Books Should Be Free Loyal Books Free Public Domain Audiobooks & eBook Downloads |
|
Goodbye, Dead Man! By: Tom W. Harris |
---|
![]()
Goodbye, Dead Man! by Tom W. Harris
It was Orley Mattup's killing of the old lab technician that really made
us hate him. Mattup was a guard at the reactor installation at Bayless, Kentucky,
where my friend Danny Hern and I were part of the staff when the
Outsiders took everything over. In what god forsaken mountain hole they
had found Mattup, and how they got him to sell out to them, I don't
know. He was an authentic human, though. You can tell an Outsider. Mattup and Danny and I were playing high low jack the night Uncle Pete
was killed, sitting on the widewalk where Mattup had a view of the part
of the station he was responsible for. High low jack is a back country
card game; Danny had learned it in northern Pennsylvania, where he came
from, and Mattup loved the game, and they had taught it to me because
the game is better three handed. The evening sessions had been Danny's
idea I think he figured it might give him a line on Mattup. On the night in question, Mattup was on a week's losing streak and was
in a foul humor. He was superstitious, and he had called for a new deck
twice that evening and walked around his seat four different times. His
bidding was getting wilder. "You'd better cool down," Danny told him. "Thing to do is ride out the
bad luck, not fight it." Orley picked his nose and looked at his cards, "Bid four," he growled. Four is the highest possible bid. Tim played his cards well and he had
good ones. He had sewed up three of his points when we heard somebody
moving around down on the reactor floor. It was old Uncle Pete Barker,
one of the technicians. [Illustration] "What you want down there?" bawled Mattup. "Just left my cap by the control room," said Uncle Pete, "and thought
I'd go get it." "You keep the hell away from there," grunted Mattup. Uncle Pete stopped and stood gazing up at us. We went on playing. It was
the last card of the hand, and would either win the game for Mattup or
lose it for him. Orley slapped his card down; it was a crucial card, the
jack. Danny took it with a queen and Mattup had lost the game. I felt like clearing out. Mattup's face was purple and his eyes looked
like wolves' eyes. He glared at Danny, making a noise in his throat, and
then I saw his gaze leave Danny and go to something down by the reactor. It was Uncle Pete, shuffling along toward the control room. Mattup didn't say a word. He stood up and unholstered the thing the
Outsiders had given him and pointed it at Uncle Pete. There was a
ringing in our ears and Uncle Pete began to twist. Something inside him
twisted him, twisting inside his arms, his legs, head, trunk, even his
fingers. It was only for a few seconds. Then the ringing stopped, and
Uncle Pete sunk to the ground, and there was the silence and the smell. Mattup made us leave the body there until we had played two more hands.
Danny won one; he was a man with good nerves. When we were back in our
room he said, "That did it I'm going to get that guy." "I hate his big thick guts," I said, buttoning my pajama shirt, "but how
are you going to get him?" "I'll get him," said Danny. "Meanwhile, we'll keep playing cards." Things went on almost normally at the Bayless reactor. It was a
privately owned pool type reactor, and we were sent samples of all sorts
of material for irradiation from all over the country. Danny was one of
the irradiation men; I generally handled controlling. The Outsiders had
filled the place with telescreens and guards, and all mail was opened,
but there was no real interference with the work. I began to worry a
little about Danny. Almost every afternoon he spent an hour alone in our
room, with the door closed. Mattup kept getting worse; an animal with power. He used to go hunting
with the damnable Outsider weapon, although the meat killed with it
wasn't fit to eat, and he used it on birds until there wasn't one left
anywhere near the plant... Continue reading book >>
|
Genres for this book |
---|
Science |
Short stories |
eBook links |
---|
Wikipedia – Tom W. Harris |
Wikipedia – Goodbye, Dead Man! |
eBook Downloads | |
---|---|
ePUB eBook • iBooks for iPhone and iPad • Nook • Sony Reader |
Kindle eBook • Mobi file format for Kindle |
Read eBook • Load eBook in browser |
Text File eBook • Computers • Windows • Mac |
Review this book |
---|