That’s when the kids had started getting mean, and she’d noticed one of them toying with Bubba’s wallet. Hand-tooled, edged with rawhide thread, made in Mexico, image of a sleepy peon leaning on a hitching rail; she’d’ve known it anywhere. “That’s my husband’s wallet! I thought I heard someone in the house! Why you little sneaks, you came in the back door and stole it off the kitchen table! I told that man a thousand times he’d forget his head if it wasn’t attached, went into town without his—give it to me!”

  “Sure!” Louis had thrown it at her face. It had hit her smack in the cheek. Almost crying with fury, she’d picked it up off her lap and looked into it. Empty. They’d paid her with her own money. Well, with Bubba’s drinking money.

  “You little bastards! Where are your parents?”

  “Fuck you, you old crip!” Clement had yelled. They’d howled with laughter at that.

  She’d picked up one of the aluminum grabbers Bubba used for handling the snakes and swung it at them. Louis had pulled it from her, and as the others chivvied her into a corner with the pickax head from the prospector exhibit, Louis had climbed onto a wooden box, pushed the top off a terrarium, used the grabber to snatch up a couple of scorpions, come over and waved them in her face, just out of reach of those stingers.

  Giggling.

  What was wrong with these kids?

  They’d used the scorpion to keep her still, found the cord, tied her up, moved her to the edge of the Injun Snake Pit, taking turns guarding her and bringing snakes and scorpions and tarantulas over and tossing them in.

  The room was dark, the light had burned out here and Bubba hadn’t replaced it because they never used the Snake Pit anymore. Wooden, cobwebby walls, tin roof, dirt floor, rim around the pit, ten foot deep, twelve feet across. One of the boys had a flashlight and sometimes he went to the edge and looked in with the flashlight and whistled. The light brought a hissing, rustling from below.

  She tried to keep calm, tried to think her way out of it. All she had was her brain, her voice. “You kids think about this: Bubba, he’s gonna realize he left his wallet here, right? He’s gonna come back here. That’s his drinkin’ money. He’s coming back for it for sure. He carries a gun. Big one.’

  “Lying old biddy cripple,” Terry said. “He didn’t have a gun.”

  Rustling, dry rustling, below. “What?” She stared at the boy.

  “He didn’t have shit,” Terry said. “Clement hit him onna head with a rock and he fell down and then we dragged him back here.”

  They pushed her right to the rim, and shone the light in.

  “He was alive when we dragged him in, before we went up to the house,” Louis said. “But now since we dropped the snakes and stuff in, God, looka that, lady, he’s all swollen up and blue. Pus coming out of his eyes. God. You used to kiss that guy? Yuck.”

  “Make her kiss him some more,” Clement said.

  “No!” Terry said. “Wait!”

  But Louis had already pushed the lever on the control and the goddamn machine that didn’t work half the time chose this moment to work, to roll neatly to the edge and pitch down.

  “Bubba!”

  She fell across him. She didn’t even try to crawl out. She knew it was useless. They didn’t start in stinging and biting her right away. She’d scared them back, some. But after a moment they moved in, rustling, hissing, rattling, chirring, and she felt the bitter smack of their strikes in her meaty places and in a breast, her ankles.

  It took her a surprisingly long time to die, and through the waves of nausea, pain, cramps, and paralysis, she had time to hear the boys arguing, one of them shouting,

  “You shouldn’t have pushed her in! I wanted to play with her awhile first!”

  And the other one saying. “Never mind that. Let’s get the grabber things and that leather bag. The town’s only a little ways away.”

  Then the final wave of pain came rolling in, and the rest of the exhibits closed over her, so that at last she knew what it felt like to be a white mouse.

  “I thought you said you could start that thing!” Perry said, hissing it between clenched teeth as he fought to hold the torn flaps together. He was in the backseat; she was in the front, lying across the seats, head under the dashboard. He’d pulled the jeep’s convertible top over them and put up the windows, but the Gray Pilots were pulling on it, tearing it with their invisible grip, unable to reach through it efficiently, it seemed, but shredding it around them.

  The buzzing was so loud it made him shake. The windows began to crack; there was an engine sound, a thrumming, as she got the car started. At the same time, accompanying a voiceless howl of frustration, the roof split down the middle. The buzzing—

  The car wrenched itself away from its tormentors and whipped out into the street, did a squealing U-turn, burned rubber, and roared down the road. The buzzing receded. After a moment she remembered to turn on the lights.

  He leaned back in the passenger seat and put his hand on her shoulder. He felt it shaking under his fingers. She shrugged him off, and he glimpsed tears making snail tracks on her cheeks.

  “I just want to get there,” she said, her voice breaking. “I just want to fucking get there.”

  “Where we’ve got to get is the hell away from Jasper.”

  “I’m not going anywhere till I see Uncle Marv.”

  “Your uncle and my aunt. God. Where is she? I can’t stand the idea of going back to Sandra’s but—”

  “No way, Perry.”

  She slung the car into a sloppy left turn, down a side road.

  “Where are you—”

  “That party she was going to. Those people live out here. It’s near here, so we can swing by, but no way I’m going back to Sandra’s.”

  She slowed for a series of winding curves leading up into the hills. On one brief stretch of straightaway, a car approached in the opposite lane. Perry squinted at it. “I don’t think that car’s got its lights—”

  The car swerved at them. A Volvo sedan, dark except for the reflection of the jeep’s lights, swerving at them like an animal taking a swipe, gouging at their fender. Metal squealed, sparks flew, tires screamed as the jeep fishtailed with the glancing impact. Perry, gripping the seat with white fingers, heart hammering, glimpsed a dark face in the other vehicle; the man looked Arab, or perhaps Iranian. And then it had swept past them, having rent the side of the jeep. Lois had kept them on the road, just barely.

  Perry looked over his shoulder, afraid the car would turn and follow them, try to kill them again. But it continued on, and merged with the darkness.

  “Jesus,” Lois said. “Jesus. I don’t know how much more I can—I don’t think I can—” She broke off, shaking her head.

  “We have to just get through it,” Perry said. “We just have to be careful and last it out and try not to feel anything at all. We can’t feel anything about the stuff we’re going to see.”

  “Big masculine voice of calm, don’t worry, ma’am, everything’s under control!” She was breaking down. He could hear it in her voice. The car was unsteady in the lane.

  “I’m just as scared as anybody. But I know the only thing to do is—”

  “Oh, shut up. Here’s the house.” She turned up a new, narrow strip of blacktop that curved through a screen of bushes.

  “Shit!” Perry burst out.

  A column of flame shifted ponderously into view as they drew around the curve and pulled up in front of the burning house; the house rippled in the blaze of its own destruction, consumed in blue and golden flame. There was an overturned sports car blocking the front way out of the drive. They’d come by the back, the drive curving up from the road, then back to it. Perry saw the slashed, oozing body of a woman in the front yard.

  After a chilling moment, Perry realized it wasn’t his Aunt June or Sandra. This was a much stouter woman than either.

  Shading his eyes against the flame, Perry looked around.

  “Sandra’s car isn’t here. God, I hope Aunt June got out with her.”

  “I’m getting the fuck out.”

  Lois put the car into reverse and, her face set grimly, turned to look over her shoulder as she backed down the drive.

  “Lois, I should look for her.”

  “If she’s here, she’s dead.”

  Perry bit off his reply. She backed down the driveway into the road and headed back the way they’d come.

  “Where we going now?”

  “Shut up.”

  There was no real malice in her voice. He had the feeling she just couldn’t deal with answering questions.

  They found the main highway, and in five minutes more they reached a gravel road. They turned right onto it—

  And stopped abruptly, with teeth-jarring suddenness.

  Three dark men stood in the road, blinking in the blaze from the headlights, all of them with guns pointed at the jeep.

  “That’s Joe Berries!” Lois said with relief as she pointed at a white-haired old man in the middle. She opened the door of the jeep, leaving it idling in park.

  “Lois wait; they could be infected! They could be changed!” He grabbed at her. But she’d piled out, run up to them.

  What do I do now, if they attack her? Perry thought. Got no weapons, except the jeep.

  He climbed in front and into the driver’s seat. Thinking: Start the jeep, drive it into them, slowly, force them away from her.

  He shifted gears, but then stomped the brake as he saw her run back to him. She got in beside him. “He’s not here. He left with his sons and some other guys to look for me and to go to the sheriff’s office, try to use the sheriff’s radio. He’ll probably look for me over to your place. Sandra’s.”

  She was panting, barely getting the words out.

  “Shit. Looks like we got to go back there. Aunt June’ll probably head there too. But I don’t want to.”

  “Perry. Like I told you before, I don’t want to either. But fuck. We have to. Just drive. Okay?”

  He thought about the corpse in the tub. “Shit.” He thought about the pilots, maybe still hovering around the house. “Fuck.” He thought about Aunt June. He sighed and put the car in reverse. “Okay.”

  16

  “This is where Markowitz lives,” Rutherford said. “If it’s the same guy. Markowitz Real Estate Development.”

  “I just have a feeling Sandra might have come here. She was obsessed with this man,” June said as they pulled up in front of the Colonial-style house. It looked out of place here, with the split levels around it. With its white columns and eighteenth-century lines. Built recently, and not at all authentic, probably, if you looked close. But in the darkness it looked like an old southern Colonial mansion.

  The place was unlit. The front door was wide open.

  Come in, it said.

  “Well hell,” Rutherford said reluctantly. “Let’s have a look. I guess.”

  They got out of the Land Rover and, hearing an approaching car, looked down the street. It zigzagged down the road, driving past them. A convertible with an old man driving it and a young girl beside him. Dragging a teenage boy behind on a chain. Dragged naked, by his wrists, the boy screamed. The car went around the corner. Driving without lights. They stared after it.

  There was a red streak on the street where it had gone.

  “Maybe,” Joey said, “we oughta go after ’em.”

  Joey, one of Rutherford’s sons, was wearing a football jersey; he looked more like a basketball player. The younger one, a sharp-eyed kid with fear in his voice and an Elvis Costello T-shirt on his chest, was Bryce. The Indians were Sunwalker and Carl Stetson.

  “We can’t go after ’em every time we see ’em mistreat someone,” Rutherford said sadly. “We’ve seen it too much already. We’d just get ourselves killed. One thing at a time.”

  “Right,” Stetson said, looking at the dark eaves of the house. “Fact is, I’ve said before and I’ll say again, our responsibility is to get out of the area and contact the authorities.”

  “We’re gonna do that, just as soon as we locate this lady’s friend,” Sunwalker said. “We agreed to do it. It was on the way to the sheriff’s office. And we got to pick up Marv’s niece Lois.”

  “I don’t think we should even bother going to the sheriff’s office to radio anywhere,” Stetson said, his voice edging close to a whine. “We should get out of town, head for Bend.”

  “They’ll have the roads blocked,” June said. She said it with conviction, though she wasn’t sure how she knew. Perhaps it was her encounters with them, and the thing at the party. She’d had a glimpse into their thinking.

  “There are ways through the desert,” Rutherford said. “They can’t cover ’em all. We try to get to that radio first, though. After this stop. Come on, let’s check it out so we can get the hell outta here.”

  Carrying a flashlight, Rutherford led the way. Sunwalker, June, and the boys followed. Stetson came last. Sunwalker carried a shotgun; Joey carried a deer rifle.

  They paused at the porch and shone the light in. The place had been trashed. There was a shattered gilt-frame mirror lying at the foot of the steps. A torn, bloodied yellow curtain lay twisted in the entranceway to the living room.

  “Sandra!” June called. “Are you—”

  Stetson clamped a hand over her mouth. “Dammit, woman! If those things are around—”

  June slapped his hand away and glared at him.

  Rutherford said, “They’ll know we’re here anyway, like as not. Let’s look around.”

  Stetson raised a hand as if to signal halt. “I hear something. You hear that? A hissing, kind of?”

  June heard it. Sisssss.

  “Coming from in here,” Rutherford said, stepping into the living room. He stabbed the flashlight beam into the shadows.

  The living-room sofa had been slashed open; the gold and green wallpaper had been torn in strips with the randomness of fury. The lamps lay in rubble. Across the room, in the door to the kitchen was a spreading puddle of water; the living-room rug was darkened black with it. Sunwalker beside him, shotgun leveled at the door, Rutherford led the way to the kitchen. He stepped into the doorway and shone the light inside. June could see his shoulders slump as tension went out of them. “Just a water faucet left running. Flooded the kitchen. Nobody in here except—oh God.”

  Sunwalker pumped the shotgun and raised it to his shoulder. “Where is it?”

  “No, forget it. I thought it was one of those things, but it’s a Siamese cat. In the microwave. Very dead.”

  June winced. “In the—don’t tell me any more about it.”

  They checked the bathroom, the pantry, the dining room, and found no one—just the wreckage. They retraced their steps to the front entrance and—Rutherford and Sunwalker leading—climbed the hall stairs, to the secondfloor landing. The gloom seemed to deepen as they went. June thought: The dark thing was here. Maybe it’s not here now. But it was here.

  They looked in every upstairs room except one. No one around. All that was left was the bedroom.

  They stopped in the door to the bedroom. Rutherford’s flashlight beam spot-lit a man lying facedown on the bed, his arm thrown forward so his hand drooped over the edge. He was fully dressed, except that he was missing one shoe. A ring of brown encircled him on the rumpled bedclothes.

  “I think that’s Markowitz,” June said.

  Rutherford shone the light around the room, at the closets, the ceilings, the windows. Nothing.

  They stepped into the room. June stayed near the door, as Rutherford and Joey went to Markowitz. Rutherford touched his shoulder. “Man’s dead, feels like.” He turned him over and shone the light on him.

  His face was locked into an expression of hurt disbelief. He was unscathed, except at the groin, which was matted with blood. Rutherford shone the light into it, rather too impulsively, and they let the body drop.

  A deep, ragged crater had been gouged in his groin. His genitals had been entirely cut away.

  “It would be crazy to stop for him. For anyone we don’t know. And maybe even people we know.”

  “Pull over, Perry. I don’t want to be like those things.”

  He pulled the jeep over, muttering, “Could be a trap.”

  They’d seen the man up ahead, waving his arms, clearly signaling that he needed help, looking desperate. He’d slowed, planning to drive around him.

  Perry pulled up about ten yards past the man. He looked into the trees on either side of the road, half expecting some sort of ambush to materialize. “Not long ago you were saying you just wanted to get there.”

  “I thought about it. We’ve got to scrape up some dignity or we’ll end up—oh shit, here he is.”

  He was in his late twenties, baby-faced, short brown hair, undernourished mustache. He wore a three-piece suit, his tan jacket now slung over his shoulder, his collar opened, tie spilling from a jacket pocket. He was huffing as he ran up to them, his face blotchy with exertion, butter-colored shirt stained with sweat. “Thanks, oh God thanks for stopping!” He opened the back door and climbed in behind Perry. “Let’s get out of here, those things could be around.”

  Perry drove back onto the road and picked up speed, flooring the accelerator.

  “If you’re headed into town, you could drop me off at the Thunderegg Motel. My car’s there.”

  After a moment Lois turned to him. “What do you know about them? How do you know we’re not …”

  “You’re driving with your lights on. They don’t do that. They see better in the dark. Headlights confuse their vision. Makes coronas.”

  Perry looked at him in the mirror. “How come you know so much about them?”

  The man made a weary whimper and shook his head, leaning back. “Oh God, oh shit. If you knew.”

  “I want to know,” Perry said. “Or we let you out here.”