The dog paces the margin of the bog, then hurls itself at him—and is stuck too, all four legs, teeth snapping just out of reach. Now here she comes, sidestepping down the hillside, hugging tree trunks, with the rifle slung on a strap over her shoulder.

He has one minute, maybe. If he wants, he can reach the dog’s heavy leather collar, the woven-leather handle that Papa grabs to be towed. Or he can reach several of the heavy broken branches that litter the rim of the bog. He catches the narrow tip of one and pulls the branch to himself and threads three feet of the narrow end through the harness handle. He jams the ragged point down into the muck. The dog squirms and yelps. With his weight on the thick end of the branch, he levers himself, belly flops, strains, and reaches another branch farther out, hauls and claws and worms his way to solid ground. She fires again but doesn’t hit him.

He limps on and on into screeching, howling night, long after the sounds of the chase have faded. Once, he staggers out of the forest to the edge of a cornfield, a vast, black-silver abnormality straining at the moon. He follows its outer row to a road, walks along heat-exuding asphalt, but a car approaches—everyone and everywhere—and he bolts back into the alien corn. Later, scratched raw by leaf blades, he follows a cold creek, rinsing arms and legs and face in it, drinking from it, hobbling on its sharp stones. But then an engine roars above his gulping breaths, headlights fracture black forest, tree limbs shatter, and a white truck crashes through, Papa’s swollen head moonlit in the driver’s window. He hurries back the way he came.

Later still, utterly empty, he surrenders to a soft patch of hot earth, curls upon his bedspread, and crashes into sleep.

He awakens to a bestial snort and a barrel in his face.

He is caught again, he first believes.

But it is an old horse, lathered and blowing. Standing beside it is a barefoot girl in a long dress and a bonnet, her raw thumb on the hammer of a short-nosed shotgun aimed squarely at his face. He can’t erase his rigid grin, even when she reaches into her dress pocket and shines a small flashlight on his raw arms.

She lowers the gun. She peels her sleeves back to show him.

Neither says a word.

She turns in the moonlight and vaults aboard the horse. She scoots forward. He rises, shoulders his backpack, mounts behind her, and rides with his arms around her hard, narrow waist.

Part 6: 94°–101°

Sat, Aug 10, 2:13 AM

To: Dairy Queen ([email protected])

From: Oppo ([email protected])

Subject: Opposition Research

Found Hubbards truck and Fantas car way back in

CHAPTER 33

Way back in… where? Why didn’t Oppo finish the message?