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back. My job was portable. And Rebecca was a writer. Children’s books mostly—all she needed was a room where she wouldn’t be disturbed. Well, and a working computer. And an internet connection.
    Inside, Felicia and Rachel shrieked and ran to Tim. “Daddy! Did you find Mom?” Rachel asked, tears streaming.
    Tim seemed to shrink. “No. Not yet. Listen, girls,” He looked around. “All of you. You need to know what I saw.”
    Rebecca, Robbie and I sat on the couch. Tim’s daughters clung to him. He looked down at them, then stared at my family sitting together, and I didn’t want to know what he was thinking.
    “Okay,” he said at last. “I ran out after Susie. I ran around for a while but didn’t see anything…then I heard some rustling noises in the woods. Could have been a javelina, could have been somebody’s dog. I didn’t care. It was a direction. So I headed in.”
    I figured that explained the scratches and tears, anyway. The low brush nearby was hard to navigate in full daylight. So were the stinging nettles. The local joke was that they were intelligent, and mean, and worked together to stick us when they could. Because they could. My grandmother used to tell us kids stories about them, plotting in the darkness…
    “Whatever it was ran away. I just…wandered, trying to listen. I got a little lost. At one point I heard some coyotes howling, not far off, and I figured that at least meant there was nobody in that direction because they’re so shy. But…the howling stopped all of a sudden and I heard a yip. Like something happened. So I went that way after all.”
    “Daddy!” Felicia exclaimed.
    “Hush, girl. I was looking for your mom.” He took a moment, looking lost. Then: “I found Old Center and followed it to the end. Then I figured—since I didn’t have any idea which way to go—I’d go see what was going on at the high school.
    “I cut across the woods and came out by the projects.” That was the low-income housing area the town had built just after the prison had come in. “There was a kid, a teenager, walking down the street. He was dragging his left leg, and sort of twitching. I started toward him, thinking I’d help, but a police car came around the corner. There was a lot of shouting, not by the kid; he was clearly disoriented. Anyway, they came out to grab him. Only one of them got scared and shot him. Right there in front of me. I thought…thought they’d killed him. But they gave him some sort of injection—they said morphine but who the hell knows—and he was still moving when they put him in the back of the car. Well, twitching. But vigorously . He nearly knocked one of the police officers down just before they got him in there.”
    Rebecca spoke up. “Tim, sit down. You’re going to fall over.”
    He gave her a horrible grin, an expression I’d never seen on his face before. “Oh no I’m not. I kept sneaking over toward the high school. I saw them bring that kid in later. They had him zip-tied, with two others, and he still nearly hopped out of there before they could give him another injection. I heard them saying something about running out of tranquilizer. But here’s the thing. Whatever they gave him, they’d also shot him in the chest. I got a really good look at the wound. There is no way that kid should have been alive , much less hopping around.”
    He paused and swallowed. “I saw them bring in ten people last night. All of them were twitching, at the very least. And that spooked me. But later on? I saw Slimy Bob Germain too. He was walking around, preaching his normal drivel. And—Ash, you know the guy. He’s got that Cowboy Church just out of town, but everybody knows it’s a tax dodge.”
    “Okay,” I said. Not everybody knew. A lot of people went to Germain’s church regularly, with his “West ‘By God’ Virginia” sign out front, and they had to find something worthwhile in it or they’d find something else to do on Sunday