Free Chapter - the deaf can hear.

Here's a free chapter from the novella, THE BONE TRADERS #Amazon in which Joe meets up with the geriatric Hunters and solves a hearing problem. Hope you enjoy and, as always, feel free to comment.

Joe's website

Salvaged wind generators and the crooked, rotating blades of wind pumps greet The Sow as it transports Joe down the street in Erasmusville.

The midday sun is flat and ferocious. The few villagers that remain keep under whatever shade they can find. They stand glued to their spots like toy soldiers, basking in the half-light.

Joe climbs out of The Sow, the weary dust trail settling immediately like a tired mongrel. Joe makes for the crooked gate.

“Danya?”

His voice rings loud in the sullen silence of the village. “Danya...It’s me.”

Charles appears from a corner of the house, his shotgun levelled at Joe’s stomach. “Hiiiiii,” he teases, managing to curl his lips. “It’s me,” he adds, offering an exaggerated, womanly wave.

“So I see,” responds Joe. He hasn’t looked Charles in the eyes. Not yet.

“I’m going to shoot your balls off,” Charles informs him.

Joe takes out his cigarette case. “No you’re not.”

Charles giggles and sniffs. “I am, too.”

“Is Danya here?”

“You’ll never know.”

Joe now looks at Charles as he pulls a match from his coat pocket.

“Don’t look at me. Okay? I’m going to shoot your balls off...I SAID DON’T LOOK AT ME!”

“I’m not looking. Not really. Not yet.”

Then Joe lights the match, passing his hand over it, as he always does. The match flares. He lights his cigarette.

Charles has witnessed this. He is silent. “Holy crap,” he finally whispers.

“Is Danya in the house?”

Charles wipes his nose, and then nods, a little too eagerly.

Joe cautiously opens the door.

Sampson stands in the hallway, his shotgun aimed at Joe. The big man grins, his hearing aid prominent.

“You killed Dog,” Joe tells Sampson.

“I did what?”

Charles has moved behind Joe where he can see Sampson in the hallway.

“Shoot him. Go on. Shoot him,” Charles tells Sampson.

Sampson cocks his head. “What you say?”

“I said shoot him,” Charles yells.

Joe hasn’t shifted his position in the doorway. He exudes calmness. “You killed dog. You did. I know. Why?”

Joe is staring at Sampson now and already Sampson is wavering; his facial expression taking on the pallor of a man sick at sea.

“Just who or what the shit is Dog?” Charles asks.

Joe stares at Sampson, boring into him. “Dog was the bird, my bird.”

“What you gonna do, Sampson? Huh? Huh?” Charles asks Sampson, loudly.

“I don’t know...what you going to do? He’s looking at me again, Charles.”

Joe hasn't flinched.

“Hef - Hef he said to kill the bird. To make it go quiet,” Sampson finally admits, incapable of breathing regularly now.

“People like you started the senseless rot and the violence. People like you who should have cared.”

“I can’t hear you?”

Charles is dancing on his feet with nervousness. He knows it has all gone horribly wrong, that both he and Sampson are sinking in the quicksand Joe has managed to plant.

“I asked you where is Danya?”

“He lit a match! Oh shit...with his hand!” Charles sniffs from behind Joe, his eyes darting left and right.

“Where is she?” Joe again asks, this time louder, but still in control.

“Sky took her.”

“Took her where?”

“He said we were to meet at the canyon at sunrise...afterwards.”

“Afterwards...?”

Sampson fiddles with his hearing-aid: anything to avoid Joe’s presence. “After...after us...Charles, not me...was going to make it so’s you...you know...”

“No I don’t know...”

“Don’t tell him anything Sampson,” Charles yells from the background, his boots stirring the dust.

Sampson eyes the floor. “So’s you can’t breed no more,”  e tells Joe.

Joe steps closer to Sampson very quickly. “You killed my friend,” he says on the move, and then he slaps Sampson’s ear, the one without the hearing-aid. He slaps it with a full hand, palm in, and the blow rings out like a pistol shot.

And as Sampson yelps like a struck puppy, Joe is already striding off, past Charles and toward The Sow. Charles dodges out of Joe’s path, his feet numb with nervousness, and the shotgun as useless as the sudden air in his bowels.

Sampson, clasping his head, staggers out of the house.

“Sky is going to kill us...Sky is going to take our balls,” Charles whispers as he watches The Sow transport Joe away, not even wanting to question or deliberate the silence of the auto mobile. 

“Screw, Sky...”says Sampson.

Charles looks at his friend. “What did you say?”

“I said screw Sky, why?”

Before The Event, the breaking of dawn was a slow unveiling, like a chameleon changing colour, a chrysalis to butterfly – a slow realisation that day was impending.

This is the pace, the crawl, that realisation spreads across Sampson’s face. He pulls his hearing-aid away from his ear. He looks at it. He looks at Charles.

“Charles,” Sampson says quietly. “I can hear. He’s made it so I can hear.”