"I want to think you"re right," Sam said. "I just don"t want you to get your hopes up. I mean, we could be way off the mark here. That motel might not even be there, for all I know. It"s probably been ten years since I"ve seen it and the city likes to tear things down that could possibly harbor squatters and b.u.ms. I would be more surprised if it were still standing at all."
Jack thought about the mental image in his head from when Mr. Grin had called. It fit. It fit the image of an abandoned hotel perfectly. That would explain why all the furnishings were more wildly out of date than hotel furnishings normally are.
"Yeah," Jack said. "You"re right. We"ll just have to play it by ear."
The trains were in front of them, reeking of oil and exhaust, even after all these years. They loomed there, larger than life.
"All aboard," Sam said, and slowly climbed up into the freight car.
"Wait!" Jack shouted. A bad feeling soured his stomach.
It was Sam"s alarm at Jack"s warning that probably got him hurt.
He turned to face Jack and a gunshot rang out. The hand holding the rusty rail disintegrated and Sam tumbled to the ground at Jack"s feet. Jack didn"t know whether to help him or run.
"Move away," Jack heard from the freight car. It was a voice he recognized all too well. One he"d had to listen to rambling on at unholy lengths about subjects he had no interest in.
Mr. Moran, d.i.c.k, stood at the lip of the freight car, a double-barrel shotgun in his hand.
Jack stood in front of the sprawled Sam, holding his stump of a hand against his chest.
"I only got one more sh.e.l.l in this and it ain"t intended for you," Mr. Moran said.
"Why are you doing this, d.i.c.k?" Jack asked.
But he knew he wasn"t really talking to his neighbor. He was talking to whatever that brand had made him. In a sense, by his mere contact, what Jack had made him. Snapshots of the other people he had come in contact with that day lightning-flashed through his mind. Quick. Joey at the cafe. There had been a woman in front of him when he got there. How far did this go? Would they be branded as well? What about that woman at the gas station? Jack couldn"t remember her name but he remembered all those blue stars under her name. Those blue stars meant she was good at what she did. Would she be good at killing Jack too? Where did it end? There was that old lady on the bus. The one who had crossed herself. And what about the bus driver and the other people on the bus? What about people who had... Jesus, what about people who had maybe just seen him from the windows of their homes or the windows of their cars? What about them?
"I"m not moving," he told Mr. Moran.
"You weren"t supposed to have no help. Them"s the rules."
"How the f.u.c.k would you know what the rules are?"
"I know everything he knows."
"Who is he?"
"Well, I think you call him Mr. Grin, don"t you?" Mr. Moran laughed a strange toothless laugh. Jack realized he had never seen him laugh before. He had seen him smile plenty of times but he had never seen him laugh and it was a sphincter-tightening thing to witness.
"How could you possibly know that?"
"See, I kinda know everything you know too."
"Put the gun down, d.i.c.k."
"Who said you could call me d.i.c.k," Mr. Moran said.
Then he pulled the trigger.
Twenty-two.
Jack felt the black pall of death fall around him, sure he was shot.
The stinging in his leg took his mind off that.
He had only taken some of the buckshot, biting into the outside of his left leg.
Another second and he realized what happened. Horrified, he turned and looked down at Sam.
Only it wasn"t like looking at Sam at all. Most of his head was gone, turned into a red-gray pulp. He dropped down to his knees, between Sam"s legs, his back to him, and threw up.
He couldn"t remember the last time he had eaten anything. He figured it was mostly coffee, black and burning, clinging to his tongue and his lips.
And it hit him again how very serious this whole thing was. Although he had begun to realize it was a very serious thing a long time ago, there was a gradual escalation to the seriousness of it all. A gradual escalation culminating here.
He looked up at Mr. Moran, d.i.c.k, a cold kind of belief freezing his insides.
d.i.c.k stood just inside the freight car. Looking at him, Jack knew d.i.c.k Moran was nowhere inside of that man. He was back at his house. Back where he had been branded. Part of Jack wanted to kill the man who stood before him. But he knew that would be wrong. It was not this man who had killed Sam. It was not this man who had stolen Gina away from him. It was somebody else. A greater power. Maybe just another man or maybe someone or something far more equipped than anyone Jack had ever known.
"You shot Sam," Jack muttered, in shock, not knowing what else to say.
"I told ya," Mr. Moran said. "Them"s the rules. Them"s the rules and if you don"t follow em then I have to make sure you do follow em."
Jack stood up, wiping the stinking puke from his chin. He had to get away from here. He had to get through the car Mr. Moran was blocking and to the hotel. He was convinced Gina would be in the hotel. She had to be. Or else it wasn"t a game at all, was it? If there wasn"t any sort of ending. If there wasn"t any clear-cut winner, then it was more like a trick than a game.
When Jack reached the ground just in front of the car, Mr. Moran transferred the barrel of the gun to his hands and swung it out in a giant loop. Normally, if this were the actual d.i.c.k Moran, Jack wouldn"t have been frightened of that swinging stock. There wouldn"t have been any real muscle power behind it. But this was the branded d.i.c.k Moran. This was undoubtedly a d.i.c.k Moran of near superhuman strength.
He waited until the gun completed its arc before rushing the car and grabbing Mr. Moran around his skinny old man ankles.
He tried to drive the stock of the gun down into Jack"s head but Jack quickly yanked his ankles and sent him sprawling back into the car. Quickly, Jack heaved himself inside and pounced on Moran.
The gun had come loose in his fall and lay in a far corner of the car, out of reach.
He rested his a.s.s on Mr. Moran"s scrawny chest and put his knees on his upper arms.
Mr. Moran stared at him, an expression of fury twisting his face, and tried to lift Jack off. Jack had no doubt he could be bucked off if Mr. Moran fully caught his bearings.
Yanking Mr. Moran"s shirt sleeve up, Jack bared the brand on his left forearm. Now, looking at it, even momentarily, he didn"t see how it could be anything but an "H" and an "E".
He pinched Mr. Moran"s papery skin between his thumb and forefinger and gave a healthy yank. Jack put the brand in his pocket.
The old man screamed, spitting at Jack.
Then he was calm, lying there on the floor of the car and breathing deeply.
Jack knew the decent thing would be to stick around at least long enough to ask him if he was okay but he was through doing the decent thing. At least for the day.
Sam was dead but he couldn"t mourn.
Mr. Moran may be injured, may even need medical attention but he couldn"t wait to find out.
Gina was the only thing that mattered.
And now, if he didn"t find her, then Sam"s blood was on his hands. Sam"s death would have been in vain. Jack wasn"t going to let that happen. He was going to do what he started out to do and now, he had no doubts, he would relish the kill. If he could find Mr. Grin, there would be no hesitation. No conscience. No mercy.
Jack took a deep breath and plunged off the other side of the freight car and there was something inside him that hoped Gina was right. Because he thought, maybe, in a magical world, the odds would be a little more even.
Twenty-three.
Jack stepped out of the freight car and into the Wilds. This was the most thickly wooded area in Alton; the rest of it, like most mid-size cities, given up to overdevelopment and urban sprawl. The trees, still with most of their leaves, made it seem prematurely dark. Full dark was still a couple hours away but, in the Wilds, dusk was upon him. Still thinking about the others who may be branded- Joey, the customer in the coffee shop, the bus driver, the old lady on the bus (h.e.l.l, maybe everyone on the bus), the cashier at the gas station- made him nervous. Here, in the Wilds, there were plenty of places for them to hide.
He stood for a moment, hesitant to move. Whichever direction he chose, he knew, might be his last. He may not have the chance to go back and repeat his steps or choose some other path.
Time was short.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
The now familiar dual sensation of hope and dread made its way down his spine to sit in the pit of his stomach.
He pulled the phone from his pocket, wondering exactly when he had put it back in there, and flipped it open.
"Yeah."
"JACK! JACK!" Gina"s voice. Frantic. Frantic but welcome. She was still alive. She was still able to scream and that was something. That was everything to him, at this point.
"Gina. Gina."
"He knows where you"re at. He"s coming after you-"
And her voice was gone. Replaced with grunts and moans. The sounds of smacking flesh. Screams. Screams unlike Jack had ever heard before.
But where are you, Gina? he thought. Where the h.e.l.l are you?
"She"s right, s.h.i.tcrawler."
Then the connection was gone.
A shot cracked through the early dusk.
Jack"s stomach lit up, on fire. He"d been hit.
He dropped to his knees, his head jerking in the direction of the shot, wondering when the next one was going to come. He was not going to let it end this way. He told himself it couldn"t end this way. He couldn"t even begin to wrap his mind around it at this point. To wake up to a beautiful Sunday morning only to die in the woods beside some abandoned trains was not something he could understand.
Another shot followed but that one must have missed because he didn"t feel any biting pains.
Then he saw her.
Moving behind a tree less than twenty feet away.
The woman from the gas station.
It was like everything he had thought was coming true. He felt helpless but knew he couldn"t just lie down and die. He felt helpless because he wondered who else could be surrounding him. And he wondered how they had guns. Well, he thought, Mr. Moran was kind of a given. Old Republican s.h.i.ts like him always had guns. And, of course, he thought, the woman from the gas station probably kept a gun under the counter or in the safe. For self-defense.
While she was behind the tree, he darted up, off to his left, and hid himself behind a tree. What a fun game this is, he thought.
She started out from behind her tree and momentarily stopped when she noticed Jack was no longer on the ground where she had left him.
Desperately, he scanned the ground around him for anything he could use as a weapon. He also scanned the surrounding woods to see if there was anyone else lurking there.
Nothing.
On both accounts. Nothing.
The only thing he could do was try and work himself behind the mad woman. She walked toward the freight car and Jack crept to the next tree. If he knew where he was going he would simply take off in that direction but he didn"t and, with the mad woman, the branded woman, wandering around, he didn"t have the time to stand around and try to decide.
The pain in his stomach eliminated whatever patience he may have had left. Luckily, the wound didn"t seem to be an incredibly huge one and he figured it must have missed most of his vital organs.
The woman continued to stand there, hunched over. Jack realized she was searching for some kind of scent. Trying to pick him up.
His time was short. And, he thought, he could really use her gun. She had already fired two shots and that meant there were probably at least four more in there. If there were going to be other people in these woods hunting him, those four shots would be essential.
He had to try and take her down before she could manage to get any more off.
Taking a deep breath, trying to ignore the searing pain in his gut, he darted out from the tree, rapidly approaching the woman.
Drawing closer, he realized how burly she was. Taking her down might not be as easy as he thought. Nearly to her, he tripped over a branch and went flying. Luckily, he hit her in the back of the knees before she could even turn around.
She went down and he was immediately upon her, trying to seize her gun before she could aim it at him.
Her lips pulled back in an angry snarl. He saw the brand, burned into her left forearm.
She fired off another shot but it went astray. Reflexes, he thought.
She tried to throw him from her but he held on, digging his knees into her solar plexus. He put his left hand around her thick left wrist, his fingertips sinking into the soft flesh. With his right hand, he grabbed the lump of flesh bearing the brand. All the while, she pounded on his back with her right hand. Each blow sent shuddering waves of pain and nausea through him.
He tore at the flesh. It came away in his hand and he now held another brand like some bizarre trophy. Up this close to her he could read her nametag, the one with all the little smiley faces. Her name was Donna. He remembered now. Donna was lucky, he thought. Donna almost died. But as soon as the brand was yanked from her flesh, Donna just lay there like she had been somehow... deactivated was the only word Jack could think of to describe it.