Its eyes, glaring at him from where it lay in the dust.

“What, then.”

He looked at her and grinned. The expression felt ghastly on his face. It also felt wonderful. “We’ll get it together, of course. Okay by you.”

His mind was the storm now, filled with roaring wind from side to side and top to bottom, driving before it the images of what he would do to her, what she would do to him, and what they would do to anyone who got in their way.

She grinned back, her thin cheeks stretching upward until it was like looking at a skull grin. Greenish-white light from the dashboard painted her brow and lips, filled in her eyesockets. She stuck her tongue out through that grin and flicked it at him, like the snake-tongue of the statue. He stuck his own tongue out and wriggled it back at her. Then he groped for the doorhandle. He would race her to the fragment, and they would make love among the scorpions with it held in their mouths between them, and whatever happened after that wouldn’t matter.

Because in a very real sense, they would be gone.

Johnny came back out onto the sidewalk and handed the bottle of Jim Beam to Billingsley, who looked at it with the unbelieving eyes of a man who has just been told he’s won the Powerball lottery. “There you go, Tom,” he said. “Have yourself a tonk-just the one, mind you-and then pass it on. None for me, I’ve taken the pledge.” He looked across the street, expecting to see more coyotes, but there were still just the five of them.

I’ll take the fifth, Johnny thought, watching as the veteri-narian spun the cap off the bottle of whiskey. You’d go along with that, wouldn’t you, Tom. Of course you would.

“What is wrong with you.” Mary asked him. “Just what in the hell is wrong with you.”

“Nothing,” Johnny said. “Well, a broken nose, but I guess that isn’t what you meant, is it.”

Billingsley tilted the bottle back with a short, sharp flick of the wrist that looked as practiced as a nurse’s injection technique, and then coughed. Tears welled in his eyes. He put the mouth of the bottle to his lips again, and Johnny snatched it away. “Nope, I don’t think so, oldtimer.”

He offered the bottle to Ralph, who took it, looked at it, then bit off a quick swallow.

Ralph then offered it to Mary.

“Go on,” Ralph said. His voice was quiet, almost humble. “Better if you do.”

She looked at Johnny with hateful, perplexed eyes, then took a nip from the bottle. She coughed, holding it away from her and looking at it as if it were toxic. Ralph took it back, plucked the cap from Billingsley’s left hand, and put it back on. During this, Johnny opened the bottle of aspirin, shook out half a dozen, bounced them in his hand for a moment, then tossed them into his mouth.

“Come on, Doe,” he said to Billingsley. “Lead the way. — They started down the street, Johnny telling them as they went why he had all but broken his neck to get his cellular phone back. The coyotes on the other side of the street got up and paced them. Johnny didn’t care for that much, but what were they supposed to do about it. Try shooting at them. Pretty noisy. At least there was no sign of the cop. And if they saw him before they made it down to the movie theater, they could always duck into one of these other places. Any old port in a storm.

He swallowed, grimacing at the burn as the half—liquefied aspirin slid down his throat, and tried to put the bottle into his breast pocket. It bumped the top of the phone. He took it out, put the bottle of pills in its place, started to shove the cellular into his pants pocket, then decided it couldn’t hurt to try again. He pulled the antenna and flipped the phone open. Still no transmission—bars. Zilch “You really think that was your friend.” David asked.

“I think so, yes.”

David held out his hand. “Could I try it.”

Something in his voice. His father heard it, too. Johnny could see it in the way the man was looking at him.

“David. Son. Is something wr-”

“Could I try it please.”

“Sure, if you want.” He held the useless phone out to the boy, and as David took it, Johnny saw three transmis-sion-bars appear beside the S. Not one or two but three.

“Son of a bitch!” he breathed, and grabbed the phone back. David, who had been studying the keypad func-tions, saw him reaching a moment too late to stop him.

The moment the cellular phone was back in Johnny’s hand, the transmission-bars disappeared again, leaving only the S.

They were never there in the first place, you know that, don’t you. You hallucinated them. You—“Give it back!” David shouted. Johnny was stunned by the anger in his voice.

The phone was snatched away again, but not too fast for him to see the transmission-bars reappear, glowing gold in the dark.

“This is so damned dumb,” Mary said, looking first back over her shoulder, then at the coyotes across the street. They had stopped when the people had. “But if it’s the way you want to play it, why don’t we just drag a table out and get drunk in the middle of the fucking street.”

No one paid any attention. Billingsley was still looking at the bottle of Beam. Johnny and Ralph were staring at the kid, who was stuttering his finger on the NAME/MENU button with the speed of a veteran video-game player, hurrying past Johnny’s agent and ex-wife and editor, finally getting to STEVE.

“David, what is it.” Ralph asked.

David ignored him and turned urgently to Johnny. “Is this him, Mr. Marinville. Is the guy with the truck Steve.”

“Yes.”

David pushed SEND.

Steve had heard of being saved by the bell, but this was ridiculous.

Just as his fingers found the doorhandle-and he could hear Cynthia grabbing for hers on the other end of the seat-the cellular telephone gave out its nasal, demanding cry: Hmeep!

Hmeep!

Steve froze. Looked at the phone. Looked across the seat at Cynthia, whose door was actually open a little. She was staring back at him, the grin on her lips fading.

Hmeep! Hmeep!

“Well.” she asked. “Aren’t you going to answer that.” And there was something in her tone, something so wifely, that he laughed.

Outside, the wolf pointed its nose into the darkness and howled, as if it had heard Steve’s laughter and dis-approved. The coyotes seemed to take that howl as a signal. They got up and disappeared back the way they bad come, walking into the blowing dust with their heads lowered. The, scorpions were already gone. If, that was, they had been there at all.

They might not have been; his bead felt like a haunted house, one filled with hallucjna-tions and false memories instead of ghosts.

Hmeep! Hmeep!

He grabbed the phone off the dashboard, pushed the SEND button, and put it to his ear.

He stared out at the wolf as he did it. And the wolf stared back. “Boss. Boss, that you.”

Of course it was, who else would be calling him. Only it wasn’t. It was a kid.

“Is your name Steve.” the kid asked.

“Yes. How’d you get the boss’s phone. Where-”

“Never mind that,” the kid said. “Are you in trouble. You are, aren’t you.”

Steve opened his mouth. “I don’t-” Closed it again. Outside, the wind screamed around the cab of the Ryder truck. He held the little phone to the side of his face and looked over an oozing lump of buzzard at the wolf. He saw the chunk of statue lying in front of it as well. The crude images of intermingled sex and violence which had filled his mind were fading, but he could remember the power they had exercised over him the way he could remember certain vivid nightmares.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you could say that.”

“Are you in the truck we saw.”

“If you saw a truck, likely that was us, yeah. Is my boss with you.”