Authors: Joe Hill

Wolverton Station (4 page)

BOOK: Wolverton Station

4.05Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

“Best’un in town. Also the only’un. But if I’d known that’s where you wanted me to drive you, I wouldn’t have taken the fare. It’s easier walking, see?”

“I’ll pay you triple your usual rate. I’ve got plenty of money. I’m the richest man that’s ever sat in this fucking cab.”

“Isn’t this my lucky day,” said the driver. The ignorant country moron had no idea Saunders had just almost been torn apart. “So what happened to your regular chauffeur?”

“What?”

Saunders didn’t understand the question; in truth, he hardly registered it, was distracted. They had stopped at a light, and Saunders happened to look out the window. Two teenagers stood necking on the corner. They had a couple dogs with them, who stood at their sides, whisking their tails nervously back and forth, waiting for the kids to get done kissing and start walking again. Only there was something wrong with those two kids. The taxi was moving again before Saunders figured out what it was. Those tails, fretfully whisking from side to side—Saunders hadn’t actually spotted the dogs attached to them. He wasn’t sure there had been any dogs there at all.

“Where is this?” Saunders asked. “Where am I? Is this Foxham?”

“We isn’t anywheres near Foxham, sir. Upper Wolverton, this is,” said the driver. “Which is what they call it because ‘The Middle of Nowhere’ don’t sound as good. Edge of the known world, really.”

He eased the cab to the end of the next block and swung in at the curb. There was a pub on the corner, big plate-glass windows, bright squares of gold in the darkness, steamed over with condensation on the inside. Even shut into the backseat of the cab, Saunders could hear the noise from within. It sounded like an animal shelter.

A small knot of people loitered outside the front door. A carved and painted wooden sign, bolted to the stone beside the door, showed a crowd of wolves standing on their hind legs gathered around a table. In the center of the table was a great silver platter, with an assortment of pale human arms laid upon it.

“Here you go,” said the cabdriver, turning his head to look into the rear. His snout moved close to the glass that separated the front seat from the back and breathed a filmy white mist on it. “You can make your call here, I ’spect. Have to fight your way through a bit of a crowd, I’m afraid.” He made a low chuckling sound that Saunders supposed was meant to be laughter, although it sounded more like a dog trying to cough up a hairball.

Saunders did not reply. He sat in the black leather seat, staring at the crowd outside the door of the Family Arms. They were staring back. Some of them were walking toward the cab. Saunders decided not to make any sound when they pulled him out. He had learned in Kashmir how to hold on to silence, and if he was strong, he would only need to hold on to it for about a minute and a half, and then it would be holding on to him.

“Good little mum-and-pop place, this is,” his driver told him. “They serve up a right fine dinner in here, they do. And you know what, mate? I think you’re just in time for it.”

A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE

Note: The first draft of “Wolverton Station” was written entirely while I was riding English trains—the first part on the rails from London to Liverpool, the second while en route from Liverpool to Manchester, and the conclusion on the Manchester–Nottingham line. The author wishes to thank the people of England for not devouring him while he toured their country.

—Joe Hill, April 15, 2010

A
BO
UT THE
A
UTHOR

Joe Hill
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the novels
NOS4A2, Horns
,
and
Heart-Shaped Box,
and the prizewinning story collection
20th Century Ghosts
. He is also the Eisner Award–winning writer of an ongoing comic book series,
Locke & Key
. You can learn more at www.joehillfiction.com, or follow Joe on Twitter, where he goes by the inspired handle of @joe_hill.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

20th Century Ghosts
(story collection)

Graphic Novels

Locke & Key, Volumes 1–6

with Gabriel Rodríguez (IDW Publishing)

C
RED
ITS

Cover design and illustration by Adam Johnson

C
OPYRIGHT

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

“Wolverton Station” originally appeared in
Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy,
April 2011, published by Subterranean Press.

WO
LVERTON STATION.
Copyright © 2011 by Joe Hill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIR
ST EDITION

EPub Edition JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780062341594

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A
BOUT THE
P
UBLISHER

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

http://www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor