Blood Lite III: Aftertaste by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Anthologies (Multiple Authors), Horror, Fiction, American, Humorous Fiction, Horror Fiction, General, Short Stories
ISBN: 9781451636246
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2012-05-29T05:00:00+00:00

Short Term

DANIEL PYLE

Henderson checked for dogs before hopping the privacy fence: no little wooden house, no sleeping mound of fur chained to a stake, no evidence of feces in the grass. Probably no dog. Probably safe.

He straddled the slats for a second before dropping into the yard and winced when he landed and his legs buckled beneath him.

Easy, Gramps. You’re not exactly in your fence-hopping prime.

Which was true, but not the whole truth. He might not have been as spry as he used to be, but he had plenty of hopping left in him. Plenty of invading. And plenty of what came after.

He grinned.

If there were motion-activated lights, Henderson didn’t see them. He took a few steps into the yard. When nothing happened, he crept the rest of the way to the back door and crouched by the knob.

His knees cracked. He ignored them. His back groaned. He told it to shut the fuck up.

Before he took his tools from his back pocket, he tried the knob. You wouldn’t believe how often breaking into a place was only a matter of opening the door and letting yourself in. For the most part, midwesterners were honest, down-to-earth, trusting people.

In other words: idiots.

The knob turned just a little and caught. Locked.

Henderson reached for his kit.

The lock was old looking, cheap. He pulled a torsion wrench and a rake pick from his pouch but didn’t touch the hook pick. No need to get too fancy for a piece of junk like this. He could have picked it with his fingernails.

Half a minute later, give or take—not a record, but not too terrible when you considered how shaky his hands had gotten in the last few years—the lock disengaged and the knob spun.

Piece of cake. He jammed the tool kit back into his pocket.

Somewhere nearby, sirens wailed.

He let go of the knob and hunkered against the house. No one in the street would have had much chance of seeing him back here, behind the house and the privacy fence and buried in the shadows, but he hadn’t gotten this far in life by taking unnecessary chances. No, sir.

While he waited for the sirens to fade into the distance—fifteen seconds, thirty, maybe a full minute—he stared into the dark yard and listened to himself breathe. The silence that came when the emergency vehicles finally drove out of earshot surprised him almost as much as the initial burst of noise had, and he rubbed at his temples.

He waited another minute and then fought his creaking joints to a standing position.

Okay, where was I?

The lock was old looking, cheap. Before he reached for his tool kit, he tried the knob (it never hurt to go for the obvious option first). It twisted in his hand, and the door swung open.

Idiots.

He pushed the door open just far enough to let himself through and crept inside.

A small emergency light plugged into an outlet on the far wall provided him with enough illumination to see where he was going. The room seemed to be some sort of makeshift office.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.