“Homer.”
“The fuck you doing down there, boy?” laughed the killer. His face and chest glistened with bright, fresh blood. “Nap time’s over. We gots to go.”
He jerked open the Cube’s doors, grabbed Goat’s camera bag, laptop, and recorder, put them into the Escalade, then bent and grabbed Goat by the belt and hauled him out of the mud with a huge sucking sound. Homer stood Goat on his feet and gave him a shove toward the passenger door.
“Get in.” He had to shout to be heard over the continuous machine-gun fire and all those screams.
Goat obeyed and crawled into the SUV.
He even buckled up for safety.
Homer staggered around and climbed in behind the wheel, grunting with the effort of bending his body. Goat wanted to believe that the killer’s stiffness and pain were the result of the accident, but he knew better.
It’s rigor mortis, he whispered in his own thoughts, marveling that something as bizarre as that could be the truth.
There was a hiss in the air and then on the road three cars flew up into the air on a fireball.
“Rocket,” said Homer as casually as if he was commenting on a breed of dog walking down the street. “Let’s get some gone between us and that shit.”
He put it in drive and the Escalade lurched forward, wanting to run, but Homer did not race away from the battle. Instead he killed the headlights and angled toward the trees that filled the thirty-yard-wide median. Between explosions and the lightning there was just enough light to steer, and Homer drove with care.
“Don’t want to wreck this ride,” said the killer. “Always wanted me an Escalade. Never could afford it.” He paused, thinking. “Guess the ticket price don’t mean shit now.”
Goat said nothing. He jammed his good leg against the floor and clutched the dashboard, using his hands to brace himself against unexpected impacts. But the car hit nothing.
No trees, anyway.
Several times Homer had to swerved to avoid running people, and twice he didn’t swerve fast enough. The dull thud of meat and bone against metal was horrifying.
“Slow as shit,” Homer said as one man went spinning off the left fender, his body twisting in ways it shouldn’t.
When the median thinned, Homer angled across the road to where the line of cars was now thinner. He bullied his way through the traffic and went right off the road again into a farm field.
With every second they were leaving the disaster farther behind.
Escaping.
Goat realized that he was watching the single most dangerous man in the world escape.
And he was too frightened to do a thing about it.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Trout heard the sound and thought it was more thunder. He and Dez whipped around toward the row of windows that faced the north. They saw the light and for a moment they thought it was more lightning.
Then the whole sky lit up and something monstrous rose up from behind the forests and rows of houses. A colossus that towered like a fire god from some pagan dream of Ragnarok, a titan of flame who reared above the town and raised a burning sword with such fury that the storm itself recoiled in terror.
Dez said, “What the—”
She got no further as a wall of furnace-hot air blew across the treetops, setting them ablaze, tearing the smaller ones down, shattering thousands of windows, whipping debris into the air and igniting it.
The reinforced windows of the school bowed inward, the glass fracturing into tens of thousands of tiny silver lines but the fragments held fast by the wire mesh. Tongues of flame licked in through those windows that were open, setting fire to curtains and shelves of books, and American flags on wooden poles.
Trout screamed as he fell backward, steam rising from his clothes. Dez screamed, too, and began slapping at his clothes, swatting out tiny fires that wanted to take hold.