“Right,” she said. “I’m pulling Joe from school. We’re going south.”
“Good,” he said. “Go as far as you can and don’t stop until dusk.”
“I’ll message you with the details,” she said.
“No,” Alan said. “Not until you hear from me.”
“With our password?”
“Exactly.” He disconnected after they said goodbye and she wished him luck.
Mary was looking at him with surprise on her face.
“You have a password?”
Alan nodded. “We have a lot of code because we can’t talk about… things. You understand.”
“Right. I remember,” Mary said. “That must be hard.”
“Somewhat,” Alan said. “But it’s also just the way things are.”
“True.”
In the back seat, Tucker stood up and looked through the window. Alan kept thinking about what wasn’t back there. He had flashlights—two of them—but no stakes or weapons. When he and Amber had gone out, those were things that she had always packed.
“So you say he’s working with them,” Mary said.
Alan glanced at her.
“No, I never said that.”
“It’s what you implied.”
Alan didn’t bother to correct her. It was an interesting idea. Maybe it was the natural conclusion of what he had been saying earlier, but he wouldn’t have put it like that.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why is he working with them?”
“Or for them,” she said.
“I don’t know. I guess maybe they have some leverage over him. Maybe… I don’t know, maybe some of the monsters used to be people he loved and he’s just sentimental.”
“You’ve seen them,” Mary said. “Would you feel sentimental about them?”
“I wouldn’t, no,” Alan said. “They didn’t seem human at all. They were more like lizards.”
“Lizards,” Mary said to herself. “Why would a person help lizards?”
“I do believe that he’s afraid of them,” Alan said. “I mean, fear will only motivate a person for so long, but he did seem afraid. But, back to your point about him working with them…”
“Or for them.”
“Right. That could explain how they were able to get from way up north down to… The tire tracks!”
“What?” Mary asked.
“I’m just connecting dots,” Alan said. “When Ricky and I were up north, we saw tire tracks near the cemetery that were really similar to the ones I just saw near my house. We were wondering how those things could have possibly traveled so far so quickly. What if they had help from Romeo?”
“Lots of things make tire tracks, Alan.”
He nodded.
# # #
“How much time do we have?” Alan asked.
“Still forty minutes until sunset,” Mary said after checking the clock.
In the back seat, Tucker was sitting up and fully alert, as if he knew they had reached their destination.
“That’s Jan’s house,” Alan said, pointing as they rolled by. “Looks like she’s home. There’s Amber’s car.”
He pulled up next to the car and then began to steer towards the side of the road just past it.
“Hold up?” Mary asked.
Alan punched the brakes.
“Hood’s popped,” Mary said.
“Huh.”
Alan pulled over. The tires sank into the soft shoulder at the side of the road. Mary was out before Alan had his seatbelt off. She opened the rear door to let Tucker out. As he got out of the vehicle, Alan checked his satellite messenger one last time. They were close the location where it had sent its last signal, but there had been no communication for hours and hours.
He went around to the trunk. Mary was investigating Amber’s vehicle.
“We should get moving,” Alan said. “It’s a decent hike and I don’t want to be in the woods after dark.”
Mary lifted the hood.
Tucker was still sniffing around behind Amber’s car as Alan started down the side of the road towards where the trail to the Prescott cemetery started.
“Mary?”
She had her head buried under the hood of the car. Alan walked back. His car had sunk into the soft shoulder of the road. He made a mental note to take it easy pulling out so his tires didn’t dig in any farther. There were already ruts there from some other vehicle.
“Alan, I think this battery is gone,” Mary said.
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
She shut the hood and looked at him.
“What’s up?”
Alan pointed.
“Lots of things make tracks, but I swear those are the same ones I saw.”
She turned to look.
Mary slid by Alan and rushed to the back of the vehicle. She crouched in front of the dog.
“Tucker, where’s Ricky? Where’s Ricky?”
Alan was about to ask if the dog was trained to track when Tucker’s nose dove to the pavement and he started sniffing around. He turned a tight circle, went to the side of the road, down the length of the vehicle, and the galloped across the pavement. On the other side of the road, he ran down to a patch of grass and then disappeared.
Mary put her fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle. She trotted after the dog.
Alan stopped paying attention. Instead, he pulled up the map on his phone to check a hunch.
“Mary, we’re at the wrong place,” he said.
She emerged from the grass, hunched over and leading Tucker by the collar.
“Where should we be?”
Alan pointed west. “If they went that way, then they’re headed towards Romeo’s.”
Mary opened the back of his vehicle and guided the muddy dog up into Alan’s car.
“All roads lead to Romeo,” she said.
Thirty-Four: Ricky
“Get in the light!” Ricky yelled at his mother.
Her legs were completely in shadow and she was just standing there, frozen. It was maddening how slowly she moved as she shut the car door and stepped into the beams of the headlights. Her form cast deep shadows into the garage and Ricky shot a panicked look upwards. They were all waiting up there, reading to drop down.
Ricky’s head pounded as he pulled the strap free from his chin. He threw himself forward to free his legs, but was jerked to the side when his left arm reached the extent of the strap. When he twisted to get it loose, his weight tipped the table. It fell in slow motion, gaining speed. Sliding a little to the side would have righted it, but he was too focused on releasing the straps
