Filthy roaches .
The Pitch mob poured into the Totem.
Max watched from his chalk circle. He drew white beetles marching on every surface he could reach without vacating his protections. He remembered all he had done. The details of his betrayal came back starkly. He thought if they did not butcher him before the dawn, then he would kill himself. Tilt the Ruger up under his chin, pull the trigger without thinking twice, and see what the next world would bring. Though he suspected the next world might be worse, or his place in it severely degraded. He’d never been one to indulge self-pity. Tonight was different. He didn’t have any strength left. He was small, weak, scuttling.
Maybe I’m a roach, too.
A face appeared at the cracked camper window.
Red, woolen. A mask.
“Leave me alone!” Max shouted.
Knuckles rapped on the glass.
Max turned to his harasser. Or was it his soon-to-be killer?
Red ski mask. A baseball bat-cum-mace balanced on the knuckle rapper’s shoulder. The nail points jammed up with gore. Long raincoat. He looked at the mask again. Only one of the eye sockets had an eye in it.
“Wyatt?”
The mask nodded.
“Where is my family?”
Max narrowed his eyes. He crawled out of the circle. He opened the camper to a charred smelling wind. He touched the raincoat to make certain it was real, that the man wearing it was no figment of his imagination. The red mask appeared full in Max’s face.
“Where’s Opal? Where’s Adam?”
Max said, “They’ve taken them inside. Vera, too. He’ll kill them all.”
Wyatt’s lone gray eye closed.
When it opened again, it looked into the lodge.
Max raised his chalk and began drawing on the raincoat. “This may help you pass through the crowd unnoticed. But I can’t be confident. . .”
A hand grabbed his wrist.
“Opal has the stone?”
“She does,” Max said. “Tell your wife to let him have it.”
“What?”
“He’ll influence her. Cloud her mind. You need to help her. Scream if you have to. She must act swiftly.”
Wyatt let go of his wrist. The long coat snapped behind him as he vanished into the Totem Lodge.
Max rested his hand on the window to keep from toppling over into a snow bank. His fingers were sticky. He had touched Wyatt on the back while he marked up the raincoat. Now the glass showed a handprint.
In blood.