Page 25 (2/2)

Getting the body along the lower hall, through the kitchen, and across the back porch was easy enough Then ht, and they were in the yard

He considered loading the body in the Explorer and driving it as close to the ancient vent as possible The distance was not great, however, and dragging Lanny all the way to his final resting place seemed to require no more exertion than to heave hiain

Like a banked furnace, the land now returned the stored heat of the day, but at last a faint breeze ca yard and the swath of tall grass and knee-high brush beyond proved longer than he had iined it would be froan to ache, his shoulders, his neck The hook wounds, which had not recently bothered hi the way, he realized that he was crying This scared hih

He understood the source of the tears The nearer that he drew to the lava pipe, the less Billy was able to regard his burden as an incriized, this was Lanny Olsen, the son of the good woman who had opened her heart and her home to an emotionally devastated fourteen-year-old boy

Now in the starlight, to Billy’s dark-adapted eyes, the knob of rock ely like a skull

No matter what lay ahead, whether a o back, and he certainly could not bring Lanny to life again, for he was only Billy Wiles, a good bartender and a failed writer There

were no miracles in him, only a stubborn hope, and a capacity for blind perseverance

So in the starlight and the hot breeze, he came to the place of the skull There, he didn’t delay, not even to catch his breath, but pushed the wrapped cadaver into the hole

He lay against the redwood fra to the long descent of the body, the only way he could bear witness When silence caainst the dark below and said, "It is finished"

Of course only this task was finished, and others lay ahead of hih surely none worse

He had left the flashlight and the power screwdriver on the ground beside the lava pipe He slid the redwood lid into place, fished the steel screws out of his pockets, and secured the cover

Sweat had washed the last tears from his face by the tie, he left the screwdriver and the flashlight in the Explorer The latex gloves were torn He stripped the, and drew on a fresh pair

He returned to the house to inspect it fro behind to indicate that either he or a dead body had been there In the kitchen, he could not decide what to do about the ruave hi to start upstairs, in thethe hallway to the front of the house As he approached the foyer, he greare of an unexpected brightness to his right, beyond the living-room archway

The revolver in his hand suddenly becaht than an essential tool

On his first pass through the house, on his way upstairs to see if Lanny’s body remained in the bedroom armchair, Billy had switched on the overhead fixture in the living roo on a sofa, facing the archway, a testament to unreason and the durability of thrift-shop clothes, sat Ralph Cottle

Chapter 51

Ralph Cottle had incredibly shed his plastic shroud, improbably ascended from thousands of feet beneath the valley floor, impossibly let hi down the lava pipe, and all while re was the sight of Cottle that for an instant Billy believed the man had to be alive, that somehow he had never been dead, but in the next instant he realized that the first body he had dropped into the volcanic vent had not been Cottle, that the filling of the corpse burrito had been replaced Billy heard himself say "Who?" by which he an to turn toward the hallway behind hi to shoot anyone there, no questions asked

A lead-shot sap, or so rather like it, expertly rapped hiht point above the back of the neck, at the base of the skull, inducing less pain than color Brilliant but brief electric-blue and h his head and dazzled on the backs of his descending eyelids

He never felt the floor come up to meet hih a lightless lava pipe, wondering how the dead auished volcano The darkness seeht, for he woke in fits and starts, repeatedly plucked back into the depths just as he floated to the surface of consciousness

Twice, a de voice spoke to him, or twice that he heard Both times he understood it, but only the second time was he able to respond Even dazed and confused, Billy warned himself to listen to the voice, to remember the pitch and the timbre, so he could identify it later Identification would be difficult because it didn’t sound e, distorted, it insistently posed a question "Are you prepared for your second wound?"

Following the repetition, Billy discovered that he was able to answer:

"No"

Finding his voice, worried that it sounded so wheezy, he also found the power to open his eyes

Although his vision was blurred and clearing too slowly, he could see theover him The freak’s hands were clad in supple black leather, and he needed both to hold a futuristic handgun

"No," Billy said again

He lay on his back, half on the rose-flowered runner, half on the dark wood floor, his right ar out to his side, the revolver in neither hand

As the last of the blur washed out of his vision, Billy saw that the handgun did not, after all, provide proof of a time traveler or of an extraterrestrial visitor It was just one of those portable nail guns not lith of a compressor hose

His left hand lay palm-up on the floor, and the man in the mask nailed it to the hardwood

PART 3

ALL YOU HAVE IS HOW YOU LIVE

Chapter 52

Pain and fearthe mind

Punctured flesh punched a screahts as he realized he was pinned to the floor, immobilized in the presence of the freak

Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is erows in perception if not in reality

The best response to terror is righteous anger, confidence in ultihts didn’t h his mind They were truths held in his adapted unconscious, based on hard experience, and he acted on them as if they were instincts born in blood and bone When he’d fallen, he dropped the revolver The freak didn’t appear to have it The weapon ht be within reach