Ted’s body was almost blocking his path ahead, along with the ample white flesh of his girlfriend sprawled atop him. She was holding his hand tenderly and playing with his fingers like always, even as she murdered him. Del stepped around them. That’s when she grabbed the boy’s ankle. She sat up straddling Ted’s middle, her chest now in plain sight with its one full breast and the other partially collapsed where Charlie Bean’s stake had left two gaping holes. She hissed at him, spitting flecks of blood onto his coat. Her leg muscles tensed for a reflexive spring.

There was little else Del could do. He hissed back. He got right back in her face and bared his dime-store fangs and summoned a cat’s guttural warning from deep in his chest. Several heads bobbed up at his response, like cobras rearing. But they just as quickly dismissed him and the female and went back to their business. Even Doreen recoiled. Her snarling face softened and she looked almost apologetic. She let go of his ankle and went back to Ted with her head hung sheepishly.

Your luck won’t hold forever, Cap. Move it. Now.

He picked his way through them at a faster pace, careful not to let momentum overcome his balance. The door loomed closer and closer, a goal that frightened him with its nearness. I can’t be making it, I can’t be, they’re bound to get me before I reach the threshold . . . But then his feet found the hillock of bodies that clogged the doorway and he was climbing over them, stepping on Rusty Sanders, making his way into the fresh night air beyond.

But the job wasn’t finished yet.

He sat the backpack down gently beside the door and lined up the Little Kings bottles, one by one. There were six in all, each sprouting a leaf of linen from its corked mouth.

“Boy,” came a voice from the gloom of the basement. Del glanced inside and saw a figure standing just in front of the second hanging bulb. Only the silhouette was visible, though he could feel the eyes on him. He stood up with one of the Molotov cocktails in his hand . . . but where were the matches? He hadn’t thought of that! He patted his coat pockets, his pants, all the places he knew they would not be.

“BOY!” There were several eyes trained on him now, several dark forms standing in the half-light of the basement. They were coming toward the door.

He grabbed the backpack and turned it inside out and envisioned a book of matches clutched in Bart’s lifeless hand.

Don’t be stupid. Unzip the front pocket.