I waited a couple of more days, working it all out in my head.

Mrs. Barnes told me Dr. English was coming back to the school next week. She was going to talk to him about Tommy, maybe get him to do some of his therapy in the hospital until the boy was ready to come home.

I told Tommy I knew how to stop the monsters for sure now. I told him I was building a new machine—I'd have it ready for him next week. I told him when he got home I wanted him to walk the dog for me. Out in the back where the other kids played. I told him I'd teach him how.

Tommy really liked that. He said he'd try and come home if I was sure the new machine would work. I gave him my word.

I'm working on the new machine in my basement now. I put a hard rubber ball into a vise and clamped it tight. I drilled a tiny hole right through the center. Then I threaded it with a strand of piano wire until about six inches poked through the end. I knotted it real carefully and pulled back against the knot with all my strength. It held. I did the same thing with another ball the same way. Now I have a three—foot piece of piano wire anchored with a little rubber ball at each end. The rubber balls fit perfectly, one in each hand.

I know how to Ax things.

When it gets dark tonight, I'll show Dr. English a machine that works.

Rules of the Road

I made a mistake with the first two. I didn't think about them being black until the papers said a racist murderer was on the loose. Because they matched the slugs they took out of them, they figured it had to be from the same killer. And because they were black, they did what the media always does.

I mean, they could have said they were both men. Or both married. Or both employed. Or maybe a hundred other different things the two had in common. But they picked the easiest thing, color.

Everybody wants to be P.C. Politically correct. They all want to say the right things.

But they don't do the right things.

People won't do the right things by themselves. They have to be shown how to act. We have rules. Laws, regulations, codes of conduct. And we have the Scripture.

But people just won't obey unless you make them.

That's why we have prisons, to make people obey. But it doesn't make them obey. If you don't believe me, look at all the men on parole who commit crimes.

I have been thinking about this for a long time. What happens in prison, I think, is that the people learn to obey, but they obey the wrong things.

Everybody obeys something—if you make them. What happens, after a while, the rules change. The higher laws—the ones made by God—they tell people how to act. But the lower laws—the ones people make up as they go along— they take over.

It's like pollution. You can make all the laws about it, but it still gets into the air. And we have to breathe it no matter how obedient we are to the real laws. We all have to breathe.

See, the big laws, everybody agrees about them. You're not supposed to kill. Or steal. Or commit rapes and stuff like that. But it's the little laws that start the unraveling.

And pretty soon, it's just threads. Not connected to anything. Just floating in the wind.

The Bible tells the truth. It says not to spare the rod. This has nothing to do with hitting kids, the way some of those people do.

I know all about that stuff.

All of it. The Bible too.

The rod is the Shepherd's Rod. The staff to guide the Rock.

People are sheep.

Sheep need guidance.

I know I'm not God. I can't make the sheep stop the ugly things they do. Like killing. Or stealing. Or sex stuff.

My job is smaller—I'm just a messenger.

One of the ways you can see the threads unravel is the way people talk to you when you ask them a polite question.

"Drop dead!"

"Shut up!"

"Fuck you!"

Maybe they don't realize how much that hurts. Or maybe they don't care. I tried to ask someone once, but he raised his hand to me. He was going to hurt me just because I wanted to ask him a question.

You can see the threads unravel. Because the sheep have no rod to guide them, they all follow the herd.

That's where I got the idea. I was driving in my car. I am a very good driver. I always yield the right–of–way, always stop at stop signs. I never cut people off in traffic. I'm always very careful, a good citizen behind the wheel. I obey the rules of the road.

But, what happened, this man cut me off. Right in front of me. If I hadn't slammed on the brakes, I would have smashed right into him. There was no point to it—he couldn't get where he was going any faster for treating me like that. When he stopped at a red light, I looked over at him. I shook my head. Not to admonish him, just to show I was sad at his impolite behavior. He shook his fist at me. He was so angry that he got spit all over the inside of his window. His face was bright red. Then he jumped out of his car and ran toward me. I had to go through the red light to get away from him. Sometimes you have to break the law, but only if there's a really good reason for it.

Anyway, that's what gave me the idea. The sheep are even worse in their cars. They don't act correctly. So what I wanted was to help them. With a message.

I know all about guns. My father taught me. He was a hunter, my father. And a soldier before that. He said you weren't a man unless you knew all about guns.

He taught me himself. So I'd understand. When I didn't get it right, he would tell me I was stupid. That hurt worse than the other stuff. Words can really hurt you.

Most people don't know that.

The first problem I had to solve was the noise. It's easy enough to make a silencer for a pistol, but they only work on semi–automatics. If you use them on a revolver, they don't work very well. That's because the cartridges are exposed and the gas escapes—that's what makes the bang. But if you use a semiautomatic, the cartridges don't stay in the gun like with a revolver—they fly out all over the place.

So what I decided was I had to shoot from inside my car. Deep inside, so the cartridges didn't get on the ground.

But I didn't think about ballistics. I thought the bullets would get all deformed once they went inside the sheep. But I guess they didn't.

So I use a different gun each time now.

I have plenty of them.

I have a very good car for this work. It's a Lexus. A gray Lexus 400 sedan. It looks like every other car, nothing special. But it's very quiet and very fast. And it doesn't make the sheep nervous.

I have taken eleven sheep so far, but the police still don't get it. Neither does the press. Not the newspapers, not the radio, not even TV.

I have been very careful. I take people of different races, different ages. Once I even took a woman, but that was a mistake—it will make it even harder for the sheep to understand.

I only take sheep when they are impolite in their cars. When they cut me off, or make obscene gestures, or run through red lights.

So far, they don't understand. The press talks about a Highway Killer. And they have all this speculation about why it happens.

Some of them even think the killer is crazy.

It's hard, because I only take them when they're alone. The car usually crashes after I take them, and I wouldn't want an innocent sheep to die. I never shoot when there are passengers. So there's nobody left to tell why I took the driver…how impolite he was.

I wish they would make the connection soon. Once they understand, the rules will change. And people will start to be polite in their cars.

But it really doesn't matter.

I have the patience of Job, like in the Bible.