“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Mauk, “you think you’re winning this little exchange? There’s a lot more to beating me than hitting me a coupla times.” He got to his feet. “See, when I kill, I like to … play. And my playmates, well … they just do whatever I tell ’em. Ain’t that right, my friends?”

The corpses stirred, and all the dead people in the rest stop slid out of their booths and stood, and Amber heard some distant part of herself scream.

Chapter 2

ALL HEADS TURNED and dead eyes opened. Amber backed off as the patrons came at her, their faces blank and splattered with their own blood.

“Stay back,” Amber warned, shoving the waitress. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare—”

They grabbed her and she cursed, struggled. She didn’t want to hit them, didn’t want to hurt them, but they were dead, they were already dead, and it was too late for them so she started slashing with her claws, punching, headbutting, and they kept coming, and now her arms were pinned and one of them had her by the throat and they pushed her back, this solid mass of corpses working as one, and they forced her into a booth and started crawling on top of her until she could barely breathe.

“Get them off me!” she screamed. “Get them off!”

Through the tangle of limbs, she watched as Mauk put the claw hammer on the table. Then he stepped back, taking a small pouch from inside his boiler suit. He dipped his fingers in, drew out a handful of black powder, and crouched. Amber lost sight of him, but she knew what he was doing. He was making a circle.

“We’re gonna be taking a trip,” he said.

“I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

He stuck his head up into her line of sight. “Hey, you be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you. The Shining Demon only told me to bring you to him alive. Now there’s alive, and there’s barely alive – I don’t much care which one it ends up being.” Then he ducked down again.

She listened to the soft hiss of the powder. There were six or seven people lying on top of her, but they were still. They didn’t even breathe. Her eyes settled on the claw hammer. She tried to reach for it.

Mauk stood, put the pouch back into his boiler suit, and slid into the seat opposite. He pulled the hammer a little closer to him.