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  That lasted for about a month. By that time, the public relations battle had been won; and with Kim still vouching for him, his old slack was back as well. It didn't take long to restore the same uneasy balance he'd held before: buying allegiance with good drugs and money, fooling most of the people at least part of the time.

  Right up until that fateful night—three days before graduation—when Marc missed a critical curve on Route 79 and spun his brand-new Trans Am into a violent three-sixty, which terminated abruptly upon slamming into a utility pole at almost seventy miles per hour.

  Once again, there'd been three other passengers.

  Once again, Marc got away clean: a couple of bruises, a broken rib.

  But this time, poor sweet Kimberly Myers had been keeping the death seat nice and warm. And when her face had exploded through the Trans Am's windshield— launching a hailstorm of glistening, red-tinged safety glass cubes and white, jagged bone—there were not enough sutures and skull-plates in the world to put it all back together.

  This time, his parents couldn't keep it out of the papers. And this time, there was no one left to argue his case. In the resulting typhoon of negative publicity, Marc Pankowski learned what it was like for a man to be despised in his own lifetime. On top of that, he was essentially disowned: cut off with nothing but a pittance, and no real hope of coming back.

  But that was not the worst of it.

  The worst of it was this:

  Marc Pankowski was still around. Not dead. Not missing. Not halfway around the world, bravely trying to start his life over again. Sure, he'd tried to leave once, heading out for Colorado with some vague idea of "getting into massage"; but the sheer gravitational pull of his crime had him back in town in less than a fortnight.

  He hung out at Chameleon's now, at least three nights a week, nodding his head in time to the music and scrounging up drinks as best he could. His once-handsome features were the worse for the wear, done in by hair loss, drug use, and soul-rot. His face had grown longer, his dark eyes more beady. All those little yellow teeth had just completed the effect.

  Syd had seen it a million times. To paraphrase ol' Honest Abe, the Great Emancipator: once a man reaches thirty-five, he's responsible for all of the lines on his face. As the layers of youthful resiliency and innocence got worn away by Time, the outer face was slowly carved into an image that mirrored the inner life.

  The older Marc got, the more he looked like a weasel.

  Living proof, to Syd, that there was indeed a God.

  And every so often, if you hung out in bars as much as Syd did, Marc would try to come up and talk to you. But only—and this was the key point—if he saw that you were down. Like a moth to the flame of sorrow, like a bat in a lightless cave, he could single you out from across the room. He was tuned to the frequency.

  First, he'd happen to pass you, on his way to the bathroom, and he'd ask you how you were doing. If that went over—if you gave him anything more than an absent wave that distinctly said leave me alone—he would seize the opportunity to lever a way in. His favorite jimmy was the phrase "I know what you mean.'-' It was a multipurpose tool.

  If you said, for example, "fine"—nothing else; no "thanks" or "how 'bout yourself?"; simply "fine"—but there was the tiniest trace of sadness, or courage, or mock cheerfulness somewhere buried in your tone, Marc would stop for a second. Cock his head knowingly. Then look straight into your eyes and say, "I know what you mean."

  On the way back from the bathroom, he would smile as he passed your table. That would sort of guarantee that you'd continue to be aware of him. When he got to his seat, he would look at you, to make sure that you knew where he was sitting. If you were looking, he'd nod and smile. If you weren't, he'd bide his time.

  About fifteen to twenty minutes later, Marc would swing by your table again. This time, he'd employ the ever-popular "Band Gambit": a time-tested conversational ploy. If it looked like you were into the music, he'd say, "Band's really smokin' tonight!" If it looked like you really weren't into the music, he'd say, "Band really sucks!" If you took the bait, he was in. All he needed was one little opening.

  If that didn't work, on his way back from the bathroom, he would ask you if you needed something from the bar. He was on his way there anyway, it wasn't a problem. Again, he would nail you with that understanding look.

  And suddenly you'd realize, once and for all, that this guy was attuned to your unhappiness. He knew what it was like. And he was only trying to help, to help you through it, whatever gets you thru the night.

  And at that point, it would dawn on you that THIS MIGHT JUST BE THE GUY to commiserate with on the nature of your immediate personal pain.

  This was Marc Pankowski's hope.

  It was, in fact, his one last driving ambition.

  Because Marc was a psychic scavenger, and he fed off your despair. He could only get close to you when you were weak; and so he would encourage that weakness, urging you to open yourself to him under the guise of warm supportiveness. In the process, he would naturally pick up the first round; and if you were buying, he'd be happy to drink with you all night. Urging you to get it all off your chest. Unload all your secret desires and shames. Unburden yourself of the pain of aloneness.

  I know exactly what you mean.

  And if you let him follow you home, either to crash on your couch or to sleep in your bed—a mistake more than one lonely woman had made-—he would be there the next day. And the day after that. He would hang around as long as you let him, drop in when you least expected, call you at work, wake you up at night, sit behind you at the movies and corral you in the bar until you finally just told him to GET THE FUCK OUT OF YOUR LIFE. . . .

  To Syd, depression was an awful lot like that.

  There was a gust of frigid wind. It buffeted the car, bit through the cracked window vent, sliced through the heat blasting from his defrosters. Syd realized that he'd been driving on automatic pilot for God only knew how long, letting his mind wander while his body drove to work.

  He checked his speed. It had dipped down to forty.

  He looked at his watch. Five fifty-five.

  Shit.

  The road ahead curved down and to the right, as the steep ravines gave way to a thickly wooded descent. It was the homestretch: punch it a little, and he might still have a job when he got there. He downshifted and pressed on the gas, heading into the curve . . .

  . . . and that was when the doe appeared, in a blur of frenzied motion: haunches dark and glistening, eyes wild as it closed on the side of the road. For one panicked, frozen moment, it balked at the sight of the Mustang. Syd's foot instinctively jumped from the gas to the brakes.

  Then he thought he saw something else emerge from the woods, something huge, and the deer darted desperately into the road. Syd's heart ballooned. He tried to swerve clear. The doe went wump against the passenger side, then off. Syd ratcheted the wheel, staring into the rearview mirror, swinging wide as he rounded the curve.

  And right into the path of an oncoming truck.

  "SHIT!" he barked, knuckles white against the wheel. The truck was an ancient flatbed, twenty feet away and closing on the steep upgrade. He slammed on the brakes and countersteered, seesawing the wheel to the right. Ten feet. The car started to fishtail. Five feet. His heart constricted like piano wire. And there was no time.

  Four. As he veered toward the shoulder.

  Three. And the guardrail loomed huge in his eyes.

  Two. As his life whipped like flash cards before him.

  One . . .

  . . . and it was amazing, how time opened up in those very last seconds. A terrible slow-motion crawl. The old man, behind the wheel of the truck, eyes bulging in terror beneath his faded Steelers cap. Syd's own last desperate, inarticulate howl.

  The truck, grinding inexorably forward . . .

  . . . and then time snapped back to normal with a squealing of tires, a shower of gravel, and a great cloud of dust. Syd piloted blind for a sec
ond before bringing the Mustang to a final, grinding halt on the shoulder of the road. Inches from the guardrail, and a long hard drop.

  For a minute, he just sat there, still gripping the wheel: listening to his blood pounding huge in his temples, feeling the slam of his adrenalated heart. It was a seismic sensation, like an earthquake in his chest. It hurt like a bastard, yes.

  But it meant that he was still alive.

  Syd threw off the seat belt, legs wobbling as he hauled himself out of the car. The truck, of course, kept right on going. Cocksucker. The coffee mug had gone flying, soaking his pants from crotch to knee and making it look like he'd peed himself, shit happens. That was for goddam sure.

  He found himself taking a deep, halting breath, and thanked his lucky stars for the ongoing privilege.

  Then he went around to the passenger side.

  And got his first look at all that blood.

  It started as just a little splash on the right headlight, ballooned into a football-sized splotch on the right front quarterpanel that gave way to a runny red smear, sliding back across the door and away. Like an absentminded brush stroke, or a guilt-ridden finger, pointing back at his inadvertent handiwork.

  "Oh, shit," Syd groaned. He squinted down the length of the road and spotted it: a russet-colored heap, half-obscured by underbrush, some thirty yards back on the flip side of the guardrail and fifteen feet below, where the ground sloped down to the edge of the woods. It looked like it might be twitching a little; but between the dim light and the distance, it was hard to be sure.

  Oh, man, it's all messed up, the voice of his conscience informed him. Judging solely by the damage to the car—a little concave ding, at the heart of the splotch—it looked like he had only clipped it.

  But that didn't begin to explain all the blood.

  When it kicked again, clearly this time, Syd knew that he had no choice. He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. His hangover throbbed behind them, dull counterpoint to the queasy oil slick in his innards. He didn't want to do this. That wasn't the point.

  Wearily, his pants legs sticking, he went back around the front of the car, leaned in the driver's side, turned off the engine and removed the keys. Suddenly, it was incredibly quiet. Just the jingling of the keys, the rustling of his clothes. Off to the right, something moved very quickly past. He looked up, saw nothing. A bird flew by. He took the keys, still jingling, around to the back of the car and opened the trunk, rooting around in the junk and clutter inside until his hand closed on unforgiving metal.

  Then he took the tire iron, slammed the trunk shut, and walked slowly back in the direction of the deer.

  The morning breeze was chill and steady. He found it strangely bracing. He was sweating under his thermals, hadn't realized how much. His coffee-soaked pants were both sticky and freezing. He tried not to think about it. As he walked, he tried to remain focused on his stride, the loose swing of his arms. He tried to keep his breathing deep and even, threw his shoulders back to keep them from tensing up around him. There were a lot of things he didn't need to think about right now, little voices he could not afford to let in. But it's not my fault. But I'll be late for work. But I didn't mean to do it. They were chickenshit rationalizations, little Marc Pankowskis of the mind. They were the last thing in the fucking world he needed to hear right now.

  The sun had climbed the rim of the mountain, slowly burning off the fog as it peeled back the shadows. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly as he walked. The tire iron was ice-cold and heavy in his hand. He switched it from right to left, flexed and unflexed his stiffening fingers. The undergrowth had grown more dense on the other side of the guardrail. He tried to peer through it, get a glimpse of the deer. He couldn't. Weird. He looked harder, uneasy now, scanning for chinks in the foliage as he continued. The deer had been laying very close to here, he knew. It had to be right around here somewhere.

  Then he saw the blood on the rail, another delicate brush stroke of gore, a little red arrow pointing into the thicket. He looked back over his shoulder at the empty road. His car looked very small, and very far away. You don't have to do this, said a voice in his head, as if it had the power to absolve him.

  He went over the rail, started down the steep ten-foot embankment. The road disappeared above his head. He skidded on his heels down the loose, rocky incline, braced himself once with his free right hand, lost a little skin on the heel of his palm. The undergrowth rose to meet him. He parted it with his feet, slid farther, briefly touched off an evergreen sapling with his left hand, the tire iron, continued to slide. Beyond the first wave of foliage, the slope continued at a less harsh angle, carpeted in dry grass maybe two inches tall. It felt crisp in the cold, crunching as it buckled under the soles of his boots.

  The mist was thicker down here, opaque pockets of blue-gray shadow as yet untouched by the sun. The woods began less than ten feet beyond. Gray light penetrated its first line of defense in patches, was swallowed by darkness. He got his footing, took two rapid steps forward, stopped dead. Sucked his breath in sharply.

  The deer was gone.

  Syd exhaled, inhaled again. The deer was gone. He blinked. It didn't change a thing. Blood, a large quantity of it, lay pooled and soaking into the pine needles that carpeted the frozen ground. Syd hunkered down beside it. A few tufts of amber fur were stuck wanly to its surface.

  "Oh, man . . ." His left hand throbbed. He stood, transferred the tire iron back to his right. A thick dark smear led into the trees. And the grass was bowed. As if it had crawled, or dragged itself off.

  You know you don't have to do this.

  He stood there, flexing and unflexing the fingers of his left hand. Trying to get sensation back. Reminding himself to breathe. Look at all that blood. It's going to die. You're late for work. Get out of here. Deep breaths. Steady. Counterbalancing the urge to hyperventilate, give panic an inroad. No fucking way. He tried to imagine how much this animal was suffering, took it as far as he had to. His stomach boiled and his throat constricted.

  He followed the dark trail to the lip of the woods, paused, and peered inside. "Jesus," he hissed. He couldn't see anything. Faint outlines in black. The woods were filled with tiny sounds, the whistle of the wind. He took one hesitant step forward, stepped on a branch. It snapped, and his flesh constricted. His hairs prickled, stood on end. The tire iron came up, ready.

  "Jesus!" There was nothing there. At least not anything he could see. He was starting to feel like an asshole in a horror movie, the kind of guy who was so stupid you just couldn't wait for the monster to kill him. The kind of guy who said shit like I know, let's split up, or everybody knows there's no such thing as AIEEEE . . .!!!, as the monster went chomp on their head or gizzard and everybody cheered. Like that girl in The Evil Dead who conveniently stripped down to her underwear before going outside to investigate those funny noises in the woods.

  "Is there anybody out there?" she kept asking, over and over, till you wanted to stand up and yell at the screen, "WELL, THE NAME OF THE MOVIE IS THE EVIL DEAD, HONEY! WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK IS OUT THERE . . . ?"

  But it was crazy to think like that, in real-life terms. He wasn't at the goddam drive-in. Syd had spent a lot of time in these woods, and as a rule, he didn't spook easily. He knew there was nothing much left in this region to be afraid of, unless you had some kind of pathological aversion to rabbits or squirrels. Just about everything that might be judged harmful to man had long since been domesticated, driven off, or destroyed.

  But here he was, exactly one footstep into the woods, unsure of exactly how long he'd been standing there. Spacing out, like an asshole, with a tire iron in his hand. He found that his eyes were adjusting to the dark. He took a deep breath, unhunched his aching shoulders, took another step forward.

  His foot hit something. Something moist yet solid. He stopped, looked down. Just off to the side of the trail of gore was a glistening purse-shaped mass. He touched it again with his toe, and then the wind blew the smell his way.r />
  Suddenly, he found that he could see very well in the dark. He could see the large severed gastric organ at his feet. He could see where the trail of blackness led, and what lay at the end of it.

  Suddenly, he understood why animals tried to escape the woods at night.

  Twenty feet into the woods, maybe less, the carcass of the deer was splayed open, belly wet and steaming in the chill morning breeze. All of its innermost secrets lay exposed, gleaming faintly in the gray morning light. Its flanks were lacerated horribly: long razored gashes in the soft matted fur. Its eyes were blank, glazed and emptied of spark. Its tongue protruded, pinkish-gray and pallid.

  But that was not the worst.

  The doe's corpse rocked gently back and forth, spindly limbs stiffly pawing the air, puppeteered in death by the great creature that now fed upon it. Long snout burrowed in the soft belly organs. Eyes closed. Ears pinned back in pleasure. Almost as though they were lovers, locked in a slow dance both intimate and timeless. Giver and receiver. Predator and prey.

  There was a terrible beauty in the horror of the moment that transcended his ability to tabulate it rationally. He stared, frozen, so close he could almost taste the meat from its scent in the air.

  "Oh my god," he whispered, and the wolf raised its head.

  Opened its eyes.

  Staring right at him.

  And he didn't know if it was a trick of the light, but the face of the creature seemed to shift: long lupine features contracting, pulling in for a second, then spreading back out, dark fur rippling across its surface. He caught a glimmer of ivory fangs and bloodied saliva, as the lips peeled back.

  But it was the force of the eyes that held him. The eyes remained unchanged. He could feel them bore into him, even through the darkness. It was that one elastic moment of truth, when a dog decides whether it smells fear on you. Whether or not to bite.

  And Syd knew, in that moment, that he would not, could not allow himself to be afraid.

  The thought was an epiphany. I am not afraid. He gripped the bar, still locked in his combat stance. I am not afraid. A little voice in his head, a distant fold in his brain, informed him that the idea of actually using it was laughable, like trying to stop a panzer tank with a toothpick. The wolf could take his arm off before he even got a chance to swing.