He depresses the trigger and the Scar resumes its thunder. Now he can see it’s some kind of snow machine with a bright orange cabin sitting high above the churning treads. The windshield explodes just as someone dives for safety from the open driver’s side door.

The monstrosity keeps coming. Brady tries to run, and Babineau’s expensive loafers slip. He flails, staring at those oncoming headlights, and goes down on his back. The orange invader rises above him. He sees a steel tread whirring toward him. He tries to push it away, as he sometimes pushed objects in his room—the blinds, the bedclothes, the door to the bathroom—but it’s like trying to beat off a charging lion with a toothbrush. He raises a hand and draws in breath to scream. Before he can, the left tread of the Tucker Sno-Cat rolls over his midsection and chews it open.

35

Holly has zero doubt concerning the identity of their rescuer, and doesn’t hesitate. She runs through the bullet-pocked foyer and out the front door, crying his name over and over. Jerome looks as if he’s been dusted in powdered sugar when he picks himself up. She’s sobbing and laughing as she throws herself into his arms.

“How did you know? How did you know to come?”

“I didn’t,” he says. “It was Barbara. When I called to say I was coming home, she told me I had to go after you or Brady would kill you . . . only she called him the Voice. She was half crazy.”

Hodges is making his way toward the two of them at a slow stagger, but he’s close enough to overhear this, and remembers that Barbara told Holly some of that suicide-voice was still inside her. Like a trail of slime, she said. Hodges knows what she was talking about, because he’s got some of that disgusting thought-snot in his own head, at least for the time being. Maybe Barbara had just enough of a connection to know that Brady was lying in wait.

Or hell, maybe it was pure woman’s intuition. Hodges actually believes in such a thing. He’s old-school.

“Jerome,” he says. The word comes out in a dusty croak. “My man.” His knees unlock. He’s going down.

Jerome frees himself from Holly’s deathgrip and puts an arm around Hodges before he can. “Are you all right? I mean . . . I know you’re not all right, but are you shot?”

“No.” Hodges puts his own arm around Holly. “And I should have known you’d come. Neither one of you minds worth a tinker’s damn.”

“Couldn’t break up the band before the final reunion concert, could we?” Jerome says. “Let’s get you in the—”

There comes an animal sound from their left, a guttural groan that struggles to be words and can’t make it.

Hodges is more exhausted than ever in his life, but he walks toward that groan anyway. Because . . .

Well, because.