She did remember. A bullet tearing a pig's cheek, and a second bullet mangling his throat.
Suffer.
This was far out, she thought. Groovy weirdness. She recalled reading about the pig in Didi's photo album, but she couldn't remember his name. Didn't matter, though. He was as crazy as Laura if he thought he could stop her. She was trekking to California with Drummer, and no one was going to get in her way and live. She'd watch her speed and be a good girl for the highway patrol piggies, and she'd figure out how to take care once and for all of Laura Clayhead, Benedict Bedelia, and the sufferer.
She went on, arrowing along the gray highway toward the promised land, with the BMW in dogged pursuit.
3: Good Boys
South of Chicago's spraw, I-94 became I-80, but the highway still aimed across the flatlands of Illinois. Mary had to pull into another gas station near Joliet, and Laura – who'd gone the last ten miles with her fuel warning light on – pulled in after her and filled up the tank while Didi held the gun on Earl Van Diver. 'I need to use the bathroom,' Van Diver said through his speaker, and Didi said, 'Sure. Go ahead,' and handed him one of the paper cups.
Laura got into the backseat with Van Diver while Didi relieved herself in the bathroom, and then Didi took the wheel. Within fifteen minutes the car and the van were back on the highway again, both keeping a steady sixty-five and fifty yards apart. Van Diver closed his eyes and slept, a soft, groaning noise coming from his mouth every so often, and Laura had a chance to relax, if only in body and not in mind. The miles reeled off and the exits went past, and Didi felt the car shudder as the winds hit them in hard crosscurrents.
At two o'clock in the afternoon, with Moline, Illinois, twenty miles ahead, the sky was the color of wet cotton, and wandering shards of yellowish light speared through holes in the clouds. Mary Terror, her system raw with caffeine, nevertheless felt the weariness starting to overtake her. Drummer was tired and hungry, too, and kept crying with a high, thin wail that she couldn't block out. She gauged the BMW behind her, and watched the Geneseo exit coming up. It was time to make the move, she decided. She kept in the left lane, making no indication that she had her eye on the exit. When it was almost too late to turn, she stepped on the brake, veered the van across two lanes in front of a Millbrook bread truck whose driver pounded his horn and displayed his command of expletives, and then Mary was speeding up the exit ramp and the BMW had flashed past.
Didi shouted, 'Oh, shit!' and hit the brake pedal. Laura, roused from an uneasy sleep in which snipers on rooftops took aim at Mary Terror and David on a balcony, saw Didi struggling with the wheel, the van no longer in front of them, and instantly realized what had happened. Van Diver's eyes came open, his senses as alert as those of a predatory animal, and he looked back and saw the van turning to the right off the exit ramp. 'SHE'S GETTING AWAY!' the metallic voice roared, the speaker at top volume.
'No, she's not!' Didi fought the car across the lanes, the tires shrieking and other cars blowing their horns and dodging around her. Didi got the BMW into the emergency lane, put it into reverse, and started backing toward the Geneseo exit. In another moment she was speeding up the ramp, and at the intersection she took a hard right that threw Van Diver into Laura and crushed Laura against the door. Then she was racing north along a county highway that cut across flat, winter-browned fields, a few clusters of tract housing on either side and a factory in the distance, its chimneys spouting gray smoke above the horizon. Didi passed a Subaru, almost blowing it off the road, and she saw the van about a half mile ahead. She kept giving the engine gas, the distance rapidly closing.
Mary saw the BMW approaching. The van didn't have enough power, there was no way to outrace the car, and there was nowhere to hide on this straight, flat road. Drummer was crying steadily, and rage flew up inside Mary like sparks swirling from a bonfire. 'SHUT UP! SHUT UP!' she screamed at the baby, but he wouldn't be quiet. She saw a sign on the left: Wentzel Brothers Lumber. A red arrow pointed along a narrower road, and the lumberyard stood surrounded by brown fields. 'Okay, come on!' Mary shouted, and as she took the turn she lifted the Colt out of her shoulder bag and laid it on the passenger seat.
She went between a pair of open iron gates that had a sign saying WARNING! GUARD DOGS! The lumberyard was maybe four or five acres across, a maze of timber stacked anywhere from six to ten feet high. There was a trailer, before which was parked a pickup truck, a forklift, and a brown Oldsmobile Cutlass with rust- eaten sides. Mary turned the van deeper into the maze, her tires throwing up dust from the unpaved surface. She pulled up alongside a long, green-painted cinderblock building with high, dirty windows, and she got out, holding Drummer's bassinet and the Colt revolver. She searched for a good killing ground, the dust roiling around her and the crying baby. As soon as she stepped around behind the building, she was met with a fusillade of barking as loud as howitzer shells. Within a dogpen topped by a green plastic canopy were two stocky, muscular pitbulls, one dark brown and the other splotched with white and gray. They threw themselves against the pen's wire mesh, their white fangs bared and their bodies trembling with fury. Beyond the dogpen were more stacks of lumber, piles of tarpaulins, and other odds and ends.
'Jesus H. Christ!' a man bellowed, coming from around a pile of timber. 'What the hell's goin' on with you boys?' He was big-bellied and wore overalls and a red plaid jacket, and he stopped next to the cage when he saw Mary's gun.
Mary shot him, as much of an involuntary reaction as the pounding of her heart. The bullet hit him like a punch to the chest, and he went down on his butt on the ground, the color leaching from his face.
The noise of the shot and the violence of the man's fall sent the pitbulls into paroxysms of rage. They ran back and forth in the pen, colliding with each other then caroming off, their barking savage and their beady eyes on Mary and the infant.
Didi hit the brake as she saw the van, and the BMW skidded to a stop. Laura was out first. She could hear the hoarse, rapid barking of dogs, and she started running toward the sound with the automatic gripped in her hand.
Didi and Van Diver got out, and Van Diver did not fail to notice the keys left in the ignition. Behind the cinderblock building, Laura found the dogpen and the man lying on his back on the ground, blood on his chest just below his collarbone. He was breathing harshly, his eyes glassy with shock. The pitbulls raged behind the wire mesh, running back and forth over their territory, and Laura saw the beef bones of past meals scattered about on the ground. Laura carefully walked on between the high stacks of lumber, her gaze searching for Mary. She stopped abruptly, listening. The dogs were barking loudly, but had she heard the sound of David's crying? She went on, wary step after wary step, her knuckles white around the gun's grip and her heavy coat blowing around her.
Back near the car, Van Diver hesitated and let Didi walk on. Mary Terror's van was parked next to the building, and Bedelia Morse was between Van Diver and the van. She carried no weapon, but she'd been a blood- spilling member of the Storm Front. It would take a quick snap of her neck, he thought, to send her to her reward, and then he could plan on getting the gun away from Laura. He made up his mind: three seconds of judge, jury, and executioner.
He strode toward Didi, the speaker dangling from its plug in his throat, and he reached out for her.
He grabbed a handful of her hair. She said, 'Wha -' and then he was twining his other arm around her throat from behind. Instantly, Didi started fighting to get away, her head thrashing before he could tighten his arm.
Mary Terror stepped out from the opposite end of the building with Drummer's bassinet held by one arm. She fired twice, a bullet for each of them.
The first shot shattered Earl Van Diver's right shoulder in a burst of flesh, bone, and blood. The twisting of Didi's head saved her from having her brains blown out. She was aware of a zip and a wasp's sting, but did not yet know that a chunk of her right ear was gone. Didi screamed, Van Diver fell to his knees, and Laura heard the shots and the scream and raced back between the lumber stacks the way she'd come.
Didi ran for cover. Mary shouted, 'TRAITOR!' as she fired a third time. The bullet thunked into a pile of lumber and sent jagged splinters flying, but then Didi flung herself to the ground and scrambled into the maze of corridors between the lumber stacks.
Mary aimed her gun at the man on his knees. He was clutching his ruined shoulder, his face glistening with pain sweat. His speaker had been pulled out of his throat and lay beside him. He was grinning at Mary, an unearthly grin. She walked toward him, and saw steam rising from the man's face and bald scalp in the frigid air. Mary
