The smell of bacon, sausages, beans, and coffee flooded Chase's mouth with saliva as he slung the canvas over a low branch and secured it to the mossy ground with steel pegs. They had covered a fair distance, despite the holdup. Frenchman was behind them and Fallon three or four miles ahead--the latter a town of respectable size according to the map. With an early start in the morning it was even possible that they might reach Goose Lake by late tomorrow, though this depended on whether they chose the most direct route, which meant going through Reno, or took one of the minor roads heading north past Pyramid Lake.
After the encounter that afternoon Chase was unsure what to do. It was a straight choice between civilization and the backwoods, neither of which had great appeal. Was this how it was going to be from now on? A slow disintegration into madness and chaos? No grand finale, just a gradual slide into gibbering mindlessness?
They ate off metal plates sitting cross-legged next to the camping stove. The sultry heat of the day lingered on, so the unlit stove served merely as a symbolic campfire.
Something squawked near at hand in the undergrowth and they both jumped. "We're a couple of townies and no mistake," Chase remarked, wiping his mouth.
"Is that what we are?"
"Sure. City people who drive at eighty miles an hour without seat belts and yet turn pale at the sight of a cow. Where were you born?"
"Columbus, Ohio. Though we had a place in the country where I learned to ride."
"Are your parents still there?"
"Both dead. My father was a druggist. He ran his car into the back of a bus when I was twenty-one. He was drunk at the time. Six months later my mother committed suicide."
"So you put yourself through medical school?"
"Yes. It wasn't too hard. I didn't have the struggle that is supposed to be character-building. There was money from the sale of the store and two fat insurance policies to collect on." Ruth smiled mirthlessly. "I never starved."
"No brothers or sisters?"
"An older brother, Kevin. He's a chiropodist in Wisconsin Rapids, married with two kids. I haven't seen him in over three years."
"You never married."
Ruth shrugged, a dim blue shape in the darkness. "I had my chances, I guess. It was all set up at one time for me to marry Frank Kollar--you remember, the guy at Bill Inchcape's the first time we met?"
"What happened?"
"It occurred to me one day that I didn't love him. I liked him, he was fun to be with, but he was a rat. A very charming rat, you know the type. And after that I started to get involved in other things, for which you were largely responsible."
Chase was quite genuinely astonished. "I was?"
"You impressed me no end, that first time at Bill's," Ruth said. "And what was worse, you started me thinking. I began to realize what a hell
of a mess we were getting ourselves into and I decided I'd better do something about it--Ruth Patton, a one-woman crusade to save the world. The Madam Curie of the twenty-first century. So I went to the Rotten Apple and dedicated myself to mankind. The rest, as they say, is history."
Her spiritual desolation was even deeper and more intractable than his. And he had nothing to offer her except empty phrases and meaningless platitudes.
In the middle of the night he was shocked into bleary life by a kick in the ribs. He opened his eyes and everything was dazzling white. The pain seeped through him like syrup as he shielded his eyes from the flashlight shining directly into his face. Ruth wasn't beside him. That fact brought him fully awake, and simultaneously he was trying to remember where he'd put his Windbreaker with the gun in the pocket.
"Take that light out of my eyes, for God's sake!" Chase said, angry with himself. What a cretin! He should have known red gums and the other men would come after them. They'd followed the jeep's trail to this secluded spot in the trees and now he and Ruth were helpless, defenseless, at the mercy of those five mean son-of-a-bitch bastards with revenge in their hearts.
The flashlight swung away and a voice with a peculiar nasal intonation said haltingly, "Don't bother--looking for rifle--won't do--no good."
Chase squinted into the darkness but could only make out a vague humped shape. That wasn't the voice of the man with the straw Stetson. Must be one of the others. He struggled to sit up, wincing at the pain in his rib cage.
"What have you done with the woman, you bastards?"
The beam flicked across the grass and settled on two figures, one held in the embrace of the other. Chase felt his stomach go rigid. Transfixed like a rabbit in the light, Ruth stared at him, her eyes dark and wide, something bony and clawlike covering her mouth. Behind her shoulder he saw a white gleaming skull with black eye sockets and two rows of exposed teeth: the head of a skeleton.
"Woman not harmed," said the clotted nasal voice behind the flashlight.
