood in the water long after he could no longer see that angelic white figure floating on it, long after his brother had gone down the river and disappeared.
    “You won ’t,” he said. “You won’t disappear.”
    When Jack got back home, he found an empty notebook and a pen, and he began to write. Finally he had something worth writing. He wouldn ’t let Henry disappear, wouldn’t let the bloodstain on the wall be the summary of his brother’s life, or of his own.
    At the top of the paper, he began.
     
    The River: The Story of My Brother
     
    I t didn’t matter that what he wrote wouldn’t make him any money. He had finally found his