"Anthony Neil Smith - A Good Summer Job" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Anthony Neil)

A GOOD SUMMER JOB
By
Anthony Neil Smith

Ray drove the minivan down Highway 98, carrying the killer's body from the prison in Leakesville to a funeral home in Hattiesburg. The trip took an hour, so Ray tried to tune in a decent rock station on the radio. He settled for a little static overlapping the music. Better than nothing. Anything to take his mind off the dead man covered up on the stretcher behind him.

It was a good summer job, driving bodies between Hattiesburg and other cities in south Mississippi, dropping off, picking up. Ray got to see nice scenery: Hills and pine trees, worn down farm houses, churches of all types, some with hand painted signs and really long names.

He took his mind off the past year in college, the grade troubles, the problems with that Christina girl, his parents pressuring him to drop out of the frat and concentrate on the studies. He wasn't floating through like he planned, and Ray was beginning to think law school wasn't in his future anymore. He changed his major again. He didn't care.

Ray stayed in Hattiesburg over the summer in order to take a Chemistry course, one he'd failed twice and desperately needed a credit for in order to graduate eventually. His parents insisted he find a part time job. But what could he do? A store, maybe? Waste of time. Mow some lawns? Not with his allergies. Then he saw the ad in the paper, paraphrased to: Driver's needed. Must have strong stomach.

Hauling dead people. Ray was nervous at first, but he thought, How bad could it be? Not much could go wrong, except zombies, maybe. He remembered how to pray, which he had stopped doing mostly except holidays with the folks and that one night last semester when Christina told him she was pregnant. He tossed and turned, kept from crying so the frat brothers wouldn't see, and prayed that he would wake up dead. Or that Christina would wake up dead. But he was alive the next morning, called Christina, and told her he'd pay for an abortion. Told her he never wanted to see her again after that. Last he heard she'd dropped out of school and moved back to Alabama.

The road made a wide curve ahead, and Ray sang along with The Who: "See me, hear me, touch me, feel me." Turned it up loud, shifted in his seat, glanced in the rearview, and thought he saw the cover over the dead man move.

No, just nerves. An illusion. A bump in the road, he thought. Ray had been driving for eight weeks, and not one body had ever been alive. Well, there had been that heart attack victim who released some air from his lungs, and it came out as a moan. Scared Ray to death, and he pulled over quickly, jumped out running to the closest pay phone, where his supervisor assured him it was normal. The guy was still dead.

"What, you think he's come back to life or something? A vampire?" The boss asked.

"It could be demons, possession maybe. I've seen that before with live folks."

"Then get back there and cast it out of him. You're already late."

That's what Ray did, praying as best he knew how on the way back to the van, and he found the man just as dead. One of the morticians later told him what caused the noise. It hadn't happened since, but Ray still tried to distract his mind from whoever he was carrying.

It couldn't have moved, he thought, and he looked ahead to see a semi passing on the left. Ray had drifted too close to the center line and yanked the wheel right, hugged the edge of the road. He looked into the side mirror, saw only a few cars far behind, an old brown Chrysler holding up traffic.

There was a rustling, and Ray turned to the rearview in time to see the body definitely moving.

Eyes ahead. Nightmare, coming true. Try to concentrate on the road. He felt it move, felt it sit up. A hand gripped the back of Ray's seat, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw another hand on the passenger seat. Then the dead man in the white prison jumpsuit climbed into the seat beside Ray and stared at him. The van swerved as Ray's grip on the wheel tightened.

"Easy, boy, you're going to kill us. I didn't get this far to die in a car wreck," the dead man said.

Ray blinked and looked the man over. Wet hair, half a mustache, dirty skin. There was a stale odor Ray hadn't noticed until the guy got close. Terrible.

"It's not a car. It's a van."

"Whatever."

"I thought you were already dead, right?" Ray said.

The man laughed. "Sure was. It worked out great. I think the worst part was convincing the doctor, but I had practiced holding my breath all week. It was three in the morning, doctor was half asleep when he took my pulse, didn't find it. Almost like he wasn't trying. But hey, I'm a free man!" He shook his head. "I wonder what that stuff was the guard gave me. Amazing."

Ray watched the road ahead and saw that they had just passed New Augusta, only twenty miles from Hattiesburg. No more gas stations, only woods and houses and hills. Smashing Pumpkins was on the radio: "In you I look so pretty, In you I crash cars, We must never be apart." The criminal reached to his bare feet and untwisted the wire on his toe tag.

"They tell you about me?" he said.

"A little, that you died from an overdose or something." Ray didn't say he knew the guy had killed a teenage girl. Sliced her throat after raping her and left her behind a burger joint.