Another impossibility, Steve thought. The dragon always stayed low to the ground.
And yet, Levi’s plan must not be impossible; he must have thought of a way . . .
It hit him. Levi’s dying words. “The tunnel. Use the tunnel. Jesus will take care of the rest.”
Steve thought it over. He envisioned it; he played it out, and considered the odds.
Yeah, Jesus better take care of the rest . . . because Steve was going to try it.
WHILE STATE TROOPERS combed through the Clark County Sheriff’s Office for clues and evidence, Lieutenant Barnard and Evelyn Benson stood in Collins’s office with Deputy Johanson; Barnard to view things firsthand and Evelyn to clarify what she’d seen.
“He was sitting right there, propped against the door,” Evelyn indicated, pointing at the doorway to the sheriff’s office. “And Tracy was over there, near the coat rack.”
“Yeah,” said Johanson. “The bloodstains were just behind the door. Take a look at that jacket. It has some kind of black scuzz all over it.”
Barnard took a look, sniffed it, and shot a look at Evelyn.
“What is this stuff? Do you have any idea?”
“It’s something they all seem to have in common,” she answered.
“And Deputy Ellis was going back to Hyde River?”
“She was going after Steve. They could both be in danger.”
Suddenly Barnard’s mobile radio squawked, “Car one-eighteen, car one-eighteen.”
Barnard grabbed the radio off his belt and spoke into it. “One-eighteen.”
Julie the dispatcher’s voice crackled out of the radio. “We have reports from Hyde River: full-scale rioting, looting, gunfire. One man down with a gunshot wound. Aid crew is en route.”
“What in the—” He looked at Evelyn then replied to the dispatcher, “one-eighteen responding.”
“I’ll bet Harold Bly’s behind this,” Johanson said.
Barnard hurried into the hall, barking orders to one of the troopers. “Tape off the whole building. Seal it up.”
His radio squawked, “One-oh-nine, two-twenty, two-twenty-five, one-sixteen, respond Hyde River.”
All the patrol cars acknowledged.
“They’re sending an army out there,” Barnard said as he headed for the door.
Evelyn was right behind him. He stopped and asked her, “What if I told you to stay put?”
“I’d drive out there anyway,” she answered.
He nodded. “That’s what I thought. Come with me. At least then I can keep an eye on you.” They went out the door to the patrol car. “Bly’s crazy if he thinks he can hide this one.”
THE CHURCH ROOF was falling in. Flames licked skyward through every window and every door, and now the flames were eating out gaps between the logs. The fire lit up the whole neighborhood, and people had gathered to see the spectacle.
Somewhere up the hill, some caring folks found the pastor’s wife out in the street, screaming and hysterical, and took her and her children away to safety.
By that time the Carlson house had just about burned to the ground and was not that exciting to watch, so the big church fire came just in time for three of Andy Schuller’s buddies, all volunteer firemen. With whoops and hollers and a beer in each hand, they came running up the hill to watch the church burn down.
But they never got there. Halfway up the hill, all three had the same hallucination: a freight train with big golden headlights pulling right out in front of them. They were dead, reduced to a cinder before they ever knew what it was.
The flames were still blasting from the dragon’s nostrils and scorching the street as the dragon swung his gaze downhill, sensing the Hunter had to have gone that way.
Just then, a vehicle roared up the hill, its lights on high beam. The dragon crouched.
STEVE SAW the golden retinas in his headlights, the pupils contracting when the light hit them. The dragon was unable to fully camouflage itself anymore. Most of the neck and body were out in the street, the neck coiled, the head close to the pavement like a rattlesnake ready to strike. It was leaning on that stumped leg. Hopefully it would move a little slower because of it, Steve thought. This ladder truck was no hot rod.
He drove straight for the dragon’s flank, the transmission in second, the engine racing, until the silvery scales filled his windshield. He cranked the wheel hard to the right, and the scales raced across his vision like a flurry of rainbows.
The dragon immediately lurched at him. If not for that shattered leg the contest would have been over.
Steve ducked down a side road that paralleled the highway. He shifted to third and took a quick look in the rearview mirror.
He saw golden eyes and then nothing but flames.
The truck lurched forward as if hit from behind. Steve could smell the paint blistering.
With a tight right turn, tires screeching, the truck leaning, Steve drove back down the hill toward the highway. There were people in the street, standing in his path! He blew the horn. He was going too fast!
The dragon was hobbling only a few yards behind him, running on hind legs, hopping on its foreleg, the wings dragging in tatters on the street, the neck reaching, the teeth bared.
Kawump! Steve hit the bottom of the hill, and the shocks bottomed out as screaming people leapt aside.
Tires squealing, Steve made a left turn. The truck reeled and fishtailed up the main road toward the four-way stop, the Carlson house a smoldering ruin on the right.
Suddenly he saw a pickup truck coming straight toward him.
Steve swerved left, missed it, and kept going—
He looked in the rearview mirror and saw the dragon hobbling, stumbling, then sliding down the steep grade into the intersection. A moment later the pickup plowed into its belly, and both went skidding over the curb and into a boarded-up cafe, the dragon’s head trailing on one side of the truck, its tail on the other, its body halfway into the building.
Well, Steve thought, this would buy me some distance.
WEDGED BETWEEN the pickup and the building, the dragon coiled, twisted, and pushed to get free, to back the truck off. The claws found a man inside the cab and crushed him. A woman escaped through the passenger door and ran, screaming.
The dragon could see the ladder truck nearing the four-way stop.
The sinister eyes narrowed, piercing into the souls in the street. The souls in the street heard the call.
STEVE SAW trouble. A man pushing a new wheelbarrow, then a woman carrying a stolen television, then two youths, each with a portable tape player, suddenly turned into the street and into his path. He jammed on his brakes, sounded his horn, swerved around the man, almost hit the woman, then came so close to one of the teenagers that the truck knocked the tape deck out of his hands. What did these people think they were doing? Didn’t they know what was back there?
Maybe they did, and that was why they stood in his way.
THE DRAGON hooked the cab of the truck with one toe, shoved it backward into the street, then wriggled free of the building. The head rose high above the truck, found three more people huddling in the truck bed with loot from the mercantile, and with one fiery blast incinerated them all.
THE MINING COMPLEX! Steve had to get to the mining complex! But there were some more people meandering through the four-way stop, blocking off the bridge across the river. Steve jammed on the brakes, and the truck started a side skid.
It slowed enough to turn.
The road going up the hill was clear enough. He cranked the wheel to the left, ground the gears into second, dodged past some blurred bodies and waving arms and headed up the hill again. He didn’t know where this street went; he only knew there was a very angry lizard behind him. How he’d ever get back to cross that bridge to the mining complex he had no idea.
Suddenly a man’s face appeared right outside Steve’s window, which was down. Before he could roll it up, the man grabbed the wheel, and the truck lurched to the left. Steve pull
ed it to the right.
A tug-of-war ensued as the man pulled to the left and Steve steered to the right. Then the man grabbed a fistful of Steve’s hair. Steve took one hand from the wheel to fight him off.
Steve got a good look at the man: it was Clayton Gentry, the young logger. The guy was crazed, maniacal, and smeared with black ooze.
The truck kept rumbling up the hill, swerving and rocking.
“Clayton, let go!” he cried.
Clayton growled and punched Steve in the side of the head.
Steve wrenched the wheel, and the truck swerved across the street to the left. Steve saw a utility pole coming up. He cut the wheel, veering in close.
The pole took off the left-side mirror—and Clayton Gentry.
THE PICKUP was engulfed in flames and black smoke. The gas tank blew and the ball of flame ignited the old cafe. The dragon’s neck reached above the inferno, and it saw where Steve had gone. It leapt over the burning pickup, through the tower of flame, and headed up the hill again, steam and smoke wisping from its nostrils.
It probed for souls with its mind, its essence. It reached for hearts it could herd.
BOOM! The shotgun blast got the crowd’s attention. They froze, the canned goods, wool socks, clothing, and garden supplies still in their hands.
Harold Bly chambered another round and aimed the gun toward the ceiling. “All right now. Hold it!”
Click-click. Click. Click-click-click. Pistols, revolvers, rifles aimed at him from every direction. It appeared that his power was eroding.
At that moment Carl burst in the front door. “I just saw the professor drive by!”
As everyone stood frozen, Carl gushed something about a phone company truck and the hill above the town and lots of fire up the street. United again, everybody headed for the door.
“Block the roads!” Bly shouted, in charge again. “Block the roads! Andy, take the north end! Carl take the south! Doug, take the four-way stop, don’t let him across the bridge!”
They ran for their vehicles.
“I saw him go up there!” Carl shouted, pointing up the hill. “Paul!” shouted Bly. “You and Kyle go after him, flush him out. The rest of you block the roads!”
Trucks and cars roared to life and raced off.
STEVE REACHED the crest of the hill and came to a T in the road. He looked both ways and decided to go right, up a narrow road past some old frame houses. He drove a block and came to a fork in the road, the left climbing the hill, the right descending.
He was as good as lost. He had to find a way back to the highway, back to the four-way stop and across that river. He thought he’d take the right—
He spotted a black shadow leaping out from behind a house and across that road. His headlights caught the flicker of silver scales and a stringy wisp of gray smoke.
There was a driveway on the right. He took it, then drove right through the yard, hooking and dragging a swing set for several yards and then crashing through a split-rail fence. Now he was in another yard, where he dodged a laundry tree but gave it a spin, then rammed a raised planting bed with such force that his head hit the ceiling. When the headlights came down to ground level again, he was in a narrow alley. He screeched to the right again, trying to double back the way he had come, back to the four-way and that bridge.
THE DRAGON clattered and clawed up one side of a house, roosted for only an instant on the peak of the roof, and then came crashing down into the alley, its tail smashing a small porch and a row of garbage cans. It didn’t run down the alley, but leapt atop another house, slipping and clawing on the steep metal roof until it hooked its claws on the ridge and pulled itself over. It caught sight of the truck going back down the hill, then it slid and rolled off the roof and landed in the yard. As it lunged into the street again, it caved in the roof of a car. It could see one remaining taillight—the other had melted—on that lumbering truck just above the four-way.
But the dragon’s net was closing.
PAUL AND KYLE came barreling up the hill in Kyle’s off-road pickup just in time to play chicken with the telephone truck coming the other way.
Steve saw them coming, their headlights and amber foglights in his eyes.
Oh-man-oh-man-oh-man—GET OUT OF THE WAY!
Kyle veered to the right. So did the telephone truck. They barely missed each other. Kyle jammed on the brakes. He was about to turn around when a silvery, glittery freight train roared by the windshield.
“Aaawww!” Kyle screamed. “What was that?”
They both knew. Neither could say it.
STEVE WAS building up speed again, diving down into that four-way with little chance of stopping. The four-way was more solidly blocked than before. Two cars were parked bumper to bumper across the bridge. Some men with rifles were standing beside them.
Well, it was all or nothing now, Steve thought. He kept going, hit the horn and held it there.
He only had fifty feet to go now. People darted sideways out of his path. He could see Doug Ellis by the roadblock aiming a rifle.
Twenty. He ducked down, just barely able to see over the steering wheel.
Crash! The truck struck both cars and spun them aside, opening the roadblock like a gate. He hit the gas and headed over the bridge.
Steve took one quick look in the mirror. There was Doug Ellis, aiming at him. A bullet ripped through the back door and several tool racks. Then another. Steve ducked, and the truck swerved.
NOW THE dragon’s way was blocked by its own net. The four-way was full of people, trucks, cars, and loot thrown everywhere. It filled its lungs as it galloped down the hill, step-thump, step-thump, step-thump.
Bernie and Melinda saw it. Joe and Elmer saw it.
Harold Bly saw it.
Everyone screamed and ducked behind cars, trucks, utility poles and one another.
Doug Ellis stepped out and aimed his rifle at the dragon.
The dragon expelled a ball of fire that engulfed the four-way, igniting cars, buildings, and littered loot. The hill was steep, and the dragon stumbled, then slid, then tumbled over the burning cars and through the four-way into the clear on the other side. It righted itself and bounded toward the bridge.
Bly and the others were awestruck. They’d never seen it before.
“Did you—” Bernie stammered. “Did you see that?”
“It’s after the professor,” Elmer said.
Paul and Kyle came to a screeching halt in the middle of the four-way. “Did you see that?” Kyle screamed, his voice a terrified falsetto.
“It’s going after the professor!” Bly hollered, wielding his shotgun. “It wants him!” He laughed with delight. “See? What’d I tell you?”
Nobody moved.
The dragon was real. They’d seen it. Buildings and vehicles were burning all around them, as further proof. And Doug Ellis was dead—burned and crushed.
They were stunned, mesmerized.
Meanwhile, Steve roared along the narrow ramp that paralleled the river, hoping this route would take him to the tunnel. The last time he had gone this way he was drugged out of his skull.
Oh Lord, make this work even if it is crazy!
BLY HAD to goad the people to get them moving again. “Joe and Elmer! Get those cars across the road again! Kyle! Get your truck over there!”
Kyle was looking at Doug’s charred body and the two rammed cars. “But—”
“Do it! Benson’s trapped. There’s no way out of there.”
They couldn’t move. All they could do was stare across the bridge and then at each other.
Bly shoved them and slapped them to get them moving. “Come on. The dragon’s on our side! Let’s help him out!”
Joe got into one car, Elmer into the other, and they jockeyed them into position so that they blocked the road again.
Melinda was cowering by the corner of the ransacked hardware store. “The dragon’s not on our side,” she said, her voice quivering with fear. “He’s not on anybody’s side.??
?
Nobody else seemed to catch her words, but Bly did. He shot her a dirty look and then hollered his rebuttal to the others. “The dragon wants Benson; you all saw it! We gave him Benson and he’s taking Benson! He’s bought the deal!”
Melinda was silenced, but she did not change her mind. She said nothing more, but only shook her head no.
Bly hollered louder, “The dragon wants Benson, and I want him too! Benson’s the cause of it all!”
Kyle nosed his truck up against the two cars. The professor wouldn’t bash his way through here next time.
“All right,” said Bly, raising and waving his shotgun, “let’s go!”
Elmer and Joe took up the call, “Let’s go.”
Bernie was ready and stepped forward. But Paul wasn’t sure. “What for? You want to help that thing?”
Melinda found her voice again and shouted defiantly, “I’m not!” She pointed to Doug’s charred body. “The dragon wants all of us; can’t you see that?”
Kyle wasn’t sure about anything, but he was a great follower; he followed.
Andy had seen the ruckus and the fire from the north roadblock and come back to be a part of it. He was armed and ready. He was ready to follow Bly, and Andy’s buddies—those who were left— went where he went.
Then Carl came running from the south, his eyes popping out. “What’d I miss?”
“Come on,” Bly said. “The action’s this way.”
They were a fresh mob now, an armed gang ready to side with the dragon and erase the last vestige of the Trouble. They squeezed around the roadblock and headed across the bridge toward the towering, tangled mine complex.
STEVE’S HEADLIGHTS illuminated a tunnel running under the huge company building. Was this the one? No. He remembered another . . .
He slowed just a little, looking back. Was the dragon following him? No sign of it.
His eyes came forward in time to see silver claws come over the wall up ahead on the right, up from the river below.
Steve hit the gas, hoping he could get past it in time. He had to keep that thing behind him.
Silver horns appeared, then the head came over the wall, the eyes blazing, the teeth bared, smoke puffing from the nostrils.