Barker, Clive - Books of Blood Vol. 4.pdf - ENG - Chlorella

THE

INHUMAN

CONDITION

Tales of Terror

Books of Blood, Volume IV

CLIVE BARKER

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to: Doug Bennett, who got me into Pentonville-and out again-in the same day

and later furnished me with his insights on prisons and the prison service; to Jim Burr, for

his mind's eye tour of White Deer, Texas, and for the New York adventures; to Ros Stanwell-

Smith, for her enthusiastic detailing of plagues and how to start them; and to Barbara

Boote, my tireless editor, whose enthusiasm has proved the best possible spur to invention.

CONTENTS

The Inhuman Condition

The Age of Desire

THE INHUMAN CONDITION

ARE YOU the one then?" Red demanded, seizing hold of the derelict by

the shoulder of his squalid

gabardine.

"What one d'you mean?" the dirt-caked face replied. He was scanning the

quartet of young men who'd cornered him with rodent's eyes. The tunnel where

they'd found him relieving himself was far from hope of help. They all knew it and

so, it seemed, did he. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You've been showing yourself to children," Red said.

Pope, the old man muttered. Mr. Pope.

Brendan grinned. "Mr. Pope?" he said. "Well, we heard you've been exposing

that rancid little prick of yours to innocent children. What do you say to that?"

"No," Pope replied, again shaking his head. "That's not true. I never done

nothing like that." When he frowned the filth on his face cracked like crazy

paving, a second skin of grime which Was the accrual of many months. Had it not

been for the fragrance of alcohol off him, which obscured the worst of his bodily

stench, it would have been nigh on impossible to stand within a yard of him. The

man was human refuse, a shame to his species.

"Why bother with him?" Karney said. "He stinks."

Red glanced over his shoulder to silence the interruption. At seventeen, Karney

was the youngest, and in the quartet's unspoken hierarchy scarcely deserving of an

opinion. Recognizing his error, he shut up, leaving Red to return his attention to

the vagrant. He pushed Pope back against the wall of the tunnel. The old man

expelled a cry as he struck the concrete; it echoed back and forth. Karney,

knowing from past experience how the scene would go from here, moved away

and studied a gilded cloud of gnats on the edge of the tunnel. Though he enjoyed

being with Red and the other two-the camaraderie, the petty larceny, the drinking-

this particular game had never been much to his taste. He couldn't see the sport in

finding some drunken wreck of a man like Pope and beating what little sense was

left in his deranged head out of him. It made Karney feel dirty, and he wanted no

part of it.

Barker, Clive - Books of Blood Vol. 4.pdf

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