Standing in a cluster, guns ready, bunched up and looking all around, scared.
A few looked at Jack as he drove past them.
They had guns. They could shoot.
But they simply watched him sail past, one lanky man’s face having a what-the-fuck look, wondering where the hell this guy could be going.
If someone looked in the back, all they would see was the shape, the blanket.
Would word be passed? A different kind of alarm?
Jack picked up speed as he passed the cabin area, and started down the road past the lake and on the way to the main gate.
He wondered if he had made a mistake.
If he could get out this easy, had he made a fucking mistake? His plan all wrong?
He felt like stopping. Going back. Was there time to change his mind?
Instead, he kept driving. The plan. This was the plan, the way to get his family out.
He pressed harder on the accelerator, passing the fifteen-mile speed limit posted along the road. Twenty, twenty-five… thirty.
And more, until the heavy-duty wheels of the SUV began kicking up a steady stream of pebbles and dirt behind it.
A curve, another straight section, then—if his memory was correct—one more curve.
He noticed something. The alarms had ended.
Was the power still out?
Could they have fixed the power to the fence in such a short amount of time?
Another curve, and now a clear straight run to the main gate.
Bright lights ahead, two high beams on the turret at the side of the gate, one at road level.
The turret lights pointed out into the woods, probably hunting for any signs of Can Heads.
Faster. Thinking he was so close.
The two lights on the top of the turret swung around. Almost as if it had been planned.
The guards hadn’t been looking for stray Can Heads at all.
The lights swung around and pointed down at the roadway, at the SUV, at Jack racing to the gate.
A bunch of guards on the road, waiting for Jack.
With Ed Lowe at their head.
He didn’t brake.
So, they see me. They’ll shoot. The Explorer can take some hits.
But then, despite the blinding glare of the giant lights, he could see above them, the gate… so close.
Faster—and then the group parted.
And Jack saw the trap.
A massive felled tree lay right across the road. The SUV slammed into it.
And backlit, the people waiting there. Guns sticking out like pins in black pincushions, the crowd all shadows.
They waited for him while the front of the car crumpled against the tree, tires exploding, windows shattering.
Jack’s head hit the steering wheel. He immediately tasted blood from the gash.
Then, as the shadows moved closer, Jack, blinking—blood in his eyes, too—he saw the struggling figure of Ed Lowe, laboring to walk, but walking.
His camp. His place.
Behind him, a bloodied Shana.
Someone had found them, freed them.
Lowe knew that there was an even worse danger to Paterville than the Can Heads outside.
Exposure.
Exposure would destroy the camp.
Jack looked at the seat next to him.
My gun.
He reached to the side but felt nothing.
The crowd only steps away. Some moving ahead of Lowe now, eager, perhaps forgetting that he ran the place. Maybe Lowe had had his day.
As they suddenly started racing toward the vehicle, Shana raised her ax. Other women were there too, rocks in their hands.
Everyone invited.
He heard Lowe’s voice as if coming from miles away.
“Jack! Jack, it’s over. We got you, got your family!”
As the crowd gathered close, Jack could only shoot one quick glance at the back.
Lowe stuck his head through a shattered opening in the driver’s-side window, his jowly neck catching some of the cracked glass.
“We’re going to rip you all into pieces!”
Jack turned. His hand again reached to the seat beside him.
The gun. Fallen to the floor?
He popped open the glove compartment.
A knife there. Used to be there.
His hand closed on it.
A jagged knife for fishing. Probably rusty.
Jack spoke as loud as he could.
“You’re right! It is over!”
He jabbed the blade into Lowe’s neck and twisted it left and right before leaving it buried in Lowe’s gullet.
But the action only seemed to embolden the others, now reaching in through the smashed windshield, the side windows, into the back.
No way forward, no way out.
More glass being smashed, pried away. Like opening a can. To get at what was inside.
Jack sat there.
He could see the clock on the dash. The digital clock. The time.
“Now,” he whispered.
Jesus, now…
A rock smashed into the front window, then another, until, on all sides, the windows took hits.
The car tilted forward, wheels flat, engine dead, the SUV now rendered completely immobile.
Until one crazed person kept banging at a rear passenger window with a big rock broke through.
Then, like a feeding frenzy, that small opening triggered the horde to clamber on top of the vehicle, banging, shooting, smashing. A few with flashlights, shooting light into the car to see what treasure waited for them.
Jack leaned down, flailed around, feeling the car floor. The gun had to have fallen down here.
Had to be there.
Then he had it.
He started shooting through the jagged openings in the glass as they tried to get at the door latches, some trying to crawl through impossibly small holes in the windows.
Just Can Heads, he thought. That’s all you are.
Shot after shot.
And then hands reaching in from the side to grab at the blanket, and what lay beneath it.
Jack ran out of bullets. He let the pistol fall. Ammo somewhere… but why bother?
The Explorer was covered with Can Heads.
All around the sides, on top, reaching into every hole. Ed Lowe, his throat gushing, still battered at Jack’s side window, the bloody spittle flying out.
The SUV like a bit of candy dropped in the summer dirt and soon coated with ants as though it was a living thing.
He reached down to the switch.
Not a slow movement. Perhaps he had waited too long already. He thought he heard something inside the car, on top of the blanket.
Jack threw the first safety switch.
The car had enough explosives to make a crater twice the size of the vehicle.
And blow the dozens of monsters on it to pieces.
He threw the second, now-active switch.
He heard a click.
42. Five Minutes Earlier
Christie sat up in Tom Blair’s car.
She looked back at the kids.
“Okay. Just stay down.”
Nothing.
“You hear me?” she said.
Kate answered first, her body pressed down as close to the floor as she could. “Yes, Mom.”
Then Simon, following his sister’s modeclass="underline" “Yes.”
She turned the key, hands shaking with the thought that the car wouldn’t start, even though Jack had tested it.
He had been so clear in his instructions; so precise in his plans.
To watch the time. Because when it was the right time she had to pull out of the lot.
If they were expecting them to leave, it would be the front gate. They’d look for the Explorer.