Michelle screamed once. Between black bodies, Dale caught a glimpse of her red hair rolling. The three dogs roiling above her seemed larger, more ferocious. Their growling and snarling filled the night.

Only half conscious, bleeding from his torn scalp, Dale rolled out from under one of the black dogs and tried to get to his feet. The second hound hit him from behind and Dale pitched forward onto the frozen ground, feeling the wind go out of him. The black hounds were ripping and tearing at Michelle not twenty steps away.

Dale kicked back, felt his boot connect solidly with dog ribs, heard the howl almost in his ear, and struggled to get to his knees, crawling toward where the larger three dogs seemed to be ripping Michelle apart.

The two hounds whirled around him, their jaws higher than his head, their eyes burning yellowly. One snapped at his shoulder, seizing his leather sport coat and ripping it, pulling him off his knees and tumbling him onto his face in the frozen mud. Dale covered his face as both hounds ripped his sport coat from his back, tossing it back and forth between them. Their slaver fell on his hair and cheek. He rolled on his back, balling his hands into fists.

“Michelle!” he screamed. There was no answer except for the snarling and growling.

The larger of the two hounds that had hit him leaped across him now, the other black dog growling out of sight above and behind him. Dale hammered at the black wall of the largest hound’s chest as the animal straddled him, setting a huge paw on his chest like a lead weight. The animal’s breath was sulfurous, rank with carrion rot.

“Get. . . the fuck. . . off,” gasped Dale, grabbing the giant hound by the loose skin at its neck as if it had a dog collar and thrashing to throw it off him. The black dog snarled and snapped, its teeth missing Dale’s face by less than an inch. The fourth hound had run back to join the others in their assault on the now silent woman. Dale could hear the dogs moving away in the darkness, toward the sheds and barns, but dragging something. . . dragging something.

Dale screamed again and slammed his fists into the jackal ears of the hound above him. The dog leaped back.

Rolling onto his knees again and struggling to stand, Dale got a last glimpse of Michelle—just her pale legs and one hand, no longer flailing but dragging limply—as the four black dogs dragged her out of the last light from the open kitchen door, toward the black fields and the unseen barn. The dogs were snarling and snapping, tugging first one part of her and then another.

“You fucking goddamned fucking. . .” screamed Dale, blood running into his eyes and the earth seeming to pitch and roll as he staggered toward the pack of hounds. He could not see them or their victim now. Dale remembered the shotgun, hesitating only a second before turning back to get it. Even if it cost him a few seconds, he would be useless out there in the dark with the beasts unless he had a weapon.

Dale swung back to the concrete stoop and had just stumbled up onto it when the fifth dog hit him again—leaping through the air, its black coat gleaming silver-black in the yellow light from the kitchen—and then both he and the hound were flying off the stoop, striking the wall of the farmhouse once before bouncing away. Dale fell facedown in the black dirt, felt the earth rise like a wall below him, and felt himself sliding backward down it, toward the snarling hound behind him, into darkness.

TWENTY-ONE

AND then what happened?”

“I already told you what happened next.”

“Tell us again,” said the deputy sheriff.

Dale sighed. He was very tired and his head hurt. The local anesthetic was wearing off where he had received nine stitches for the cut on his head, and a tetanus shot made his arm ache even through the throb of various bruises. But the headache was the worst part. The nurses had let him get dressed again, and now he and the sheriff’s deputies were talking in an empty lounge just off the emergency room at the Oak Hill Hospital. It was a little after three in the morning, but there were no windows in the lounge and the fluorescent lights were very bright. The air smelled of burned coffee.

“After you left the farmhouse,” prompted Deputy Presser. He was the older of the two men in uniform but still in his twenties, with a florid face and short-cropped blond hair. “How long was that after you say you lost consciousness?”

Dale shrugged and then regretted the movement. His arms and shoulders and ribs ached as if someone had been kicking him with hobnailed boots. The headache stabbed behind his eyes like so many steel darts. “After I left the farmhouse,” Dale said slowly, “I walked to the KWIK’N’EZ at the I-74 exit.”

“But you say you had a cell phone. You could’ve used it before you got to the KWIK’N’EZ.”

“I said that I couldn’t find the cell phone,” Dale said softly, so as not to aggravate the headache. He tried to place words between waves of pain. “I looked in my truck, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe it slipped down between the seats. The Land Cruiser’s interior lights weren’t working. I could have looked in the house, but I thought it was important to get out of there and call for help.”

“Your sports utility vehicle would not start,” said the deputy in a monotone. He was glancing at the cheap spiral notepad in his hand. Dale could see the price sticker with its bar code still on the back of the notepad.

“My sports utility would not start,” confirmed Dale. “The battery. . . it wouldn’t even turn over.”

“But Deputy Reiss got it started on the first try using the keys you lent us,” said the sheriff’s deputy. He glanced at the younger deputy sitting on the other side of the table. The younger man nodded seriously in confirmation.

Dale started to shrug again but then nodded. “I don’t know why it didn’t start earlier.”

“And you have no phone at your residence. At the residence you currently lease?”

Dale took a breath. Nodded again. They had been going over this in one form or another since midnight. “You’re sure there’s no sign of Michelle?” he asked the younger deputy.

“Nope,” said Deputy Dick Reiss. His name badge was pinned over his left shirt pocket.

“It’s dark out there,” said Dale. “Did you check the big barn?”

“Taylor and me checked all the barns and sheds,” said Deputy Reiss. Dale saw for the first time that the young man had a small wad of tobacco tucked between his cheek and gum.

The older deputy held up the notepad as a gesture for Deputy Reiss to shut up. “Mr. Stewart—do you prefer ‘Mister’ or ‘Professor’?”

“I don’t care,” Dale said tiredly.

“Mr. Stewart,” continued the deputy, “why did you walk the three miles to the KWIK’N’EZ? Why not to a neighbor’s house? The Fallons live just a mile and a half north of you. The Bachmanns are just three quarters of a mile back toward the Hard Road—right before the cemetery.”

“Bachmanns?” said Dale. “Oh, that’s who live in Uncle Henry and Aunt Lena’s house now.”

Deputy Brian Presser returned a blank gaze.

Dale shook his head again. “If we’re talking about Uncle Henry and Aunt Lena’s old house just north of the cemetery, it was dark. There were no vehicles in the driveway. A big dog was barking in the side yard. I kept walking.”

“But why the KWIK’N’EZ rather than into town, Mr. Stewart?”

“I couldn’t remember where there was a pay phone in town,” said Dale. “I thought there might be one at the post office or in front of the bank, but I couldn’t remember. And it seemed darker in that direction. When I got to Jubilee College Road. . . well, I could see the lights of the KWIK’N’EZ just a mile or so ahead along the cutoff past the Hard Road.” He touched his throbbing temple. “It seemed. . . safer. A straight line.”