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No one said anything for a long moment Then Luke stepped closer "What if ait for you? Tom would want us toWe pack up and move, say, a ain, the day of the Zap, when she was saddled with Ellie and terrified out of her mind She didn’t want all this on her Yet if Ellie hadn’t been there, would she have tried so hard? Ever left the Waucamaw? Every step she’d taken since the Zap had been because of soht still be lost if not for Ellie and Tom and Chris Even Wolf All those connections led her out of those woods, from a very black place, and pulled her fro and no one waiting but death

Tom said we saved each other She ran her eyes over the upturned faces Maybe he was saving me for this

"If I can," she said to Luke, "I’ll be back We’ll figure this out But don’t wait too--"

A quick kick of pain, a fireball behind her eyes Deep in her mind, the , trying to muscle open that box She blinked, and it was as if the shutter of a camera suddenly opened, a third eye--

--and she is behind those eyes again, in that body she is beginning to think h on a horse, dressed in white, the red stor: GOGOGO LET ME GO Silently streao of the red stor in the ripe meat sh hill and the stark outlines of a tower--

--then a shift--

--into and through many eyes--

--a shio--she is looking through a tangled curtain of matted hair This body is another boy, and he is wild at the aroma of salt and meat, of prey dead ahead and just up that hill, in the tower--gogo pushpush--I want I want I want I need--pushpush gogo--

Two ru booms suddenly cannoned like distant thunder So back behind her own eyes, Alex sao faint yellow-orange candles shoot into a pewter sky due north The flares faded fast, sed by distance, the coleam of the moon, low on the western horizon

That tower That’s where the Changed boy was focused: the tower, and men Meat

"Go, Alex Good luck," Luke said "We’ll watch for you Come back"

She wanted to say she would, but all those words hung in her throat "Stay safe"

Then she spurred her horse as Buck sprang after, and galloped for Rule

Toether By then, Jarvis was on the ground and Chris was trotting down the last flight On the final landing twenty feet above the ground, Tom turned a troubled look back Those men should’ve been on theround in no tih breaks in the trees, he saw they’d dis on

"To?"

"Yeah, but their backs are to me Can’t tell what" As a cloud finally drifted aside to bathe the plain with ht, he raised his binoculars "Why send only four--"

"Tom?" Chris’s voice was sharp "What"

"Oh Jesus" Alarut as he finally understood Two , and now he could see what they balanced on their shoulders

"RPGs!" Whirling, Touardrail "RPGs, RP--"

"Jesus Christ, kid," the bald boy snarled With dawn filtering through low-slung evergreens, Ellie saw the creep’s hair was growing back around spidery scabs "Give e to her chest This was so eer, were all big eyes and sniggery irl with a froth of fine, nearly white hair was cringing, like Ellie had sneezed and gotten her all boogery "It’s on, and I don’t care" Creep totally freaked her out All those eyebrow hoops, and that safety pin, crusted with old blood, through his right earlobe, not to ue studit was just plain sick, like the kid got off on deciding what part to stab next As if life wasn’t bad enough already "Now hand it over," the boy said