Deadside in Bug City Read Online Free Page A

customer, you rag-head goat fucker.”
    The storekeeper did some more sputtering, finally getting out the words: “I call nine-one-one.” He had the phone in his hand and was holding it like a weapon.
    Joe was close enough to Rat Face to smell his stench, and his stomach did a rollover, sending a hot surge of bile up his throat. He decided to get the hell out of there and do his cigarette shopping elsewhere, but as he took his first step toward the door, Rat Face planted his filthy thick-knuckled hand in the center of Joe’s chest and stopped him.
    “Hold up, Bubba,” said Rat Face, “you’re my witness. You see this guy threatening me wid dat phone?”
    The Pakistani started punching digits, but before he hit the third number, Rat Face reached over the counter and snatched the phone away, laughing. It was a dirty, rumbling sound, like the thunder of hot-rods on a dusty drag strip.
    Joe found his voice and said, “Let’s just—”
    “You son of a bitch,” Rat Face spat, dropping the phone. He was talking to the storekeeper who had pulled a pistol from under the counter and was pointing it at him.
    There was a long nerve-wracking moment of thick silence.
    Rat Face stared at the Pakistani. The Pakistani stared back. Joe’s eyes went back and forth between the two men faced off across the counter.
    The air-conditioner hummed.
    Up on Holy Cross Hill, the iron bell in the belfry of the forsaken church continued its somber tolling. Who’s ringing that damn bell? Joe wondered.
    Then the door opened, the cowbell clatter-clanked and a girl in cutoff jeans and a skimpy halter-top sauntered into the store. She didn’t look toward the three men frozen at the counter, but went straight toward the refrigerated beer on the back wall of the Jiffy-Quick.
    “Your damn Skippy,” said Rat Face, smiling at the man with the gun.
    Joe took a second to wonder what the hell that meant, then he moved on to the real question: Is somebody going to get shot?
    “Give me the phone,” the Pakistani demanded. He had the pistol’s muzzle zeroed on the longhair’s chest.
    “Fuck you, come get it,” said Rat Face.
    The girl in the red halter-top pulled a six-pack of brew from the fridge, let the glass door shut with the sound of a smacking kiss, then turned toward the counter and froze when she saw the gun in the storekeeper’s hand.
    Joe shook his head, trying to signal her away. But her wide eyes never left the gun. Joe’s eyes drifted down to her jaunty breasts. The cold air in the store had puckered her nipples and they poked against the thin halter-top, tweaking the single-minded little soldier in Joe’s pants. The little trooper’s helmet nosed against Joe’s zipper, unmindful of mortal danger.
    “You think I will not shoot you?” the incredulous storekeeper asked Rat Face.
    “You ain’t got the balls, sand monkey.” Rat Face sneered, flashing his gapped teeth.
    Outside, the church bell kept up its ponderous bonging.
    Joe had had enough. He was not going to be hostage to this tableau of macho craziness. He moved toward the girl with the six-pack. She finally tore her eyes from the gun and fixed them on Joe as he walked toward her. “We have to go,” he said simply, softly.
    She gave him a questioning look, then glanced down at the six-pack of beer in her hand. She had a hard-edged prettiness that reminded Joe of a country & western singer he couldn’t quite put a name to. She was probably in her mid-twenties, with bottle-blonde hair and a tight little body. If he had to guess, he’d say she lived in the run-down tenement building off Old Boston Road, two blocks from where they now stood in dangerous limbo. She looked up at Joe again.
    “Forget the beer,” he said. “We gotta go.”
    She nodded. She put the beer on top of a stack of soup cans, keeping a wary eye on the two men at the cashier’s counter.
    Joe took her hand and they walked toward the door like a pair of mismatched lovers.
    The pop of the gunshot made