Ferro looked faintly amused. “Don’t worry, Chief, you’ll be getting a lot of help from my team. We can probably count on the state police and by tomorrow probably the FBI as well, not to mention some pinch hitters from the neighboring towns. We’re used to doing this sort of thing. I don’t mean to usurp any authority from you, sir, but we have a set way of handing these things, and if you’ll let us, we can run the show for you.” He glanced at Terry. “If that’s acceptable to you, sir?”
“Darn straight!” Terry said. “Like I said, I don’t care if you have to call in the National Guard, just do what you have to do. Chief Bernhardt will be more than happy to defer to your greater expertise.” He glanced at Gus, who, rather than looking offended at the loss of authority, appeared to be massively relieved. “You tell us what to do,” he concluded, “and we’ll give it a go.”
Ferro nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Chief. Okay,” he said and clapped his hands, “let’s get to work.”
The wrecker was a gleaming, grotesque monstrosity. From the rat-eye red of its running lights to the shroud-black opacity of its tinted windows, it appeared every inch a pernicious and predatory thing, soaring along the road in a hideous silence. The split-rim hubcaps were polished to a spotless chrome finish, as was every cold metal accessory from the twin exhaust stacks to the guardrails that looked as if they had come from some ornate and disinterred coffin. The duel sets of rear wheels pushed the behemoth along the road at a ghastly speed, whipping along past harvested and unharvested fields, past whitewashed telephone poles that looked like old bones, past the bolted doors of night-darkened houses. Aside from the faint whine of the tire rubber on the macadam and the fainter growl of the perfectly tuned engine, the wrecker made no other sound; for all the noise it made it might have been a midnight wind.
In the cabin, Tow-Truck Eddie squatted in a repulsive tangle of ungainly muscularity, unnaturally disfigured by knots of muscles. Muscle upon muscle, tendons like bundles of piano wire, veins like high-pressure hoses. Even his face was hard with bulging muscles, bunching as the driver clenched and unclenched his jaw. He drove in complete silence, eyes fixed and staring, barely seeing the road as it unrolled itself before his headlights, big hands gripping the nubbed and leather-wrapped wheel with crushing force.
He made no sound, played no radio, listening instead with entranced delight to the voice in his head, the voice that whispered and whispered.
On his massive hands the blood still gleamed bright and fresh, lit by the dashboard display; in his mouth he could still taste the blood of the man he’d killed. His thick lips twisted and writhed in some semblance of a smile as he drove wildly through the night. The night that was now his.
He savored the taste of blood in his mouth, and he knew that it had made him pure, made him holy. It was the first time he’d ever really paid attention to the taste of blood. It was delicious, and he wondered if he would have more of it. Inside his head the voice of God told him that yes, he would. Soon.
As Tow-Truck Eddie drove, God whispered secrets to him, telling him of the glory that had been, and of the glory that was to come. God reminded him of his own holy purpose — that of finding the Beast and killing him.
You are the Sword of God.
It echoed like thunder in his head.
Somewhere, out there in the darkness, in some unknown spot on the black road, his destiny waited. Destiny in the form of the Beast — a creature of vast cunning and evil power that he must find, must oppose — must destroy—because he was the Sword of God, and it was his holy purpose to do God’s will here on earth. Now he knew that, after all his waiting, the Beast was out here on the road tonight, waiting for him to find it, to confront it, to begin the battle of Good against Evil, of heaven against hell. That was what the voice of God told him, pounding the words into his brain. Over and over again.
He laughed out loud, and his laugh was an explosion of righteous joy because his holy work was beginning. He had always known that someday God would set him on the right path. He’d prayed for this for years. His destiny had been clear to him since childhood. If he was who he thought he was — who he knew he was — then the voice that spoke so powerfully in his mind could belong to no one else but his own father. To God himself.
He laughed again and searched the roadside shadows for the Beast.
The wrecker cut through the night air like a butcher’s knife leaving a screaming darkness behind it.
“Jesus, Karl, wait for me, will you, for Chrissakes?”
Ruger said nothing and didn’t slow his pace a single bit. He plowed on through the corn, moving fast but seemingly not making as much sound as he ought to. He glided through the stalks like a snake.
The corn stood impossibly tall and it stretched outward on all sides in a forever of darkness. Boyd stumbled after Ruger, slapping the stalks aside, feeling the sharp sting of the razor-edged leaves nicking his hand and cheeks. The wind was icy and damp and his exposed skin burned from the raw cold. His lame left arm was tucked into his shirt, and the dead weight of it plus the lumpy burden of the backpack gave him an ungainly pace that consumed energy and cost effort. Despite the chilly air he was bathed in sweat and the backpack felt as if it were filled with rocks.
“Man, do you even know where we’re going?”
This time Ruger did stop. He turned and faced Boyd, his face completely in shadows. “Yeah, Boyd, sure I know where I’m going.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m going that way. Any more fucking questions?”
Boyd shut his mouth with a click, biting down on all the things he didn’t have the balls to say. They burned on his tongue like pepper seeds. With a grunt, a hearty expectoration, and a shadowy sneer, Ruger turned and plunged back into the corn. After a few seconds Boyd followed him. They trudged on in silence for just over a hundred yards before Boyd stepped into a gopher hole and neatly snapped both the tibia and fibula of his right leg.
He never saw the hole, and despite the dropping lunge and the sharp double snap of the bones, he couldn’t immediately understand what had happened. All he knew was that the cornfield suddenly rose up in front of him, the stalks seeming to launch themselves into the air, and then his face was rushing at the dirt. He tried to break his fall, but only one hand answered the summons and that was a second off the mark, so he took a cheekful of hard-packed dirt. His eyes jolted painfully in their sockets, he bit his tongue, and his brain felt jellied by the impact. He never even heard the double pop-pop of his leg bones as they broke, and at first all he felt was the pain in his face…and then the leg pain hit him. It hit him like a hurricane — blasting through every nerve ending he possessed, boiling up from the torn muscle and severed blood vessels all the way through the top of his head. He howled. He howled as loud as he could, and the shrill sound of it took flight and rose far above the waving corn. He drew in a single ragged breath and then opened his mouth to howl again, but the rough leather of Ruger’s glove, backed by bone and gristle and anger, struck him with such shocking force that the howl evaporated on his tongue and he gasped for a shocked breath, tears springing into his eyes. Ruger grabbed a fistful of his hair and jerked his head back and Boyd stared in mute awe at the single black metal eye that glared unwinkingly at him. The hard, cold silver that surrounded that black eye gleamed dully in the bad light.
“If you make one more fucking sound I’m going to blow your face all over this field.” The whisper was as cold as the metal of the gun barrel.