It was as if a swarm of bees had settled on them. They whirled in a clumsy, jostling mass of snouts and ears and teeth and tails, nipping at one another’s flanks and at their own.

Then they raced off, yapping and yowling in what sounded like some painful argument.

She could hear them, even with the contending shriek of the wind, for a long time.

David turned back, surveyed their dumbfounded faces — expressions too large to miss, even in the gloom-and smiled a little. He shrugged, as if to say Well, what are you gonna do. Mary observed that his face was still tinted Irish Spring green. He looked like the victim of an inept Halloween makeup job.

“Come on,” David said. “Let’s go.”

They clustered in the street. “And a little child shall lead them,” Marinville said. “So come on, child-lead.”

The five of them began trudging north along Main Street toward The American West.

“I think that’s it.” Cynthia pointed out her window. “See it.”

Steve, hunched over the wheel and squinting through the bloodsmeared windshield (although it was the sand sticking in the blood that was the real problem), nodded. Yes, he could see the old-fashioned marquee, held by rusty chains to the side of a weathered brick building. There was only one letter left on the marquee, a crooked R.

He turned left, onto the tarmac of the Conoco station. A sign reading BEST CIG PRICES IN TOWN had fallen over. Sand had piled against the concrete base of the single pump—island like a snowdrift.

“Where you going. I thought the kid told you the movie theater!”

“He also told me not to park the truck near it. He’s right, too. That wouldn’t… hey, there’s a guy in there!”

Steve brought the truck to a hard stop. There was indeed a guy in the Conoco station’s office, rocked back in his chair with his feet on his desk. Except for some-thing in his posture-mostly the awkward way his head was lying over on his neck-he could have been sleeping.

“Dead,” Cynthia said, and put a hand on Steve’s shoulder as he opened his door. “Don’t bother. I can tell from here.”

“We still need a place to hide the truck. If there’s room in the garage, I’ll open the door.

You drive in.” There was no need to ask if she could do it; he hadn’t forgotten the spiffy way she’d handled the truck out on Highway 50.

“Okay. But do it fast.”

“Believe me,” he said. He started to get out, then hesi-tated. “You are all right, aren’t you.”

She smiled. It clearly took some effort, but it was a working smile, all the same. “For the time being. You.”

“Smokin.”

He got out, slammed the door behind him, and hurried across the tarmac to the gas station’s office door. He was amazed at how much sand had accumulated already. It was as if the west wind were intent on burying the town. Judging from what he had seen of it so far, that wasn’t such a bad idea.

There was a tumbleweed caught in the recessed doorway, its skeletal branches rattling.

Steve booted it and it flew away into the night. He turned, saw that Cyn-thia was now behind the wheel of the truck, and gave her a little salute. She held her fists up in front of her, her face serious and intent, then popped the thumbs. Mission Con-trol, we are A-OK.

Steve grinned, nodded, and went inside. God, she could be funny. He didn’t know if she knew it or not, but she could be.

The guy in the office chair needed a spot of burying. Inside the shadow thrown by the bill of his cap, his face was purple, the skin stretched and shiny. It had been sten-cilled with maybe two dozen black marks. Not snakebites, and too small even to be scorpion stings—There was a skin magazine on the desk. Steve could read the title-Lesbo Sweethearts-upside down. Now something crawled over the edge of the desk and across the naked women on the cover. It was followed by two friends. The three of them reached the edge of the desk and stopped there in a neat line, like soldiers at parade rest.

Three more came out from under the desk and scurried across the dirty linoleum floor toward him. Steve took a step backward, set himself, then brought a workboot down, hard. He got two of the three. The other zigged to the right and raced off toward what was probably the bathroom. When Steve looked back at the desk, he saw there were now eight fellows lined up along the edge, like movie Indians on a ridge.

They were brown recluse spiders, also known as fiddle—back spiders, because the shape on their backs looked vaguely like a country fiddle. Steve had seen plenty in Texas, had even been stung by one while rooting in his Aunt Betty’s woodpile as a boy. Over in Arnette, that had been, and it had hurt like a bastard. Like an ant-bite, only hot. Now he understood why the dead man smelled so spoiled in spite of the dry climate. Aunt Betty had insisted on disinfecting the bite with alcohol immediately, telling him that if you ignored a fiddleback’s bite, the flesh 2 around it was apt to start rotting away. It was something in their spit. And if enough of them were to attack a person all at once…

Another pair of fiddlebacks appeared, these two crawling out of the dark crease at the center of the gas—jockey’s strokebook. They joined their pals. Ten, now. Looking at him.

He knew they were. Another one crawled out of the pump-jockey’s hair, journeyed down his fore-head and nose, over his puffed lips, across his cheek It was probably on its way to the convention at the edge of the desk, but Steve didn’t wait to see. He headed for the garage, turning up his collar as he went. For all he knew the goddam garage could be full of them. Recluse spiders liked dark places.

So be quick. Right.

There was a light-switch to the left of the door. He turned it. Half a dozen dirty fluorescents buzzed to life above the garage area. There were actually two bays, he saw.

In one was a pickup which had been raised on over—sized tires and customized into an all-terrain vehicle—silky blue metal-flake paint, THE DESERT ROVER written in red on the driver’s side of the cab. The other bay would do for the Ryder truck, though, if he moved a pile of tires and the recapping machine.

He waved to Cynthia, not knowing if she could actually see him or not, and crossed to the tires. He was bending over them when a rat leaped out of the dark hole in the 2 center of the stack and sank its teeth into his shirt. Steve cried out in surprise and revulsion and hit himself in the chest with his right fist, breaking its back. The rat began to wriggle and pedal its back legs in the air, squealing through its clenched teeth, trying to bite him.

“Ah, fuck!” Steve scream. “Ah, fuck, you fuck, let go, you little fuck!”

Not so little, though-it was almost the size of a full—grown cat. Steve leaned forward, bowing so his shirt would bell out (he did this without thinking, any more than he was aware he was screaming and cursing), then grabbed the rat’s hairless tail and yanked.

There was a harsh ripping sound as his shirt tore open, and then the rat was doubling over on the lumpy knuckles of its broken spine, trying to bite his hand.

Steve swung it by its tail like a lunatic Tom Sawyer, then let it fly. It zoomed across the garage, a ratsteroid, and smacked into the wall beyond THE DESERT ROVER. It lay still with its clawed feet sticking up. Steve stood watching it, making sure it wasn’t going to get up and come at him again. He was shuddering all over, and the noise that came out of his mouth made him sound cold—Brr—rrrr—ruhhh.

There was a long, tool-littered table to the right of the door. He snatched up a tire iron, holding it by the pry-bar end, and kicked over the stack of tires. They rolled like tiddlywinks. Two more rats, smaller ones, ran out, but they wanted no part of him; they sprinted, squeaking, toward the shadowy nether regions of the garage.