Wade still doesn’t seem hurried. Or even bothered. He’s got the same expression on his face as someone doing the laundry or mowing a lawn; finishing a necessary and mindless chore.

This isn’t fair, Bobby thinks. He did the right thing. He worked hard to become a grown-up. He changed his life. And Wade came back anyway.

“It’s just not fair,” he mumbles, the words slipping out of him.

That strikes Wade as funny for some reason. He laughs, and he leans in close. Bobby can smell the beer on his breath, and a deeper stink of rot and corruption, like there’s raw meat stuck in his teeth.

“You’re right. It’s not fair. None of it is,” he says. “But don’t worry. I’m going to get even.”

He twists the knife again, and really starts to work.

A little less than an hour later, Wade is using the last of Hog’s paper towels to wipe up the mess on the kitchen floor. He pauses at one puddle of blood. He’s tired. He’s been on the road for two days. He drove straight through after doing the woman in Arkansas.

He thinks about skipping this next part entirely, but the pain shoots through his skull and reminds him of the deal he made.

Hog wasn’t on the list he’d been given. This was personal. Payback for his betrayal. Wade would have done the same to all the other Warriors, if only they’d lived long enough. Hog was the only one left. He had to foot the bill for all of them.

But Wade still owes the Followers. They got him here, after all.

Which means he has to do the ritual.

Wade dips his finger in the rapidly drying blood and draws a circle with a slash through the top on the floor, near the place where Hog’s body fell.

The sign of the Followers. So the pain of this death will go to the Good Man.

“Stretch out thine hand toward Heaven,” he says, loudly. “That there may be Darkness over the land.”

As soon as he makes the sign, Wade feels all the weariness leave his body. He checks under his shirt where Hog stabbed him. The wound has closed completely, leaving only a black crust. By tomorrow morning, even that will be gone.

Wade hates this shit, but he can’t argue with the results.

He gets up to grab another beer. He’s starving, but Hog barely has any food in the house. No wonder he got so damn skinny.

On his way to the fridge, Wade is very careful to step over the symbol in blood.

He can keep his end of the deal. They better keep theirs.

8

The World Beneath the World

Eric is the first to make it back.