There were a few businesses on Main Street that looked like half-going concerns, but mostly it was a shambles. The sidewalk was cracked and littered with rubbish. I saw half a dozen parked cars, and every one was either a gas-electric hybrid or equipped with the roof-spinner devices. One of them was a Honda Zephyr; one was a Takuro Spirit; another a Ford Breeze. They looked old, and a couple had been vandalized. All had pink stickers on the windshields, the black letters big enough to read even in the gloom: PROVINCE OF MAINE “A” STICKER ALWAYS PRODUCE RATION

BOOK.

A gang of kids was idling up the other side of the street, laughing and talking. “Hey!” I called across to them. “Is the library still open?”

They looked over. I saw the firefly wink of cigarettes . . . except the smell that drifted across to me was almost surely pot. “Fuck off, man!” one of them shouted back.

Another turned, dropped his pants, and mooned me. “You find any books up there, they’re all yours!”

There was general laughter and they walked on, talking in lower voices and looking back.

I didn’t mind being mooned—it wasn’t the first time—but I didn’t like those looks, and I liked the low voices even less. There might be something conspiratorial there. Jake Epping didn’t exactly believe that, but George Amberson did; George had been through a lot, and it was George who bent down, grabbed two fist-sized chunks of concrete, and stuffed them into his front pockets, just for good luck. Jake thought he was being silly but didn’t object.

A block farther up, the business district (such as it was) came to an abrupt end. I saw an elderly woman hurrying along and glancing nervously at the boys, who were now a little farther up on the other side of Main. She was wearing a kerchief and what looked like a respirator—the kind of thing people with COPD or advanced emphysema use.

“Ma’am, do you know if the library—”

“Leave me alone!” Her eyes were large and scared. The moon shone briefly through a rift in the clouds, and I saw that her face was covered with sores. The one below her right eye appeared to have eaten right down to the bone. “I have a paper that says I can be out, it’s got a Council stamp, so leave me alone! I’m going to see my sister! Those boys are bad enough, and soon they’ll start their wilding. If you touch me, I’ll buzz my beezer and a constable will come!” I somehow doubted that.

“Ma’am, I just want to know if the library is still—”

“It’s been closed for years and all the books are gone! They have Hate Meetings there now.

Leave me alone, I say, or I’ll buzz for a constable!”

She scuttled away, looking back over her shoulder every few seconds to make sure I wasn’t coming after her. I let her put enough distance between us to make her feel comfy, then continued up Main Street. My knee was recovering a bit from my stair-climbing exertions in the Book Depository, but I was still limping, and would be for some time to come. Lights burned behind drawn curtains in a few houses, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t produced by Central Maine Power.

Those were Coleman lanterns and in some cases kerosene lamps. Most of the houses were dark.

Some were charred wrecks. There was a Nazi swastika on one of the wrecks and the words JEW

RAT spray-painted on another.

Those boys are bad enough and soon they’ll start their wilding.

And . . . had she really said Hate Meetings?

In front of one of the few houses that looked in good shape—it was a mansion compared to most of them—I saw a long hitching rail, like in a western movie. And actual horses had been tied up there. When the sky lightened in another of those diffuse spasms, I could see horsepucky pats, some of them fresh. The driveway was gated. The moon had gone in again, so I couldn’t read the sign on the iron slats, but I didn’t need to read it to know it said KEEP OUT.

Now, from up ahead, I heard someone enunciate a single word: “Cunt!” It didn’t sound young, like one of the wild boys, and it was coming from my side of the street rather than theirs. The guy sounded pissed off. He also sounded like he might be talking to himself. I walked toward his voice.

“Mother- fucker!” the voice cried, exasperated. “Shit-ass!” He was maybe a block up. Before I got there, I heard a loud metallic bonk and the male voice cried: “Get on with you! Goddam little wetnosed sonsabitches! Get on with you before I pull my pistol!”

Mocking laughter greeted this. It was the pot-smoking wild boys, and the voice that replied certainly belonged to the one who had mooned me. “Only pistol you got is the one in your pants, and I bet it’s got a mighty limp barrel!”

More laughter. It was followed by a high metallic spannng sound.

“You fucks, you broke one of my spokes!” When the man yelled at them again, his voice was tinged with reluctant fear. “Nah, nah, stay on your own goddam side!” The clouds rifted. The moon peeked through. By its chancy light I saw an old man in a wheelchair. He was halfway across one of the streets intersecting Main—Goddard, if the name hadn’t changed. One of his wheels had gotten stuck in a pothole, causing the chair to cant drunkenly to the left. The boys were crossing toward him. The kid who had told me to fuck off was holding a slingshot with a good-sized rock in it. That explained the bonk and the spang.

“Got any oldbucks, grampy? For that matter, you got any newbucks or canned goods?”

“No! If you don’t have the goddam decency to push me out of the hole I’m in, at least go away and leave me alone!”

But they were wilding, and they weren’t going to do that. They were going to rob him of whatever small shit he might happen to have, maybe beat him up, tip him over for sure.

Jake and George came together, and both of them saw red.

The attention of the wild boys was fixed on the wheelchair-geezer and they didn’t see me cutting toward them on a diagonal—just as I’d cut across the sixth floor of the School Book Depository. My left arm still wasn’t much good, but my right was fine, toned up by three months of physical therapy, first in Parkland and then at Eden Fallows. And I still had some of the accuracy that had made me a varsity third baseman in high school. I pegged the first chunk of concrete from thirty feet away and caught Moon Man in the center of the chest. He screamed with pain and surprise. All the boys—there were five of them—turned toward me. When they did, I saw that their faces were as disfigured as the frightened woman’s had been. The one with the slingshot, young Master Fuck Off, was the worst. There was nothing but a hole where his nose should have been.

I transferred my second chunk of concrete from my left hand to my right, and threw it at the tallest of the boys, who was wearing a huge pair of loose pants with the waistband drawn up nearly to his sternum. He raised a blocking arm. The concrete struck it, knocking the joint he was holding into the street. He took one look at my face, then wheeled and ran. Moon Man followed him. That left three.