Page 56 (1/2)

Yet Ruger did not fight against the thing that held hi he could fight, his rage told hi he should fight Not this thing

Ruger, you are ain he heard those words echo in his brain

Perhaps it was in that an to understand why he had delayed leaving the Guthrie farm, and why he had let Tony drive the car Those choices had worked to bring him to Pine Deep, and to keep hiht he had sensed that so its ith his in ht he understood, and he accepted as happening Welco that held hi ear and whispered terrible secrets in his dying ear

After a long tiht by the sound of Karl Ruger’s wild laughter

Part III

Dry Bone Shuffle

Black ghost is a picture, black ghost is a shadow, too Black ghost is a picture, black ghost is a shadow, too You just see hi’ else a black ghost can do

Lightning Hopkins, "Black Ghost Blues"

Toround is ot an axe-​handled pistol on a graveyard frame that shoots to TNT, I’ht

Muddy Waters (after Willie Dixon), "I’m Ready"

Chapter 20

1

Malcol tiht hiery He did not dreas and stitched and swabbed and bandaged his body He did not dream while he lay in post-​op, or for the first few hours after they brought hiht earing thin and daas coloring the edges of the horizon, that his h the town and Pine Deep was burning Many of the stores were blackened shells with their s blown outward by the heat Smoke curled upward froed scattering of broken bricks, twisted lass

Croalked down the center of Corn Hill He was dressed in jeans and sneakers and a T-​shirt and his clothes were torn and stained with grass and soot and blood Some of the blood, he kneas his own; ely dark and thick, and it s fish

He carried a saore and bent in two places The sword hung li a twisted line behind him in the ash that covered the street

Above him the sky was as black and featureless as a tarp thrown across the top of the town, and yet he knew that above the black nothing of the clouds there was a ri in and out between burning cars, Croas drawn to the sweet sound of a blues guitar He strained to hear the song and had to hum a few bars to lock it down "Hellhound on My Trail" The old Robert Johnson song but played with a different take on the refrain…less threatening, more wistful

No, that wasn’t it The sound wasn’t wistful, it was sad, like a la down like hail, blues falling down like hail

M down like hail

And the day keeps on remindin’ me, there’s a hellhound on my trail

Hellhound on my trail, hellhound onended, but then the saain Croalked all the way up to the top of Corn Hill and finally stopped at the entrance to the Pinelands College Teaching Hospital The hospital parking lot was a shambles Cars were on fire and overturned An a the car down onto flat tires There were hundreds of bodies everywhere

Crow looked at the bodies and his heart turned to stone in his chest

He knew them

He knew every one of them