Wyatt fell into a crouch and, without rising to his full height, advanced to the corner of the apartment edifice. His eyes flicked from the footprints to the space immediately ahead of him, waiting for the Hook Man to appear, a point of steel glinting in the night. Ice pellets pattered against his chest. The rain was falling harder, glazing the rooftop and all of American Rapids.
Trapping them in an ice rink.
The snow crust snapped into shards underfoot. Soon the ice layer would be thick enough to send him sliding and tumbling. Bracing his gun hand, he swung around the corner. Ready to fire at anything.
The footprints loped away, disappearing into the darkness on the other side of the motel. Wyatt changed direction. He lay on his belly and scooted over to the roof’s edge.
It was worse than he imagined.
A river of firelight spilled onto the highway.
Fire and ice.
He saw the Pitch parading from the Totem Lodge. Silhouettes, a small army of them, materialized out of the gloom. Their stark homemade weaponry triggered a primal fear—hunting knives mounted on wooden handles, circular saw discs welded to barbells, hedge shears repurposed for battle, one ambitious straggler even duct-taped his fists around two lawn-mower blades.
Nearest the motel was a teen in a red ski mask. Scrawny, androgynous. Identified as male only because he was shirtless; dressed in a pair of jeans and, hanging off his shoulders, a woman’s floral robe. The back of the robe was shredded. Blood-soaked. The kid was wearing flip-flops, swinging a Worth baseball bat studded with sixteen-penny nails, fashioned into a mace. He slammed it into the tire of a car abandoned in the highway, its doors hanging open, drag marks and bloodstains leading around the trunk and off to . . .
Wyatt couldn’t tell where.
There was an explosive hiss. The front end of the car kneeled. All the vehicles parked in the vicinity had flats: the kid’s work. He planted a flip-flop on the fender and wrenched the bat up and down until the nails tore loose. His head bobbed to unheard music. He began to dance. Unfazed by the rain. Gyrating in ecstasy, he capered, oblivious to Wyatt observing from a few feet above.
Wyatt backed away.
Zigzagging from end to end along the rooftop, he scouted. When the darkness clotting around him felt thick enough—though never completely safe—he lifted up on his knees, his feet, and then tiptoes, to peer over the town.
Hopelessness struck a blow in the pit of his stomach.
There were too many of them. A hundred or more, he estimated by their lantern clusters and the amount of mayhem. Surprise gave them every advantage. Surprise and viciousness. Attacking on Christmas Eve, the Pitch caught the town with its guard down. They’d killed the police and firemen. Cut off contact with the world at large. Confusion reigned. The blaze spreading out from the demolished gas station was their greatest ally. That and the night.
In the morning things would change.
Their initial energies spent, the Pitch would be getting tired. They had no reinforcements coming. Wyatt was almost certain of that. This operation was quick and crazed. By morning light, the citizens would move away from their defenses, climbing out of
their bunkers with their own mad assortment of fighting tools. Plenty of hunters lived in town. And once they emerged from their homes, they’d mobilize. Taking back their turf. Well-armed state police and local lawmen from the vicinity would arrive on the scene, too.
The roads would open.
Chaos would end.
If they could hold out until then . . .
How much of American Rapids would be standing?
What was the purpose of destroying the town?
Except for the progress of the fires, the most intense destruction was taking place within sight of the motel. The logic of it became immediately apparent to Wyatt. They didn’t plan to destroy the whole town. It was, in its own sickeningly violent way, a performance. The Pitch didn’t care if American Rapids stood or fell by morning. Their goal was singular: to possess the stone. The town was collateral damage. A staging area for psychological warfare aimed at the audience inside the Rendezvous. Max told them the Pitch believed they could not take the stone directly. It had to be procured by a surrogate thief, or given over to them freely. Wyatt understood now.
They’re hoping to break us.
Red emergency lights flashed below. They weren’t the tricolored light bars used by the PD. Wyatt wondered if a lone law enforcement vehicle had crossed the border from Canada, someone off-duty who was passing through and, by chance, found Hell. The flickering moved slowly. Vivid scarlet rays stabbed between houses. They were about to merge with the highway. Even before he saw their source, Wyatt felt a terrible sinking in his belly and for the first time since he lowered himself outside, he shivered uncontrollably.
The old ambulance turned the corner.
A scratchy loudspeaker voice called out.
“No more need to die. What we ask for is easy. Give us the stone. We will go away. No more need to die. .. .”
The announcement repeated.
In front of the motel, the ambulance stopped.
Wyatt flattened himself.
The microphone on the loudspeaker clicked open. A rhythmic rushing of air filled the channel like surf rolling up a beach. In his mind’s eye, Wyatt saw the oily iridescent waves. He smelled the night’s dead haul of the sea and the ripe putrid tang of a garbage dump. He swore he heard the rubber-on-glass cries of seagulls. Their hungry insistence swooped down on him, the sharp beaks drawing closer and closer as if he were a bit of meat quivering inside a cracked, immobile shell.
It’s someone breathing, he realized. The ambulance talker knows I’m up here. It’s Whiteside. He’s laughing at us.
Wyatt resisted the desire to stand up and empty the Glock into the ambulance. He sensed that was exactly what Whiteside wanted him to do. To lose control. To give in to his anger and frustration and show himself.
He refused.
Adam whispered through the chattering rain.
“I can’t see you. Are you there?”
Wyatt didn’t want to answer despite the impossibility of anyone inside the ambulance hearing him. He had the terrible sense that Adam was the Pitch’s puppet. If he could see Wyatt, then the Pitch could, too. They would use him, pull his strings, and control him. And there was nothing Wyatt could do to stop them. A hot wave of shame washed over him. Whiteside’s presence was as real as any hunter’s, waiting for him to move so he could proceed to the kill.
Adam leaned out of the vent hole.
Wyatt rolled onto his side. He waved Adam back inside.
Adam hesitated for a moment then retreated into the shadows.
When Wyatt returned his attention to the highway, he saw the ambulance pulling away. The parade of silhouettes from the Totem parted, allowing the vehicle to pass. They bowed their heads and touched their hands to the ambulance body. The red lights
flashed over them. The bronze glow of the fires continued. It was as though the town were now made of flames, the fuel to keep them burning, and nothing else.
Wyatt picked his way carefully over the rooftop.
He slipped and fell to his knees. The hard landing sent pain up his thighs.
He crawled until he was under the attic opening.
Adam’s arm reached down to him. They locked hands. Wyatt’s boots scraped along the motel siding. He heard Adam straining to hoist him higher. Wyatt tapped his free hand along the wall. He found the edge of the gap. His fingers clawed at the threshold and he maneuvered himself into the hole. Iciness trickled along the naked skin at the back of his neck. He startled, thinking of the Hook Man. And he almost teetered backward out the gap.
An icicle fell from the peak of the eaves above him.
The cold spike of it broke across his head.
He heard a glassy clinking.
A thicker rattle followed.
More icicles dropped.
A windy slicing . . .
The sound moved left to right. It wasn’t falling ice.
Wyatt looked into Adam’s eyes and saw terror. Adam stared at a spot behind and above Wyatt’s head. Wyatt was doing all he could to push forward into the attic. But he couldn’t move fast enough.
He felt a rough tug. It was taking him backward.
Next came the tightening, like a muscle spasm in his shoulder.
Finally, the pain seared through him. He never felt the hook penetrate. Only now it grabbed him from a place inside. Lodging. Twisting.
He looked down at his chest. He expected to see the bloody steel tip poking through. He didn’t see anything but the zipper of his jacket.
He craned his head back to look up toward the eaves.
The taut chain stopped him, frigid links brushed his ear. An-
other tug. Stronger. The man on the attic rooftop grunted with satisfaction.
Pain kicked loose every thought. Wyatt fell out of the gap. The hook was buried deep under his left arm. He was suspended there.
Swaying.
The hook dug into bone.
Wyatt screamed.
His good arm flailed out at his side. Flapping absurdly as the Hook Man anchored his chain around a chimney pipe and raised him up.
One foot. Two.
Three.
Wyatt looked down at Adam in the cutout. Adam leaned, reached, groping for his legs. He wrapped his arms around Wyatt’s ankles. Hugged them.
“No, no ... please don’t take him.”
The steady pulling from above drove the hook deeper. Wyatt didn’t want to look at it now. He was too afraid. He saw the snow underneath the attic opening turning liquid black and knew that it was his blood. He snatched at the chain. His free arm wouldn’t stretch far enough. Pain stole his breath.
The chain creaked. Chunks of snow rafted off the roof above. Wyatt was lifted higher against his will, the hook point gnawing, an excruciating torment; his left arm slowly being ripped from its socket. Agony exploded across his body. He trembled uncontrollably. Red-black spots filled his vision.
“Let go,” he said to Adam.
Adam shook his head.
“You have to . . . he’s killing me.”
Adam released him.
The chain moved quickly.
In a few seconds, his father was gone.