Wolf Flow by K. W. Jeter

smoke?"
        "You did, huh." Aitch still looked disgusted.
        "Gave it up-'cause of the smell, and all the other stuff. The first time I woke up in the morning, went to the bathroom, and coughed up a big yellow wad in the sink-looked like some kinda prop from a horror movie-I said that's it. No more for me. The way I quit, this old guy I used to know told me how to do it. It was the same way he'd gotten himself off pills."
        "Yeah? What's that?"
        Charlie lifted a forefinger off the wheel. "What you gotta do is, you take all the stuff you don't want to do any more, like the pills or the cigarettes, and you throw 'em in the toilet, and you watch it all go down. Then you go out and get some more of it-you go out and buy more-and you take it home and flush that. And you keep doing that until you don't want the stuff any more." He took his hand from the wheel and used the finger to tap the side of his head. "See, what it does, it makes a connection in your brain between that stuff and shit. Shit goes in the toilet. That's what it's for. And who wants shit? You know?"
        Aitch turned his head and looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded. "That's very good. That's smart. Lucky for us, the people we deal with aren't that smart." He slumped back in the seat, gazing back out the side window.
        It'd been the longest spiel he'd ever had, talking with Aitch. Usually he didn't say that much, at least not all in one go. But he'd wanted to change the subject, get Aitch off all that b.s. about skeletons-Mike's bleached bones-and stuff. That was sick.
        He glanced over at Aitch. The man was thinking, whatever it was he thought about when he shut up and his eyelids came halfway down.
        "Maybe…" Aitch's voice came from far away. "Maybe we could go out there and put like chicken wire over him. So the coyotes wouldn't get to him." Shit, thought Charlie. The guy never let up.
        

EIGHT
        
        Mike lay on the building's verandah, his back against the boards over the door. It had been so hot and airless inside, the sun making the place into an oven, that he'd had the kid drag him out there. Along with the water that was left in the thermos, and the big bottle of Pepsi. He'd nearly finished them both. He'd lost a lot of fluid, both from the beating and then from the hours he'd been lying unconscious at the roadside.
        The sloping roof over the verandah-it ran all the way across the long front of the building and turned the corner to the side-had shaded him. What breeze there had been brought a faint sulfur smell from, he supposed, the pond he could just see out at the side of the lane. It probably had some kind of mineral content, fed from underground. That was why it hadn't evaporated away in this heat.
        On other hot days, long ago-he'd drowsed, thinking about it-the people in the wheelchairs, with their nurses behind them, must have stationed themselves up here in the shade, watching the young women playing badminton.
        Or would they have played, in that kind of heat? Maybe just strolled about, with parasols trimmed with lace to match their dresses. And those little straw hats with blue ribbons, that sat up on top of their hair. A pretty picture. With his eyes closed, he'd almost been able to see it.
        After sunset, the temperature had started to fall. The kid-Doot, whatever-had pulled Mike's green scrub shirt back on him, working it over his useless arm. The kid had also hauled out one of the blankets, though Mike hadn't seen the point of it at the time. Now he was glad the kid had done it. He managed to wrap it around his shoulder, crouching forward into the well of his own body warmth. The kid lived out here, he was part of this world; he knew what it was like.
        The kid had had other things to take care of, all of his little scooting-around errands. Skinny kid; he looked like a scarecrow in faded denim, with yellow hair sticking out