And screamed as they rushed toward him, reaching for him with bloody hands. He fell beneath them and Goat turned away.
“No,” barked Homer, hitting him hard on the shoulder, “you don’t look away. You fucking well look.”
It cost Goat another part of his soul to turn back. To witness another death.
And another resurrection.
The cashier was rising, too, scrambling toward the bartender with the bitten leg.
More blood.
More screams.
“There,” said Homer, “there it is.”
“W-what…?”
“That’s the secret the Red Mouth wants you to know. The Black Eye wants to open in the center of your forehead so you can see. You can see it, can’t you?”
“I … see it.”
“Glad to hear it. I was beginning to have my doubts about you, son.” He tapped the video camera. “Did you get everything like I asked?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll put it on the Net?”
“As soon as we get somewhere with a Wi-Fi.”
Homer grunted, a note of deep satisfaction, perhaps of relief.
“Good,” he said.
He pulled back onto the highway and headed toward Pittsburgh.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
THE NORTHERN LEVEES
FAYETTE COUNTY
“Please, God…”
Jake DeGroot prayed nearly continually, but he prayed under his breath.
He didn’t dare make a sound.
In case someone could hear.
He didn’t want anyone to hear him. Not the things that had pretended to be teenage girls. The things that had done those awful things to Burl and Richie and the others.
He was sure they were dead.
He just wasn’t sure that it mattered.
After the attack had started—if “attack” was even the right word—Jake had been down in the mud for too long. When he’d fallen face-first into the muck and choked on it and on his breakfast, getting his shit together took a long damn time. Lying there, gasping like a gaffed billfish, his leg screaming at him, hi
s chest on fire, he had no strength at all. Not for a long time. Too long. Maybe. Or long enough. It was all a matter of how you looked at it.