Dale rolled in the drifts, using his hands to rub snow on his flash-burned eyebrows and hairline.

For a minute the combine just burned steadily, the flames having not yet reached its own interior fuel tank, melting snow, curling paint, and superheating old steel and iron with a hiss that filled the night.

Hrot-garmr,Dale thought dully. Funeral flames like a howling dog. The heat from the flames was intense, but almost pleasant after all the wet cold.

Then, slowly, amazingly, the door to the flaming cab opened and a human figure engulfed in fire stepped out on the burning grain bin deck and jumped out to lie facedown and burning in the snow.

Dale was vaguely aware of the other skinheads fifty feet or so behind him, silhouettes against the other fire—The Jolly Corner—but none of these forms moved. “Shit,” said Dale and staggered to his feet. He rushed as well as he could to the burning man’s side, dragged him out of the circle of burning fuel, and threw snow on the back of the man’s burning jacket and flesh until the flames were smothered. He rolled the man over. Skinhead Lester Bonheur’s features were burned red down to the muscle layer, and his eyes were flickering as if from an epileptic fit.

On his knees next to him, Dale sagged backward and shouted to the unmoving skinheads back by the sheds, “For God’s sake, go for an ambulance.” None of them answered or moved.

The burned shape in front of him seemed to gain mass, rolled over, and got to its knees. “It looks like I have to do this myself,” hissed the corpse of C.J. Congden and lunged at Dale, knocking him onto his back and grabbing him by the throat.

Dale’s gasping breath was visible in the air as he clawed at Congden’s tightening fingers. No breath came from Congden’s broken, open maw. The thing was terribly strong, its rotted mass heavy on him, and Dale felt what was left of his own strength slipping away with the last of his breath.

“Fuck you,” Dale gasped up into Congden’s contorted death mask, and then Dale surrendered—not to Congden, not to those fuckers behind him, but to forty years of resistance, letting the wall in his mind crumble like chalk. With the last of his breath, Dale shouted into the night, “Gifr! Geri! Hurkilas! Osiris sews healf hundisces mancynnes, he haefde hundes haefod!”

Congden’s rotted fingers tightened on Dale’s windpipe, cutting into the flesh of his neck, and the mouth lowered as if ready to suck the last breath from Dale if necessary. Instead, Dale used his last breath, to howl defiance.

“Anubis! Kesta! Hapi! Tuamutef! Qebhesenuf!”

Then there was no more breath with which to shout or breathe, and the Congden thing laid its full weight upon Dale, who sensed but could not see the five hounds knocking aside four skinheads, not leaping on them but past them, and then the first and largest of the impossibly huge jackal dogs hit Congden with a noise like a sledgehammer striking a rotten watermelon and ripped Congden’s head off with one swipe of its massive jaws.

Congden’s arms and fingers continued to choke Dale.

The hounds were all on Congden now, ripping the animated, headless corpse literally limb from limb and then limb from torso, black dogs running through flames from the burning combine and then circling back as if the flames did not exist, growling, snarling, and fighting each other in their hound-frenzy over the lacerated torso and scattered parts.

“Jesus fuck,” cried one of the distant skinheads, and Dale dimly heard them running back toward the burning farmhouse and their Chevy Suburban.

Dale staggered to all fours, shaking the last of Congden off his chest and legs. Blazing-eyed hounds knocked Dale to one side and snatched up the rotted bits—a cowboy-booted foot, a fleshy ribcage trailing intestines, a half-fleshed jawbone—and then ran with them into and through the flames, disappearing into the darkness beyond. Dale rolled onto his side and looked over to where Bonheur still lay in the trampled snow. Smoke rose from the man’s dark form. Dale could not tell if he was breathing.

Dale tried to get to his feet, aware that the burning combine’s fuel tank could ignite any second, but found that he could no longer stand or even kneel. He rolled on his belly and started crawling back through the mottled snow toward the sheds and blazing farmhouse.

Flashing red lights and flashing blue lights. A half dozen vehicles, all with lights flashing, in the turnaround near the farmhouse, and more emergency vehicles just visible on the driveway. Dale caught a glimpse of the skinheads raising their arms, dropping weapons, of a fire truck, of men rushing with hoses and other men running and stumbling through the drifts toward the burning combine and him, and then Dale decided it might be a good idea to rest a minute. Belly down in the snow, he put his burned forehead on his bloody forearm and closed his eyes.

TWENTY-NINE

ON the third day, I rise again and leave this place—the hospital, the farm, the county, the state.

But on the first day I almost do not wake at all. Later that evening, the doctor confides in me that they were concerned, that my vital signs showed someone slipping more toward coma than wakefulness or recovery, and that they do not understand, since my injuries had proved essentially superficial and had been dealt with during the night. I could have explained the near-coma state to him, but would probably have found myself in a straitjacket. On that first day and evening in the hospital, Deputy Brian Presser and Deputy Taylor were there, and together they irritated the doctor by insisting on taking a videotaped statement from me, as if I were on the verge of death after all. I told them the truth, mostly, although I said that I could remember nothing after the first explosion of the combine.

When it is my turn to quiz them, I ask, “Did anyone die?”

“Only Old Man Larsen,” says Taylor.

For a second I must look blank, for Deputy Presser says, “Bebe Larsen, the guy they commandeered the Chevy Suburban from on the day before Christmas Eve. Derek and one of the other kids confirmed that the five of them were pretty pissed when they hiked out from the quarry that night. They roughed the old man up a bit before tying him up and sticking him in the back of the truck. He was dead when they got to one of the other kid’s sister’s house in Galesburg.”

“Heart attack,” says Deputy Taylor. “But the skinheads didn’t know that.”

“Lester Bonheur?” I ask. My hands are bandaged for burns. My right side and right arm hurt from where they removed bits of buckshot, and I have stitches holding my scalp in place on that side. My eyelashes and eyebrows have been burned away, my hairline has receded three inches because of the flames, and I have goopy salve over much of my face. It all feels wonderful.

“Bonheur’s still alive,” grunts Deputy Presser, “but he’s burned all to hell and gone. They’re transferring him to the St. Francis burn unit in Peoria tomorrow morning. The docs think he’ll live, but he’s going to have a shitload of skin grafts ahead of him.”

“Hey, Professor,” says Deputy Taylor, referring to something he had asked earlier during the taped interview, “who was that other guy there at the fire. . . the one the kids say they saw? The one who looked like he was dead?”

I close my eyes and pretend to sleep.

On the second day, Sheriff McKown shows up with some magazines for me to read, a Dairy Queen milkshake for me to drink, and the ThinkPad computer. “Found this in the chicken coop,” he said. “I assume it’s yours.”

I nod.

“We didn’t turn it on or anything, so I don’t know if it still works,” says McKown, pulling a chair and settling into it rather gracefully. “I presume there’s no evidence on it. . . at least none relating to this weird series of events.”