was that we were probably going in whether he helped me or not.
He was blind but not deaf and had decided he wanted to live. He put his sneakered feet down on the cement floor and shoved backward just as hard as he could, his skidding heels splashing up little flurries of spilled gasoline. At the same time, Arky and Stephanie Colucci gave the rope another hard tug. We shot backward almost five feet toward the door, but then the undertow grabbed hold again. I was able to wrap a bight of slack rope around Ned's chest, binding him to me for better or worse. Then we were off again, the Buick taking back all the ground we'd gained and more. It moved us slowly but with a terrible relentlessness. There was a breathless, claustrophobic pressure in my chest. Part of it was being wrapped in the rope. Part of it was the sense of being pinched and petted and jerked by a huge invisible hand. I didn't want to go into the place I'd seen, but if we got much closer to the car, I would. We both would. The closer we got, the more the force pulling us stacked up. Soon it would snap the yellow nylon rope. The two of us would fly away, still bound together. Into that sick purple throat we'd go and into whatever lay beyond it.
'Last chance!' I screamed. 'Pull on three! One . . . two . . . THREE!'
Arky and Stephanie, standing shoulder to shoulder just outside the door, gave it all they had.
Ned and I pushed with our feet. We flew backward, this time all the way to the door before that force seized us yet again, pulling as inexorably as a magnet pulls iron filings.
I rolled over on my side. 'Ned, the doorframe! Grab the doorframe!'
He reached blindly out, extending his left arm fully. His hand groped.
'To your right, kid!' StefFscreamed. 'Your right!'
He found the doorjamb and gripped. Behind us there was another monstrous purple flash from the Buick, and I could feel the pull of the thing ratchet up another notch. It was like some hideous new gravity. The rope around my chest had turned into a steel band and I couldn't get a single inch of fresh breath. I could feel my eyes bulging and my teeth throbbing in their gums. My guts felt all in a plug at the base of my throat. The pulse was filling up my brain, burning out conscious thought. I began slipping toward the Buick again, the heels of my shoes skidding on the cement. In another moment I would be sliding, and a moment after that I'd be flying, like a bird sucked into a jet turbine engine. Arid when I went the boy would go with me, likely with splinters of the doorjamb sticking out from under his fingernails. He would have to come with me. My metaphor about chains had become literal reality.
'Sandy, grab my hand!'
I craned my neck to look and wasn't exactly surprised to see Huddie Royer - and behind him, Eddie. They'd come back. It had taken them a little longer than it had taken Arky, but they'd come. And not because Steff had radioed them a Code D, either; they'd been in their personals, and radio communications out of our barracks were FUBAR, for the time being, anyway. No, they had just
. . . come.
Huddie was kneeling in the doorway, holding on with one hand to keep from being sucked in. His hair didn't move around his head and his shirt didn't ripple, but he swayed back and forth like a man in a high wind just the same. Eddie was behind him, crouching, looking over Huddie's left shoulder. Probably holding on to Huddie's belt, although I couldn't see that. Huddie's free hand was held out to me, and I seized it like a drowning man. I felt like a drowning man.
'Now pull, goddammit,' Huddie growled at Arky and Eddie and Steff Colucci. The Buick's purple light was flashing in his eyes. 'Pull your guts out.'
They might not have gone quite that far, but they pulled hard and we tumbled out the door like a cork coming out of a bottle, landing in a pigpile with Huddie on the bottom. Ned was panting, his face turned sideways against my neck, the skin of his cheek and forehead burning against me like embers. I could feel the wetness of his tears.
'Ow, Sarge, Christ, get your elbow outta my nose!' Huddie yelled in a muffled, furious voice.
'Shut the door!' Steff cried. 'Hurry, before something bad gets out!'
There was nothing but a few harmless bugs with green backs, but she was right, just the same.
Because the light was bad enough. That flashing, stuttery purple light.
We were still tangled together on the pavement, arms pinned by knees, feet caught under torsos, Eddie now somehow tangled in the rope as well as Ned, yelling at Arky that it was around his neck, it was choking him, and Steff kneeling beside him, trying to get her fingers under one of the bright yellow loops while Ned gasped and flailed against me. There was no one to shut the door but it did slam shut and I craned my head at an angle only raw panic would permit, suddenly sure it was one of them, it had come through unseen and now it was out and maybe wanting a little payback for the one that had been slaughtered all those years ago. And I saw it, a shadow against the shed's white-painted side. Then it shifted and the shadow's owner came forward and I could see the curves of a woman's breast and hip in the dim light.
'Halfway home and I get this feeling,' Shirley said in an unsteady voice. 'This really bad feeling. I decided the cats could wait a little longer. Stop thrashing, Ned, you're making everything worse.'
Ned stilled at once. She bent down and with a single deft gesture freed Eddie from the loop around his neck. 'There, ya baby,' she said, and then her legs gave out. Shirley Pasternak sprawled on the hottop and began to cry.
We got Ned into the barracks and flushed his eyes in the kitchen. The skin around them was puffed and red, the whites badly bloodshot, but he said his vision was basically okay. When Huddie held up two fingers, that was what the kid reported. Ditto four.
'I'm sorry,' he said in a thick, clogged voice. 'I don't know why I did that. I mean, I do, I meant to, but not now . . . not tonight - '
'Shhh,' Shirley said. She cupped more water from the tap and bathed his eyes with it. 'Don't talk.'
But he wouldn't be stopped. 'I meant to go home. To think about it, just like I said.' His swelled, horribly bloodshot eyes peered at me, then they were gone as Shirley brought up another palm filled with warm water. 'Next thing I knew I was back here again, and all I can remember thinking is 'I've got to do it tonight, I've got to finish it once and for all.' Then . . .'
Except he didn't know what had happened then; the rest was all a blur to him. He didn't come right out and say that, but he didn't need to. I didn't even have to see it in his bloodshot bewildered eyes. I had seen him, sitting behind the Roadmaster's steering wheel with the gas can in his lap, looking pale and stoned and lost.
