Summer of Night

THIRTY-THREE

Dale and Lawrence pedaled across Main and skidded to a stop in the gravel of the parking strip along the west side of the park. Dale pulled the walkie-talkie strap over his head and keyed the transmit button; they'd given Mike and Kev and Harlen fifteen minutes to get in position.

"Red Rover to Dresden Base. We're at the park. Over." It had been Kev's idea to name the other team Dresden Base-Kev's dad had served as a navigator in the Army Air Forces in World War II.

"Roger, Red Rover." Mike's voice was faint and static-lashed. "We're all set here,"

Lawrence was all ready to go, leaning over his handlebars and grinning like a dope, but Dale didn't want to move just yet. "Mike," he said, already abandoning the radio codes, "they're going to see the radio."

"Yeah, but we can't do anything about that. Just don't let Chuck Sperling or Digger see it."

Dale looked over his shoulder before he realized that Mike was making a joke. Ha ha.

"Red Rover?"

"Yeah?"

"Try to talk into the radio when you're out of sight of the truck. The rest of the time, keep it strung over your back. They probably won't notice it."

"Roger," said Dale. He wished he had one of the pistols. They'd decided to leave Dale's Savage over-and-under behind, but Dresden Base had brought Harlen's .38, Kev's dad's big .45, and Mike's grandmother's squirrel gun with them in a canvas duffel bag. Dale and Lawrence had the radio and their bikes.

"Moving out," said Dale. He reslung the radio and pedaled south down Broad, Lawrence right at his side on the smaller bike. Approaching the intersection with the street where Sperling lived, Dale looked at Lawrence. "Would you really have told Mom?"

Lawrence grinned. "Sure ... I found it. It's my truck, in a way. No way I was gonna be left behind."

"You're going to end up in the back of the Rendering Truck with all the other carcasses if you don't do exactly as I say. Got it?"

His brother shrugged.

They paused at the entrance to the circular drive at the old Ashley place. "You can't see it from here," whispered Lawrence. "You've got to get around by the house."

"Just a second." Dale pulled the walkie-talkie around. His bladder was sending urgent signals and he wished he'd gone into the house before leaving. "Dresden Base, come in. Over." Three calls and Mike responded.

"We're heading down the drive." They pedaled slowly, moving in the center of the driveway to keep the branches and brambles off them. Suddenly Dale stopped and pulled behind a tree, Lawrence following. "Dresden Base, Dresden Base . . . Red Rover here."

"Go ahead, Red Rover."

"I see it. It's right where punko said it'd be."

Lawrence bashed his older brother on the upper arm.

"Leave the transmit button open," said Mike. "Let the thing dangle. Let me see if I can hear you."

Dale let the radio hang. "Testing," he said, feeling how dry his mouth was and how full his bladder felt. "One, two, three . . ."He lifted the gray plastic case.

"Yeah, Red Rover, I can hear you. Just talk loud when you want us to hear. We're ready here, Dale. You guys set?"

"Yeah." Dale felt the tension in his body as he straddled the center bar of the bike, left hand clenching and unclenching on the handlebar.

"Remember," came Mike's raspy voice, "no chances. I don't think they'll do anything in town, in broad daylight. He cuts you off, just go into a store or something. Got it?"

"Yeah."

"Don't go right up to the truck even if it doesn't respond," said Mike. They'd gone over all this already. "We'll meet at the park. Don't hang around there."

"Roger," said Dale. He lowered the radio. "We're going," he said loudly.

Lawrence was slightly ahead as they pedaled up the last part of the drive to the house, took the narrower lane along the north side of the ruins. The Rendering Truck was almost invisible, covered as it was with what looked like an old net and cut branches. It was tucked in behind a long rusted shed and the greenhouse with its broken panes and rusted metal lattice. A casual passerby would think the truck was just another abandoned relic of the Ashley estate.

Dale sincerely hoped it was.

They stopped just beyond the carbon-smirched tower of bricks that had been the fireplace. The mansion itself was almost lost to weeds and brambles, charred rafters poking from the dark space of the basement. An ornate pump stood on what had once been a back patio: local kid-myth had it that people drowned dogs in the well here.

The Rendering Truck looked hot and dead in the flat, gray glare of day. The windows reflected gray sky.

Lawrence dismounted, stood by his bike, and looked at his brother. Dale glanced over his shoulder, made sure the way down the driveway was clear, and said, "Do it."

There were plenty of loose rocks here; the lane had once been paved with cobblestones. Lawrence's first throw was accurate enough to bounce a fist-sized rock off the hood of the truck forty feet away. The second throw caught a fender.

"Nothing yet," Dale said loudly enough for the radio to hear. His first throw missed. The second rock landed on the camouflage net and branches. The smell of decomposing animals was very strong now.

Lawrence's third throw hit the metal strip between the panes of windshield glass. His fourth was flat and hard and broke the right headlight. The truck was silent and nothing around it stirred.

Dale was winding up and Lawrence was saying "I don't think there's anyone ..." when the Rendering Truck's starter ground, the engine roared, a differential whined, and the whole thing came rattling and bouncing out of the space between buildings, the net and branches flying aside as the boards of the trailer section tore through the flimsy camouflage.

"Go!" screamed Dale, dropping his rock and leaping onto his bike. His left foot missed the pedal and he almost fell onto the crossbar-the type of ball-breaking drop that made you just want to curl up on the grass for an hour-but he caught himself, almost tipped the bike over, got his head down and his ass high, and was pedaling furiously, Lawrence three yards ahead and not looking back, both boys barreling down the long drive between the arching brambles and the Rendering Truck less than fifty feet behind them, its roar and its stench curling like a tidal wave at their heels.

"Give me the lighters," Mike said to Harlen. They were lying prone behind the faded co-op sign on the tin roof of the grain elevator, about fifteen feet above the loading dock. Kevin was across the narrow drive, lying flat on the warehouse roof. It had been Harlen's job to bring the cigarette lighters, and he had checked his pocket and said he had them before they rendezvoused on Catton Road.

Now Harlen patted his pockets and looked wide-eyed. "I guess I forgot them ..."

Mike grabbed Harlen's shirt and half-lifted him from the hot tin roof. "Don't fuck around, Jim."

Harlen produced five lighters, all topped off with fluid. Harlen's dad had collected the things and they'd been lying in the bottom of a drawer for three years.

Mike tossed two across to Kevin, put one in his pocket, and dropped back down behind the sign. Suddenly the radio squawked and Dale's voice shouted, "It's coming after us!"

The Rendering Truck was faster than they thought it would be, grinding gears as it roared out of the driveway after them. Even with their half-block lead, the thing was going to catch them before they got to Main Street. Wide yards led to nothing but the railroad embankment and cornfields on their left; the street to Sperling's house on their right was a cul-de-sac.

Dale caught up to Lawrence, got a bit ahead, glanced back and saw the red cab and rusted grille of the Rendering Truck closing the gap, and then leaned right, cutting across Bandstand Park, the rear fender of his bike clattering. The two boys went on either side of the War Memorial, cut between the park benches and the Parkside Cafe, and skidded out on the sidewalk in front of the cafe and Carl's Tavern.

Dale frowned, head low over the handlebars, elbows high. This wasn't going as planned-they had to get the truck up Broad, headed north. Now the thing had squealed to a halt to let a semi go past heading east and pulled onto Main-chasing them east.

"Come on!" Dale called to Lawrence and launched his bike out over the eighteen-inch curb. Lawrence jumped his at the same instant. A westbound station wagon blared its horn at them as they cut in front of it, and then they were on the north side of the street, still headed east but closing on the intersection with Third Avenue.

The Rendering Truck was half a block behind them and cruising at thirty miles per hour. Dale saw a hint of movement through the windshield glare and the truck swerved to straddle the center line. Van Syke or whoever"s driving doesn't give a damn who's watching, thought Dale. He's going to run us down right here.

Dale shouted something at his brother and they leaned left, their left arms brushing across the top of the low hedge in front of Dr. Viskes's house, their bike tires laying down rubber on the uneven sidewalk pavement. There was a drainage ditch between the sidewalk and Third Avenue here, and if either one of them skidded into it, the Rendering Truck would be on them.

They didn't. Dale let Lawrence pull past as they flashed up the sidewalk on the west side of Third, heading north now. An old man with a cane-Cyrus Whittaker, Dale thought-shouted at them as they whizzed by on the sidewalk.

The Rendering Truck turned north on Third.

Another block and they'd be passing the house where Dr. Roon rented a room, then coming into view of Old Central. Dale didn't want to see either one of those places, as much as he was tempted to reach the schoolyard and just cut across it to Depot Street and home. His mother would see the madman chasing them in the truck and call Barney or the sheriff . . .

Dale shouted at Lawrence, and his brother cut left on Church Street, heading back toward Broad. The truck came to the intersection sixty feet back, slowing to let a pickup go past.

Dale took the lead again and skidded onto the sidewalk, heading north along Broad past the library and the boarded-up stucco building that had been Ewalts Recreation Palace. They were almost to Mrs. Doubbet's house when Dale glanced over his shoulder and realized that the truck was no longer following. He hadn't seen it turn west on Church Street after them.

"Shit!" yelled Dale, pulling out onto Broad and skidding almost completely around. Lawrence slid to a stop next to him and they looked south along the wide avenue, waiting for the scabrous red cab of the truck to appear on Church.

The Rendering Truck pulled out of the alley twenty-five feet behind them, sliding from behind the forsythia bushes along the north side of Old Double-Butt's property as stealthily as a cat.

Lawrence got moving first, leaping his little bike onto the curb on the west side of the street and careening down the alley north of the post office. Dale was right on his tail, shouting their location at the walkie-talkie dangling from its strap. If Mike or anyone said anything back, Dale didn't hear it.

The Rendering Truck crossed Broad and accelerated down the alley after them, its bumper less than thirty feet behind Dale's back tire. Lawrence's bike was wobbling far right as the boy's body leaned left, then rocked left as Lawrence came down on the right pedal. He whooped and cut left across Mrs. Andyll's backyard, ducking under a clothesline, leaving tire tracks in the corner of her vegetable garden, and throwing cinders into the air as he led the way down her drive toward Church Street.

We'll lose the truck, thought Dale, but we're going south again. The wrong way.

They didn't lose the truck. It swung left after them, the double rear tires throwing great divots from Mrs. Andyll's lawn and garden. The cab of the truck ripped four clotheslines right out of their uprights and came down the drive dragging sheets and print dresses.

Dale and Lawrence went west on Church Street, standing to pedal, their rumps higher than their heads. The Rendering Truck gunned its engine and came up the street after them. Dale looked back and saw that one headlight was burning.

Just before they reached St. Malachy's, Dale led the way left and they cut between a house and a garage separated by less than four feet, roared past a lady and her infant sitting in a wading pool, and actually rode across a Doberman's chain before the dog realized that trespassers were in the yard. He and Lawrence came out into the alley and turned east again, Dale catching a glimpse of the truck barreling down the narrow street that ran along the railroad embankment half a block to the west.

The two boys headed up Fifth toward Depot Street, both of them panting hard now, Dale feeling the fading of energy that the first rush of terror had given him. His legs felt very tired. We're less than halfway there.

The Rendering Truck almost beat them to the intersection at Depot Street and Fifth.

Dale saw the red cab screeching around the corner near the depot, and then he cut right across the street and into the alley that ran north and south behind the Staffneys' place. Where Mike saw his priest friend Thursday night. What if that guy steps out in front of us, grabs our handlebars?

Dale fought down the sudden weakness and turned to check on Lawrence. His brother's face was beet-red, his crew cut as wet as if he had been swimming, but he looked up and grinned at Dale.

The Rendering Truck pulled into the alley behind them and shifted up through gears, the sides of the high-sided bed behind the cab shearing off branches and bushes as it came. The dogs along the alley went nuts.

Dale shouted their position at the walkie-talkie as they cut across the backyard of the last house before Catton Road. It was going to be close.

They went across the railroad crossing at thirty miles per hour, their bikes flying fifteen feet until the rear tires crashed down on hard-packed dirt on the narrow lane beyond. The Rendering Truck came on as if emboldened by the trees and isolation here.

Dale had a sudden image of the Soldier or one of the other things stepping out of the trees onto the narrow lane ahead of them, of the thing's mouth pulsating and extending the way Mike had described it. ... He pedaled harder, shouting at Lawrence to move, move, move.

They circled around south to the clearing where the abandoned grain elevator and warehouse rose from the weeds. Dale glanced back just as the Rendering Truck stopped at the entrance to the drive . . . Dale imagined that it looked like a huge, wild, red dog at that moment, sniffing, knowing that its prey was cornered but cautious just the same.

Lawrence rode ahead just as they planned, barreling between the elevator proper with its faded sign on the roof and the long warehouse extension. It was a narrow lane where the trucks had pulled in to be weighed and to load or unload their grain, but it was wide enough for the Rendering Truck. Barely.

But the truck did not come on.

Dale had skidded to a halt just at the opening of the weighing lane, and now he stood on one leg, the other bent over the bike's crossbar, gasping and staring at the truck twenty yards away. What if Van Syke has a gun?

The engine roared. Dale could smell the cargo and see the stiffened legs of what looked like a couple of cows and a horse, sticking up above the off-white boards siding the truckbed, could even make out the reddened and hairy arm of the driver of the truck . . . but it did not come on:

Waiting for reinforcements? Does that goddamn thing have a radio? Can Van Syke call Roon and the others?

Dale dismounted and stood holding his bike. He could feel rather than hear the silent shouts of his friends behind him. If they're there. Maybe something's already got them . . . got Lawrence when he went through . . . and has me trapped.

He stood there facing the truck, seeing it rock as if the driver were popping the clutch in with the brakes still engaged.

Dale lifted his right arm and gave the unseen driver the finger.

The Rendering Truck came on, gravel flying and dust rising in a cloud.

Dale didn't have time to get back on his bike. He shoved it aside and turned and ran, cutting between the elevator and the warehouse, his Keds pounding on the rotted boards of the truck scales. He hadn't reached the end of the building when the Rendering Truck roared in behind him.

The lighter flared on the first try, the soaked rags ignited, and Mike stood to toss the twelve-ounce Coke bottle of Shell Premium onto the roof of the truck cab. What he saw as the truck roared by underneath made him pause for the split second it took to miss the cab and hit the truckbed: the rear of the Rendering Truck held not only dead livestock but other things-human things-that looked as if they had just been disinterred from old graves: brown soil, brown rags, brown flesh, and the bright white of bone.

Mike threw, Harlen tossed a second later, and both of them watched Kevin stand and fling his bottle from the warehouse rooftop.

Mike's Molotov cocktail exploded in the rear of the truck, igniting the bloated corpse of a cow, the dried flesh of a horse, and the rags of several of the human corpses. Harlen's bottle struck the back of the cab and splattered it with gasoline, somehow without igniting. Kev's struck the left front fender of the cab and exploded in a ball of flame.

Dale leaped to the left as he came around the building, almost colliding with Lawrence on his bike. His brother looked as if he were ready to drive back out through the narrow drive just as the Rendering Truck exploded through the gap, its cargo bed on fire and its left front wheel throwing gobbets of flame and melted rubber at them.

Mike and Harlen grabbed the next bottle from the duffel bag and ran to the edge of the tin rooftop, not worrying about being seen now, holding the lighter next to the rags.

The Rendering Truck skidded in the gravel and dirt of the co-op's back drive, turning in a frenzied circle. It was trapped. To the west lay a seven-foot-high barrier of abandoned railroad ties and iron rails, stacked for fifty feet along the edge of a small creek. Straight ahead, to the south, the woods closed in like a solid wall. To the east, running tight against the warehouse, was a six-foot-deep concrete drainage ditch separating the compound yard from the railroad embankment.

For a second Mike thought that the truck was going to try to jump that paved moat, but at the last second the driver slammed on the brakes and swung the vehicle left, completing his turn. The two right-rear wheels spun out over nothing for a moment and then the truck was screaming back toward Dale and Lawrence.

"Get out of there! Move!" Mike and Harlen and Kevin were screaming, but the boys below did not need the advice. Lawrence's bike rattled up a ramp onto the loading dock of the warehouse and Dale came pounding along a second later. They disappeared under the roof where Kevin stood, bottle and lighter still in hand, and then the truck was back, the flames diminishing on the fender and wheel.

Mike saw what Van Syke was going to do a second before the still-smoldering left front fender smashed into the first column supporting the roof where he and Harlen stood. The loading dock on the other side was too high for the truck to mount it, but this roof was held up just by the three columns running parallel to the truck scales.

Harlen screamed something, he and Mike lit their rags and threw, and then the roof was going down with them on it, the sign ripping free and falling onto the scales, Mike's duffel bag and the radio going flying as the south end of the roof folded first, dumping the boys and everything else in a cloud of dust.

Harlen's Molotov cocktail exploded on the hood of the truck; a second later, Kevin's second throw struck the back of the cab and ignited the spilled gasoline already there. Kevin ran to the front of the warehouse porch, readying a third bottle.

The Rendering Truck revved its engine and charged back through the narrow drive, seemingly intent on running down Harlen and Mike, both of whom lay stunned in the dust and rubble and tin of the collapsed roof. The truck rammed tin and wood, folded great sections of the shattered roof in front of it-Mike stared dully at it and thought of a bulldozer pushing its way toward them-but several of the broken support posts were set deep in cement and hindered the truck's advance.

The rubble of the roof was blocking the drive.

Mike staggered to his feet, lifted Harlen under one arm and the duffel bag with the other, and stumbled toward the loading dock as the truck backed off into the front driveway.

The left section of the truck's windshield had shattered and Mike caught a glimpse of the gun rack and muscled arm reaching just as Dale and Lawrence came into sight at the front of the warehouse dock. "Get down!" screamed Mike.

Dale pulled his brother off the bike and leaped behind a pile of wooden skids just as the rifle fired twice ... a third time. A dusty windowpane above the skids shattered and dropped glass on the crouching boys.

Mike had dropped the lighter, but he pulled the spare from his pocket, ignited the soaked rags, and threw the Coke bottle at the grille of the truck thirty feet away. It dropped early, rolled under the cab, and exploded, sending flame blossoming up around the engine and both front wheels. He pulled Harlen out of sight just as the rifle came through the broken windshield and fired twice. Wood splintered from the corner molding of the warehouse.

Kevin dropped another bottle on the right running board, still another into the mass of burning bodies behind the cab.

The Rendering Truck backed up, turned around, and roared down the drive, trailing flames, turning left rather than right toward town.

"We got it! We got it!" Harlen was screaming as he jumped up and down.

"Not yet," said Mike, carrying the heavy duffel and running for his bike where it was hidden behind the grain elevator. For the first time he realized that the truck had ignited the wooden side of the elevator and bits of the collapsed roof. The fire was already spreading to the warehouse wall, where a hundred years of sawdust and old wood was catching faster than the gasoline that had started it.

Dale ran out into the front drive and retrieved his bike-which the Rendering Truck miraculously had missed each time it had backed past it-straightened its handlebars, and leaped on while running. Lawrence sped past, in hot pursuit of the truck despite the fact that the boy had no weapon. Mike and Harlen got on their bikes and pedaled out past an elevator already burning to the second story.

"Cut through the woods!" shouted Mike, bouncing left between the trees, taking a shortcut to the overgrown lane that ran from the grain elevator to the Dump Road. He assumed that the truck would turn left on the Dump Road, heading back along the railroad tracks toward the depot and town, but when they came crashing out of the weeds and undergrowth onto the narrow gravel drive, the truck was visible a hundred yards ahead, going north toward the dump. Flame and black smoke still rose from the jouncing vehicle.

The boys put their heads down and concentrated on riding faster than they ever had before, their bikes jostling and bouncing over ruts and stones in the twin lanes.

Mike was out in front, and he caught up to the Rendering Truck just as they reached the widened area where the Cookes and another poor family had lived. Both shacks looked abandoned.

Somehow Mike managed to get a bottle out, hold it in his left hand against the handlebar, and fumble out his lighter as he pulled alongside the truck.

The rifle barrel came out the driver's window.

Mike braked, skidded, pumped hard to get behind the truck, and pulled up on the right side as they both entered the last hundred yards of road to the dump. Dale, Lawrence, Kevin, and Harlen pumped along in single file behind.

Mike caught a second's glimpse of Karl Van Syke's long face-he was grinning maniacally through the flames and smoke curling back from the hood-then the rifle came up again and Mike lobbed the already-flaming Coke bottle through the passenger-side window.

The explosion blew out the remaining windshield glass. The heat forced Mike to drop back behind the truck, and what he saw there almost made him dump his Schwinn into the ditch alongside the road.

The carcass of the cow, or the horse, or both, bloated with methane and the other gasses of decomposition, exploded . . . showering flames and bits of flaming decayed flesh into the woods on either side.

But that wasn't what made Mike's jaw sag open.

The brown, rotting, once-human things seemed to be writhing and tugging at one another as the flames enclosed them . . . the denizens of some evacuated cemetery trying to pull themselves to their knees, to their feet, but finding no muscles or tendons or bone with which to do so. The brown things struggled and writhed, falling back into each other's embrace as the entire heap of carcasses began to burn.

The flaming truck did not slow for the wooden gates at the dump entrance. Boards splintered with a sound like more rifle shots and then the large truck was through, bouncing across the ruts and heaps of landfill with five bicycles in pursuit.

The Rendering Truck got as far into the mounds of refuse, old tires, sprung sofas, rusted Model-T's, and moldering organic garbage as it could before it slewed left and slid to a stop on the edge of a forty-foot drop into the part of the ravine here that had not been filled. The boys slid to a stop thirty feet back, waiting for the truck to turn on them.

It did not. The flames had enveloped cab and truckbed now; the wooden slats at the rear were parallel strips of fire.

"Nothing could live through that," whispered Kevin, his mouth open as he stared.

As if the driver had heard, the flaming door on this side slammed open and Karl Van Syke slid out, his one-piece jumpsuit charred and smoking, his face streaked with soot and sweat, arms reddened. He was grinning almost from ear to ear. A scoped rifle was in his huge hands.

All the boys looked around and raised their feet to the bike pedals, but it was sixty or seventy feet to the nearest cover-a cornfield to their left. It was almost a hundred yards to the dump entrance and the line of woods behind them.

"Get down!" shouted Mike, dropping his bike in front of him and scrabbling at the heaped landfill to find cover.

The other four boys threw themselves flat, inching toward any rotted tire or rusted drum that might offer cover. Harlen had his .38 in his hand but did not fire ... it was too much distance for the short-barreled gun.

Van Syke took two steps from the flaming vehicle and raised the rifle, taking careful aim at Mike O'Rourke's face.

During the turmoil, a small figure with two dogs had come over the top of the highest heap of garbage. Now she released the thongs and said, "Git 'im!" in a surprisingly soft voice.

Van Syke looked to his left just as the first dog, the Dober-man named Belzybub, covered the last twenty feet of ground. He swiveled his rifle and fired, but the huge brown animal had already leaped, striking his chest and driving both of them back into the flaming cab of the truck. The big dog named Lucifer was next, growling and leaping at Van Syke's kicking legs.

Mike dug Memo's squirrel gun out of the duffel, saw Kevin pull his dad's .45 from his belt, and all five boys rushed forward even as Cordie slid her way down the garbage slope.

One of Van Syke's flailing legs caught in the half-open window of the door and swung it shut on him and the dog. Cordie and Mike rushed forward, but at that second the gas tank beneath the truck ignited, sending a perfect mushroom of flame eighty feet into the air. Mike and the girl were both lifted off their feet and thrown across the rough ground, the German shepherd-mix named Lucifer landing scorched and howling at their feet. Belzybub was still in the cab; Dale and Lawrence grabbed Mike and Cordie and dragged them back, watching the two dark shapes still struggling in the curling vortex of orange flame.

Then the motion stopped and the truck burned, filling the world with the stench of melting rubber and something far worse.

The six kids stood there, almost a hundred feet away now-driven back by the terrible heat-shielding their watering eyes and staring. A siren sounded back through the woods, somewhere around the grain elevator. Another siren whooped along the Dump Road.

Cordie was weeping and cradling her other dog. The shepherd-mix had lost most of his hair. "Foun' my hideout, didn't you?" said Cordie between sobs. "Couldn't leave me alone, could you?"

Harlen started to protest that they hadn't known she was living in the goddamn dump, for Chrissakes, but Mike hushed him with a hand on his chest and said, "Is there another way out of here? We've got to get going before the fire trucks arrive."

Cordie gestured toward the corn. "They'd see ya if you took the railroad tracks back, but cut across the Meehans' field there for about half a mile, an' you'll get to Oak Hill Road about a quarter of a mile above the Grange Hall. You can take it to the Hard Road."

Mike nodded, seeing the map in his mind. They rushed to the barbed-wire fence, tossed their bikes across, and started to climb. "Aren't you coming with us?" Dale called to Cordie.

The sirens were closer now. The girl in her dumpy, soiled dress had climbed the hill of garbage, still carrying the large dog. "Uh-uh. Y'all go on." She turned and spat in the direction of the huge pyre that had been the Rendering Truck. "At least that fuck's dead." She disappeared over the mound of refuse and old tires.

The boys pulled their bikes into the corn just as the first fire truck and its retinue of rushing pickups came through the shattered gate.

It wasn't easy pushing their bikes through half a mile of soft soil between seven-foot-high rows of corn only nine inches apart, but they did it.

When they reached Oak Hill Road and turned south, pedaling past the Old Grange Hall, where Mike and Dale had gone to Boy Scout meetings in another lifetime, the cloud of black smoke was still rising thick and heavy from the dump far to the northeast.