It was twenty minutes later when the big Peterbilt steered into the downgrade, heading for home.

Rusty Myers sighed as he flipped on the Jake brake and leaned back in his seat; it had been a long d.a.m.n day. The Jake brake hissed and killed the engine, releasing compression to the cylinders and letting inertia do the job of walking the rig down the mountain. The hulking 450 CAT under the hood groaned as the gears wound down, immediately began to slow. It was a fail-safe system, designed to safeguard against brake burnout, and it beat the s.h.i.t out of double-clutching it all the way home.

Rusty wasn't about to argue. His legs and b.u.t.t and shoulders ached to the point of numbness from eleven hours on the road, and he was bone-tired from lugging a total of seventy-two tons of Budweiser from Morgantown to McKeesport to Pittsburgh and back again. Three round-trips in this one shift, some six thousand pallets in all. He wondered where people put it all.

Rusty stretched his long legs, pushed his Steelers cap back on his head, and thought about the wife and daughter he had not gotten more than a fleeting glimpse of in the last three weeks. At any rate, he was over the hump and into the homestretch now. Another hour, he figured, till he got back to the yard; another three till he could kick back with his family. If he was lucky.

Then he rounded the curve, saw the sheared-off signpost lying in the middle of the road.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n!" Rusty yelled, as the truck thundered over it, mashing sheet metal to macadam. "What the f.u.c.k . . ."

The sign had still been standing when he came over the mountain, not three hours ago. Someone had knocked it off in the meantime, and violently, by the looks of it. The d.i.c.kheads who had pa.s.sed him on the way up came screaming to mind. It wouldn't surprise him a bit. Rusty dealt with automotive idiots all day long: cutting him off on the highway, trusting him to somehow defy physics and magically stop short of ramming eighty thousand pounds of jackknifing freight up their b.u.t.ts.

The guys that pa.s.sed him on the upgrade were no exception. They were either drunk or stupid or both, and Rusty wouldn't have minded slapping the s.h.i.t out of either one of them, if only to teach them some manners.

But he didn't want them to die for it.

So when he came upon the skid marks and saw the yawning gap in the guardrail, his heart sank like a stone. There was no question of what had happened. Rusty couldn't see the wreck, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that somebody'd played b.u.mp-cars and lost, big time. There was debris all over both lanes and deep gouges heading all the way up to the gaping hole. The fire glowing at the base of the ravine filled in the rest of the picture, and as he rolled down his window he caught a noxious whiff of burning gasoline, plastic, rubber, and hair.

"Jesus." He slowed to a stop some thirty yards short of the breach, reached over to the rocker panel, and flipped on the four-ways. There was a cellular phone in the cab, in addition to the CB. He picked it up, dialed 911, waited for the operator to come on. Interference was formidable in the highlands, but he managed to get enough of the message through to count.

He reached under the seat and grabbed the box of emergency marker flares, then climbed down out of the cab. The Staters would be there soon enough; in the meantime, he did what any good trucker would do: shut down the lane, laid out the flares, and waited for help. Taking care of endangered motorists-no matter how stupid or deserving of their fate-was an ongoing responsibility, and sometimes inconvenient as h.e.l.l. But he couldn't forget that it might be him one day, or his mom, or his wife and child. It was more than the right thing to do.

It was the code of the road.

Rusty hiked over to the edge of the rail, peered into the abyss. There was no way in h.e.l.l he could get down there. The pickup truck was a crumpled inferno, belly-up at the bottom of a fifty-foot drop. Whoever it was, he was flame-broiled by now. Rusty swallowed hard and began backtracking up the road, striking flares and positioning them at ten-, hundred-, and five-hundred-foot intervals behind his rig. The road in either direction was desolate, pitch-black but for the strobing glow of the flashers, the hissing glare of the flares. They bathed everything in shades and grades of red, cast eerie shadows across the rocks and trees.

An unsettling quiet fell over the tableau. The fire below had banked, settled into a slow, steady burn. The road curved off behind him, r.i.m.m.i.n.g the flickering chasm. His rig sat blinking, partially obscured by the trees. Rusty stood just beyond the curve: flare in hand, ready to wave off the unwary motorist coming 'round the bend.

Down in the ravine, something popped and shifted, sending up a spray of glowing sparks. Rusty looked back and c.o.c.ked his ear, listening to the shifting of dead weight, the scorching heat. The sparks fluttered and died, like a miniature fireworks display. The trees rustled, as a breeze picked up. The breeze shifted toward him, bringing with it that awful, nauseating smell. The gasoline taint had burned away, but he could still make out the unmistakable odor of smoldering rubber, blistered paint, melting plastic . . .

. . . and underneath it all, the pungent fetor of charred flesh.

And that was the worst of it, the part that made his skin crawl and his stomach turn. He fought back the nausea, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "C'mon, man," he muttered, cursing the police. "Don't make me wait out here all f.u.c.kin' night."

The wind changed direction, blew back toward the truck. It took a moment longer for the big man to realize that the smell was still with him. It was strong, almost overpowering. Something cracked off to the side of the road. Rusty turned, as the smoking shadow rose behind him.

And there was no time to react; not really. There was just a snarl and a flurry of violent motion, and the flare went skittering off down the road, along with the hand that had held it.

And for Rusty, the long day was over.

46.

The elevator doors opened onto a scene of madness. Frightened patients stared from darkened doorways as shocked doctors talked to stricken nurses, their faces as pale and green as the sterile halls in which they huddled. There were police: many, many of them. Wandering the corridors. Crawling all over the ward. Outside, another half-dozen shined lights behind bushes and into parked cars, slowly patrolling the perimeter. They were searching for perpetrators, searching for suspects.

They were searching for Jane.

Syd dreaded it from the moment he first limped the Jeep up to the entrance, caught his first glimpse of flashing red light. Oh G.o.d, he thought, shutting off the trashed and battered motor. Oh please no. Tucking the gun into his belt clip, pulling his shirt over the bulge. The whole way up he prayed, thinking please please let her be okay. . . .

Then the doors opened. He smelled the blood.

And knew that she was not.

Neon-yellow CRIME SCENE tape cordoned off the entrance to Intensive Care. A huge crimson smear pooled and spread just downstream from the nurses' station. A pair of rumpled detectives were huddled around the p.r.o.ne form, conversing in low tones. One of them moved, and Syd caught a flash of skull where a face used to be.

He turned away then, his senses awash in fear and panic. He didn't have to see the bed to know that Jane was no longer there. He could smell the death and the terror, the endorphin-laced vapor trail that hung in her wake. Syd followed it, all the way to the other end of the hall. There was a door there, a sign glowing over the transom.

EXIT.

There was a tiny spot of red on the threshold, near the corner of the doorjamb. It was fresh, as yet unnoticed in the chaos surrounding him. Syd knelt, touched a finger to it.

"Jane," he murmured. He peered through the little vertical window, saw another tiny droplet down on the stairs, glistening against the poured-concrete floor. Syd pushed the door open, stepped through. As it closed he glanced back and saw one of the cops looking his way, gesturing to his partner . . .

. . . and then Syd was moving, down and down and down, taking the stairs two and three at a time. He was already to the second-floor landing by the time he heard the door upstairs chunk open, the first angry voices following in his wake.

Syd hit the exit to the street before they even got to the third floor. He took a deep breath, stepped calmly into the night, hiked quickly over to the battered Jeep. He opened the door, was just starting to climb inside when he heard the sudden, nerve-jolting whoop of a siren.

A police cruiser roared up, screeched to a halt. A spotlight pinned Syd as a pair of deputies hopped out, flanking him.

"FREEZE, a.s.sHOLE!" one of them cried.

Syd froze.

A gaunt figure emerged from the cruiser, ambled over. Syd groaned as he recognized Chief Hoser, a squawking walkie-talkie clutched in one bony hand. As the deputies moved in, Hoser's cadaverous face expanded into an exuberant grin. He thumbed the talk b.u.t.ton, brought the box to his lips.

"Roger that," he said. "Yeah, we got yer boy right here."

Syd wheeled around, just as two more of Hoser's deputies pulled up behind him, completely boxing him in. They piled out: one leveling his gun at Syd's chest as the other pulled his flashlight, started nosing around the Jeep.

"Syd," Hoser said, addressing him with utterly contemptuous camaraderie. "Seems like bad news just follows you wherever you go, boy. Now what the h.e.l.l can you tell us about this mess?"

Syd opened his mouth, tried to think of a suitable lie. But before he could even formulate a reply, the cop with the flashlight, a man named Hardy, spotted something on the floor behind the pa.s.senger seat.

"Chief!" he gasped. "I think you better see this."

"What is it?" Hoser snapped. Oh, s.h.i.t, thought Syd. Hoser stepped over, peered into the seat well.

There followed a moment of silence.

The next thing Syd knew, he was grabbed and spun, spread-eagled across the hood of the squad car. One of the deputies, a lantern-jawed man named Gardner, held him by the neck, began rudely patting him down.

"Jesus f.u.c.king Christ!" Hoser ran one hand over his close-cropped skull, stared at the severed head. "Any idea who it is?"

"Hard to tell," Hardy replied, squinting. "Kinda looks like Marc Pankowski."

"Pankowski?" Gardner blurted. "G.o.d, I f.u.c.king hate that guy!" His hand moved across the bulge under Syd's shirt, felt it. "Okay, hold the phone. This boy's got a gun," Gardner called out as he flipped up Syd's shirt, yanked the pistol from its hiding place.

"Please," Syd said. "I can explain . . ."

"Shut up," Hoser hissed with disgust. "You sick little p.r.i.c.k." The cops all looked at each other, then back to Syd with a sort of queasy fascination, like they'd just stumbled upon their very own homegrown Jeffrey Dahmer.

"You're under arrest, son," he continued. "Get ready for a world of s.h.i.t." Hoser motioned to Gardner. "Cuff him. And make sure you read him his G.o.ddam rights."

"Please, don't . . ." Thinking please don't make me do this. He could feel the Change inside, fighting for release.

"Hold still, dammit!" Gardner ordered, then to Hardy, "Gimme a hand with this a.s.shole!"

"I can't let you do this," Syd reiterated, as his right arm was wrenched rudely back. The cuff snicked shut. The sound went right through him. His left arm came next: forced back so hard he thought it would break.

The second cuff snapped shut.

And then Syd snapped, too.

"NO!" he roared, suddenly twisting, too wild to handle. Gardner pressed down on him, felt the sudden surge of strength that lifted his prisoner clear off the hood.

"s.h.i.t!" Gardner barked. "He's getting loose!"

"G.o.dDAMMIT!" Hoser bellowed at his other men, furious. "KEEP HIM DOWN!"

The deputies scrambled, trying to restrain him.

"NO!" Syd screamed, control slipping away . . .

. . . and that's when they heard the crunching explosion of metal on metal on metal, the grinding whine of impending doom. Chief Hoser and the other officers looked up to see thirty tons of p.i.s.sed-off Peterbilt hurdle the divider: smashing through concrete and steel, tossing cars like Matchbox toys as it roared across the parking lot.

Gardner momentarily lost his grip. It was all Syd needed. He broke free, whirled around in time to see the still-smoking apparition behind the wheel . . .

. . . and it was worth it, it was worth it, just the look on their faces as he gnashed the gears and smashed his way toward them. Vic howled, half-mad with pain and exhilaration, wreaking havoc as he weaved the huge truck back and forth, playing kick-the-can with a dozen more shiny cars along the way.

Vic laughed and rasped for breath, smelled his own scorched hide, and laughed some more. The little men in blue pulled their popguns, p.i.s.sed their pants, as Vic rolled up and over their blinking kiddie cars, then rolled up and over the little men themselves. He leaned on the horn exultantly, drowning out their cries as he mashed them roadkill-flat.

A bullet hit starred the windshield; another whistled inches past his skull, pinged off the stinking interior. Vic didn't care. Injury was beyond him now; survival completely beside the point.

It was blood he wanted. One man's blood.

The man who was running, even now . . .

. . . running away from the carnage, even as the ma.s.sive rig plowed through Jane's Jeep and Chief Hoser's two cruisers, tossing them to the side. Syd glanced back only once, just long enough to see the old man take his valiant last stand: six-gun blazing like a righteous David to Vic's eighteen-wheel Goliath.

Only this time Goliath won, bowling over the chief with a sickening thud that left pieces of him stuck to the grill like bugs on a windshield. Syd felt a pang of pure human remorse, and then even that was gone as he rounded the corner, hurtling toward the Emergency Room entrance just as fast as his legs could carry him. There was a Taurus station wagon parked in the pickup zone, its front doors hanging wide. A yuppie man loaded his yuppie wife into the pa.s.senger seat, her arm freshly set in a bulky white cast. They stood transfixed, identically frozen as they stared in the direction of the fearsome noise, the manacled wild-man coming around the corner.

"GET IN!" Syd yelled, knocking the guy aside even as he shoved his wife onto the seat. She yipped and slid away, her eyes bulging with terror.

"HEY!!" The guy stood threateningly, but one look and Syd knew his heart wasn't in it. Maybe it was the light in Syd's eyes. Or the fact that Syd was starting to get in with her.

Or perhaps it was the twelve-ton monster that howled around the comer, snapping at his heels.

It veered savagely, the trailer almost tipping as it took the turn. Vic countersteered and took out a Volkswagen Jetta on the backhand, swatting it out of its spot and up onto the sidewalk.

The man stood in shock, ballpeened by the spectacle.

"GET IN THE G.o.dd.a.m.n CAR!!!" Syd screamed.

The man snapped out of it, vaulted over the hood on his way to the driver's side. The guy's wife was already making doomed whimpering sounds as Syd hopped into the car.

The truck loomed behind them, less than a hundred yards away.

"DRIVE!!" Syd bellowed.

He did.

47.

Syd's ride ended at the foot of Jane's mountain.

They had lost Vic on the back roads, the endless winding upgrades; but Syd knew his lead was fleeting, ticking away fast. He apologized again to the hijacked couple as he stepped out of their car, watched the wagon peel out and take off madly down the road. They couldn't get away fast enough. He didn't blame them a bit.

After they had gone, Syd hunkered down on the side of the road: bringing his shackled hands down and under his feet, then stepping through until the cuffs were in the front. A small but necessary improvement. He stood and took off up the mountain, eschewing the winding drive for the most direct overland route.

Forty yards into the woods, he picked up her trail.

At first, he thought he might have been confused, his senses registering leftover traces of last night's carnage. But it wasn't true. This blood was fresh, and bore the hospital's taint. With a little concentration, he found, he could track it. It led up from the woods, coming out of the south. She had run all this way.

She had lost a lot of blood.

The forest was dark and quiet as he climbed the rocky slope, the trees above filtering out all but the most tenacious tendrils of earthbound lunar light. As he ran, his heart raced in tandem with his thoughts; he'd never known that the darkness could be so rich, invested with so many textures and scents.

And beneath it all, such clarity. His terror and his purpose had aligned somehow, come together in perfect and potent counterbalance. The moist scent of evergreen and loam, of damp fur and warm blood-the pulse of a billion forms of interactive life-all touched him deep beneath his skin. He felt inextricably connected to the whole of creation, instinctively locking into the rhythm of his soul; as he did, his whole life spread before him, like a preview of the flashing-before-his-eyes that death would doubtless bring.

And death was imminent; of this, he was certain. He could literally feel it in the air, its chill pall like the sweat that clung to his skin. And the acceptance of that fact had freed him somehow, allowed him to see how things had all been perfectly, precisely designed to bring him to this point, this moment. This choice.