Lopez ran to it. Someone was trying to speak, but the words were indistinct.

“Greg?”

The voice spoke again.

“I’ll have you out of there in a second,” he said.

He took his baton, twisted it against the chain, then pulled. The handle on the closet popped out of the wood, releasing the door. It shot open and what was left of Greg Bradley tumbled out onto the floor. His face was entirely black, and his eyes were hidden beneath his swollen flesh. Most of his hair had fallen out, and what remained were gray strands, stuck to the lesions that had opened in his scalp. Lopez turned away, feeling himself start to retch at the smell.

“Uh-ee,” said Bradley.

“I can’t-”

Bradley’s hand tried to grip at Lopez’s shirt, but it had no strength.

“Uh-ee,” repeated Bradley. “Uh-ee sick.”

His consciousness was failing, the black things eating away at him, consuming him by turning his own body against him. He could not remember his own name, or where he was. He was lost in the growing darkness, and he would never be found again. All that was left was pain, and the memory of the man who had brought it.

And then even that was gone.

Lopez eased Bradley’s body slowly to the floor.

Uh-ee.

Buddy.

At that moment, Buddy Carson was standing in the shadows at the back of Eddy Reed’s bar. The place was filling up nicely, with more cars arriving every minute. A small, lithe female cop was helping to direct the new arrivals into the parking lot. Buddy waited patiently. He knew his chance would come, and it did.

A fat woman in a Nissan, three of her howling brood crammed into the backseat, tried to buck the one-way system in the lot in order to grab a parking space close to the bar’s back door. Unfortunately, she reckoned without a big Explorer, which was next in line for the space and which pipped the Nissan. There was some shouting, which confirmed Buddy’s view that the neighborliness in this town was only skin-deep, before the Nissan backed away, glancing against someone’s Lexus and setting off the alarm. The couple who owned the Lexus had not yet made it to the bar, and the sound of the alarm brought them scurrying back. It also brought the cop, who had to skirt the Dumpsters behind which Buddy lay.

He grabbed her quickly and without fuss, then left her bleeding amidst the trash.

Five minutes later, he was heading for the bar.

The call about Lloyd Hopkins came just seconds after Lopez finished up with Barker. He had given the young part-timer a description of Buddy Carson and told him to alert the state police. He was trying to raise Ellie when Barker came back to him on the radio. He sounded on the verge on tears.

“Chief, it’s Lloyd,” he said. “A couple of kids think they’ve found his body behind the old Metzger’s Bowl. His car’s there too. They say he’s been beat on pretty bad. What do you want me to do?”

Jesus, not Lloyd. Lopez felt a wrenching in his gut.

“Who are the kids?”

“Ben Ryder and the Capoore girl.”

Pat Capoore’s daughter, the girl from the motel: she knew Lloyd Hopkins by sight.

“I’m heading out there,” he told Barker. “Get back on to the troopers again. Tell them we have one officer dead, and the suspect is Carson, Buddy Carson.”

Lopez didn’t know for sure that Carson was responsible for Lloyd Hopkins’s death, but he was the best suspect. Nobody local would ever even raise a voice to Lloyd Hopkins.

“And Chris,” he added, “you tell them to use extreme caution. Tell them not to even touch this guy. I think there’s something wrong with him. He may be contagious, you understand?”

He was about to hit the lights and speed to Metzger’s, but paused before activating the siren. First Link Frazier was diagnosed with cancer, then Greg Bradley’s receptionist had alerted him to two further possible cases. Now Greg was dead, his face a mess of tumors, and Lloyd Hopkins’s body was lying in the deserted lot of an abandoned bowling alley, beaten and maybe diseased. But cancer wasn’t contagious. It didn’t work that way.

He tried raising Ellie again, but with no success. Instead, he took out his cell and called Reed’s. Eddy picked up on the third ring.

“Reed’s. How can I help you?”

“Eddy, it’s Jim Lopez. Do me a favor. Look out into the lot, see if you can’t spot Ellie Winters.”

He could hear voices in the background, and laughter. Music was playing.

“Hang on, Chief,” said Reed.

The phone was put down, and in that instant Lopez made his decision. Minutes went by before the phone was picked up again, but by the time Eddy came back on the line Lopez was in sight of the bar.

“No, I don’t see her anywhere. Her car’s outside, but-”

Eddy Reed paused.

“Hold on, there’s something happening,” he said.

Then the music died, and Lopez heard somebody start to scream.

Buddy had been preparing himself all day, working on the poison within him until it was distilled to its purest essence. He could feel it responding to his thoughts, readying itself for what lay ahead. The fluid with which he had blinded Lloyd Hopkins was waste matter and nothing more. He had kept back the real stuff, so that when he touched the first woman over by the ladies’ room, the release of energy rocked him on his heels. He could almost see the black fluid seeping through his pores and entering the base of her skull. He felt light-headed, and giddy with power, even as the woman’s skin puckered and blackened before him. She spun toward him, her fingers reaching back to try to find the source of the pain, but Buddy was already moving. He touched a fat man on the hand, and a waitress on the shoulder blade. Her tray fell to the floor, the glasses upon it shattering.

Then a woman screamed. Buddy thought it might be the bitch at the toilets, but in fact it was one of her companions, responding to the sight of the creeping tumor colonizing her friend’s face. Buddy felt somebody reach for him, the man’s hand closing firmly on his shoulder. Without looking, Buddy slapped back at his face and felt the surge again as the transfer occurred. He was making for the far corner of the bar, where a familiar blond-haired woman was talking to a man in a gray suit. He had spotted the cop’s girlfriend as soon as he entered the bar. He liked the idea of taking her while the venom was still so strong in him. He stretched out his arms in a crucifixion pose, his fingers trailing behind him, brushing against skin, cloth, hair as he began moving like a dark messiah through the crowd, quickly losing count of those whom he touched.

For a moment, he found himself in a clear space. He drew a deep breath, his eyes briefly closing, and felt the worm un-coiling deep within his bowels. He released the breath and opened his eyes.

The bullet hit him in the right shoulder, spinning him into the bar. He saw the female cop in the side entrance hallway, cold air entering through the open door behind her. Her hair was matted with blood and rivulets of red ran down the side of her face. She was almost slumped against the doorjamb, weakened by her injuries and exhausted by the effort it had taken her to get to the bar. Buddy reached under his shirt for the gun he had taken from Lloyd Hopkins as Ellie tried to clear her vision for a second shot. There was no pain from the wound, but the arm of Buddy’s shirt was soaked in a black, viscous fluid. People were shouting and screaming, trying to put as much space between him and them as possible. Most of them were already on the ground, or seeking cover behind tables and flimsy chairs.

Buddy felt his body changing. It was as though he were being stretched to bursting by some unseen force. He looked at his hands and saw his pores widening, expanding in size until his skin appeared to be pocked with half-inch-wide holes. They spat black fluid, like miniature volcanoes erupting. He felt more of them appear on his face, and liquid pressure building behind his eyes, increasing the bulge in his sockets and distorting his eyesight. The great worm writhed in his belly, and he felt it shoot tendrils through his system, causing him to spasm in agony. His clothing started to tear as dark nodes pressed upward, bursting through the denim and twisting in the air like newborn eels in clear water.