“I would have done more, but you’re all muddy. I figure we’ll put you in the shower now that you’re awake, and then I’ll have a go at you.”

“How about if I have a go at you,” I said. And I kicked him in his Munchkins.

He crashed to the floor and rolled around in a fetal position, gasping for breath. The door to the little bedroom opened, and Wulf looked in at us.

“I see it’s going well,” Wulf said.

I wanted to say something clever, do a kung fu move on him and run like the wind, but truth is, my brain was numb with fear. Wulf scared the crap out of me. There was something about him. The lack of facial expression. The black eyes. The perfect clothes over the body that exuded evil power. He was the dark side of Diesel.

“I need to move you,” Wulf said. “You can walk with me, or I can incapacitate you and drag you out.”

“I’ll walk.”

He stepped aside and motioned me out the door. We were in a small but comfortable ranch-style house from the seventies. He led me out the door and across the yard to an outbuilding. It had stopped raining, but the air was raw and the ground was oversaturated. The outbuilding was nothing more than a shed. Maybe five by five. A door and no windows.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “And when I come back, you’re going to have to be nicer to Martin.”

He closed and locked the door with a padlock, and I was in total blackness. Not a hint of light. No furniture. No bathroom facilities. Just a metal shed. I felt my way around the shed, but there were no weak seams. I still had my cell phone clipped to my jeans, but there was no reception.

I was in a terrible position. My Jeep was in my parking lot, and Ranger had no idea I was in trouble. Diesel was rambling around in the woods, oblivious to my predicament. When he finally returned to rendezvous with Flash, Flash wouldn’t be there. Bottom line, I was on my own, locked in a shed, waiting for a madman to return and give me over to a geek who wanted to get laid.

A half hour passed, and I heard a car drive away. A couple more minutes, and it sounded like someone was clunking the padlock against the shed exterior. There was silence and then more of the clunking and some scratching. The padlock clicked, the handle turned, and the door opened a crack. I cautiously peeked out. The sun had set below the trees, but the sky still held some light. No one was in the yard. I pushed the door fully open, and that was when I saw him. It was Carl!

I picked him up and hugged him to me.

“Eeep,” Carl said.

The padlock was on the ground, the key still stuck in the lock.

“Is anyone else here?” I asked him. “Gail Scanlon or Martin Munch?”

Carl shrugged his shoulders.

This wasn’t one of the properties Diesel had tagged for further investigation on his first sweep. The little ranch-style house sat in the middle of a cleared patch of ground. No garage. No generator. Just the tool shed, which was big enough to hold a lawn mower and not much else.

I crept to the house and looked in a window. Lights were off. No activity. I tried the front door. Locked. I worked my way around the house, looking in all the windows. No one was in the house. There was a yellow pad on the kitchen counter. Dishes in the sink. Some clothes on the floor in the second bedroom. Looked like jeans and boxer shorts.

A window was broken in the kitchen, the glass cleared out with a stick that was left on the counter. I looked down at Carl.

“I imagine that’s how you got the key to the padlock.”

Carl scratched the top of his head.

I reached through the window, got the stick, and used it to break a window in the back door. I opened the door, and we stepped inside. My search was fast. I didn’t want to be there when Wulf returned. No phone that I could find. There was a power cord for a computer in the kitchen but no computer. Milk and a couple cans of soda in the fridge. A jar of peanut butter, half a loaf of white bread, and an opened box of cereal had been left on the kitchen counter. Minimum clothes in the dresser. A couple T-shirts and a pair of Power Ranger’s briefs. A down jacket in the closet.

Munch was living in the house, but it looked more like a stopover than a residence. And he was working someplace else.

I dropped my wet sweatshirt onto the kitchen floor and zipped myself into Munch’s down jacket. The yellow pad on the counter caught my eye. It looked like Munch had a grocery list going. The first item was HTPB. The second was APCP. He also listed a transmitter, barium, and Blue-Bec rockets. I ripped the page off the pad and stuffed it into my jacket pocket.

I left through the back door with Carl tagging after me, clutching the cereal box. I guess life in the woods lacked amenities like cookies and cereal. We crossed the yard and followed the road. After a half hour, I heard a car approaching and saw headlights shining through the trees. Carl and I ducked into the woods, crouching low, hiding in the shadows. The headlights swept around a curve and the Audi passed us on its way to the house.

As soon as the lights disappeared around the next curve, I took off running. In a matter of minutes, Wulf would be hunting me down. It was dark, and the road was slippery and pocked with potholes. I went down twice, scrambled to my feet, and stumbled forward. The dirt road widened slightly, and a short driveway to my right led to a double-wide. There was a pickup parked in the drive. I ran to the pickup and looked in the window. Keys in the ignition. Pineys are trusting people.

I jumped into the pickup, Carl scampered over me and sat in the passenger seat, and I turned the key. I backed it out to the dirt road, and the door to the double-wide opened and a big guy, more Wookiee than human being, filled the doorway. He had to be over seven feet, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and he had hair everywhere.

He roared, there was a shotgun blast, and the windshield was peppered with birdshot that didn’t completely penetrate.

“Eep,” Carl said, eyes big and bugged out.

I whipped the truck around and took off down the dirt road in Sasquatch’s broken-down heap that reeked of giant prehistoric wet dog. In seconds, I was able to turn onto pavement. I had no idea where I was. I didn’t recognize anything. I was in a stolen truck with half a tank of gas, no identification, no credit cards, no money, and a monkey. I stuck to the paved road, and after ten miles, I came to an intersection with signs. The signs meant nothing to me, but just ahead I could see the glow of overhead lights to a parking lot. The lot was empty except for one car. The Subaru. Somehow I’d found the junk store.

I had the SUV keys in my jeans pocket. I swapped out the truck for the Subaru and laid down rubber, wasting no time getting the heck onto the Expressway. I called Diesel while I drove. No answer. Diesel was probably waiting for Flash and had no reception. I needed to go back and get Diesel. Crap. I really didn’t want to do that. I was afraid I’d run into Wulf.

“What do you think I should do?” I asked Carl.

Carl didn’t answer. Carl had discovered Super Mario stashed in the console and was beyond happy, eating his cereal and making Mario jump around.

I made a U-turn at the next interchange and headed back for Diesel. If I got to the pickup point and he wasn’t standing there with the two ATVs, I’d turn around and not stop driving until I pulled into my apartment building parking lot.

My heart started skipping beats a quarter mile away. I wanted Diesel to be waiting for me, unharmed. I wanted to get him in the car and make a safe retreat. And as far as I was concerned, Munch could stay in the wind forever. Vinnie would just have to deal with it. My rent was due, but better to be evicted than be dead… or even worse, be a Munch toy.

I was the only car on the road. I switched to my high beams and slowed to almost a crawl, looking for the dirt road, afraid I wouldn’t recognize it. Fortunately, it wasn’t an issue, because Diesel was at the edge of the road. He was standing hands on hips, mud splattered and wet through to his skin. I stopped, he opened the passenger-side door, and Carl gave him a thumbs-up.