On one of these shelves was a Transco Sonic Space Blaster. Another kid's toy. On the side was a switch. He supposed the child who had received this for his birthday used it to make the gun ululate at different frequencies.

What did it do now?

Who gives a fuck? Gardener thought wearily. All this shit has become one big dumb bore.

Bore or not, he put the gun in his belt and hopped back across the shed. At the door, he looked back at the old man.

Thanks, guy.

Faint, fainter, faintest-a dry rustle of leaves:

out of this son

Yes. You and Peter both. You bet.

He hopped outside and looked around. No one else had come yet. That was good-but his luck couldn't hold much longer. They were there; his mind touched theirs, like a couple waltzing with the care of strangers. He sensed them linked in a

(net)

single consciousness. They were not hearing him… feeling him… whatever they did. Either using the transformer or just being in the shed had cut his mind off from theirs. But they'd soon know that, like Elvis, fat, flailing, but game and blindly bopping just the same, he had made a comeback.

The sunshine was dazzling. The air was hot, full of a burning stink. Bobbi's farmhouse was blazing like a heap of dry kindling in a fireplace. As he watched, half the roof fell in. Sparks, nearly colorless in the bright declining day, rushed up to the sky in a flume. Dick, Newt, and the others had not observed much smoke because the fire was burning hot and colorless. Most of the smoke they'd seen had come from the burning vehicles in the dooryard.

Gard stood for a moment on his good leg in the shed doorway and then hopped for the whirligig. He made it about halfway and then sprawled full-length in the dust. As he came down, he thought of the Sonic Space Blaster in his belt. A kid's toy. No safety on a kid's toy. If the trigger was depressed, the essential Gardener might suddenly be drastically reduced. The Tommyknocker Weight-Loss Plan. He took the toy gun out of his belt, handling it as if it were a live mine. He crawled the rest of the way to the whirligig on his hands and knees, then pulled himself up.

Forty feet away, the other half of Bobbi's roof collapsed. Hot sparks whirled toward the garden and the woods beyond. Gard turned toward the shed and thought again, as hard as he could: Thank you, my friend.

He thought there was an answer-some weary, faint answer.

Gardener pointed the toy at the shed and pulled its trigger. A green ray no thicker than a pencil-lead shot out of its muzzle. There was a sound like bacon frying in a skillet. For a moment the green beam splashed from the side of the shed like water from a hose, and then the boards burst into flame. More hot work, Gardener thought wearily. Smokey the Bear wouldn't dig me at all.

He began to hop toward the back of the house, the Sonic Space Blaster in his hand. Sweat and bloody tears ran down his face. Winston Churchill would have loved me, he thought, and began to laugh. He saw the Tomcat… and then his jaws spread in another big yawn. It occurred to him that possibly Bobbi had saved his life without even knowing it. In fact, it was more than possible; it was likely. The Valium could have protected him from the full force of the unimaginable power-load that transformer carried. It might well have been the Valium which

Something inside the burning house-one of Bobbi's gadgets-exploded with an artillery-shell bang. Gard ducked his head instinctively. Half of the house seemed to suddenly lift off. The far side of it, fortunately for Gardener. He looked up into the sky, and a second yawn turned into a large stupid gape.

There goes Bobbi's Underwood.

It flew up and up, a typewriter in the sky, whirling and turning.

Gard hopped on. He reached the Tomcat. The key was in the ignition. That was good. He'd had enough troubles with keys to last him the rest of his life-what little might remain.

He pulled himself up onto the seat. Behind him, vehicles approached and turned into the dooryard. He didn't turn around to look. The Tomcat was parked too close to the house. If he didn't get moving right now, he was going to bake like an apple.

He turned on the key. The Tomcat's motor made no sound, but that didn't bother him. It was vibrating faintly. Something else exploded inside the house. Sparks drifted down and prickled his skin. More vehicles turning into the yard. The minds of the arriving Tommyknockers were turned toward the shed, and they thought

baked apple he's

baked inside the shed

dead in the shed right yes

Good. Let them think that. The New and Improved Tomcat wouldn't clue them in. It was as noisy as a Ninja. And he had to go; the garden was already on fire, the giant sunflowers and huge cornstalks with their giant inedible ears of corn blazing. But the path down through the middle of the garden was still passable.

Hey! Hey! HEY, HE'S BEHIND THE HOUSE! HE'S ALIVE! HE'S STILL

Gardener looked to his right, dismayed, and saw Nancy Voss roaring across the stony field which lay between Bobbi's place and the stone wall at the edge of the Hurd property. The Voss woman was on a Yamaha trail-bike. Her hair was tied in braids which flew out behind her. Her face was a harridan's glare… although she still looked like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm next to Sissy, Gard thought.

HEY! BACK HERE! BACK HERE!

Oh, you bitch, Gardener thought, and raised the Sonic Space Blaster.

Twenty or thirty of them had entered the yard. Adley and Kyle were among them; so were Frank Spruce, the Goldens, Rosalie Skehan, and Pop Cooder. Newt and Dick were back by the road, keeping all in order.

All of them turned toward

HERE! BACK HERE! ALIVE! THE SON OF A BITCH IS STILL

Nancy Voss's screams. They all saw her charging across the field on the bike, looking like a jockey riding a hard-charging horse as the Yamaha's tough suspension system bounced her up and down. They all saw the green pencil-beam shoot out from behind the burning house and envelop her.

None of them saw the whirligig as it started to turn again.

One whole side of the shed was in flames. Part of the roof fell in. Sparks swirled in a fat spiral. One landed in a pile of greasy rags and they bloomed with fire-roses.

Deliverance, Ev Hillman thought. Last thing of all. Last thing

The transformer began to pulse a brilliant green for the last time, for a moment or two rivaling the fire.

Dick Allison heard the creak of the whirligig. His mind was filled with a furious, feral cry of rage as he realized Gardener was still alive. All of it happened fast; very fast. Nancy Voss was a flaming rag-doll in the field to the right of Bobbi's house. Her Yamaha ran on for twenty yards, struck a rock, and turned a backover flip.

Dick saw the burned hulks of Bobbi's truck, Moss's truck, the Bozemans” Olds -and then he saw the whirligig.

GET AWAY FROM THAT THING! GET AWAY! GET

But there was no chance. Dick had fallen out of the net and he couldn't get past the two thoughts it beat out like a primitive rock-and-roll backbeat:

Still alive. Behind the house. Still alive. Behind the house.

More people were arriving. They were moving across the dooryard in a tidal flow, ignoring the blazing house, the blazing shed, the guttering, blackened vehicles.

NO! FUCKING DAMN FOOLS! NO! GET DOWN! GET AWAY!

Mesmerized, Newt was staring at the inferno of the house, ignoring the whirligig, spinning faster and faster, and in that moment Dick could cheerfully have killed him. But he still needed him, and so he contented himself with pushing Newt rudely to the ground and falling on top of him.