Left, right, in front, behind, from the ground beneath his feet or from
out of the sable-black sky above, it was coming. He could feel it, an
object of such colossal size and weight that the atmosphere was
compressed in its path, the air thickening as the unknown danger drew
nearer. Closing on him so rapidly, faster, faster, and nowhere to hide.
Then he heard Emily pleading for help somewhere in the unrelenting
blackness, calling for her daddy, and Charlotte calling, too, but he
could not get a fix on them. He ran one way, then another, but their
increasingly frantic voices always seemed to be behind him.
The unknown threat was closer, closer, the girls frightened and crying,
Paige shouting his name in a voice so freighted with terror that Marty
began to weep with frustration at his inability to find them, oh dear
Jesus, and it was almost on top of him, the thing, whatever it was, as
unstoppable as a falling moon, worlds colliding, a weight beyond
measure, a force as primal as the one that had created the universe, as
destructive as the one that would someday end it, Emily and Charlotte
screaming, screaming-West of the Painted Desert, outside Flagstaff,
Arizona, shortly before five o’clock Monday morning, flurries of snow
swirl out of the predawn sky, and the cold air is a penetrating scalpel
that scrapes his bones. The brown leather jacket that he took from the
dead man’s closet in the motorhome less than sixteen hours ago in
Oklahoma is not heavy enough to keep him warm in the early-morning
bitterness.
He shivers as he fills the tank of the Honda at a self-service pump.
On Interstate 40 again, he begins the three-hundred-fifty-mile trip to
Barstow, California. His compulsion to keep moving westward is so
irresistible that he is as helpless in its grip as an asteroid captured
by the earth’s tremendous gravity and pulled inexorably toward a
cataclysmic impact.
Terror propelled him out of the dream of darkness and unknown menace,
Marty Stillwater sat straight up in bed. His first waking breath was so
explosive, he was sure he had awakened Paige, but she slept on
undisturbed. He was chilled yet sheathed in sweat.
Gradually his heart stopped pounding so fearfully. With the glowing
green numerals on the digital clock, the red cable-box light on top of
the television, and the ambient light at the windows, the bedroom was
not nearly as black as the plain in his dream.
But he could not lie down. The nightmare had been more vivid and
unnerving than any he’d ever known. Sleep was beyond his reach.
Slipping out from under the covers, he padded barefoot to the nearest
window. He studied the sky above the rooftops of the houses across the
street, as if something in that dark vault would calm him.
Instead, when he noticed the black sky was brightening to a deep
gray-blue along the eastern horizon, the approach of dawn filled him
with the same irrational dread he had felt in his office on Saturday
afternoon. As color crept into the heavens, Marty began to tremble.
He tried to control himself, but his shivering grew more violent. It
was not daylight that he feared, but something the day was bringing with
it, an unnameable threat. He could feel it reaching for him, seeking
him–which was crazy, damn it–and he shuddered so viol windowsill to
steady himself.
“What’s wrong with me?” he whispered desperately. “What’s happening,
what’s wrong?”
Hour after hour, the speedometer needle quivers between 90 and 100 on
the gauge. The steering wheel vibrates under his palms until his hands
ache. The Honda shimmies, rattles. The engine issues a thin unwavering
shriek, unaccustomed to being pushed so hard.
Rust-red, bone-white, sulfur-yellow, the purple of desiccated veins, as
dry as ashes, as barren as Mars, pale sand with reptilian spines of
mottled rock, speckled with withered clumps of mesquite, the cruel
fastness of the Mojave Desert has a majestic barrenness.
Inevitably, the killer thinks of old movies about settlers moving west
in wagon trains. He realizes for the first time how much courage was
required to make their journey in those rickety vehicles, trusting their