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"Iggy, where are you? Quit fking withwith hi; the voice was in his head Every surface that met his eyes seeot worse It was as if he weren’t just seeing things, but touching and s them too, as if the wires in his brain had crossed

Don’t you re?

And all at once he did; the memory pierced him like an arrow to the chest The aquatic blue of the contain above hi his full and terrible dimensions; the feel of Zero’s jaws on the curve of his neck and the cla hiunfire and the screa men; his stumble into the hall, a vision of hell, blood everywhere, painting the walls and floor, and the grisly res and ar entrails; the sticky, arterial spurt through his fingers where he held the slide to the floor, blackness enveloping hio

Oh God

Coht blasting his eyes It was crazy; he was crazy Across the parking lot he ran like a great, luhtless and without direction, his hands clamped to his ears A few cars dotted the lot, parked at haphazard angles,open But in its white-hot state, Grey’s ister this fact, just as it failed to note other troubling details: the shway on which not a single vehicle could be seen tostation across the access road, its s sainst the pump in the manner of an impromptu siesta; the wrecked McDonald’s, its chairs and tables and ketchup packets and Happy Meal toys and patrons of various ages and races hurled through the s in violent disgorge wreckage of a tractor-trailer two e, black birds, crows and ravens and buzzards, the scavengers, idly spinning overhead All of it suspended like the aftermath of a terrible battle, bathed with pitiless summer sunshine

Do you see, Grey?

"Stop it! Shut up!"

He stuanically da to his hands and knees, skidding on the blacktop

See the world that we havefor breath He kneithout looking that the squishy thing was a body Please, he thought, not sure who Himself The voice in his head God, who to believe in now I’m sorry for whatever I did I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry

By the time he finally looked, all hope had left him The body was a wohtly to the bones it was hard to tell how old she was She was dressed in sweatpants and a scoop-necked T-shirt with a little frill of pink lace at the neckline; Grey supposed she’d been in bed and had co She was splayed on the pave over her, dipping in and out of her mouth and eyes One arm lay outstretched on the pavement, palm up; the other was bent across her chest, the tips of her fingers touching the wound at her throat Not a cut or gash, nothing as tidy as that Her throat had been chomped away, down to the bone

She was not the only one Grey’s vision widened, like a ca over the scene To his left, twenty feet away, a Chevy half-ton was parked with the driver’s door open A heavyset man in suit pants with suspenders had been pulled fro half in and half out of the truck, dangling head-down over the running board, though his head wasn’t there; his head was somewhere else

More bodies lay near the hotel entrance Not bodies, strictly speaking-more like a zone of human parts A woman police officer had been eviscerated as she’d stepped froainst the fender, pistol still clutched in her hand, her chest opened like the flaps of a trench coat A old around his neck to fill a pirate chest, had been hurled upward, his torso lodging like a kite in the limbs of a maple tree; his bottom half had come to rest on the hood of a jewel-black Mercedes The s were crossed at the ankles, as if the lower half of his body hadn’t heard it wasthe rest

By this ti close to a trance You couldn’t look at so

The one that finally did it was the one that wasn’t there Two vehicles, a Honda Accord and a Chrysler Countryside, had collided head-on near the exit, their front ends crumpled into each other like the bellows of an accordion The driver of the sedan had been shot through the windshield The sedan was otherwise untouched, but thedoor had been ripped away and hurled across the parking lot like a Frisbee On the pavement by the open door, in a plume of debris-suitcases, toys, a jumbo pack of diapers-lay the prostrate body of a woman; just beyond the reach of her outstretched hand, tipped on its side, was an eht

And then: Oh

Grey chose the pickup He wouldn’t have uessed a truck would be more sensible He’d owned a Chevy half-ton, back in a life that didn’t see to He eased the decapitated driver free and laid hiive back to the poor guy It didn’t seeht to leave him there without it But the head was nowhere obvious, and Grey had seen enough He looked around for a pair of shoes his size-13EEE; whatever Zero had done to him, it hadn’t shrunk his feet any-and finally chose a pair of loafers from the feet of the man on the Mercedes They were Italian lambskin, soft as butter, and a little narrow in the toe box, but leather like that would stretch He got in the truck and started the engine There was a little ured that would get him most of the way to Denver

He was about to pull ahen a last thought occurred to him He put the vehicle in park and returned to the roo the pistol a little distance from his body, he walked back to the truck and deposited it in the glove coun for coear and drove away

Chapter 6

Mo Momma was in the bedroom, which was forbidden Moone, reet Bathe every other day Milk in the fridge, Lucky Charer casseroles to reheat in the freezer Put them in at 350 for an hour, and re boy, Danny I love you always I just can’t be afraid anymore Love, Momma