کتاب 08-06

6

They parted, a human sea before a Moses wrapped in a robe of flame. As he stalked toward them, he was already letting himself go out. The blue corona of fire that surrounded his head guttered, flickered through different hues—emerald, then palest yellow—before dying in a puff of white smoke. His eyes continued to burn, however, remained hot, blind embers.

“Come on,” the Fireman said. “Thiff is our cue to go.” When he attempted a fricative, his busted lips blew a fine spray of blood.

Harper and Allie pulled the Fireman to his feet, each of them taking one of his hands. He had no balance, no strength in his legs, and almost immediately started to plunge forward. Harper and Allie steadied him and he put his arms over their shoulders.

“Get us behind Nick,” the Fireman said. “They’re terrified of him. They’re at least as terrified of him as they’ff ever been of me.”

They only got two steps, though, Harper and Allie helping the Fireman along, when they heard the blast of an air horn, a bellowing bronk-bronk that seemed to go right through Harper’s chest. She froze and glanced wildly around, staring up the road, toward the crest of the hill.

A pair of headlights came on, bright blue xenon headlights casting an arctic glare above an enormous snow-wing plow.

They shone upon a man, standing eight feet before the truck, a guy in a filthy sweater with reindeer leaping across a green background. This man had a noose around his neck, the hairy rope leading back to the grille beyond the snowplow. His hands were tied behind his back. The headlights turned his wispy white hair to filaments of steel.

Those headlights also fell upon Mark Mazzuchelli. The Mazz was almost fifty yards away, moving up the middle of the dirt road, had apparently decided he had spent enough time luxuriating in the pleasures of Camp Wyndham and was on his way to greener pastures. But when the lights blinked on he took a last staggering step and then went still.

“The fuck is this?” the Mazz said, his voice carrying in the sudden hush.

Another pair of headlights blinked on, and then a third. One set belonged to an open-top Humvee. The other lights blazed from the front of a Chevy Silverado Intimidator, on six jacked-up tires. Blinding floodlights flashed on above the cab. There were at least two other pickup trucks down the road behind them.

Nelson Heinrich, the limping man in the noose, looked over his shoulder into the lights.

“See!” he screamed. “See, I told you! I told you they’d be here! All of ’em! Two hundred infected at least! I told you I could help you! Now you have to let me go! You promised! You promised you’d be done with me!”

An amplified voice—there were speakers mounted on top of the Intimidator, along with floodlights—boomed into the night. Harper knew it. They all knew it. The Marlboro Man was famous up and down the seacoast.

“A promise is a promise,” the Marlboro Man said. “And ain’t no one can say the Marlboro Man don’t keep his word. Someone cut Mr. Heinrich loose.”

A man in fatigues stood up from the passenger seat of the Humvee. He had a Bushmaster and he steadied the barrel on the top edge of the windshield before he began to fire.