Mary winced. Audrey saw it and turned toward her.

“That’s something else you need to remember. If he can see you and he decides to shoot you, you’re gone.” She passed her eyes over the rest of them, apparently wanting to be sure they didn’t think she was joking. Or exagger ating. “He’s a dead shot. Accent on the dead.”

“We’ll keep it in mind,” Steve said.

“The other one was a delivery guy. He was wearing a Tastykake uniform. Entragian got him in the head, too, but he was still alive.” She spoke with a calm Johnny rec-ognized.

He had seen it in Vietnam, in the aftermath of half a dozen firefights. He’d seen it as a noncombatant, of course, notebook in one hand, pen in the other, Uher tape—recorder slung over his shoulder on a strap with a peace sign pinned to it. Watching and listening and taking notes and feeling like an outsider. Feeling jealous. The bitter thoughts which had crossed his mind then-eunuch in the harem, piano-player in the whorehouse-now struck him as insane.

“The year I was twelve, my old man gave me a.22,” Audrey Wyler said. “The first thing I did was to go out-side our house in Sedalia and shoot a jay. When I went over to it, it was still alive, too, It was trembling all over, staring straight ahead, and its beak was opening and closing, very slowly. I’ve never in my whole life wanted so badly to take something back. I got down on my knees beside it and waited for it to be finished. It seemed that I owed it that much. It just went on trembling all over until it died. The Tastykake man was trembling like that. He was looking down the street past me, although there wasn’t anybody there, and his forehead was covered with tiny beads of sweat. His head was all pushed out of shape, and there was white stuff on his shoulder. I had this crazy idea at first that it was Styrofoam poppers-you know, the packing stuff people put in the box when they mail something fragile.-and then I saw it was bone chips. From his, you know, his skull.”

“I don’t want to hear any more of this,” Ralph said abruptly.

“I don’t blame you,” Johnny said, “but I think we need to know. Why don’t you and your boy take a little walk around backstage. See what you can find.”

Ralph nodded, stood up, and took a step toward David.

“No,” David said. “We have to stay.”

Ralph looked at him uncertainly.

David nodded. “I’m sorry, but we do,” he said.

Ralph stood where he was a moment longer, then sat down again.

During this exchange, Johnny happened to look over at Audrey. She was staring at the boy with an expression r that could have been fear or awe or both. As if she had never seen a creature quite like him. Then he thought of the crackers coming out of that bag like clowns out of the little car at the circus, and he wondered if any of them had ever seen a creature quite like David Carver. He thought of the transmission-bars, and Billingsley saying not even Houdini could have done it. Because of the head. They were concentrating on the buzzards and the spiders and the coyotes, on rats that jumped Out of stacks of tires and houses that might be full of rattlesnakes; most of all they were concentrating on Entragian, who spoke in tongues and shot like Buffalo Bill. But what about David. Just what, exactly, was he.

“Go on, Audrey,” Cynthia said. “Only maybe you could, you know, drop back from R to PG-13.” She lifted her chin in David’s direction. Audrey looked at her vaguely for a moment, not seeming to understand. Then she gathered herself and continued.

“I was kneeling there by the delivery guy, trying to think what I should do next-stay with him or run and call someone-when there were more screams and gun shots up on Cotton Street. Glass broke. There was a spun tering sound-wood-and then a big clanging, banging sound-metal. The cruiser started to rev again. It seems like that’s all I’ve heard for two days, that cruiser revving He peeled out, and then I could hear him coming my way I only had a second to think, but I don’t guess I would have done anything different even if I’d had longer. I ran “I wanted to get back to my car and drive away, but I didn’t think there was time. I didn’t think there was even time to get back around the corner and out of sight. So I went into the grocery store. Worrell’s. Wendy Worrell was lying dead by the cash register. Her dad-he’s the butcher as well as the owner-was sitting in the little office area, shot in the head. His shirt was off. He must have been just changing into his whites when it happened.”

“Hugh starts work early,” Billingsley said. “Lots earlier than the rest of his family.”

“Oh, but Entragian keeps coming back and checking,” Audrey said. Her voice was light, conversational, hysteri-cal. “That’s what makes him so dangerous. He keeps coming back and checking. He’s crazy and he has no mercy, but he’s also methodical.”

“He’s one sick puppy, though,” Johnny said. “When he brought me into town, he was on the verge of bleeding out, and that was six hours ago. If whatever’s happening to him hasn’t slowed down He shrugged.

“Don’t let him trick you,” she almost whispered.

Johnny understood what she was suggesting, knew from what he had seen with his own eyes that it was impossible, knew also that telling her so would be a waste of breath.

“Go on,” Steve said. “What then.”

“I tried to use the phone in Mr. Worrell’s office. It was dead. I stayed in the back of the store for about a half an hour. The cruiser went by twice during that time, once on Main Street, then around the back, probably on Mesquite, or Cotton again. There were more gunshots. I went upstairs to where the Worrells live, thinking maybe the phone up there would still be live. It wasn’t. Neither was Mrs. Worrell or the boy. Mert, I think his name was. She was in the kitchen with her head in the sink and her throat cut. He was still in bed. The blood was everywhere. I stood in his doorway, looking in at his posters of rock musicians and basketball players, and outside I could hear the cruiser going by again, fast, accelerating.

“I went down the back way, but I didn’t dare open the back door once I got there. I kept imagining him crouched down below the porch, waiting for me. I mean, I’d just heard him go by, but I still kept imagining him waiting for me.

“I decided the best thing I could do was wait for dark. Then I could drive away. Maybe.

You couldn’t be sure. Because he was just so unpredictable. He wasn’t always on Main Street and you couldn’t always hear him and you’d start thinking well, maybe he’s gone, headedfor the hills, and then he’d be back, like a damn rabbit coming out of a magician’s hat.

“But I couldn’t stay in the store. The sound of the flies was driving me crazy, for one thing, and it was hot. I don’t usually mind the heat, you can’t mind it if you live _ in central Nevada, but I kept thinking I smelled them. So I—waited until I heard him shooting somewhere over by the town garage-that’s on Dumont Street, about as far east as you can go before you run out of town-and then I left Stepping out of the market and back onto the sidewalk was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life Like being a soldier and stepping out into no-man’s-land At first I couldn’t move at all; I just froze right where I was. I remember thinking that I had to walk, I couldn t run because I’d panic if I did, but I had to walk. Except I couldn’t. Couldn’t. It was like being paralyzed.

Then I heard him coming back. It was weird. As if he sensed me Sensed someone, anyway, moving around while his back was turned. Like he was playing a new kind of kid s game, one where you got to murder the losers instead of just sending them back to the Prisoner’s Base, or some thing. The engine… it’s so loud when it starts to rev. So powerful. So loud. Even when I’m not hearing it. I m imagining I hear it. You know. It sounds kind of like a catamount getting f… like a wildcat in heat. That’s what I heard coming toward me, and still I couldn’t move I could only stand there and listen to it getting closer I thought about the Tastykake man, how he was shivering like the jay I shot when I was a kid, and that finally got me going. I went into the laundrymat and threw myself down on the floor just as he went by. I heard more screaming north of town, but I don’t know what that was about, because I couldn’t look up. I couldn’t get up I must have lain there on that floor for almost twenty mm utes, that’s how bad I was. I can say I was way beyond scared by then, but I can’t make you understand how weird it gets in your bead when you’re that way. I lay there on the floor, looking at dust-balls and mashed-up cigarette butts and thinking how you could tell this was a laundrymat even down at the level I was, because of the smell and because all of the butts had lipstick on them. I lay there and I couldn’t have moved even if I’d heard him coming up the sidewalk. I would have lain there until he put the barrel of his gun on the side of my head and-”