up to the cafe beyond, all the way to the shallow ditch bordering the road. They crept quietly across the grass into the deeper blackness of the hedge's shadow, then inch by cautious inch, they made their way to within a few yards of the highway. The three dropped simultaneously to their bellies in the dirt.
Straight ahead, a hint of starlight played off the pebbled surface of the two-lane strip of tar. To the left, past the hulking outlines of the cafe and the gas station beyond, the black mouth of the forest swallowed the road.
To the right, the direction they had chosen, the delineation between the dark highway and the darker sky was almost indiscernible, and the road simply disappeared over a small rise. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound.
Grace glanced at Annie on her left, saw a glitter of white where the eyes would be in a nearly invisible face, and then began to wriggle forward, past the shelter of the lilac hedge, down into the shallow, grassy ditch. There was no way they could risk getting in and out of the cafe now-only a faint hope that the purses might not be seen in the dark.
With virtually no sounds to hear other than the ones they made themselves, and no light by which to see, Grace's other senses seemed to sharpen and overlap, as if to compensate. She could smell the oil from her gun, caught a whiff of brackish water from somewhere up ahead, and breathing through her mouth, tasted something she could only describe as green.
After the first few yards, Annie decided that crawling on your belly was one of those activities you very sensibly gave up when you started to develop breasts. She felt as if she were trying to propel two ripe cantaloupes through grass so long and slick that even the insides of her feet had trouble gaining traction.
It was a relief when she sensed the floor of the ditch sloping down, even as the highway sloped up.Good, she thought, thinking that if it went deep enough, they could crawl on their hands and knees instead of trying to slither on their bellies. Snakes with legs, she decided, would be every bit as handicapped as people without them. It all depended on what you got used to.
The ground beneath the thick grass was dampening with every push forward that Grace made. When the fingers of her left hand dipped into standing water puddling around the roots, she bent her right elbow to keep her gun clear of the water. A few more yards, and she felt the giddy relief of a floating sensation as she pushed into water deep enough to displace part of her weight.
By now the ditch had widened slightly, and the walls were a good three feet above their heads. Grace stopped and waited for the others to come up next to her. Easing onto her haunches to give her back a rest, she felt the fronts of her legs sink into the compressed muck beneath the water. Her face felt heavy. When she touched her cheek, her finger skated through sweat.
She felt it in her legs long before she heard it-a low, throbbing vibration that traveled through the ground. 'They're coming,' she said quietly. 'Get down.'
The jeep seemed to thunder by above on their left, shooting grit from the road onto their backs, whipping the tall grass above them into a chaotic dance. And then the silence wrapped itself around them again.
Eventually, as soon as her heart slowed down, Grace started inching forward again, the other two following soundlessly in her grassy wake. The ditch became shallow again as they crawled up a slight incline until Grace's head topped the rise and she could see what lay ahead. She ducked down almost immediately and scrambled backward until she was with the other two.
She spoke downward, letting the ditch absorb her voice. Annie and Sharon had to tip their heads close to hear what she said. 'Another roadblock. More soldiers.'
Sharon whispered, 'Can we get past?'
'Too far away. Can't tell.' Suddenly, Grace realized that she could see Sharon's profile. Her eyes lifted and she saw the rim of a huge, rising moon topping the forest. A full, bright moon. 'It's getting lighter. It's time to get away from the road. We're too exposed here.'
All three of them raised their heads high enough to look over the edge of the ditch. There was a cornfield directly across from them, and beyond that, set far back from the road, the outline of a silo, its metal hood glinting in the moonlight.
And then suddenly there was a flicker of light up the road, less than twenty yards away. A suspended face appeared to be floating in the distance, and then a second one, moving close to the first. They heard the distinctive click of a lighter closing, then saw only two sparks of red in the darkness as the men drew on freshly lit cigarettes.
The three women slid silently down into the ditch to lie in the water again. Male voices, surprisingly clear, rode the thick, still air to where they lay.
'I don't like this. We should just clear the hell out.'
'Won't do much good if someone got in.'
'Christ, if somebody had gotten in, we would have found them by now. That car was outside the perimeter. It could have been there for a week, for all we know.'
'There was luggage inside. Nobody leaves luggage for a week.'
'So the car broke down, and whoever it was got a lift, and we sure as hell better be gone by the time they come back for it, or we're fucked anyhow.'
'At least the farm's done.'
There was a soft grunt of acknowledgment, and it frightened Grace that the sound carried so well. Then the soldiers' footsteps faded gradually as the men walked on the stony shoulder away from the women and toward the roadblock.
A minute passed, then another. There was the sound of gears grinding far up the road, and the labored growl of an engine, then nothing.
Grace closed her eyes. It was a little better than she'd thought. Yes, the soldiers had found the Range Rover, but they weren't sure they had company yet. And the farm was 'done,' whatever that meant. Probably that they'd just finished searching it.
By the time the three women felt secure enough to creep back up the rise and peek over it, the moon was halfway over the tallest of the forest's giants, and a diffuse white light was rolling back the night. The corn across the road was full-grown, nearly ten feet tall, thick and dark and welcoming.That way, Grace thought.
A quick glance confirmed that the blinking yellow lights of the roadblock were still in place. The lights stuttered periodically as the shadows of men passed in front of them.
Grace's eyes shifted downward to where the white line of moonlight sliced the ditch in half. If they were going to cross this road, they had to do it fast, before the moon rose any farther.
They crossed the road on their stomachs, just beneath the rise so they wouldn't be visible from the roadblock, then rose to their hands and knees and scrambled deep into the cornfield. A few more rows in, and it was thick enough to block the moonlight, tall enough to allow them to stand in perfect concealment. The women stopped crawling and rose to their feet.
Homo erectus,Sharon thought as they started walking in a cultivation furrow. She pulled the soft fragrance of living, growing corn deep into her lungs and longed for the first bite of the season's sweet corn exploding sugary juice into her mouth.Another week, she thought,maybe two. If we live that long.
The field angled to the right, leading them farther into the land, closer to the silo, and then suddenly only a single row separated them from a closely clipped lawn.
The farmhouse was a large, two-story cube sheltered by motionless umbrellas of old elms. The shadowy shapes of hollyhocks towered around the small back porch, leaning against it, making their own miniature forest. The three women stood at the edge of the cornfield, listening, watching.
The house looked solid in its darkness, as if there were no windows or doors, as if whatever lived inside could not bear the radiance of light of any kind.
Sharon caught a quick breath, suddenly understanding why she always left a lamp on all night long, in spite of burned-out lightbulbs and the battered bodies of moths that she had to sweep from the end table on summer mornings. It was for moments like this, for people like her who stood paralyzed in the night, affected beyond reason by the unshakable certainty that dark was evil and light was good.
This is a bad place.
BY NINE P.M., the lights were blazing in Halloran's office, the rich aromas of the chicken-fried steak Cheryl had brought over from the diner were already a fading memory, and wisps of Bonar's thinning hair were sticking out
