Colchester was playing with him, Eric realized. Because Eric was a child compared to the old wizard. Colchester was genocide and worship and mythology contained in one man, a whole religion standing on two legs.

Colchester leered at him and waited for Eric’s next attack. His skin was peeling off half his face, he was literally smoking, and the falling rain hissed when it touched him. Despite all that, he looked overjoyed.

Eric didn’t think they had a chance of winning anymore.

Carrie’s chest felt like there was a miniature sun blazing inside her, radiating pain all the way down to the tips of her fingers and toes. It was sheer, blazing agony. She thought her ribs might have been caved in.

But the vest worked. It saved Carrie’s life.

Slowly, painfully, she rolled to her side, trying to get to her feet.

She heard a sound somewhere to her left.

It felt like trying to move her head through wet cement, but she turned to look.

There was Wade. Standing less than a dozen feet from her.

Holding a rifle and smiling.

She struggled to her feet. Wade waited for her patiently. She took longer than she needed to. Behind Wade, the last of her classmates hurried out the gym doors, pulling and dragging their friends who couldn’t walk. She could at least keep him busy while they made it to safety.

When Carrie finally stood up straight, Wade raised the gun and aimed carefully. There was no way he could miss, and the vest would not save her again.

Danny’s hand slipped on the screwdriver. Maybe it was the rain. Or his palms were sweating. Didn’t matter. Focus.

Only 59 seconds to go.

But it was okay. He knew these clocks. He knew them. They were cheap to build and they had a 60 percent markup and they depended on a small programmable transistor that was so dumb it barely deserved the name. And it had a flaw, a flaw Sharp Industries decided wasn’t worth fixing after he found it, because honestly, who cared about a timer glitch in a $29.99 clock radio?

Seventeen seconds.

Press the pin with the screwdriver. Hold that down, hold that down, so the alarm doesn’t go off prematurely.

Twelve seconds.

And if you pressed the pin for SLEEP/SNOOZE at the same time as you did that —

Six seconds.

Then it would reset itself, over and over again, forever.

The numbers on the display counted down to 00:03 and back to twelve, and then back to 00:03.

Infinite loop. The timer would never reach zero.

Danny put the clock radio down gently, wiped the sweat and rain from his eyes, and carefully lifted himself out of the back of the truck.

He picked up his ray gun and ran as fast as he could to find Carrie.

Wade pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.