He cries out as a demon-boot strikes his temple. The pain is so raw it rips through his skull.
Again he feels weightless, his body lifted, and he shudders to that awful sound at his ear. Yes, yes, he can smell it; the gum is so sweet as to sicken.
“You’re dead, Lishk,” the demon tells him, and in that instant, as if injected with a potion of magic, he remembers the sign … remembers what it wants him to know.
The Run’s a monster.
It’ll eat him alive … it’ll swallow him whole.
He turns to the voice and locks eyes with Arnie Kovacs. Arnie’s face is one freckled mass of gum-chewing flab, his eyes deep black pits. That ugly brow twitches, twitches so fast it looks like it hurts.
“You’re so dead,” Arnie chortles, and when he hears that, he turns to Tony, who has him by the right arm. Tony is sobbing.
Propping up his left leg, Randy is sobbing too, and though he can barely see the top of Simon’s toque beneath his goofy foot, he knows, he just knows, that his bestest friend is in tears.
The order is given, Arnie barking to throw his faggot ash, and again he is on the move. To his right, past the teary eyes of Tony Armano, he sees the water rush past; it roars like a lion. It looks so cold and so deep, and he fears that when they find him, it won’t be his mom or his brother or that policeman he knows is coming, it’ll be an old man with a hook, just like Eric always said.
He struggles. His arms and legs are useless. He tries to scream but nothing comes. Nothing.
He falls. The creek is colder and blacker than lies; his lungs ache, swamped with liquid ice. He panics trying to stay above the surface, but the water’s too heavy, filling his snowsuit even faster than his lungs. The rapids claw with hunger; the beast is ravenous, it will stuff itself sick.
He draws his last breath. The graying light fades as he slips to the blackness, and the last thing he sees is the grin of Arnie Kovacs. He prays for a quick death, but like all of his prayers, this too goes unanswered. He is a long, long way from death. The water is too deep for that.
In the murk, he sees the hook. It is bigger than he imagined and sharper than he can. He’s not Regular Lucky, he never was, so the hook doesn’t tear off some skin; he’s not Really Lucky, so the hook doesn’t tear out his guts. No, he’s Not So Lucky, like Eric always said, so when that old man above yanks hard on the line, when those fangs hook his face and rip through his eye, only the fish hear him scream.
A fat lazy pike drifts by; he can see in its eyes it has the smarts of old age. Its long snout pokes at his body, but he moves not a muscle, for this big old fish will know he’s alive. And if it knows that—
A school swarms. They can smell him, they can smell the blood. They’re hungry, circling and circling, nasty little fishies, and they’re here for one reason, they’ve come just for him.