Desperation

Its eyes, glaring at him from where it lay in the dust.

“What, then.”

He looked at her and gri

His mind was the storm now, filled with roaring wind from side to side and top to bottom, driving before it the images of what he would do to her, what she would do to him, and what they would do to anyone who got in their way.

She gri

Because in a very real sense, they would be gone.

Joh

I’ll take the fifth, Joh

“What is wrong with you.” Mary asked him. “Just what in the hell is wrong with you.”

“Nothing,” Joh

Billingsley tilted the bottle back with a short, sharp flick of the wrist that looked as practiced as a nurse’s injection technique, and then coughed. Tears welled in his eyes. He put the mouth of the bottle to his lips again, and Joh

He offered the bottle to Ralph, who took it, looked at it, then bit off a quick swallow.

Ralph then offered it to Mary.

“Go on,” Ralph said. His voice was quiet, almost humble. “Better if you do.”

She looked at Joh

“Come on, Doe,” he said to Billingsley. “Lead the way. — They started down the street, Joh

He swallowed, grimacing at the burn as the half—liquefied aspirin slid down his throat, and tried to put the bottle into his breast pocket. It bumped the top of the phone. He took it out, put the bottle of pills in its place, started to shove the cellular into his pants pocket, then decided it couldn’t hurt to try again. He pulled the ante

“I think so, yes.”

David held out his hand. “Could I try it.”

Something in his voice. His father heard it, too. Joh

“David. Son. Is something wr-”

“Could I try it please.”

“Sure, if you want.” He held the useless phone out to the boy, and as David took it, Joh

“Son of a bitch!” he breathed, and grabbed the phone back. David, who had been studying the keypad func-tions, saw him reaching a moment too late to stop him.

The moment the cellular phone was back in Joh

They were never there in the first place, you know that, don’t you. You hallucinated them. You—“Give it back!” David shouted. Joh

The phone was snatched away again, but not too fast for him to see the transmission-bars reappear, glowing gold in the dark.

“This is so damned dumb,” Mary said, looking first back over her shoulder, then at the coyotes across the street. They had stopped when the people had. “But if it’s the way you want to play it, why don’t we just drag a table out and get drunk in the middle of the fucking street.”

No one paid any attention. Billingsley was still looking at the bottle of Beam. Joh

“David, what is it.” Ralph asked.

David ignored him and turned urgently to Joh

“Yes.”

David pushed SEND.

Steve had heard of being saved by the bell, but this was ridiculous.

Just as his fingers found the doorhandle-and he could hear Cynthia grabbing for hers on the other end of the seat-the cellular telephone gave out its nasal, demanding cry: Hmeep!

Hmeep!

Steve froze. Looked at the phone. Looked across the seat at Cynthia, whose door was actually open a little. She was staring back at him, the grin on her lips fading.

Hmeep! Hmeep!

“Well.” she asked. “Aren’t you going to answer that.” And there was something in her tone, something so wifely, that he laughed.

Outside, the wolf pointed its nose into the darkness and howled, as if it had heard Steve’s laughter and dis-approved. The coyotes seemed to take that howl as a signal. They got up and disappeared back the way they bad come, walking into the blowing dust with their heads lowered. The, scorpions were already gone. If, that was, they had been there at all.

They might not have been; his bead felt like a haunted house, one filled with hallucjna-tions and false memories instead of ghosts.

Hmeep! Hmeep!

He grabbed the phone off the dashboard, pushed the SEND button, and put it to his ear.

He stared out at the wolf as he did it. And the wolf stared back. “Boss. Boss, that you.”

Of course it was, who else would be calling him. Only it wasn’t. It was a kid.

“Is your name Steve.” the kid asked.

“Yes. How’d you get the boss’s phone. Where-”

“Never mind that,” the kid said. “Are you in trouble. You are, aren’t you.”

Steve opened his mouth. “I don’t-” Closed it again. Outside, the wind screamed around the cab of the Ryder truck. He held the little phone to the side of his face and looked over an oozing lump of buzzard at the wolf. He saw the chunk of statue lying in front of it as well. The crude images of intermingled sex and violence which had filled his mind were fading, but he could remember the power they had exercised over him the way he could remember certain vivid nightmares.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you could say that.”

“Are you in the truck we saw.”

“If you saw a truck, likely that was us, yeah. Is my boss with you.”