The guy started to move on, plodding now instead of running as the adrenaline faded. Jason unhooked his seatbelt and leaned out to call after him. “Did you see what color it was? The car that did it?”

The man turned back, pale and haggard. “Gray. Great big gray car.”

Jason sat back down and looked at Rob. Neither of them had to say it out loud: it was the one they had swerved to avoid as they came out of McDonald’s. And that hadn’t been rust on its snout, after all.

“Go, Robbie. We’ll worry about the mess in back later. Just get us to the prom and don’t hit anyone, yeah?”

“Okay.”

By the time Rob arrived in the parking lot, the panic was abating. Some people were leaving at a walk; others were trying to help those who had been struck by the gray car; a few, the assholes present in every crowd, were snapping photos or making movies with their phones. Hoping to go viral on YouTube, Rob assumed. Chrome posts with yellow DO NOT CROSS tape trailing from them lay on the pavement.

The police car that had passed them was parked close to the building, near a sleeping bag with a slim white hand protruding. A man lay sprawled crossways on top of the bag, which was in the center of a spreading bloodpuddle. The cop motioned the ambo forward, his beckoning arm seeming to stutter in the swinging blue glare of the lightbar atop his cruiser.

Rob grabbed the mobile data terminal and got out while Jason ran around to the rear of the ambo. He emerged with his First In Bag and the external defibrillator. The day continued to brighten, and Rob could read the sign flapping over the main doors of the auditorium: 1000 JOBS GUARANTEED! We Stand With the People of Our City! MAYOR RALPH KINSLER.

Okay, that explained why there had been such a crowd, and so early in the morning. A job fair. Times were tough everywhere, had been since the economy had its own thunderclap infarction the year before, but they had been especially tough in this little lakefront city, where the jobs had started bleeding away even before the turn of the century.

Rob and Jason started toward the sleeping bag, but the cop shook his head. His face was ashen. “This guy and the two in the bag are dead. His wife and baby, I guess. He must have been trying to protect them.” He made a brief sound deep in his throat, something between a burp and a retch, clapped a hand over his mouth, then took it away and pointed. “That lady there might still be with us.”

The lady in question was sprawled on her back, her legs twisted away from her upper body at an angle that suggested serious trauma. The crotch of her dressy beige slacks was dark with urine. Her face—what remained of it—was smeared with grease. Part of her nose and most of her upper lip had been torn away. Her beautifully capped teeth were bared in an unconscious snarl. Her coat and half of her roll-neck sweater had also been torn away. Great dark bruises were flowering on her neck and shoulder.