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Chapter 19

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He lay dying in the dark

The blood wor the earth below his back, letting the hungry soil feed on him Overhead the moon looked down at hies of the sky A night bird cawed plaintively somewhere in the corn; other sounds troubled the darkness: sirens,as vehicles came and left

He kneas still too close to the house, safe only with the cover of darkness and the fact that they didn’t knohich direction he’d gone He couldn’t linger here Soon they would be finished with those assholes back at the house Soon they would be after hirowled softly

He had to get up, he knew that

But lying there was better for now

It wasn’t the pain that kept hi there was to know about pain, and he’d kicked pain’s sorry ass too many times to sweat that now

No, it was the hate Hate had put the steel in his legs that let hione toe-​to-​toe with, bullet holes and all Hate had driven him at least this far away from the cops and all the activity Hate had kept hiot-​flow of blood wanted to lull him down into a drowse that he kneould kill him

Hate made him patient, too

The hate wanted him to live, not die The hate wanted hi alive long enough to get help, to force help It was only hate that had given him the patience to stuff his torn shirt into the bullet holes, and kept hi while he did so That hadn’t stopped the flow of blood, but it had slowed it

The hate ise, too It knew that if he didn’t rest, just for a while, then he would die on his feet and the bastards would win The bastards would prove that they were stronger than he was There was no way in hell that Karl Ruger was going to let that happen His hate was the power that had always kept his black heart beating It hat kept the vinegar that puh his veins cold and fast It hat ue water whenever he saw the fear of him that was always there in other people’s eyes The hate was Ruger’s secret self, defining hi hi and nasty bitch of a night

More than all of this, his hate was his one and only god A dark god that nightly listened to his blasphe not absolution, but per, bleeding, trying to gather together the power to rise once th

He prayed for the strength to live long enough to find that little bastard and kill hith to find that broken-​nose country bitch and teach her so-​city th to hurt them all Hurt them so bad and so deep that even if they did so for no new toth to find Boyd, and his money, and to make Boyd sorry that his father had ever fucked hisKarl Ruger had ever wormed its way into his tiny brain Tothe drug buy back in Philly

He prayed for the strength to be all things in all ways to them that were as dark as the utter darkness in his heart

Above him the cloud-​free sky rumbled with i round again

Ruger, you aresuddenly in his head, clear and strong as if soer lay there in the cornfield, feeding the soil with his life and his hate and his black prayers

In the vastness of the night that overhung the cornfields, sos and the rage-​filled screaiven life by the saer in Pine Deep The thing rose fro horror with it, and slouched through the fields toward the place where Ruger lay, ain answer to those prayers

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Where was Val? Hadn’t she been there a while ago? Henry thought she had, but now he couldn’t remember Maybe it had been a drea, he could carry hiet an aht he called out, but the word echoed only in his head and he knew that he hadn’t found the power to say his son’s naain, the lids pressing tears out from under the lashes

Please, God , he prayed Please, God …

He wanted to say the words out loud Maybe they would haveaway fro and fores of Val and Mark and Connie, but hisblank, and it broke his heart

Please, God, he begged Help the rustled the corn near where he lay, and Guthrieup a truck He searched the shadoith his failing vision, hoping, hoping…

But it was not Val coer Theover hi to for the cornstalks His cheap suit was soaked and rainwater glittered like diamonds in his kinky hair