He kneed her in the belly. It was like being clubbed with a piece of stove wood. Becky felt pain and something worse than pain, in a low place where abdomen met groin. It was a kind of muscular contraction, a twisting, as if there were a knotted rope in her womb and someone had just yanked it tight, tighter than it was supposed to go.

“Oh, Becky! Oh, girl! Your ass—your ass is grass now!” he screamed, a note of mad hilarity wavering in his voice.

He kneed her in the stomach again and then a third time. Each blow set off a fresh, black, poisonous detonation. He’s killing the baby, Becky thought. Something trickled down the inside of her left leg. Whether it was blood or urine, she could not have said.

They danced together, the pregnant woman and the one-eyed madman. They danced in the grass, feet squelching, his hands on her throat. The two of them had staggered in a wavering semicircle around the corpse of Natalie Humbolt. Becky was aware of the dead body to her left, had glimpses of pale, bloody, bitten thighs, rumpled jean skirt, and Natalie’s exposed grass-stained granny panties. And her arm—Natalie’s arm in the grass, just behind Ross Humbolt’s feet. Natalie’s dirty, severed arm (how had he removed it? had he torn it off like a chicken drumstick?) lay with fingers slightly curled, filth under her cracked fingernails.

Becky threw herself at Ross, heaved her weight forward. He stepped back, put his foot on that arm, and it turned beneath his heel. He made an angry, grunting cry of distress as he spilled over, pulling her with him. He did not let go of her throat until he hit the ground, his teeth coming together with an audible clack!

He absorbed most of the impact, the springy mass of his suburban-dad gut softening her own fall. She shoved herself off him, began to scramble on all fours into the grass.

Only she couldn’t move quickly. Her insides pulsed with a dreadful weight and feeling of tension, as if she had swallowed a medicine ball. She wanted to vomit.

He caught her ankle and pulled. She fell flat, onto her hurt, throbbing stomach. A lance of rupturing pain went through her abdomen, a feeling of something bursting. Her chin struck the wet earth. Her vision swarmed with black specks.

“Where are you going, Becky DeMuth?” She had not told him her last name. He couldn’t know that. “I’ll just find you again. The grass will show me where you’re hiding, the little dancing men will take me right to you. Come here. You don’t need to go to San Diego now. No decisions about the baby will be necessary. All done now.”