Dark Harvest

PART THREE Fire

Of course, the October Boy knows what stands between him and the church. Packs of teenagers roaming the street like armed villagers in some old Frankenstein movie. Loners clinging to the shadows, ready to take off his head with baseball bats and fire axes. Young men sitting on the scar-colored brick steps of the church, waiting for their hometown’s own personal Big Bad Wolf to come sniffing at the door.

The October Boy knows he can’t run that kind of gauntlet. There’s not enough luck in this bleak little town to see him through. And that’s part of the reason he lit the fire — to create a diversion that will draw those young men away from the church, and at the same time give himself a sliver of a chance to get inside that building alive.

That’s what the Boy’s thinking about as flames erase the words written on his bedroom wall. He slams the door of the house he used to call home, and he slips behind the wheel of Mitch Crenshaw’s Chrysler. As he keys the engine, he pictures himself kicking open the front doors of the church.

A fireball blooms in his old bedroom as he peels out. The black window explodes. Shards of broken glass stab the dead lawn. Flames sweep down the narrow hallway, spilling into the dining room, climbing the legs of the dinner table his father built, blistering wallpaper that bursts aflame.

The thing that used to be Jim Shepard doesn’t see any of that. He doesn’t even look in the rearview mirror. He stares dead ahead, into the night. There are other fires waiting to be lit. And there are matches in the pocket, each one of them the seed of an inferno. But the October Boy isn’t thinking of fire as he hangs the corner and leaves the burning house behind. In his mind, fire is only a means to an end. His thoughts remain fixed on the church.

Seen in the cold yellow consciousness crackling within his hollow head, that building is already empty. Those who gathered around it on this blackest of nights have already turned their backs on it. That’s how solidly the Boy believes in fire, and his strategy. But that strategy is flawed. For there is at least one person who won’t be drawn away from the heart of the town tonight. The heat of a thousand fires wouldn’t move that man from his final sanctuary, though Jim Shepard doesn’t realize that yet.

No. Jim doesn’t know about the man who sits in the front pew, alone in the darkness. For the powers that be — those trusted few who make up the town’s Harvester’s Guild — that man is an insurance policy, a last line of defense. But for the October Boy, that man is a destination — however unanticipated — as well as an individual.

He’s the place where a single line connects into a circle.

Dan Shepard sits alone in the front pew, a riot gun cradled in his arms.

Jim’s father stares at the cross hanging dead center on the wall ahead, but that piece of hardware has never been more than window dressing in this town. It doesn’t mean much of anything to Dan, so he looks at his hands instead.

Cupped palms fill with moonlight filtered through a stained glass window. When he was just a teenager, Dan had those palms read at a carnival that passed through town. The fortune-teller told him that his lifeline was strong and his heartline was deep. But looking at his hands now, Dan doesn’t remember which line was which, so he has no idea if the intervening years have changed that schematic.

He only knows that his hands hurt something awful. Been a while since he worked with a hammer, like he did earlier tonight. And he sure never did a job with a butcher knife like the one he did out in that cornfield. Carving a face for the thing that used to be his son really put the ache in him. If he had some aspirins, he’d chew them up good right now and dry swallow every bitter grain.

Not that aspirin could mask the real ache, the one that lives down deeper than the grooves scoring his calluses. No. The real pain hides beneath his heartline and his lifeline and whatever those other lines are called. It lives in his joints; it lives between his bones. And Dan knows why that ache feels at home there, though he can’t quite remember how long it’s been that way. All he knows is, it’s a sure-enough fact that he put his hands through the mill in the years since that dark-eyed fortune-teller closed her fingers around his.

Dan always worked them hard in the fields — he did that for twenty years and then some — but he worked them harder tonight. Carving a face for his twice-born child at twilight. Then turning his back on the thing that used to be Jim and driving back to town. The way Dan sees it, that was plenty enough backbust for one evening, but it turned out it was only the beginning. Toss in a phone call from some bigwig in the Harvester’s Guild a couple hours ago if you want to notch things up, add the bastard telling him he had to meet Jerry Ricks face to face if he was prepared to blow things off the dial.

Ricks. The bastard who put a bullet in his son’s brain a year ago tonight. By the time Dan made it to the cop’s house, the eager monster was already out on the streets — that’s how impatient he was about getting his licks in tonight. So they had to meet here, at the church. That little dance was a whole different kind of torture, one Dan can’t forget:

“If it was up to me, you wouldn’t even be here,” Ricks says, dragging on a cigarette. “I don’t like the way you cringe, Shepard. I think you’re the kind of man who cries in his beer.”

“But you need me anyway, don’t you? Because I’m the only man who can stop him if he gets this far. I’m the only one he’ll listen to. You can’t talk to him. If you tried to explain things to him, he’d carve out your guts with that butcher knife before you could say two words.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t really matter if the Boy could slice off a hunk of me. I couldn’t take him down even if I wanted to. We both know it has to be a kid brings down the October Boy. That’s the only way it works. And as far as sitting that freak down and explaining the facts of life to him — well, that’s sure as hell not my job.”

“Yeah. I almost forgot. You’re the town executioner, aren’t you, Jerry?”

“Shit on that. This year I’m the goddamn exterminator. The Run’s gone nuts. I had to gun down a bunch of kids over at the market. The little bastards were trying to break in. They killed Ralph Jarrett in cold blood — ”

“Weeding out the strong ones, huh?”

“Just doing what needs done, asshole. I expect you to do the same. Your kid makes it through that door before twelve, you have a come-to-Jesus meeting with him. You show him he can’t win this thing. You explain exactly why he has to lose. And if he doesn’t get the message, you jam that shotgun barrel against his belly and you tell him to get his ass back out there on the streets where he belongs. Because if he’s not dead by midnight, this whole damn town is going straight to hell.”

“You’re a little late, Jer. We made that trip a long time ago.”

“Keep it up, smart guy. Go ahead and act like you’ve got a backbone, if it’ll make you feel better. You just take care of that freak if he comes walking into this place tonight. He’s your responsibility. After all, you’re the guy who squirted him out of the end of your dick.”

Ricks smiles when he says that last part. Just a little bit. Just enough. And the words and the smile burn in Dan’s brain and set his guilt on the sizzle. He nearly bites his tongue, nearly doesn’t say a word. Because he’s already lost one son, and he’s got another one at home, and he knows exactly what Ricks and his buddies in the Guild are capable of. He knows shutting up would be the smart thing to do, but his mouth is working before his brain can dam up his words, and those words are measured and bitter when they come.

“You can’t imagine what it takes. Just to sit here and talk to you. Just to do that much.”

“Oh, I can imagine. One look at you, and I get a real clear picture.”

“You don’t see shit.”

“Yeah I do. I see plenty.”

“No you don’t. You can’t see anything, and for one simple reason.”

“What’s that, genius?”

Dan takes a deep breath, staring at the clueless bastard.

“You don’t have any kids of your own, do you, Jerry?”

“Hell, no. You’d have to be nuts to have kids in a town like this.”

Again, Ricks smiles, the way he smiles when he works that heavy bag in his backyard. It’s as if the lawman nailed Shepard with a jab, dodged a counterpunch that had some potential hurt in it, then came back with a hammer of a right hand that shook his opponent to the core. And now he’s standing there, just waiting for Dan to forget the Marquess of Queensberry and go to fucking work.

In another town, it’d happen just that way. Dan would raise that riot gun, and Ricks would draw his pistol, and in a second one (or maybe both) of them would surely hit the floor bleeding. But that won’t happen here. In this town it’s different. Here, Dan Shepard can’t take that risk, not with a wife and kid at home. So Dan swallows those words… and though they’re not a pleasant meal, they’re nothing he hasn’t tasted before.

Once he gets them down, all he can do is laugh.

It’s his laughter that allows him to turn his back on Jerry Ricks.

It’s his laughter that carries him inside the church.

So that was that. Dan carried Ricks’s riot gun up the back steps, unlocking the back door of the church with the preacher’s own key, thumb-popping his knuckles as he walked through the silence and took his place in the front pew.

And he sat there, and he waited.

And he sits there now.

No, you don’t have to ask Dan Shepard about hurt. And you don’t have to ask how he got here, or how he can sit in the quiet with a shotgun cradled in his arms while he waits for the thing that used to be his son. He knows why, even if the words don’t cross his lips. Dan’s not a stupid man.

Just because he can’t put a name to the furrows life carved in his hands doesn’t mean he can’t see where those ditches run. He knows well enough where they run. He even knows how those ditches were dug. Hell, sometimes he can almost see the shovels working. And tonight he hears those kids screaming in the streets, and he remembers what it was like to be sixteen… or seventeen… or eighteen, and run in their number. When he could believe the things that people told him, and he could chase after a dream until his heart pounded like it was ready to batter its way through his rib cage and take off on its own.

And that’s the way it was back then. For Dan and for all the guys he knew. You remember how it was, because you weren’t really any different. You could believe the things that people told you, too. Their words were gospel, and you trusted them. You believed because you were sixteen… or seventeen… or eighteen. You believed because your dreams had started running up against the Line like it was a brick wall that didn’t have a single crack. And you believed — most of all — because you had to. You needed to believe that someone could get out of this town, same way you needed to believe that that someone just might be you.

And you held on to that belief. You had to. You held on, and it saw you through the Run, saw you crowned the winner. And it saw you down the black road to a cleared patch of dirt in a cornfield, a spot where Jerry Ricks’s Smith & Wesson took all your dreams away.

That’s the way it was for you, but it wasn’t that way for everyone. If you were a guy like Dan Shepard, you walked a different path. When those three special birthdays ticked by and you came up short, the way Dan did… well, you found a way to live with it. You made your peace with your failure. If nothing else, you figured you’d had your chance. You took your cuts at the Line, and you fell short, so you really didn’t have anyone to blame but yourself. And, hey, it was a bitter pill to swallow, but at least you knew you took those cuts. At least you tried. And if you didn’t catch the brass ring, well, hell, it wasn’t the end of the world. It was just the way things turned out… it was the way things turned out for damn near everyone you knew.

That’s right. If you were like Dan Shepard, you weren’t alone. Plenty of other guys had to swallow that pill, and they kept on getting up every morning. So did you, if you were a guy like Dan.

You found a job. You filled up your days. And you filled up your nights, too. On one of them you found yourself with a girl who made you feel a little bit better about the way things were, and pretty soon you found yourself with that girl most every night. And a ring went on her finger, and the two of you carried around a couple of keys that matched the same front door, and at night you both found your way through it and closed that door behind you and, together, you waited for the morning to come.

That’s the way it was for you if you weren’t a winner. And it wasn’t so bad, really. Even when you finally started to figure things out, it wasn’t so bad, because you still had each other when that door closed at night, and maybe if you were really lucky you had something else to go along with that, something that was a little bit of both of you, something that allowed you to push away the truth just a little bit longer.

But by the time your first kid was out of diapers, you couldn’t run from the truth anymore. You knew about that cornfield. You knew about all those young men buried in that black soil. Once you’d thought those poor bastards had gone somewhere better, when they really hadn’t gone anywhere at all. And now you thought about them sleeping down there in the dirt as you stared up at the ceiling in the middle of the night. And you thought about them every time you heard your own boy cry out as he woke from a nightmare in his tiny little bedroom down the hall.

And you told yourself that you really shouldn’t worry so much, that the odds are really in his favor. They only took one boy a year. And it wasn’t your decision. It wasn’t your call. It was only the way it was, and you really didn’t have anything to do with it at all. It was those steel-rail bastards in the Harvester’s Guild who kept that trainload of misery rolling year after year after year, and no one could stand up to them.

You told yourself that, but it didn’t slow your thumping heart. Your fear was there between the pulse beats, no matter what you said. And it banged at you, because, hell, you weren’t sixteen, or seventeen, or eighteen anymore. You knew better than to believe the lies that people told you. You knew better than that because you’d learned there were other things besides dreams that could make your heart pound like it was ready to batter its way through your rib cage and take off on its own.

Turned out it didn’t matter what you’d learned, because the years swept by regardless. And one day, your boy turned sixteen. And one night, he stepped through your front door. And you let him go, knowing what you knew. And you were there when he hit the finish line, and you were there when he was crowned a winner, and it didn’t matter at all that you tried to stop it, because by then there was no way to stop it.

What mattered was that you made it home that night, and your boy didn’t. What mattered was that you got up the next morning, and he didn’t have the chance. And that’s the way it was from there on out — night after night, morning after morning. It turned out the whole deal was really as simple as that.

And now you sit in a church with a shotgun cradled in your arms, staring down at your hands, knowing full well all the things you did with them and all the things you didn’t do. You see the ditches there in your skin, and you can almost hear the shovels working. And you wonder what those hands will do this night, and you wonder how bad they’ll ache tomorrow morning.

Outside, young men are screaming in the streets.

You listen to the sound for a few long minutes… and then the sound drifts away.

In its place comes a smell that drifts through the open back door.

The raw stink of smoke.

You walk to the front door of the church and open it. Boys are running down Main, toward Oak. A couple miles to the north, flames score the sky.

Sirens scream in the night. A fire truck roars by, and a police cruiser follows. But you don’t think of the sirens… or the truck or the car… or the fire.

You think of your son, beating the hell out of the odds just a year ago.

You think of your son, beating the hell out of the odds tonight.

You feel it, down deep, in your bones. You know he’s coming. Your boy. Jim. The son you let down. He’s coming here… and he’s coming soon. You close your eyes and you can see him — the heavy church door creaks open like a castle drawbridge in an old horror movie, and that misshapen thing from the cornfield steps through the gap. You close your eyes and you can see him — a little kid reaches for a doorknob in a tiny three-bedroom house, and that pink-faced baby you once held in your arms steps out into the world on his own for the very first time.

You see all that in your mind’s eye. In your mind’s eye, you see everything.

The riot gun in your hands weighs about a thousand pounds.

But you manage to lift it.

You manage to lift it one more time.

So that’s the way it goes for Dan Shepard. Hey — no surprises there. That’s the way the cards hit the table if you live in a town where winning is just another name for losing.

And that’s the way it is for the kind of men who worry about the furrows life has carved in their hands, the kind who happen to be the fathers of sons. Dan Shepard, alone in that church with a cop’s shotgun… he’s one. But there’s another man, this one sitting in a chair in a beat-up living room. There’s a bottle on the table in front of him, and there’s a telephone receiver clutched tightly in his fist.

Jeff McCormick’s son is on the other end of that line. Pete’s out there somewhere in the darkness. A lot has happened to him since he walked out the door a few hours ago. He’s figured out a few things, and he’s running on adrenaline and something else — something that crackles through the phone line like electricity.

“So it’s all true,” Pete says. “Everything I just said. None of it’s a lie.”

McCormick stares at that bottle on the table. “You’ve got to understand, Pete. I never had a say in any of this. None of us did. Not me, not my father, not his.”

“And not me. I didn’t have a say, because no one told me the truth.”

“The truth isn’t something you get around here. Maybe you understand that now. But I never wanted you hurt. You have to understand that, too.”

“But you gave me that machete. You let me walk out that door.”

“I did.” Pete’s father swallows hard after saying those words, staring at that bottle, but he doesn’t reach for it. “Everything you said earlier tonight… I know why you feel the way you do, but you don’t know the whole story. I did some things after your mom died. Stupid things. The drinking was part of it… but only part. Things wouldn’t have gone so bad if I’d kept it to myself, but I ended up in a bar one night. Jerry Ricks was there, and so was Ralph Jarrett. I was drunk… angry… I started talking about the town, about the way we all lived. I said I’d lost your mom to cancer, but I wasn’t going to lose you to the Run — ”

“More words.”

“Maybe you’re right. If I hadn’t been drunk, I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to say anything at all. But I did, and it cost me. When I went to work the next morning, Joe Grant called me into the office and canned me. He didn’t even tell me why. He didn’t have to.”

“Right then, we should have loaded up the car. We should have gotten the hell out of here.”

“No… losing my job was just the tip of the iceberg. Guys like Ricks and Jarrett play a lot harder than that with anyone who gives them a reason. Taking my paycheck was their way of teaching me a lesson. They wanted to pin me in a corner, like everyone else. If we would have run, they would have killed us.”

“They’ll kill us anyway. I’m not going to spend the next twenty years dying inch by inch, the way you have. If Ricks and his buddies finish me, fine. But I’ll go out standing on my feet.”

“Will you, Pete? Really? Do you really think it’s that easy to die? If it meant taking someone else with you… if it meant taking Kim — ”

No. Jeff McCormick bites off those words. The conversation’s spinning out of control just like it did that night in the bar, and he’s as angry as Pete is now, but his fight isn’t with his son. It’s with Ricks, and Jarrett, and every other guy in the Harvester’s Guild.

His entire adult life, Jeff’s known this town’s dirty little secret. He knew it tonight when his son stepped through the door, but knowing didn’t make any difference. The Run rolled around the year of his boy’s sixteenth birthday, and Jeff McCormick might as well have said: Sure thing, I’ll ante up. I’ll toss my only son out there on the green felt. If those are the rules of the game, that’s the way I’ll play it. And it doesn’t matter that he wanted to stop Pete on his way out that door, because when push came to shove he let his boy go, just like everyone else in this damn town. That’s what it comes down to — what he did… not what he wanted to do. And that’s the reason Jeff McCormick can’t say those other words… the ones you’d expect. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’d take it all back if I could. Those words can never be enough once you’ve gambled with your own flesh and blood.

So Jeff holds on to his silence. He doesn’t have another choice. Not if he wants to hold on to his last shred of self-respect, too. And Pete listens to that silence. He listens, but he still doesn’t understand.

“I think we’re done now,” he says. “I didn’t call to argue, anyway. I just wanted you to know that I’m getting out of here tonight. There’s a fire burning on the north side. It’ll keep everyone around here pretty busy for a while. I can use it as a way out, and I’m going to take it.”

“You won’t make it, son. Ricks… Jarrett… those other bastards, they’ll stop you any way they know how — ”

“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But I have to try. You can help me, or you can hang up the phone. It’s your choice.”

Jeff McCormick closes his eyes. He knows his son. He knows what it means for him to ask for help in this moment, thinking what he must think. And the true hell of it is that he can’t blame his son for feeling that way. He really can’t blame him at all.

But maybe he still has a chance to change that. Maybe it’s not too late —

“What do you need, Pete?”

“Like I told you, the fire’s on the north side. Grain elevator’s on the south. I’m going to get hold of a car, and I’ll be there as soon as I can. I want you to bring Kim to me. Pack her stuff. I won’t leave without her.”

Jeff McCormick’s heart sinks. He knows he should say something. He has to say something. But he doesn’t have the words —

“It’s the right thing, Dad. She’ll be better off with me. You know that as much as I do. This time, I need you to deliver. If you don’t, I’ll come after Kimmy myself.”

Just like that, the phone line goes dead. Pete’s father cradles the receiver. He opens his eyes. Of course he does. What else can he do? And he’s still in the same beat-up living room, and there’s still a bottle on the table in front of him.

But there are no second chances.

His boy is gone. Out the door for good.

That door didn’t slam a few hours ago.

But it sure slammed now.

Pete hangs up the phone in the theater office.

“If he doesn’t come through…” Pete says. “If he lets me down one more time…”

“He’ll come through,” Kelly says. “He’s got to want what’s best for your sister as much as you do. You have to give him that much.”

Pete nods, but he can’t even trust that simple motion. Kelly’s sitting across the desk, staring straight into his eyes. In that moment Pete has nowhere to hide. His head is full of words, but he can’t find a way to say a single one of them. And suddenly Kelly looks away, just as he did when he pulled her off of Riley Blake and glimpsed that wildfire running deep and strong in her own eyes, the one he knew he shouldn’t see until she wanted him to.

“Hey,” he says, reaching across the desk and taking her hand. “It’s okay. Really.”

And it is. Because there’s nothing left inside him that he wants to hide. Not from her.

Kelly raises her head. Their eyes meet again. This time, she doesn’t look away.

They don’t say anything for a long time.

“Okay?” he asks finally, because now there are tears in her eyes.

“Okay,” she says, and then she smiles.

A strong squeeze, and their hands part.

Kelly takes the brakeman’s club off the desk.

Pete picks up the.45.

He says, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

The big Dodge jumps the tracks — chassis coming down hard, shocks crunching — and Jerry Ricks’s teeth clack together so hard that he nearly bites his cigarette in half.

Shit. That’s all Ricks needs. He slams the gas pedal with a steel-toed boot and flicks on the high beams. The patrol car speeds through a bright tunnel carved by the headlights, past the market where Ricks gunned down those kids an hour and change ago.

He’s heading north, toward the fire.

Make that fires. Because dispatch had it wrong. The radio call Ricks caught a couple minutes after parting company with Dan Shepard mentioned one fire, but Jerry spots two towers of flame rising from the north side.

Those fires look to be several blocks apart.

The town has exactly one fire truck.

Shit. everything’s gone nuts tonight. First the deal at the market, now this. If Ricks gets his hands on the pimply-faced arsonist who pulled this crazy stunt, what that kid gets won’t be as easy as a bullet. He’ll hang him from a tree like a heavy bag and do the job right… and slow.

Ricks heads toward the blaze that wasn’t called in. He gets on the radio and takes care of that little detail, even though he knows it’s pointless. Even the lazy bitch at dispatch is smart enough to figure out that a fire crew can’t be two places at once, so guess who gets to pick up the slack — your pal and mine, Jerry Ricks, who’s suddenly pretty sure that several city blocks are going to end up as cinders tonight.

All Ricks can do is jump on the problem, maybe contain the blaze if the people who live closest to it aren’t already panicking. And if they are, well… maybe he can save the asses of the ones that matter before they get barbequed. The way Jerry figures it, there won’t be too many of those — the only good news he’s got right now is that there aren’t many Guild members living in this dumpy little corner of town.

And that’s not much if you’re looking for a silver lining. Ricks signs off the radio, clips the mic on the dash, and swerves just in time to miss a couple of knotheads running toward the scene. Jesus. As he makes the next couple blocks he notices that there are dozens of kids on the streets, and they’re all heading toward the fires… every single one of them.

And that’s when it hits him.

The identity of the firebug.

Gotta be the October Boy himself, a.k.a. little Jimmy Shepard.

Yeah. Ricks slams his palm against the steering wheel, figuring it all out just that fast. Ol’ Hacksaw Face did the deed. Sure he did. And every chuckleheaded kid running on a five-day hunger has fallen for his feint. Because that’s what this action is. The freak has them kissing up to the flames like a bunch of idiot moths. He needs a diversion. He had to come up with some way to draw the gangs away from Main Street so he could clear a path to the church, and it looks like he’s done just that, because every starving little moron running around in a pair of tennis shoes tonight is beating a path in the wrong direction.

“Well, fuck me with a fistful of splinters,” Ricks says. “This boy is good.”

Houses blur by on both sides of the patrol car. Flickering pumpkins leer at Ricks from porches, and he can almost hear them laugh. Almost. Because imagination only goes so far with Jerry Ricks. It might crawl up on his shoulder and say howdy now and then, but it’s never long before he gives it the back of his hand.

And that happens right about now. Ricks stares straight ahead at the blaze silhouetted by peaked rooftops. He butts out the cig he nearly bit in half when the Dodge rattled across the tracks, gets another one started with his Zippo. There’s part of him that’s thinking maybe it’s not too late to stop the fire. But there’s another part that wants to forget the whole deal, rip a U-bender and point the Dodge in the other direction, because a glance at his wristwatch tells him that it’s 11:30. That leaves Dan Shepard’s misfit son thirty solid minutes to make it to the church, and Ricks doesn’t trust Dan to do the Guild’s dirty work if his kid manages to make it all the way to the finish line before the bell tolls midnight.

But what the hell can he do? Could be the Boy is still up ahead somewhere. That’s where the smoke is… that’s where the fire is… maybe that’s where his scarecrow ass is, too.

“Goddammit!” Ricks shouts. “Goddammit!”

His foot jams the brakes. He skids to a stop. He’s so damn close now. Flames are licking the rooftops just a block away. A half dozen boys race past him, heading for the show with bats and pickaxes and chains. The idiots don’t even realize that no one’s coming to fight the fires besides good old Officer Ricks. They don’t even know how close they are to running headfirst into a blast furnace they’ll never escape.

Ricks sits there behind the wheel, just sits there like he never has before in his life. For the first time he can remember, he can’t make a decision, and he can’t fucking stand it. He drags so hard on his cigarette that he nearly burns it down to the filter. And then a kid comes running toward him. A big kid. Ricks thinks he remembers him… maybe from the football team. Yeah. The kid looks familiar. But his face is swollen, and his nose looks like it ate fifteen rounds’ worth of jabs. Someone must have bashed him good… and more than once.

He’s pounding on Ricks’s window, screaming something. Jerry grabs his.38 with one hand, rolls the window down with the other. The kid stumbles back when he sees the gun.

“Christ… no! Don’t shoot!”

“Calm down. What the hell do you want?”

“I saw Sawtooth Jack! He’s a couple blocks over… in front of the Bagley place. He had the gas cap off Old Man Bagley’s pickup, and he was stuffing a rag into it — ”

And then it’s like someone shook up the whole damn world and popped the cap. Boom! The sound sucks any words the kid had left in him right out of his mouth, and the concussion nearly knocks him flat-ass on the blacktop.

But Ricks barely notices. He’s too busy watching a fireball climb the ladder of the night like a demon laying siege to Heaven. He’s watching that fire paint the sky, and everything beneath it — the silent houses, the hard cold streets, the white hood of his patrol car.

Something plows through the orange glow. Two dead-white headlights spear Ricks’s retinas. He squints but doesn’t look away as a car burns by. Maybe it’s a Chevy… or a Chrysler….

“Jesus Christ — it’s him!” the kid shouts. “It’s the October Boy! He boosted Mitch Crenshaw’s ride!”

Ricks eyeballs the rearview as the Chrysler’s taillights swim away in the murk. The driver’s making tracks, heading downtown… where there’s probably not a kid in sight anymore… where the only thing to stop him is a used-up crybaby with a riot gun.

Ricks knows he can’t count on that.

He looks at his watch. It’s twenty-five minutes to midnight.

He shoots a glance at the swollen-faced kid that is all business.

“Get in,” he says. “Now.”

The kid’s jaw drops open, but no words come out. He runs around to the shotgun side of the patrol car, fills the space with his sizable ass and slams the door. Ricks peels out just that fast, trailing those taillights swimming away in the dark.

Between that Chrysler and the pair of hands strangling the patrol car’s steering wheel, Ricks’s reflection floats on the windshield — his narrow face painted in dashboard green glow, the tip of his cigarette glowing like a fuse. Ricks glances over at the kid. The big dope doesn’t look like a winner. If he’s got anything in common with the other young bucks who ended up in that cornfield with a couple ounces of lead ricocheting around in their brainpans, he’s doing a pretty solid job of hiding it.

But the way things are turning out, he’ll have to do.

“I don’t have time to draw you a diagram,” Ricks says.

Then he tosses his pistol into the kid’s lap.

The October Boy is just about to cross the railroad tracks when something rams the Chrysler’s rear bumper.

The Boy glances in the rearview but doesn’t see a thing. Just as he realizes his pursuer must be running dark, a pair of high beams scald him from behind. Top that off with a screaming siren and a big ripe cherry that blooms on top of the car that’s tail-grabbing his ass, and the Boy finally gets a clue.

The prowl car rams him again, and Jim Shepard’s pumpkin head whiplashes on his braided-vine neck like it’s ready to come off. Gotta be Jerry Ricks on his backside. Only that crazy bastard would pull a stunt like this.

The Boy mashes the gas pedal. The Chrysler rockets forward, but the police cruiser stays right there with him — the space between the two cars isn’t even as wide as a coffin. Both cars pass beneath a streetlight and the Boy catches a quick glimpse of Ricks. For a second the cop is boxed up in the confines of the Chrysler’s rearview, his forehead creased above a cold pair of eyes, a cigarette pinched between his lips, the tip of that cig glowing like he’s sucking on a red-hot coal —

Bam! Another jolt. The Boy grapples with the wheel and pulls the Chrysler out of a skid, but it’s hard to do the job when your hands are only a collection of vines. Still, he manages it, and his foot is hard on the gas like those severed tangles have grown around the pedal and set root in the floorboards. We’re talking planted.

Another glance in the rearview. Another streetlight illuminates the prowl car’s interior. Ricks is smiling now. He’s not alone in the car. For the first time the Boy notices that the cop has a passenger, a kid who’s leaning out the window —

Three quick flashes from behind. Three hard pops sound in the night, but the October Boy doesn’t hear them. He only hears the sound of shattering glass as the Chrysler’s rear window explodes. Bullets scream through the cab. One rips through the Boy’s shoulder, another trenches the rind of his face, and the third doesn’t hit anything but the front windshield… which shatters like a wall of ice.

Chunks of glass splatter Jim Shepard’s freakshow hands. He whips the wheel to the side as two more shots ring out, and he doesn’t even have time to wonder where the bullets went. Main Street is only a couple blocks ahead. A hard right turn and another hundred yards beyond that… well, that’s where you’ll find the old brick church.

He’s almost there.

The cold night wind blasts through the broken window. It whips around the cab, nearly snuffing the autumn fire in the Boy’s carved head, but he won’t let that happen. No way. Not now. He’s really hauling ass. Going seventy. He knows he’s only got one chance. He’s got to punch the brakes just right, then hang on through the turn, and —

Now. He’s got to do it now.

Jim’s knotted foot jams the brake. He whips the steering wheel to the right just as Ricks jackhammers the Chrysler’s rear bumper one last time. The steering wheel whipsaws out of the Boy’s hands, yanking off a couple of his fingers as if they were ripe carrots. The wheel spins left as the two cars part and the Chrysler’s rear bumper tears loose, sparking against the blacktop, disappearing beneath the tires of the prowl car like a gleaming switchblade driven into the belly of a two-tone cat.

The front tires blow. The bumper chews undercarriage. Jerry Ricks tears at the steering wheel, because somehow a streetlamp has ended up in the middle of the road and it looks like there’s a brick wall behind it… and if you had time for a little Q&A session, the October Boy would surely tell you that a streetlamp and a brick wall sound like a pretty sweet deal to him, because the Chrysler’s not on four wheels anymore. No. It’s on two… until the road slams the driver’s side door, and the side window blows out, and the hardtop screams as the Chrysler goes ass over teakettle while the laws of physics grind their heels into the October Boy’s best-laid plans —

A couple ticks of the second hand, and two cars are totaled.

It’s quiet for twenty seconds. Maybe thirty.

In that time, Jim Shepard’s buried in a dark place, like a seed planted too deep in the ground. It’s not a new sensation. In fact, it’s much too familiar. For Jim remembers the cornfield… and Jerry Ricks’s pistol against his head… and the sound of shovels filling his grave with hard black earth.

So he fights through the darkness, battling for clarity the same way a green tendril tunnels through earth to find the sun. The shadows disappear for a second, and then they’re back. A flash of October light, and then another, and Jim sees his carved features projected on the black upholstery a few feet from his face.

Jim reaches for that reverse silhouette with a right hand that’s short two fingers, but his arm gives up and his hand slaps against his chest like a fistful of chaff. The Chrysler’s upside down. Jim’s flat on his back against the hardtop. An electric sizzle pulses in his head, projecting flickering light on that upholstery above — Jim’s smile and eyes wink out in time to the sizzle, his arrowhead gash of a nose blinking like a bad bulb in a string of party lights.

Jim can’t do much more than lie there. His eyes wink in, wink out. His smile comes and goes. And there’s a new feature, one he can chalk up to the accident — a jagged crack running from the stem at the top of his head, through his right eye, into one corner of his grin. The wound flashes like a lightning bolt against the upholstery. Again… and again… and again….

And it stabs Jim now. The next flash bucks through his body as the crack strobes on the seat above. His body spasms again, as if his muscles were corded with stripped electrical wire rather than pumpkin vine and someone just plugged him into a live socket. Jesus. He feels like some old movie monster — like Frankenstein riding the lightning one more time… only it’s not working the way it’s supposed to… the juice is burning him up instead of firing his battery.

Jolt. Jim’s right hand flaps against his chest like a hooked fish.

Jolt. Candy wrappers rustle inside him like wastepaper balled up in a giant fist.

Jolt. Jim tries to roll over. God, he wishes he could roll over. But he can’t even seem to move his hand now. It’s there on his chest, glued to a hole carved in his shoulder by one of the kid’s bullets, a hole that’s leaking sticky nougat and marshmallow cream all over his denim jacket.

Jolt.

The head crack sparks.

Jolt.

The lightning sizzles.

Jolt.

Another spasm wracks the October Boy’s body.

Ricks manages to get his eyes open. Pretty quickly he wishes he hadn’t, because his reflection’s waiting there on the windshield. Blood’s dripping from a gash in his forehead, and his left cheek’s carved like someone got his holidays mixed up and mistook Ricks’s face for a Thanksgiving turkey. But it’s that leaky forehead that bothers Jerry the most. Blood’s spilling over his brow, splattering his eyelids. Hell, he feels like someone doused his eyeballs with a handful of salt.

The cop wipes blood and sweat out of his eyes — he’s sweating like a goddamn mule. He blinks a few times. Things come a little clearer. The streetlamp’s nowhere in view — he must have missed that — but he spots that brick wall easy enough. He didn’t make out so hot with that. Spun the Dodge sideways, caved in the left side of the front end coming up against it, and the rest of the driver’s side ended up kissing those bricks pretty good. He could stick his tongue out the window and lick the damn things if he wanted to. No way he’s getting out the driver’s side of the patrol car now. Even with the side window broken, he doesn’t have the room to crawl out.

Not that he could, the way he’s feeling. Cut up, cracked up, his body hammered straight through. As for his face, must be that the glass sliced him up when the side window broke. Could even be that his head did the job on the window.

Things start to swim as he tries to remember. It’s weird. He’s trying to recall the accident, when he knows he should be thinking of something else… something that’s important….

Ricks blinks again. Kicks his own ass out of dreamland.

Yeah. There’s the world. The one he needs to grab hold of. It’s clear… and sharp —

“Are you all right?” the kid says.

Jesus. Ricks forgot the kid was there. Apart from his busted-up nose — which the kid had before the accident — he looks all right. He’s even got Ricks’s pistol in his hand and —

The October Boy, Ricks thinks. Sure. That’s the important thing he couldn’t quite remember. Where’s the goddamn Boy?

He looks to the road. The Chrysler never made that turn onto Main. It’s upside down, bashed in, finished. Ricks reaches across the kid, gets the glove compartment open. It feels like his head is going to roll off his shoulders when he does that. As he grabs a box of cartridges, he’s praying that the Boy isn’t as finished as that fucking Chrysler looks. Because if the Boy’s done, and if Ricks’s Dodge did the job instead of one of the kid’s bullets, then it’s all over.

For everything that’s penned up in the city limits, anyway.

Finished. Done. End of story.

But maybe it isn’t that way. Maybe the Boy’s still sucking wind. If that’s the deal, then the town — and everyone in it — still stands a chance.

Ricks glances at his watch. It’s 11:45. Still plenty of time to get the job done. He spills bullets into his hand. They’re out of focus. Blood drips on them from the wounds in his head. For a second it looks like he’s got a handful of fresh-spawned trout taking a bath in his blood.

Whoa, boy. Don’t go swimming in those waters.

Ricks closes his eyes, shakes his head. He doesn’t have time for this addle-brained shit. When he opens his eyes, the fish are gone. The bullets are back. He hands them to the kid, but the moron just sits there, staring at them.

Ricks doesn’t bother to look at him. Instead he sits there for a long moment, waiting for the sound of the opening door, hoping the kid will get a clue on his own.

Things get kind of shadowy for a while. Maybe ten seconds. Maybe fifteen.

“If you want to finish this job,” Ricks says, “you’d better get your ass moving.”

Ricks turns to the kid, just to make sure he got the message.

But the car door is open.

The kid is already gone.

Riley Blake swallows hard.

Man oh man. He never thought he’d win the Run.

He walks down Main Street, the cop’s pistol gripped tightly in his hand. Behind him, to the north, the three fires crawling through the poor side of town have become one roaring inferno. But fire isn’t Riley’s problem. He can’t think about it now. There’s only one thing on his mind, and it’s over there inside Mitch Crenshaw’s bashed Chrysler.

Riley hopes that thing isn’t dead.

It better not be dead.

Because Riley Blake’s got dibs on its homegrown ass. Uh-huh. It’s ten minutes to midnight, and the October Boy is all his. There’s no one else around. No competition… and that means no sweat. Twenty steps… maybe twenty-five… and Riley will be right there at that Chrysler.

He keeps walking, loading bullets into Ricks’s.38 as he goes. He feeds the pistol six, then slaps the cylinder closed. He tries to tell himself that the hacked-up bastard back there in the prowl car wouldn’t give this job a second thought, but he knows he’s nothing like Jerry Ricks.

And he doesn’t have to be. Ten minutes is plenty of time to do the job and still be careful about it. And that’s probably a very good idea, because Riley knows all about the thing over there in that wreck. Call it the October Boy… or Ol’ Hacksaw Face… or Sawtooth Jack… it’s a thing that goes by a dozen other names, a monster that can conjure a year’s worth of nightmares in a heartbeat.

That’s why Riley takes it slow….

That’s why Riley takes it easy….

Ten feet away from the wreck, he kneels and peeks inside the cab. Something’s moving in there, bucking against the hood of the car like some sadist wired it to the Chrysler’s battery. The sight rattles Riley just a little bit, but he steadies his nerve, tells himself that moving is good. Moving means the thing is still alive.

Riley raises the pistol and takes aim. Just as he begins to think this is going to be really easy, the thing in the Chrysler rolls over…

… and drops on its elbows…

… and starts crawling.

Not fast, but not at all slow, either. As it moves, one of its hands flexes open. Something feeds through the vines of its left wrist, extending into the thing’s grasp like a mutant cat’s claw. It’s a butcher knife, and it gleams in the firelight spilling over Riley’s shoulder, and the October Boy’s fingers close around it as he raises his carved-up head and stares straight at the boy with the gun.

Jolts of wild lightning jag through the thing’s head. It’s like watching an electrical storm. Something about it mesmerizes Riley… something about the way the light spills through those triangular eyes. He can’t seem to look away from it; he can’t seem to think. And all the while the pumpkin-headed thing keeps staring at him as it crawls through the busted window, elbowing across the blacktop with that knife in its hand.

And now Riley can smell the monster. Scorched cinnamon, and gunpowder, and melted wax — the stink is all mixed up in the October Boy’s fireball of a head, and that head looks like the devil’s own stewpot on the boil.

The stink shakes Riley out of his reverie.

He raises the pistol… cocks the hammer…

And something smashes against his arm. Hard. Riley drops the.38. He stumbles, grabbing his right biceps as he manages to turn around….

And there’s the girl. That same damn girl. That redhead —

“Miss me?” she asks.

Then she hits him again.

The brakeman’s club cracks against Riley’s skull.

The next thing he sees is pavement coming up fast.

Pete hauls the October Boy away from the wreck. He’s actually glad the Chrysler flipped on its lid. He and Kelly barely dodged it while crossing Main after leaving the movie theater, and that was the third time tonight he was lined up in front of that rolling monster’s headlights. He’s beginning to think the heap has it in for him. And maybe that isn’t a bad idea — because even now the Chrysler isn’t completely dead. Its Gorgon headlights are still blazing, and Pete doesn’t want to get caught in their glow even if the heap’s wheels are pointed skyward.

Pete drags the Boy to the sidewalk. The butcher knife slips out of the Boy’s grasp and clatters against the roadway, but the Boy doesn’t even notice. It seems like the thing that used to be Jim Shepard doesn’t even know what’s going on. He makes no resistance as Pete settles him against a mailbox at the curb.

While Pete’s doing that, Kelly stares down at Riley Blake, the club cocked and ready if he so much as moves.

He doesn’t. He’s out cold.

Pete stops for a second, catching his breath. Then he walks toward Riley, shooting Kelly a glance. “You lowered the boom on this guy twice tonight,” he says, grabbing the football player’s boots and dragging him away from the wrecked car. “I think maybe you enjoyed it a little too much.”

“Damn right I did. And I won’t lie about it, either.”

“Fair enough. You did that job. Now let’s do another.”

“What are you talking about?”

Pete drops Riley Blake’s feet in the gutter and nods in the Boy’s direction. “I mean, I don’t think our friend here’s going to make it anywhere on his own.”

“Whatever plan you’ve got, I hope it’s not complicated… we have about five minutes between now and midnight.”

“We’ll keep it simple, then.”

Pete bends low, ducks his head under the Boy’s right arm, sets him on his feet.

“Okay,” Pete says. “Let’s get him to the church on time.”

Ricks can’t believe he hasn’t heard a shot yet, and that can only mean one of two things — either the Boy was creamed in the accident, or the dipshit he sent to pull the trigger is dragging ass.

Well, hell, Ricks tells himself. Maybe it’s time for Mother to go hold the little moron’s hand. He slides across the passenger seat and makes it out of the car. Stands up, but nearly doesn’t stay up, so he grabs the top of the car door to steady himself.

That’s when he sees the goddamn football player over there on the ground, laid out like he’s ready for flowers. And there’s another kid. Two of them, actually. A boy and a girl, and both of them are on their feet and moving. The boy has Sawtooth Jack slung over his shoulder like a wounded soldier. He’s dragging him in the direction of the church while the girl brings up the rear, watching the shadows for trouble.

Ricks can’t believe his eyes. He blinks, but it doesn’t do any good. Forget bullets that look like trout and all that other screwy horseshit — this is the worst nightmare he can imagine. It doesn’t make any sense at all.

“Hey…” he shouts. “Hey!”

The girl glances in his direction, but she doesn’t slow down at all, and neither does the boy.

Ricks suddenly recognizes both of them.

Jesus! Kelly Haines and Pete McCormick. Just my goddamn luck!

He reaches for his holster… and finds it empty.

And why’s that, Jerry?

Well… maybe it’s because you gave your pistol to the kid.

And you gave your riot gun to Dan Shepard.

All you’ve got is a fucking nightstick.

And it’s three minutes to midnight, you stupid sack of shit.

So get your ass moving….

Pete and Kelly don’t run. The October Boy can’t.

But they move.

Kelly turns her back on Jerry Ricks, and that’s a relief. The pissed-off cop looks like he shaved with a cheese grater. He wasn’t any picnic before he looked like he’d been skinned alive. She sure doesn’t want a piece of him now.

Kelly’s still not in top form herself, but she pulls even with Pete.

“You’d better hurry,” she says.

Pete’s breaths come hard and fast. “Doing the best I can.”

And that’s what Ricks is doing, too, because the clock is short another half-minute, leaving two and a half until the final bell.

His.38’s on the ground by the wrecked Chrysler. Ricks snatches it up. Glances over at the three figures heading toward the church while he does that, and the whole deal’s making sense to him now. Ricks doesn’t need a round of interrogation to figure out that Haines and McCormick have managed to add two and two together when it comes to figuring out the grand scheme of things… and they’ve managed that feat at the worst possible moment.

See, Jerry’s long-barreled Smith & Wesson won’t do him any good. He can’t fire the pistol. He can’t risk taking a shot at McCormick, because he might nail the Boy instead. And if he blows a hole through Mr. Pumpkinhead, the whole goddamn deal will go straight to hell.

Has to be a kid nails that walking nightmare.

And it has to happen in the next two minutes.

Those are the rules.

Jerry looks around. There’s no one in sight.

Except that one damn football player. Flat-assed on his back. Over there in the gutter….

They’re halfway up the church stairs when Pete loses his grip on the Boy. As he lurches to the side, Pete makes a grab for his denim jacket and misses. Just when he’s ready for the sound of pumpkin splattering against brick staircase, Kelly catches the Boy by his frayed collar.

Together they haul Jim Shepard onto the tangled vines that pass for his feet.

“Okay,” Pete says. “I’ve got him now.”

Kelly takes the stairs two by two.

“I hope that door isn’t locked,” she says.

The kid says, “They’re a long way off. I don’t know if I can — ”

“Shut up and do it,” Ricks says. “You’ve got six shots. Make one of them count.”

The kid takes aim.

The bell in the church steeple begins to toll the hour.

“Pull the trigger, idiot! Do it now!”

Three bullets chew at the door just as Kelly throws it open. She ducks inside. Two more shots ring out as Pete and the Boy stumble past her.

Kelly heaves the door shut and sets the lock.

She turns, her eyes searching the darkness.

“Pete?” she asks. “Are you all right?”

There’s no answer. It’s as if she’s speaking to the shadows.

The bell tolls.

For the ninth time… the tenth… the eleventh….