a big green tractor with a blade doing work it was never designed for. Flattening the grass with heavy, dirt-caked treads, the machine lumbered inexorably toward a lip of land behind the paddock that sloped down to a small lake. Behind the tractor, at the end of a long chain with links as fat as a man's fist, the dairy tanker followed as obediently as a dog on a leash.
Behind his shield, Chuck Novak's lips compressed and he tasted salt. Rivulets of sweat were coursing down his reddened face-sweatborn as much of fear as of the unrelenting heat that turned the heavy suit into a portable sauna. His companions were sweating, too, but their expressions revealed none of the nervousness that was churning in Chuck's stomach like acid in a Mixmaster. Maybe they weren't afraid. Maybe they'd understood the hurried lecture about vacuums and pressure and molecular weights that was so far beyond Chuck's high-school education it might as well have been delivered in Chinese-maybe they were a hell of a lot more certain than he was that all the gas had long since escaped from the milk truck's stainless-steel tank, just like the Colonel had said.
But if that was true-if there was no danger whatsoever that any of the lethal gas lingered-why the hell did they have to wear these suits? Why had all the others been pulled back out of range until they were finished with the truck?
Because somebody wasn't a hundred percent sure,Chuck thought.
He blinked sweat out of his eyes and watched the tractor grind to a halt at the edge of the slope, then ease back to put slack on the chain. For a long moment, none of the three white-suited men moved, then one of them waddled toward the back of the tractor to release the chain. The second man headed toward the front of the truck, and after taking a deep, shaky breath of canned air, Chuck brought up the rear.
The thick, bulky gloves attached to the arms of their suits foiled dexterity, and it seemed to take them a long time to release the chain from the oily undercarriage of the truck. By the time it was accomplished, the tractor had already positioned itself to the rear, its massive blade raised slightly and ready to push. In a stiff-legged hobble, the three men moved as quickly as possible to one side, near the edge of the slope, so they could watch the truck go over.
Someone should at least say some words, Chuck thought, looking first down the hill that slid into the lake, then back up at sunlight glinting off the truck's windshield. After all, there was a man in that truck, and this was his burial. He had a mental flash of Alvin slumped across the seat, the cab around him splattered with things he didn't want to think about, and the bitter taste of nausea crawled up his throat. He stiffened immediately. Even worse than the memory of what had been left of Alvin was the prospect of throwing up in a contained suit.
Bless him, Father, for he has sinned,he thought, paraphrasing the beginning of every confession, but by then the tractor's blade had cupped the truck's rear bumper and the big engine was growling.
There had been some concern about the truck tipping as it rolled down the slope toward the lake, but the distance was short, the angle of descent was steady and relatively shallow, and the truck went in almost gracefully, like some gallant old ship consigned to a watery grave. Momentum pushed it through a bank of cattails to a sharp dropoff, and then its great weight pulled it promptly down to a muddy bottom.
Thirty feet deep, their diver had said-cold, spring-fed, and apparently stocked with walleye. Chuck smiled a little at that, remembering that Alvin had been a fisherman. He thought of the water filling the cab, buoying the dead man up to gaze sightlessly out the windshield at all those fish.
He stood at the edge of the hill for what seemed like a long time, staring down at where the dark water had closed over the shiny steel tank, and then he heard the impatient revving of the tractor behind him.
Turning, he saw the massive blade almost hidden behind a messy pile of black and white and red. As the tractor inched forward, its treads biting into the soft manure-rich soil in the paddock, the pile shifted and started to tumble sickeningly.
Shit, Chuck thought. Now came the hard part. Dead cows wouldn't roll down that hill to the lake with the same ease and dignity as the truck.
He shuddered and turned away, imagining a logjam of Holsteins at the bottom of the hill, bobbing around in the shallow water at the lake's edge. There was going to be some handwork involved here, and he wasn't looking forward to it.
THREE AND A HALF hours into the trip to Green Bay, Grace heard a telltale click and glanced right, where Sharon was slouched in the passenger seat, her hands at war with her shoulder harness. This was the universal background music of women traveling by car, Grace mused-the click and rattle of seat belts being constantly adjusted to pass between the breasts instead of smashing one of them flat.
'Damn seat belts,' Sharon muttered. 'If one of these things ever dared press against a man's balls, you can bet your life the designer would end up hanging by his.'
Annie chuckled from the backseat, unbuckling her own seat belt quietly-very quietly, so Grace wouldn't hear.
'Honey, you think you've got it bad? You should be toting my cargo. I swear I added a bra size at that diner, and I still haven't figured out what the hell I ate. Everything was white. Hey, Gracie, just how lost are we? I haven't seen a house or a car in about a million miles.'
Grace had never understood the concept of being lost. It was one of those things you had to learn in childhood, a sense of time and place that only had meaning if you belonged somewhere, if you were expected. No one had ever expected Grace to be anywhere, and therefore she had never been late, never been missing, never been lost.
Once when she was very young, she'd ended up in a night-darkened alley in some city or other-cities were basically the same, and differentiating them by name was not a priority in her memory - and there she had watched with unabashed amazement as an ageless, ragged-looking creature poked a needle into her arm. Oblivious to her audience of one, the woman performed her self-destructive magic act on the stage of Grace's curious child-stare, eventually raising foggy eyes and saying, 'Hey, kid. What the fuck are you doing here? You lost, or what?'
At the time, she'd thought it was an odd question. How could she have been lost? She was standing right there. Even then, in a city with no name and an alley with no hope, Grace hadn't felt an inkling of that impending panic others felt in unfamiliar surroundings, or when they didn't know precisely where they were. You were alwayssomewhere, right?
So she didn't understand the apprehension that had crept into Annie's voice as they drove deeper into a maze of twisting, empty country roads that coiled through the northern Wisconsin wilderness. 'We're not lost, Annie, it's just a detour.'
'So said Hansel to Gretel,' Annie grumped. 'And we turned off the detour an hour ago to go see that silly ol' barn, which, incidentally, was almost the very last sign of human habitation I've seen. Lord knows where we are now.'
'My fault.' Sharon gave her a sheepish shrug. 'Mea culpa.'
'Oh, honey, don't apologize. That barn was the most amazing thing I've seen since the day Roadrunner took his shirt off. I just didn't realize it was the gateway to hell.'
Annie looked out at the tunnel of towering white pines that crowded the strip of tar like silent spectators at a parade. The thick trunks seemed to swallow the light, offering occasional strobe-light glimpses of what lay within. She had no idea what might be lurking out there in the shifting shadows, but she was quite certain it was unpleasant. 'This is absolutely the spookiest place I have ever been in my life. I never heard of anyone famous from Wisconsin, and now I know why. Nobody lives here.'
Sharon turned around in the front passenger seat and lowered her sunglasses so Annie didn't look orange. 'Ed Gein was famous. He lived here.'
'Never heard of him.'
'He used to kill people, grind them up, and eat them.'
'Hmph. Well, apparently he ate them all.'
Sharon smiled at her, and the pull of muscles puckered the small, circular scar on her neck. Every time Annie noticed it, she remembered a pool of blood on the floor of the Monkeewrench warehouse, a smeared trail leading away where Sharon had crawled on her belly to get upstairs and save Grace.
'There aren't many people up here,' Sharon said. 'Mostly state forests. This far north, they just seem to go on forever.'
'Speaking of which, I've been keeping an eye on that little ol' compass up there on the dashboard. It's been
