Mr. Contreras was calling down to me from the road, wanting to know what Mitch was doing.

“I don’t know,” I croaked up at him.

Mr. Contreras shouted out something else, but I shrugged in incomprehension. Mitch was tugging at my sleeve; I turned to see what he wanted. He barked at me and started to cut across the swamp, away from the road.

“Try to follow us overland,” I shouted hoarsely, and waved.

After a minute or two, I couldn’t see Mr. Contreras. The dead grasses with their gray beards closed over my head. The city was as remote as if it were only a dream itself; the only thing I could see was the mud, the marsh rats that skittered at our approach, the birds that took off with anxious cries. The leaden sky made it impossible to guess what direction we were going. We might be heading in circles, we might die here, but I was so tired that the thought couldn’t rouse me to a sense of urgency.

The dog was exhausted, too, which was the only reason I could keep up with him. He stayed a dozen paces ahead of me, his nose to the ground, lifting it only to make sure I was still with him before nosing ahead again. He was following the tracks a truck had laid down in the mud, new tracks made so recently that the plants still lay on their sides.

I wasn’t wearing gloves, and my hands were swollen with cold. I studied them as I stumbled along. They were large purple sausages. It would be so nice to have a fried sausage right now, but I couldn’t eat my fingers, that was silly. I jammed them into my coat pockets. My left hand bumped into the metal thermos. I thought dreamily of the bourbon inside it. It belonged to someone else, it belonged to Morrell, but he wouldn’t mind if I had a little, just to keep me warm. There was a reason I shouldn’t drink it, but I couldn’t think what it was. Was the bourbon poisoned? A demon snatched it from Morrell’s kitchen. He was a funny, heavyset demon with thick, twitching eyebrows, and he carried the thermos to Billy’s car, then stood watching while I found it. A cry under my nose made me jump. I had fallen asleep where I stood, but Mitch’s hot breath and anxious whimper brought me back to the present, the marsh, the dull autumn sky, the meaningless quest.

I slapped my chest, my sausage fingers bunched together inside the coat sleeves. Yes, pain was a good stimulant. My fingers throbbed and that was good; they were keeping me awake. I wasn’t sure I could fire a gun again, but who was I going to shoot in the middle of the swamp?