Sam heard the jangle of her telephone and she leapt up off Rusty’s bed and raced into the kitchen to answer it. She caught it before it had a chance to ring a second time.
“What?” she cried.
Charlie’s voice was curt. “You need to get back here, Sam. Rusty’s here. With Douglas’s body.”
And Sam knew. She didn’t need an explanation of how the two had gotten there. They’d ridden the Jabberwock.
The night that Sam had driven like a crazy woman from the county line to the Middle of Nowhere to get the key to the kiln out of Abby Clayton’s pocket, time had telescoped. It did the same thing now. She had been at the county line where Charlie was helping the wounded Malachi into her car, and then she’d pulled into the parking lot of the Dollar Store. And there’d been no passage of time in between.
It was just like that now.
Sam leapt into her car beside Malachi in her driveway and then Malachi was careening the car into the parking lot by the Middle of Nowhere bus shelter and it had all happened between one heartbeat and the next.
There was a crowd gathered.
She must have run from her car to Rusty’s side.
She must have shoved everyone out of the way so she could kneel on the asphalt beside his body. She must have done those things, but there was no memory. She was just there, instantly beside him.
Rusty lay on his back, shirtless and barefoot. His face was pale, tissue-paper white so it made his chestnut hair shine red in the failing light of sunset. He was not moving.
For one horror-filled instant — that she would relive a thousand times a day of every day of the rest of her life if — she’d thought he wasn’t breathing. She put her ear to his chest. His heart was beating. It was a solid beat, regular rhythm. It was as if the boy were asleep.
Then she spotted the blood oozing out from under him. She lifted him gently a few inches off the pavement and cried out in horror. His whole back was raw, the skin flayed off, with little pellets of … buckshot? Rusty had been shot in the back with a shotgun.
Suddenly, a car came flying into the parking lot and screeched to a halt so close to where she knelt with Rusty that Charlie, Raylynn and Pete had to leap out of its way.
Claire McFarland jumped out of the car, turned and reached back inside and pulled out a shotgun.
“Where’s my baby?” she cried.
Sam looked around then, noticed the body lying on the ground a few feet from Rusty. It was the swollen, bloated horror of Douglas Taylor’s corpse.
Claire raced forward, let out a little cry, then turned the gun on Sam and nodded toward Rusty.
“You, pick him up and put him in my car.”
Sam felt her hands clenching into firsts as she began to rise.
“You shot him! You shot Rusty!”
The woman held the gun firm, as if she were unaware Sam had spoken. Then Claire gestured to Charlie and Pete Rutherford, standing side by side behind Sam.
“You two — pick up my baby. Be careful. He’s not well yet, but he will be as soon as—”
Sam advanced on Claire, oblivious to the rifle leveled at her chest. There was no clear intent in Sam’s mind. Her head was clouded with a red haze of rage.
Claire snapped back the hammers on both barrels of the shotgun.
“Take one more step, and I’ll—”
There was a blur of movement then. In a single lightning motion, Malachi leapt forward, knocked the shotgun sideways out of Claire’s hands and slammed a fist into the side of her face. She folded up in a heap on the ground.
Sam knelt again beside Rusty. She lifted his eyelids. The pupils were responsive to light. Took his pulse again. Steady. Then she saw it. She would have gasped at the sight if she’d had any air to gasp.
Reaching out with trembling fingers, she touched the single stream of blood dripping out of Rusty’s right ear.
Malachi knelt beside her and she grabbed his gaze to keep herself from falling off the edge of the universe.
“We have to get him to a doctor.” That was like saying they had to get the boy to the moon. “We have to … now. Malachi, he could have brain damage.”
She looked around then, felt smothered, as if the Jabberwock had closed in tight around the parking lot.
“We have to get out of here!”
The End