But it wasn’t his heart. He looked down and saw the running suit flaring white. While he was still thinking clearly, he tried to work the zipper, get the damn thing off, but the metal was so hot it burned his fingers and then his skin, and oh God the fire was everywhere, his skin popping and blackening. He clawed at the fabric and dug out handfuls of burning fleece and his own muscle. He screamed rawly into the peaceful silence of the morning.

Insanely, a commercial played in his head, children singing something—stop, drop, roll—

Yes. Yes. He let his legs go limp and fell hard, half on concrete, half on grass; he rolled wildly, back and forth. It didn’t stop. It didn’t stop. Oh God—

He rolled again and fell six inches, kept rolling. Gritty harsh pavement under him. He saw his hand clearly in front of his face, rotted black, skin gray and smoking—bright, so bright. Halogen-bright.

Something hit him in the back. He heard the sound, bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump, strange rattling heartbeats, and then a scream that sounded like metal.

He couldn’t move at all now, didn’t even feel any pain except twinges from his chest. There were red lights in front of him now, pulling away, slowing—

Taillights. A truck. A tanker truck had run over him.

At least the pain was gone. Blood ran past him in a thick red stream over the blacktop, down toward the truck where the tires smoked as the driver tried to stop. The tanker twisted sideways and tipped, dragging the cab with it, and the metal tank split open and gushed gold liquid down the hill.

He watched the tires spin. One of them had a piece of his running suit caught on it.

It burst into flames. A drop of fire fell from the tire into the spreading lake of gasoline. He had just enough time to think, thank you.

The morning lit up like an early violent sunrise.

Chapter Nine

Martin

The meetings were no longer being held in Martin Grady’s office building. They’d moved to a numbered marble hall with Classified Areas and a whole new group of geeks with expensive suits. The whole goddamn building was nonsmoking. Martin fished a cigarette out of a pack in his pocket and stood outside on the marble steps, staring out toward a haze of morning fog, and tapped the tobacco end thoughtfully on the back of his lighter. He had only taken two puffs when a young woman in a tweed suit and black leather gloves came out to join him, not really dressed for the chill. She was smoking Marlboros; he lit her cigarette for her and got a nod in return.