Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow (ebook reader that looks like a book txt) 📖

a crust of
dried vomit. "And you're not going to stop me."

"You don't have a home," Alan said, pressing the hilt of the knife over
the wound in his bicep, the feeling like biting down on a cracked
tooth. "You're not welcome."

Davey was monkeyed over low, arms swinging like a chimp, teeth bared,
knees splayed and ready to uncoil and pounce. "You think you'll stab me
with that?" he said, jerking his chin at the knife. "Or are you just
going to bleed yourself out with it?"

Alan steadied his knife hand before him, unmindful of the sticky
blood. He knew that the pounce was coming, but that didn't help when it
came. Davey leapt for him and he slashed once with the knife, Davey
ducking beneath the arc, and then Davey had his forearm in his hands,
his teeth fastened onto the meat of his knife thumb.

Andre rolled to one side and gripped down hard on the knife, tugging his
arm ineffectually against the grip of the cruel teeth and the grasping
bony fingers. Davey had lost his boyish charm, gone simian with filth
and rage, and the sore and weak blows Alan was able to muster with his
hurt arm didn't seem to register with Danny at all as he bit down
harder.

Arnold dragged his arm up higher, dragging the glinting knifetip toward
Davey's face. Drew kicked at his shins, planted a knee alongside his
groin. Alan whipped his head back, then brought it forward as fast and
hard as he could, hammering his forehead into the crown of Davey's head
so hard that his head rang like a bell.

He stunned Davey free of his hand and stunned himself onto his back. He
felt small hands beneath each armpit, dragging him clear of the
hill. Brian. And George. They helped him to his feet and Breton handed
him the knife again. Darren got onto his knees, and then to his feet,
holding the back of his head.

They both swayed slightly, standing to either side of Chris's
rise. Alan's knife-hand was red with blood streaming from the bite
wounds and his other arm felt unaccountably heavy now.

Davey was staggering back and forth a little, eyes dropping to the
earth. Suddenly, he dropped to one knee and scrabbled in the dirt, then
scrambled back with something in his hand.

Marci's fist.

He waggled it at Andrew mockingly, then charged, crossing the distance
between them with long, loping strides, the fist held out before him
like a lance. Alan forgot the knife in his hand and shrank back, and
then Davey was on him again, dropping the fist to the mud and taking
hold of Alan's knife-wrist, digging his ragged nails into the bleeding
bites there.

Now Alan released the knife, so that it, too, fell to the mud, and the
sound it made woke him from his reverie. He pulled his hand free of
Davey's grip and punched him in the ear as hard as he could,
simultaneously kneeing him in the groin. Davey hissed and punched him in
the eye, a feeling like his eyeball was going to break open, a feeling
like he'd been stabbed in the back of his eye socket.

He planted a foot in the mud for leverage, then flipped Danny over so
that Alan was on top, knees on his skinny chest. The knife was there
beside Davey's head, and Alan snatched it up, holding it ready for
stabbing.

Danny's eyes narrowed.

Alan could do it. Kill him altogether dead finished yeah. Stab him in
the face or the heart or the lung, somewhere fatal. He could kill Davey
and make him go away forever.

Davey caught his eye and held it. And Alan knew he couldn't do it, and
an instant later, Davey knew it, too. He smiled a crusty smile and went
limp.

"Oh, don't hurt me, *please*," he said mockingly. "Please, big brother,
don't stab me with your big bad knife!"

Alan hurt all over, but especially on his bicep and his thumb. His head
sang with pain and blood loss.

"Don't hurt me, please!" Davey said.

Billy was standing before him, suddenly.

"That's what Marci said when he took her, 'Don't hurt me, please,'" he
said. "She said it over and over again. While he dragged her here. While
he choked her to death."

Alan held the knife tighter.

"He said it over and over again as he cut her up and buried her. He
*laughed.*"

Danny suddenly bucked hard, almost throwing him, and before he had time
to think, Alan had slashed down with the knife, aiming for the face, the
throat, the lung. The tip landed in the middle of his bony chest and
skated over each rib, going *tink, tink, tink* through the handle, like
a xylophone. It scored along the emaciated and distended belly, then
sank in just to one side of the smooth patch where a real person --
where Marci -- would have a navel.

Davey howled and twisted free of the seeking edge, skipping back three
steps while holding in the loop of gut that was trailing free of the
incision.

"She said, 'Don't hurt me.' She said, 'Please.' Over and over. He said
it, too, and he laughed at her." Benny chanted it at him, standing just
behind him, and the sound of his voice filled Alan's ears.

Suddenly Davey reeled back as a stone rebounded off of his
shoulder. They both looked in the direction it had come from, and saw
George, with the tail of his shirt aproned before him, filled with
small, jagged stones from the edge of the hot spring in their father's
depths. They took turns throwing those stones, skimming them over the
water, and Ed and Fred and George had a vicious arm.

Davey turned and snarled and started upslope toward George, and a stone
took him in the back of the neck, thrown by Freddie, who had sought
cover behind a thick pine that couldn't disguise the red of his
windbreaker, red as the inside of his lip, which pouted out as he
considered his next toss.

He was downslope, and so Drew was able to bridge the distance between
them very quickly -- he was almost upon Felix when a third stone, bigger
and faster than the others, took him in the back of the head with
terrible speed, making a sound like a hammer missing the nail and
hitting solid wood instead.

It was Ernie, of course, standing on Craig's highest point, winding up
for another toss.

The threesome's second volley hit him all at once, from three sides,
high, low, and medium.

"Killed her, cut her up, buried her," Benny chanted. "Sliced her open
and cut her up," he called.

"SHUT UP!" Davey screamed. He was bleeding from the back of his head,
the blood trickling down the knobs of his spine, and he was crying,
sobbing.

"KILLED HER, CUT HER UP, SLICED HER OPEN," Ed-Fred-George chanted in
unison.

Alan tightened his grip on the cords wound around the handle of his
knife, and his knife hand bled from the puncture wounds left by Davey's
teeth.

Davey saw him coming and dropped to his knees, crying. Sobbing.

"Please," he said, holding his hands out before him, palms together,
begging.

"Please," he said, as the loop of intestine he'd been holding in trailed
free.

"Please," he said, as Alan seized him by the hair, jerked his head back,
and swiftly brought the knife across his throat.

Benny took his knife, and Ed-Fred-George coaxed Clarence into a slow,
deep fissuring. They dragged the body into the earthy crack and Clarence
swallowed up their brother.

Benny led Alan to the cave, where they'd changed his bedding and laid
out a half-eaten candy bar, a shopping bag filled with bramble-berries,
and a lock of Marci's hair, tied into a knot.

#

Alan dragged all of his suitcases up from the basement to the living
room, from the tiny tin valise plastered with genuine vintage deco
railway stickers to the steamer trunk that he'd always intended to
refurbish as a bathroom cabinet. He hadn't been home in fifteen
years. What should he bring?

Clothes were the easiest. It was coming up on the cusp of July and
August, and he remembered boyhood summers on the mountain's slopes abuzz
with blackflies and syrupy heat. White T-shirts, lightweight trousers,
high-tech hiking boots that breathed, a thin jacket for the mosquitoes
at dusk.

He decided to pack four changes of clothes, which made a very small pile
on the sofa. Small suitcase. The little rolling carry-on? The wheels
would be useless on the rough cave floor.

He paced and looked at the spines of his books, and paced more, into the
kitchen. It was a beautiful summer day and the tall grasses in the back
yard nodded in the soft breeze. He stepped through the screen door and
out into the garden and let the wild grasses scrape over his thighs. Ivy
and wild sunflowers climbed the fence that separated his yard from his
neighbors, and through the chinks in the green armor, he saw someone
moving.

Mimi.

Pacing her garden, neatly tended vegetable beds, some flowering
bulbs. Skirt and a cream linen blazer that rucked up over her shoulders,
moving restlessly. Powerfully.

Alan's breath caught in his throat. Her pale, round calves flashed in
the sun. He felt himself harden, painfully. He must have gasped, or
given some sign, or perhaps she heard his skin tighten over his body
into a great goosepimply mass. Her head turned.

Their eyes met and he jolted. He was frozen in his footsteps by her
gaze. One cheek was livid with a purple bruise, the eye above it slitted
and puffed. She took a step toward him, her jacket opening to reveal a
shapeless grey sweatshirt stained with food and -- blood?

"Mimi?" he breathed.

She squeezed her eyes shut, her face turning into a fright mask.

"Abel," she said. "Nice day."

"Are you all right?" he said. He'd had his girls, his employees, show up
for work in this state before. He knew the signs. "Is he in the house
now?"

She pulled up a corner of her lip into a sneer and he saw that it was
split, and a trickle of blood wet her teeth and stained them pink.

"Sleeping," she said.

He swallowed. "I can call the cops, or a shelter, or both."

She laughed. "I gave as good as I got," she said. "We're more than
even."

"I don't care," he said. "'Even' is irrelevant. Are you *safe*?"

"Safe as houses," she said. "Thanks for your concern." She turned back
toward her back door.

"Wait," he said. She shrugged and the wings under her jacket strained
against the fabric. She reached for the door. He jammed his fingers into
the chain-link near the top and hauled himself, scrambling, over the
fence, landing on all fours in a splintering of tomato plants and
sticks.

He got to his feet and bridged the distance between them.

"I don't believe you, Mimi," he said. "I don't believe you. Come over to
my place and let me get you a cup of coffee and an ice pack and we'll
talk about it, please?"

"Fuck off," she said tugging at the door. He wedged his toe in it, took
her wrist gently.

"Please," she said. "We'll wake him."

"Come over," he said. "We won't wake him."

She cracked her arm like a whip, shaking his hand off her wrist. She