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Al enough now seeping out with his blood, Toered back until he felt a knob of stone at his back He was going cold, all over, in an insidious black creep as fatigue and blood loss stole his strength Propping his hands on his thighs, he struggled to stay upright and sucked air, trying to clear away the cobwebs, waiting for his et out of here, back to camp He didn’t have athe air, who knehen the next Chuckies would show? Strip out of as much of my stuff as I can and take hers Those over-whites have her blood on them So maybe they won’t smell me But I have to be careful Can’t lead Chuckies back to cae A ton of dead people up at the lake, plenty to eat, but absolutely no Chuckies snacking on anyone Lots of juicy kids at camp--an abandoned farmstead, out in the open, plenty of pasture--and no Chuckies there either, as if the camp existed under a dome, an invisible force field Which he had alondered about

He stared down at the dead girl He’d seen plenty of corpses There was dead, so, because death steals, especially fro evaporates The eyes of the dead are the empty s in a deserted house But then there was battlefield juju, those few moments when a prickly spider walked the back of your neck; when the dread ate its way into your throat, crowding out fear At those moments, you just couldn’t believe that the dead wouldn’t rise

This Chucky was like thatEven in death, the Chucky’s vermillion stare, still so crazy and htmare

And I’ve seen your kind before But where? What are you? A violent shiver ht, now truly afraid Where did you co to the front of hisit, Toood He needed to hear himself "That’s crazy Who could make Chuckies worse than they are? Why would anyone do that?" Thatsound harsh and far back in his throat, like the distant saw of those crows "Jesus, listen to yourself You were in the Ar machine, a soldier who doesn’t even kno to quit?"

And who, he wondered, wouldn’t train it?

The woods That black blur That glint He dragged his binoculars fro theled

"You don’t have tiot ten seconds, Toet--"

But it didn’t take him ten seconds, or even seven

All it took were three

35

This was so bad Cindi had known To in what her mom would’ve said: this really queasy sense that To dumb

Since that second day after theto her lookout post (Which had been borrring before it turned terrible Nothing to look at now but a gouged-out hill and that big blue-white eye of the lake for the longest time until the crows showed up, and thenwellshe elve, but she wasn’t stupid) Sometimes, Luke came with, but he was fourteen, the next oldest after Tom, and didn’t have tons of tiht food because Toh to keep a tick alive His eyes had dropped so far back into his skull it was like staring into deep, dark caves You could get lost down there She never pushed him and they didn’t talk much, but she wasn’t sure that was even important Just be with him That’s what herfor hiive Too-to for the whole awful ? What could Cindi say? No, butt out, you old witch? Boy, if it was freezing in that tower before, the temperature aaay below zero the second Toh that trapdoor Everything human in Tom shriveled until there was only a husk that just happened to wear Tom’s face

To Mellie’s credit, she did try She did nice; she tried you can tell h buck up, soldier (but only Weller was any good at that) In desperation, Mellie even trotted out a whiny but we need you