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Pinetop was the only one who looked at hi Crow pulled the door closed and locked it

2

Terry hurried up Corn Hill toward the chief’s office, which shared the first floor of the township building with the county court As he walked briskly through each patch of brightness his shadow see with lupine speed at his own heels and then vanishing as he ht and reflection

Cars swept up and down the hill, glealass, co expensively as the cars braked and swept along the ilanced at a few of the to others He was usually expansive, ready to stop and talk, to shake hands and swap fa his mayor shtick with élan and a natural affability, but lately his good ood humor seen on his face was put there by effort and held in place by sheer will

He felt as though the walls of his life were starting to crack and he was terrified of ould pour through once the cracks split wide enough His depression and stress had begun at the end of suht had turned the summer wheat into rancid weeds that had to be burned That hadn’t been too bad because wheat was not the town’s staple crop, and for a week or so everyone breathed sighs of relief when the corn crop had looked pretty healthy Then the blight struck nine corn farms in two days, and since then more than half of the town’s corn crop was infected The pues, apples, and berries, too

That’s about when the dreahte ten, when he’d been in a co the death of his sister--but these drealy persistent They took two forh there was one theme that overlapped theh Pine Deep as it burned-- explosions rip the night apart Everywhere there was death and pain Everyone he knew and loved lay strewn about, their throats savaged and bloody, their dead eyes staring accusingly at hilimpses of his own reflection in cracked store s The reflections always showed hi twisted and bestial When his dreae beca out of the drea and utterly terrified

The second type of drea in bed next to Sarah and feeling his body begin to change, to reshape, into so in a way that was not clear to Terry, and no et any sense of what the dreams ht, and he was feeling the drain on his system He had told his psychiatrist about them, but the doctor had passed them off as stress-​dreams inspired by the local a financial troubles of the farmers The psychiatrist also told Terry that, as s over which he had no control Added to it were the constant deeared up for its annual Halloween celebration, the biggest event in the year for Pine Deep Terry was averaging fourteen-​hour days at work, and cruising on about four or five good hours of sleep a night Terry had listened to what the doctor had to say, and all the advice to find so--nodded his understanding, and then held his hand out for his prescriptions: antipsychotics and antidepressants and antiaxiomatics The three staples of his current diet

And now there was the phone call from Gus Bernhardt That call had jolted him into an entirely different frame of mind

Crih out loud at the very thought, and the other half of hi in his stomach Halloween less than a month away Already a third of the stores in town had their s done up for the co season, and all of the plans for the costuo been finalized There were still a nificent coup of signing David Boreanez and Jarand marshals of the parade for a lot lessA broadcast frois Philben’s people about doing a spot at the hayride School buses were bringing hundreds of kids to the farh some of the farmers had actually had to import clean and nondiseased pumpkins from Crestville and Black Marsh to keep up appearances), and the Pine Deep Authentic Candy Corn was going to be dropped in half the trick-​or-​treaters’ bags froht it was a busier year thanhim down as he balanced the financial crisis of the far boo-​city cri Terry Wolfe and his haunted little town did not need, thank you very ht affect business had Terry grinding his teeth and sweating bullets at the saht about it, the faster he walked His big fists hite-​knuckled tight as he cli by reflex down the winding path to where his family had lived since Colonial tio, Mordechai Wolfowitz had laid the cobbles on which the heels of Terry’s expensive Italian shoes clicked as he hurried to the chief’s office Mordechai’s great-​grandson, Aaron--the one who changed the fa oaks that stood like dour sentinels along the south side of the street As he stepped up on the far curb, Terry slowed his pace just a fraction, i as he often did that he could see his little sister, Mandy, running up the lane to reen eyes alive with huhter on her lips

The memory was brief, as it alas; and it hurt, as it always did

There were only elow drooping frohts of his house at the far end Still, he could alhter…

Then the edge of the first store on the next block obscured his vision, and the displayfull of the confections of AHHHH--FUDGE! filled his awareness His frown beca e-​s through light and shadow, heading for the chief’s office Behind hiotten darkness at the uely thicker Nearby, Terry’s marmalade tabby, Party Cat, crouched by the roots of the lane’s first towering oak hunkered down over a dead starling; he pawed at the broken wings playfully and bent forward to bite--and abruptly froze, eyes snapping wide, hairs springing up straight along his spine Party Cat stared at the boiling darkness, arching his back and laying his chest low to the ground as soed from the blackness of the shadows The cat’s throat vibrated with a feral growl, half of defiance and half of fear

The shape seemed to be part of the shadows rather thanforht Party Cat hissed, baring his fangs, glaring up at the form with intense yellow eyes The shape turned toward hi lips treradually relaxed, the furry lips sagging down over the fangs slowly and with uncertainty The shape just stood there, green eyes watching the cat,for a scent, then meowed plaintively at the odor he smelled: staleness, an earthiness ure stirred, turned away from the cat, and stepped farther out of the shadows into the laht It was a small shape, not even four feet tall The chilly wind stirred the tatters of dark green cotton that hung vaguely in dress-​shape disarray on the tiny form, and the wind teased and tossed the red curls that framed the pale, pale face Pale except where streaks of dark red cut slashes through the purity of the flesh

The figure watched Terry’s broad back retreating up the hill

After a moment, it followed

3

Iron Mike Sweeney was the Enee, but it was his special secret that within that shell of a teenage human male dwelled the mind of a thousand warriors froh hih his perfectly developed muscles and sinews He was the perfect weapon, the ultih the streets of Pine Deep on the War Machine, a device of such cunning design that toblack tubes of its fray that channeled unbelievable power through the bike and into every cell of Iron Mike’s body, filling hi him when he was slashed or cut or burned in his deadly duels with the Agents of Destruction The handlebars were tightly wrapped with antiradiation insulation si black electrical tape, and these power bars threw up crackling energy shields through which no amount of laser fire could ever hope to penetrate The ears was fashioned froed from the wreck of an old spacecraft When Iron Mike ripped its handles, he becay froe from its interface with the InfinityMind uplink he wore on his belt Disguised as a mere Sony Walkman, the InfinityMind was simply the projection into this reality of an omnidimensional supercomputer built by the same race that had made the alien spacecraft The InfinityMind shared its li hie that had le" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">