“No, you will not ‘organize a posse to go around back.’ I said put that away. Ma’am, do not touch me. And, sir… Hey, dipshit, I’m talking to you.” Schwem was losing it. “Return that firearm to its holster immediately.” Her deputy caught his breath and found some more suitable language. “For your own safety. And everybody’s.”

“He has an open-carry permit!” Babette kept screeching. She pointed at the sheriff. “And she’s doing nothing!”

Schwem spoke like he had grit in his teeth. “Ma’am, if you touch me again…”

“Kick her out!”

Abruptly done with Schwem, Babette tried to get the small crowd to chant.

“Kick her out!”

This jolted the sheriff back to action. She holstered her weapon and popped Luck’s back end—rifle again, plus loudspeaker—but what was she supposed to do now? Hostage training was long ago, and it was just that, training. Your little boy is the hostage was not covered in the manual. But the number one concept boiled down to this: Don’t force anything. Take your time. Put the safety of non-hostages first.

“Get back!” she hollered. The strange teen, barefoot in dirty cargo shorts, still coming toward the scene, changed course silently, keeping the backpack close in an odd grip. “All the way back across the street.”

Then time seemed to melt and slip—ten minutes? sixty seconds?—until into her ears and straight into her soul arrived a yowl of pain.

Where the window glass once read BAD AXE BROADCASTER, EST. 1938, L. FANTA, ED-IN-CHIEF, her child had emerged, yanked to his tiptoes by the fist of a bloated beast in a filthy yellow robe spotted with sweat. Jim Golly held Taylor close against him as a shield. In his other fist he gripped Harley’s framing hammer, cocked above Taylor’s skull.

She used her loudspeaker. “This is Sheriff Heidi Kick. You don’t need to hurt anyone. Tell me what you want.”

He seemed at peace. He restrained her squirming little boy from behind and kept the hammer poised as he squinted into the blazing street.

“As Mother Earth’s demands are urgent,” he called out, “so are they simple.” He held fast as Taylor squirmed. “Noon is our new midnight, people, and it’s time to wake up.”

So this was Fanta’s letter writer, FROM HELL HOLLOW. Denise’s voice crackled from the radio at her shoulder: “Heidi, you gotta look out for Patience Goodgolly. She’s in town. The report of two kids on a horse, that must be her and someone else. I just heard there’s a bonnet and a long, brown braid on the floor of the Supercuts.”

“Ten-four.”

She kept her eyes on Golly. “And right now,” he called out, “Mother needs some of her carbon back.” He paused, looking pleased with himself. “I need some gasoline!”

He strained to see if anyone moved. The sheriff said to Schwem, “Get it for him.”