Nightrunners by Joe R. Lansdale

Author:Joe R. Lansdale [Lansdale, Joe R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780786702893
Google: pUlFAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0812521234
Goodreads: 219734
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1986-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

PART THREE:

The Shark Shows ItsTeeth

October 31 (Halloween)

Somewhere in the United States, someone is

brutally murdered every twenty-six minutes.

— Statistical fact

Fierce as the Furies, terrible as Hell.

— Milton, Paradise Lost

By the pricking of my thumbs.

Something wicked this way comes.

— Shakespeare, Macbeth

ONE

October 31, 12:O2 A.M.

—clay road winding, '66 Chevy humming, falling forward in time . . .

And so for a few more miles the car rolled on. Brian driving with his pale face looking ghostlike in the night, the others sleeping, storing up ...

TWO

October 31, 12:27 A.M.

They found another pasture, Brian stopped the car and Loony got out to open the post and barbed-wire gate.

Brian drove the car through. Loony closed the gate and climbed back inside. They drove through the pasture, past sleeping cows, some of which came unstuck from sleep to look up and watch the black shark sail past.

They found a collection of pines next to a metal enclosure that contained water and had salt blocks placed on the outside and all around. The car stopped and the lights went out.

Brian got out, took a leak. "I'll be back," he said. He walked off.

Five minutes later Jimmy and Angela climbed out of the car, walked off in the opposite direction. They looped over a slight rise in the pasture and found a copse of hardwoods that the fall had shook free of leaves, sat down beneath them, backs to an oak.

"I'm scared, Jimmy," Angela said.

"I know. I am too."

"What are we going to do?"

"I don't know." Jimmy didn't want to admit it, but he was even more frightened than Angela thought. The moment she began to get rattled, show obvious fear, he had begun to rip out at the seams. For all his macho bravado, Angela was his anchor, and when her calm and cool began to slip, the final stitch of his own control began to unravel

—rapidly.

"He's crazy, Jimmy. They're all crazy."

"I know."

"By the Blessed Virgin, how did we get into this?"

"Me. Me wanting a few friends. Me the tough guy. I'm not so tough, Angela."

"So, who wants tough. I've grown up with tough. I've seen tough. I want to see gentle. I want to get out of this. Those poor people, Jimmy."

"I know . . . while you were being sick in the hall, Brian, he made me cut the woman . . .

She was dead, but he made me take a knife and do some things to her breast ... I didn't want to, but if I hadn't they'd have killed me . . . and you."

"After they got through with me. Do you see how that Loony looks at me?"

"Yes. I want to kill him, but . . . I'm not tough, Angela. I'm just ... I just am, that's all."

"We've got to split out of this, Jimmy. That Brian, he's going to kill that woman and I don't even know why really."

"Less we know the better."

"God, he's crazy, so crazy, crazier than the rest. Last night, late, after we'd parked in that other pasture, I

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