The little girl shrieked and whooped, loving it. Jonathan was exhausted, his left shoulder aching abominably as he ran, tiny flakes of light dancing in front of his eyes like diamond dust. His lungs felt ready to burst.
He realized he was about to smash into a tree. He went straight for it, then dived off to the right, rolled once, and came up on his feet in time to see the girl frantically trying to turn the dozer in time to avoid a collision. No such luck. The bulldozer rammed into the tree, its blade gouging a large wedge of white wood out of the trunk. Leaves pinwheeled down. The dozer’s screaming motor groaned to a stop.
The girl tried to start it, but this time it was her turn to go chugga chugga chugga. Cursing like a drunken sailor, she jumped down and sprinted off the way she had come.
Jonathan invited his legs to another chase, legs that were wobbling and scissoring and in no mood for another lap. He started forward regardless. Sweat was streaming into his eyes, making him blink. The girl was only ten yards ahead, her small white legs pumping out a good rhythym, a string of curses trailing behind her. Jonathan swallowed, vowing never again to run two miles at top speed without bringing a canteen along. But dehydrated as he was, his long legs were more than a match for the girl’s short ones. He caught up to her and tackled her from behind. On the side of his vision he saw the frantic mother wandering around howling for Amanda. He wrestled the girl to the ground, amazed at her strength. She was kicking and clawing, going for his eyes. He pinned her arms to the ground and looked into her eyes.
“I’m gonna rip your lungs out, you son of a bitch!” she bellowed, squirming beneath him.
Jonathan saw what he needed to see. “Pinker, you get out of her!” he shouted. She spit in his face, her eyes glowing dull red with a strange sort of inner fluorescence. “Leave her alone!”
The mother caught sight of the commotion and ran over. Jonathan looked up and discovered he was about to be hit with a large and heavy-looking purse. He ducked, too late. Whap!
She swung again. He blocked the purse with an arm. “Lady, listen!” he shouted. “This isn’t your little kid anymore!”
He didn’t expect her to believe it, and she didn’t. The purse assailed him from all angles. He supposed that if this were his and Alison’s daughter, he’d be doing some swinging himself. Only Alison was dead, and …
He jerked up, ignoring the flying purse. He dug in a pocket and pulled out the golden heart on its chain. Little Amanda saw it and quit squirming. Her red eyes grew large.
“Not that,” she whispered, obviously terrified. Jonathan smiled as he was beat about the head and shoulders. Pinker was too scared to move.
Jonathan stood up, swatting at the pesky purse, pleading with the mother to stop, for Christ’s sake, because he was not a kidnapper or pervert. She ignored him, a human banshee with a purse that could flatten the average boxer. Jonathan twisted around, begging her to stop and listen to reason. Cute little Amanda used the opportunity to kick out with one shoe on one little foot. Jonathan caught the blow exactly where she wanted it: the family jewels. He went down like a falling tree. The heart and chain fell out of his hand into the grass. The purse just went on and on.
He reached for the heart and chain, scrabbling at the grass while his insides churned in agony. He snagged it with a finger and flipped it over onto the girl’s chest just as she was about to get up.
What happened next was so strange and terrifying that Jonathan began to doubt his sanity again. Something boiled out of the girl’s chest, took nebulous form as Pinker in the orange overalls he had worn the day he died, and floated for a moment a few feet off the ground. Jonathan smelled a strange, unworldly smoke. Then it snapped sideways, crashing onto the frantic mother with a buzzing, electrical noise, a sound like huge power lines breaking in a storm. She fell down with a shriek, convulsing again and again in mindless agony. Amanda sat up and began to cry.
Her mother became suddenly still. Then she rose up on one elbow and looked calmly at Jonathan. “Ready for round two, asswipe?”
Jonathan nearly wept. It wasn’t over, perhaps had just begun, but he didn’t have the strength to fight anymore today. He barely had the strength to stand up. His guts still ached from the kick. He backed away with a low groan of denial. This couldn’t be happening.
He saw a huge man running toward him, a man in a sweaty tee shirt and baggy worker’s pants. He was carrying a pick. Jonathan sighed with relief. He could use a backup about now.
The man drew close, panting. He stepped between Jonathan and Amanda’s mother. “I heard all the noise clear over there in the road. Is this creep bugging you, ma’am?”
She reached toward him, as if needing help to stand. The man took her hand, grinning with foppish pride that he had saved the day. There was a huge electrical snap, a bolt of blue light between them. The mother fell back with a groan. The worker doubled over as if he had taken a bullet to the stomach. Slowly, though, he was able to straighten again. Jonathan’s heart sank into his shoes. The worker was still grinning, but it was the hideous leer of a madman. His eyes glowed a dismal red. He craned around to look at Jonathan.
Jonathan jumped for the heart and chain that had fallen from the girl’s chest. The big man slammed one pointy end of the pick into the ground, nearly boring through Jonathan’s groping hand. A heavy work boot kicked out, catching Jonathan under the chin. He flipped over, stunned, his teeth filled with drilling pain. His eyes squirted unwanted tears and he felt a powerful urge to sneeze. The worker lifted the pick. The heart and chain dangled from it. He swept it past Jonathan’s face, taunting.
“Say goodbye to your sweetie,” he growled, and heaved the pick with its burden of jewelry incredibly far away, where the rushes and cattails grew at the rim of a small lake, the part of the park where people came to toss stale bread at the ducks. It splashed into the blue-brown water at least one hundred feet out, sending a small geyser sparkling into the air.
He turned on Jonathan again, digging in one baggy pocket. His hand came out holding a large clasp knife. He snapped it open. The blade glittered wickedly in the sunlight. “Time to take your medicine, Jonny. Time to swallow it all up.”
He lunged forward, laughing.
Jonathan ran, weak and sick, ready to faint. The worker chased him only a few yards, then quit. His eyes gleamed, eyes drawn down to slits, eyes burning with eerie red light. He watched as Jonathan staggered toward the bushes and the sidewalk there, chuckling to himself, strangely happy, strangely content.
Chapter •
Ten
Coach Cooper’s house was located about a mile down on Hudson Street in a middle-class suburb where the houses were well kept, the lawns green and thick, the streets full of children on bicycles and dogs running loose. At times the Saturday sound of lawn mowers was deafening. Perhaps, Jonathan had sometimes wondered, the coach had dreamed the American Dream and made it come true. At any rate, welcome to suburbia, which was a damn sight closer than Jonathan’s own home.
He recognized the familiar light blue house surrounded by tall hedges, and staggered up the sidewalk to Cooper’s front door, looking like a man returning from battle. His brown hair had become a sweaty tangle. His eyes seemed overly large for his face as he glanced around, full of apprehension and fear and the paranoia he swore would never be his. His skin had turned a wan yellow-white. The blood on his arm had dried by now, turned into zigzags of brown against the paleness of his skin.
He got to the door and slumped against it, one hand weakly feeling for the doorbell, the other pressed to the scabbed-over hole in his shoulder. He heard footsteps but was unable to right himself before the door was pulled open. He collapsed in a heap on the coach’s light blue carpet in the coach’s light blue living room. The coach yelped. Strong hands hoisted Jonathan immediately upright. His eyes found their focus and he was staring at Rhino.
“What the hell?” Rhino barked. “Which skyscraper did you fall off of?”
“Get him onto the couch,” the coach sa
id. “Pac-Man, make room.”
Pac-Man jumped up, and Jonathan was dragged to the couch. Light blue, Jonathan noticed without caring. The man is a light blue freak.
“Rhino, tear his shirt off,” the coach ordered, taking command as usual. “Pac-Man, I’ve got a first-aid kit in the bathroom, middle shelf above the sink. Jonathan, you just relax. Try not to talk. What happened?”
Jonathan almost chuckled, his mind wandering to some misty dreamland where pain was a memory and Alison was alive. He let his eyes drift shut, glad to be off his feet, even if the coach was bellowing orders like Patton.
Something stung him, and he jerked awake.
“I knew that one would get him,” the coach said. Jonathan smelled iodine. How had everybody moved so fast?
“You’ve been snoozing on us, Jonathan,” the coach said, dabbing more iodine on Jonathan’s wound. It stung worse than the bullet had. He tried to edge away from it.
“Hold still.”
Jonathan kept moving away. “Why are all of you here, anyway?” he asked, jerking away from the cotton ball that was soaked in red poison.
“Trying to figure out a way to get you back on the team, Jon. Damn, I wish you’d hold still. Pac-Man, you wrap him up with that gauze. Rhino, make him quit wiggling.”
Rhino put both hands on his chest, mashing him into the couch. Jonathan gurgled in protest. Rhino eased up a bit.
“Now,” Cooper said as Pac-Man began to wrap his shoulder, “what the hell did happen to you?”
“Pinker,” Jonathan croaked. “Shot me.”
Rhino grunted. The coach sighed. Pac-Man was busy winding gauze and possibly hadn’t heard.
“Pinker,” Jonathan said, more clearly this time. “Shot me with a pistol. He could be outside right now. Coach, do you have a gun here?”
“Only one for suicide attempts whenever we lose a game. What really happened?”
Jonathan shrugged inwardly. It was now or never if he intended to convince anybody. He started at the point where Chadwick blew the front door to pieces, and ended with the road worker throwing the pick a zillion miles. When he was done he waited for reactions.
“Let’s assume you’re right about this,” the coach said. “Let’s say Pinker shot you. It’s safe to assume somebody did. But since he’s after you, I’d say you should talk to your dad about being placed in protective custody.”
Jonathan shook his head. “I can’t go and hide and let Pinker kill anybody he wants. Somehow, I’m going to get him.”
Cooper frowned. “I don’t get it. You’re saying Pinker’s alive somehow, and can just jump in and out of people like the goddam clap or something?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what he’s doing. Maybe he’s using electricity—because of the electric chair and all, the weird way he died. All I know for sure is that I’ve seen him do it four times today. Right now he’s a big guy in a white tee shirt, a road worker over on Glover Street, where they’re tearing up the road.”
The coach looked grim. “I wonder why they’re doing that. They do it every summer. Sure messes up traffic.”
Jonathan gaped at him. “Pinker’s out there, and you’re worried about traffic? What about Pinker?”
“Let’s just go grab him. No big deal.”
“Yeah,” Rhino said, grinning. “We’ll break his neck. I’d love to break his neck.”
Jonathan shook his head, exasperated. “Rhino, you’d be killing an innocent person. That’s the whole problem.”
Cooper stroked his chin. “Maybe you just hit that goalpost too hard.”
“Wait a minute,” Pac-Man put in. “The whole nervous system is electrical. It’s theoretically possible for an outside force to take it over, same as a terrorist can take over a TV station.”
“Then why not just do it the way you got away from that prison guard?” Cooper said. “You can outrun anybody Pinker gets into, and when they’re out of energy, Pinker’s forced back out. Then we break his neck!”
“Won’t work,” Jonathan said. “He’s not forced out that way until he uses up all the life of the person he’s in. I can’t kill people just to get Pinker out.”
A new thought struck him. “There’s one way to force him out on the spot, before he can kill the body he’s in.”
“Fine,” Cooper said. “Tell me what it is, and I’ll get you ten of them.”
Jonathan sighed. “There’s only one, and it’s at the bottom of the lake in the park.”
Cooper frowned. “Bottom of the lake?”
“Yep. I know pretty much where it is, so it shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve got a diving mask in my closet back home. I just need you guys to get it.”
Cooper stared at him for a while. Then he said, “I’ll get your mask and meet you at the park in half an hour.”
Pac-Man finished with the gauze and clipped it together. “I can get you some fresh clothes, and something to eat, too. No problem.”
Jonathan sat up. “Thanks, guys. I’ll never forget this.” He wobbled to his feet. Rhino steadied him. He tried to go to the door but Rhino held on. “What now?” Jonathan said, irritated.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight. Tonight we’re all on the same team again.”
Jonathan smiled. “Sounds good to me.”
Pac-Man and the coach went out and eased the door shut. They looked at each other for a long time. Then the coach shrugged.
“He is nuts, am I right?”
“Out of his skull, Coach,” Pac-Man agreed. “Absolutely off his rocker. But that doesn’t make him stupid.”
“Let’s get it over with, then. I’ll drive.”
They went out to Cooper’s van, both reaching for their car keys out of habit. The sun was beginning to fall to the horizon, dappling the clouds above with beams of orange light.
Coach Cooper started his car. Pac-Man looked at the keys in his hand and laughed.
They drove away, just as …
… a beefy man in a white tee shirt crawled out of the bushes that ringed the house. His eyes glowed as red as the sunset.
His tongue was hanging out. He was grinning.
More than an hour later Jonathan and Rhino were standing in the late-evening shadows at the muddy shore of the lake, Jonathan watching every movement in the park, every pedestrian, every car driving past. Rhino was leaning casually against the black shape of a tree, picking his fingernails and humming some catchy tune to himself. When he began to get too loud Jonathan hissed at him to be quiet.
Rhino blew out a noisy breath. “What are you so jittery for? You’ve got Rhino here to protect your young ass. I told you I’m going to break the animal’s neck if he shows up.”
It was Jonathan’s turn to make strange noises. “Haven’t you comprehended it yet? You’d be killing the wrong person!”
“Gotcha,” Rhino said, obviously not getting it at all. He went back to humming. Jonathan felt like strangling him …
… like father, like son? …
… but instead contented himself with alternately staring at his watch and staring at the shadows in the park. “Damn,” he muttered after a few fruitless minutes.
Rhino looked up. “Huh?”
“Coach isn’t coming. He’s having a good laugh right now with Pac-Man. Probably sharing some beer with him while we stand here with our thumbs up our asses.”
“Nah,” Rhino said, snapping his fingers to that catchy inner tune now. “No way the coach would jerk you around like that. Bee-bop-a-doo-wap.”
That involuntary urge to kill Rhino on the spot surfaced again. The big lummox was taking all of this too easy. “He’s an hour and fifteen minutes late, for Christ’s sake. Does that sound like something the coach would do?”
“Guess not.”
Jonathan shivered in the cool evening breeze blowing off the silent waters of the lake, growing more uncertain and miserable by the second. “Maybe the cops are all over the place. People saw me running from that Chadwick guy.”
“Could be, I
suppose.”
Jonathan ignored him, on his own now. “Pinker’s going to start killing again, tonight if I don’t stop him. I can feel it coming. Shit, it may be happening right now!”
Rhino pushed himself away from the tree. “Hold on a minute, Jon. No need to work yourself up like this.”
Jonathan was already stalking toward the lake’s swampy edge. Ducks quacked, irritated at being disturbed, and the nearby crickets and frogs stopped singing their songs. “I have to get that thing before it’s too late!” he shouted back to Rhino. “Go on home and sing your damned songs!”
Rhino jogged after him. Jonathan walked into the water, arms outstretched for balance as his feet dredged up soupy mud, nearly making him splash face-first into the black water. Rhino waded in after him. “Tell me what you’re looking for, and maybe I can get it for you. You can’t swim with that hole in your shoulder.”
Jonathan stopped with the cool water lapping at his knees. “You can’t see anything in this muck without a mask and a flashlight—no one can.” He turned around, nearly falling again. The musky stench of mud and duck shit was floating in the air, thick enough to make his stomach squirm. “I’ve got to go to my place.” He charged out of the water, splashing Rhino, who immediately turned and followed. Jonathan began the torturous run to his house with water sluicing out of his pants and surfing over his shoes.
Rhino caught up to him and jerked him to a stop. “What do you mean, I’ve gotta go? What’s with this I stuff? We gotta go, ’cause I’m with you all the way on this.”
Jonathan pulled away, growing desperate and angry. “Get lost! No deal!” He turned and ran again.
Rhino turned on the speed and caught up again, jogging sideways with his big feet thumping on the grass, his wet shoes squeaking. “Screw you, Jonathan. You need a friend, and that friend is Rhino, and that’s the deal. Get me?”
Jonathan angled away from him. Rhino’s hands scrabbled at the back of his shirt, trying to pull him back. Jonathan shrugged them off. Then Rhino lunged, captured two fistfuls of shirt, and spun Jonathan around. “Think you’re the only man on the planet all of a sudden? We’re on the same team, remember? All for one, and one for all? Did you forget that, hotshot?”
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