He was nearing Shandy’s Curve, one of many hairpin turns on A-32, and he slowed because there was no light to see the road and he didn’t want to go sailing off the side down onto the rocks. Shandy’s Curve was the one place Mike hated to pass, especially when there was traffic, because the thick brush on either side of the curve hid the glow of oncoming headlights until way too late. If the local legends about ghosts haunting the site of fatal car crashes were true, then the area around the curve was populated by enough specters to fill a graveyard. Mike’s own father had died there, though Mike did not know that. John Sweeney had been coming home late from his second job and drowsed at the wheel at just the wrong place. He and his battered old Malibu had gone sailing off the edge and had fallen forty feet down into the gully between the Maplewhites’ cornfield and the lower thirty of the Andersens’ garlic farm. All Mike knew of his father was that he had died in a car crash.
Yet, even without that unsavory bit of knowledge, Mike still feared the curve, and with his terror already swollen with thoughts of Vic, the hairpin turn looked like the path to hell. He slowed even more, pedaling at little better than walking speed as he entered the far side of the curve, seeing only shadows, hearing nothing but the constant growl of thunder overhead. He thought he heard something behind him and flicked a glance over his shoulder, but the road vanished into total blackness behind him. He swung his head around as he reached the beginning of the sharpest point of the curve and suddenly intense bright whiteness stabbed his eyes and the world was filled with the roar of a big engine as something hurtled around the curve at him.
The tow-truck! Mike thought and froze…this time there was nowhere to dodge. Harsh light stabbed his eyes as gleaming metal came ripping around the curve right toward him.
Ruger wasn’t gone twenty minutes before Boyd began to shiver. He thought it was just the coolness of the breeze, but when he wiped his fingers absently across his forehead they came away glistening with sweat.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
As if on cue, a fresh wave of chills raced right through him, entering through his spine and seeming to wriggle up his neck and out his ears. Gooseflesh pebbled his arms. He didn’t know much about shock except that everybody always tried to loosen tight clothing and throw blankets on someone who was in shock. Was that what was happening to him? He didn’t know, but the thought scared the hell out of him. The only other thing he knew about shock was that it was dangerous. He didn’t know if it could kill, but it was supposed to be really bad for you. He loosened his belt and huddled deeper into his suit coat, which failed utterly to warm him. Boyd sat there, shivering and gradually becoming aware of the immensity of the terror that had built up inside him. He was alone out here…alone and abandoned. Ruger had left him for dead.
“Fucking bastard!” he yelled out loud. Then something caught his eye and he closed his mouth. Beside him were the knapsacks of coke and cash and he bit down on that fact. Karl couldn’t have just abandoned him. Not without the junk and the take. Karl wouldn’t double-cross him and leave him alive as a witness. Not Karl. Not Cape May Karl, who absolutely had to skip the country or wind up twenty kinds of dead. That thought made Boyd shiver even worse. Karl didn’t know that he knew about Cape May, but Boyd kept his ear pretty close to the ground and he was nearly certain that the rumors were true. He’d always known Karl was a sick bastard, but what had happened in Cape May was right out of a horror movie. If Boyd could have gotten to a phone before Karl had bundled him and the others into the car and headed off to the cluster fuck at the warehouse, Boyd would have made just one call and right now Karl would be screaming as Little Nicky cut pieces off him.
There hadn’t been time to make that call, and Karl absolutely had to get out of the country, and only Boyd could swing that for him. No, he thought, he’s not going to cap me.
That fact calmed him a little, but he was still afraid. Afraid of being abandoned. Afraid of what was happening in his own body. The gunshot wound to his left arm wasn’t bad, but it was probably a long way to being infected by now. Might have some bits of cloth from his sleeve in the wound. He wondered how long it took for a wounded arm to develop gangrene. It made Boyd physically sick to think about it and he nearly puked in his own lap.
He shivered again, the shudder actually making his body spasm. He felt as if his hair was standing on end, rustling and waving like the stalks of corn that stood tall and black around him.
Flutter.
The sound made Boyd jump, and he craned his head around so violently that it jolted his arm and his leg. The pain that welled up in that one instant didn’t give a fuck for the painkilling effects of cocaine; it kicked and clawed at him until he cried aloud. Blinking back tears, Boyd looked up, fully expecting to see Ruger standing there, grinning, and holding his gun out at arm’s length.
It took a lot for him to even look.
A ratty-looking crow stood on the fence, inches from his head. It was silhouetted against the corn, just a paleness glinting on its feathers to define its shape. It cawed very softly at him, cocking its head to one side as it stared at him. Boyd looked at the bird for a long time, and then laughed a little. It was a hollow, impotent little laugh, but it was better than the scream that had wanted to come out.
“Fucking bird,” Boyd said. The crow cawed again, just as softly as before. “Nevermore,” Boyd said mockingly, “never-fucking-more.”
The black eyes of the bird just watched him with the infinite patience of its kind.
Boyd felt warmth on his leg and he peered down. Fat droplets of blood hung pendulously from the slats of the splint, and as he watched, one broke loose and splashed onto the dirt.
“Oh, that’s just fucking great!” Boyd snarled. He probed the rough bandages Karl had wound around the shattered leg, and his fingers came away black with wetness. Boyd glared at his bloody fingers for a long time, seething one moment, shivering with fear and fever the next. He half turned and swung his good right arm at the crow. “See what you made me do, you worthless piece of shit!”
The crow shuffled sideways just a few inches and the blow missed cleanly. It fluttered its wings noiselessly and again uttered that strange muted cry.
Boyd leaned over as far as his leg would allow him and beat at the bird, but his fiercely scrabbling fingers were inches short of the mark. The bird watched him dispassionately. It was the ugliest bird Boyd had even seen: dirty and disheveled, with greasy wings that shone with oily scum. Boyd grabbed the rail and hoisted himself up, shifting his buttocks to his right just a couple of inches and then beat once more at the bird. The crow took another delicate sideways step, but this time, as Boyd’s fingers clawed at him, the bird darted its head forward and jabbed with its long, sharp beak.
“Ow! Shit!” Boyd howled, whipping his hand away and jamming his finger into his mouth. He could taste the salty blood, and when he held the finger out for inspection, he was appalled to see an inch-long gouge, quite deep and ragged, running from the outside of the nail down past the knuckle. Fresh blood welled from it and ran down between his fingers, onto his palm, and down his wrist.