He considered.

“Not to me,” he said. “In the dark, I think we were both gray. I love you, Odetta.”

She put a hand over his.

“You’re a sweet young man and perhaps I love you, too, although it’s too early for either of us—”

At that moment, as if given a cue, a wildcat growled in what the gunslinger had called the brakes. It still sounded four or five miles away, but that was still four or five miles closer than the last time they heard it, and it sounded big.

They turned their heads toward the sound. Eddie felt hackles trying to stand up on his neck. They couldn’t quite make it. Sorry, hackles, he thought stupidly. I guess my hair’s just a little too long now.

The growl rose to a tortured scream that sounded like a cry of some being suffering a horrid death (it might actually have signalled no more than a successful mating). It held for a moment, almost unbearable, and then it wound down, sliding through lower and lower registers until it was gone or buried beneath the ceaseless cry of the wind. They waited for it to come again, but the cry was not repeated. As far as Eddie was concerned, that didn’t matter. He pulled the revolver out of his waistband again and held it out to her.

“Take it and don’t argue. If you should need to use it, it won’t do shit—that’s how stuff like this always works—but take it anyway.”

“Do you want an argument?”

“Oh, you can argue. You can argue all you want.”

After a considering look into Eddie’s almost-hazel eyes, she smiled a little wearily. “I won’t argue, I guess.” She took the gun. “Please be as quick as you can.”

“I will.” He kissed her again, hurriedly this time, and almost told her to be careful . . . but seriously, folks, how careful could she be, with the situation what it was?

He picked his way back down the slope through the deepening shadows (the lobstrosities weren’t out yet, but they would be putting in their nightly appearance soon), and looked at the words written upon the door again. The same chill rose in his flesh. They were apt, those words. God, they were so apt. Then he looked back up the slope. For a moment he couldn’t see her, and then he saw something move. The lighter brown of one palm. She was waving.

He waved back, then turned the wheelchair and began to run with it tipped up in front of him so the smaller, more delicate front wheels would be off the ground. He ran south, back the way he had come. For the first half-hour or so his shadow ran with him, the improbable shadow of a scrawny giant tacked to the soles of his sneakers and stretching long yards to the east. Then the sun went down, his shadow was gone, and the lobstrosities began to tumble out of the waves.