along with the scuttling of many legs.
Phillip's voice says it first.
They're alive again.
'Lazarus lobsters,' Sue says, almost sounding like her old self. 'Jesus lobsters, Elvis lobsters.'
She rolls down her window. There's a cardboard handle on top of the box and she's going to pitch the entire thing out the window. Then she's not going to think about it anymore, just like she's not going to think about the bodies in the back of her car or the song that tells her about the history of murder in New England. In fact she's going to restrict her thoughts to Veda and how she's going to be with her in the morning as long as she does what the voice tells her. Because this is what people do when they're dealing with maniacs. They do what the voice on the phone tells them.
She reaches down for the box, her fingers starting to curl around the handle, lifting it tentatively from the floor, when a boiled red claw bursts up from a flap in the cardboard. The claw is wide open, and it snaps shut on her hand, trapping the fourth and fifth fingers. Sue shouts in pain and surprise, jerks her hand back, yanking the entire lobster out of the box with it. It's shockingly big-two and a half pounds, Sean told her, though it feels a lot heavier dangling off her hand. But that's a lot less shocking than the fact that it's whipping around, alive and completely pissed off.
She's forgotten all about the steering wheel. The Expedition veers right and then weaves sharply left, comes inches from hitting the stone fence alongside the road until Sue swings the wheel back to the center again.
The lobster holds on to her hand even as she shakes it, swings it out the open window, the thing dangling next to her face with its tail and legs clicking and snapping against the glass. Sue hits the power window, raising it so it catches the unprotected joint between the leg and claw and cuts right through it. The body of the lobster drops, leaving only the claw still gripping her fingers.
Holding the wheel steady with her knee, Sue pries the claw off, lowers the window again, and throws it out. Her hand is bleeding where the claw broke the skin, and between the pain and the cold, her arm is throbbing right up to the elbow. She presses her hand under her armpit and holds it there.
She sees that the graveyard is gone, taking the town with it, and she's back in open country again. The snow has tapered off to reveal a clear black sky. Keeping the window down, she inhales until her sinuses start to sting. The air smells clean.
She looks down on the floor, sees the empty box resting on its side, and remembers the second lobster. It's nowhere to be seen. She shuts the window next to her head and tries to listen over the whine of the wind coming through the shattered glass on the passenger's side. After a moment she hears it rustling under her seat, followed by silence. Without hesitating she leans forward and shoves her hand directly underneath her and grabs the lobster by the tail, pulling it out.
It starts wiggling. With strength that surprises even her, Sue slams it straight down on the dashboard with enough force to crack the plastic. The lobster's entire carapace explodes and sprays meat along with shards of shell and warm, salty water across her face and lap. She flings the thing's carcass across the passenger seat and out the broken window.
She gets out the map again and draws a line to the next town, measuring the distance at two finger-widths. According to the map's legend that means that Stoneview is about fifteen miles from here. She consciously tries to recall the poem that the kid recited to her, the one that she was terribly certain she could speak word for word only a few minutes earlier.
Now she can't even remember the first line.
12:39A.M.
Following the capillary bed of secondary roads outlined on the map, Sue finds herself headed down yet another nameless stretch of blacktop. It's empty, but it's been plowed recently, and she's able to cruise along at a bracing seventy with decent visibility. Once again the mindlessness of driving becomes a tonic. There's no sign of the van or any other traffic. There is nothing but darkness and the broken yellow line receding in her headlights.
She's ten miles from Stoneview when her phone starts beeping.
For the first time she's seized by the inexplicable compulsion not to answer it. She knows that it's him, the voice of the man who has her daughter, and she has to answer. Still she lets it ring half a dozen times before finally forcing her hand to pick it up and hit theTALK button.
'Hello?'
The voice is right there in her ear, a moist, heavy murmur.
'Susan, are you beginning to understand what's happening here?'
'What?'
'The changes. Do you feel the changes?'
'What changes?'
The voice sighs. 'That's what I was afraid of. You need to be punished again, Susan. It will open your eyes.'
'No, wait.'No more punishment, she wants to cry. 'What do you want? Just tell me.'
'I want to see you.'
'What?'
'I want to look at you, Susan. I want you to look at yourself.'
'How…?' she starts.
'When you get to Stoneview, there's a place called Babe's. You'll find it.'
'Please, don't-' she stops herself, realizing that he is still listening and probably enjoying hearing her beg, maybe that's the whole point to begin with. So instead she says, 'Who was Isaac Hamilton?'
'Ah.' He sounds pleased. 'Youare beginning to understand. Just when I was ready to throw you to the wolves.'
'Is his statue in all the towns along the route?'
'Do you want to see your little girl in the morning, Susan?'
'Yes.'
'Babe's, Susan. I'll see you there.'
He hangs up before she can say anything else.
She puts the phone down, still cruising along at seventy, seventy-five. She doesn't know what else to do except follow the map. She thinks about Isaac Hamilton. The name has an enchantment on it. It has a kind of power, like a key dangling from a chain, a key that might open a box-or a cage.
Sure enough, six miles later, she sees the sign coming up:
STONEVIEW-ESTABLISHED1802
The town is a husk.
Empty buildings with no glass in the windows, a dead gas station, vacant houses, and great dinosaur spines of snow drifted up in the streets. It's like a hurricane came through, or a virus, and took everyone with it. She wouldn't have thought such towns even existed in Massachusetts. And apparently they don't, at least on any map but this one.
Sue drives through it, her sinuses expanding, the enormous, cabbage-size pain at the base of her skull beginning to pound again. She feels a twinge of nausea, and her skin is moist to the touch. Her ribs squeeze her chest like a pair of skeletal hands. The lines and edges of the Expedition are running together-the bloodstains and bodies that she shouldn't be able to see are trickling into her peripheral vision, occluding her eyes.
