"Where am I?" I said, aloud, and then inside: "Where are we? h.e.l.lo?"

No reply. But it wasn't like there was no one in the pulpit to answer; it was like the pulpit itself wasn't there. That scared me. I wanted to go inside and investigate, but I couldn't leave the body unattended in this playground.

I stood up again.

All this time I'd been facing more or less in one direction. Now I made myself turn around and see what was behind me.

A motel rotated into view. The playground was situated at the narrow end of a V-shaped parking lot; two single-level rows of guest rooms extended diagonally left and right along the lot's outside edges, while a triangular island in the center held the motel office. A slowly turning neon sign on the office roof said badlands motor lodge.

I took a few steps out into the parking lot, moving cautiously, as if it were paved in black ice rather than asphalt. The lot opened out onto a four-lane road. Directly across the road was a pair of fast-food restaurants, but beyond them I saw what looked like private houses, and more buildings and rooftops beyond them, though nothing taller than two or three stories. A small town, then; I was on the edge of a small town, a town in the Badlands. . . wherever that was.

I tried to imagine the chain of events that had brought me to this place -- not the whole story, just the last ten or fifteen minutes. Was I staying at the motel, or had I just been pa.s.sing by, seen the playground, and decided to have a swing? The latter was the kind of thing Jake would have done -- like most little kids, he loves dinosaurs -- but on the other hand, he's not much for wandering around strange places on his own, and I couldn't picture him just walking aimlessly down that road. Of course if house discipline had broken down completely, somebody else could have been doing the walking, only to have Jake pop out at the sight of the dinosaurs.

I thought about going into the office to see if the motel manager recognized me. That might work, unless I'd signed in when a different manager was on duty. Then again, if the manager didn't recognize me, I could try asking straight out whether I was registered at the motel -- but what name should I ask for?

Then it hit me: a key. If I was registered at the motel, I should have a key.

I started checking my pockets. In one of them, a different one than I usually kept it in, I found my wallet. It was light; the last time I'd taken it out, at the bar in Autumn Creek, I'd had almost a hundred dollars in cash, and now I had less than half that. It looked like someone had been using my credit card, too; there's a "secret" compartment where it's supposed to be hidden, but the card had been moved to the center billfold, next to the remaining cash. The wallet's other contents -- my library and video rental cards, my father's expired driver's license, and a picture of Andy Gage's mother -- appeared untouched.

I searched the rest of my pockets. I found my house key but no motel-room key. It occurred to me that that still didn't settle the question -- I might have left the key in the room when whoever-it-was decided to visit the playground. I scanned the rooms on both sides of the parking lot, looking for one with an open door. All the doors were closed.

For the first time, I began to get a real sense of the chaos my father had lived with before the house was built -- the chaos Penny Driver still lived with.

Penny. . . wait a minute. In a parking s.p.a.ce off to my left was a familiar-looking black sedan: a black Buick Centurion, with -- yes! -- Washington state license plates. I moved up for a closer look, and as I did so, the door of the nearest motel room swung open, and Penny herself came running out. She was barefoot, wrapped in a fuzzy green bathrobe with dinosaurs on it, her hair wet and plastered to her skull. When she saw me standing by the car, she pulled up short and let out a squeak.

"Penny?" I said.

At the mention of her name, Penny looked freshly startled. . . and suddenly hopeful. "Andrew?"

she said. I nodded. "Oh thank G.o.d!. . . Andrew!. . . Finally!"

"Finally," I repeated, wondering just how much lost time that word represented. "What day is it, Penny?"

"May 8th," she told me. "Around ten o'clock in the morning, local time. It's OK, it's only been two days. You left Autumn Creek the night before last."

I nodded again, thinking that it wasn't OK at all but that at least it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I looked back at the playground, at the landscape beyond it. "Where are we?"

"South Dakota," Penny said. "I don't know the name of this town, but it's close to Rapid City."

She frowned. "Or at least that's what I was told."

"South Dakota. . ." I went off for a moment, trying to picture where in the country that was -- east of the Rocky Mountains, I recalled vaguely, and at least two or three states over from Washington.

But this was procrastination, a way of delaying the big question: "How did we get here?"

"That. . ." said Penny, and sighed. "It's complicated."

20.

As they follow the truck across Washington state, Maledicta and Malefica take turns at the wheel; Mouse is relegated to backseat driver status, stuck in the cave mouth. This is not what Mouse had in mind when she asked the Society for help. But she's learning there's a price to be paid for requesting the Society's a.s.sistance -- and for voluntarily giving up control.

"Which way did Andrew go?" she had asked, back in Autumn Creek. It was a simple question, and the answer, when it came, was one that Mouse could have guessed on her own: west. He was headed towards the highway, probably intending to hitch a ride to the airport.

"But what the f.u.c.k are you going to do when you catch up to him?" Maledicta inquired, as Mouse started up the Centurion and got rolling. "Run him down? Punch his f.u.c.king lights out?"

"No," said Mouse coolly, not interested in talking to herself now that she had what she needed.

"Leave me alone now, please."

"c.u.n.t."

Mouse reached the Interstate junction without catching sight of Andrew. Crossing her fingers that he had not already been picked up by someone, she drove up the westbound on-ramp. At the top of the ramp, as she paused to scan the road shoulder in both directions, she saw brake lights flaring on the other side of the median -- an eighteen-wheeler was pulling into the eastbound breakdown lane.

"Oh G.o.d," said Mouse, as a figure came running up behind the truck and was briefly illuminated by its taillights. It was Andrew. Mouse was on the wrong side of the highway. "He said he wanted to go to the airport!"

"He said he wanted to go to Michigan," someone corrected her. "And you told him he couldn't afford a plane ticket."

Mouse glanced at the broken, rocky strip that separated the two sides of the Interstate. She recalled how, coming to work the first day at the Reality Factory, she'd missed the Autumn Creek exit and had to go miles out of her way before she could turn around.

"Let me drive," Maledicta suggested from the cave mouth. "I'll get you over there in no time."

Andrew had boarded the truck. The eighteen-wheeler's brake lights went off and it started moving again. At the same moment, there was a surge in westbound traffic, vehicles whizzing by so close together that now even getting on the highway going the wrong way was going to be a challenge. Mouse started to panic.

"Come on!" Maledicta pressed her. "Let me f.u.c.king drive. He's going to get away!"

The truck was out of the breakdown lane now, picking up speed, about to disappear around a curve.

"You're going to f.u.c.king lose him!"

"All right," Mouse said, and let go. Reality telescoped; Mouse flew back into the cave mouth.

She braced herself there, expecting Maledicta to tromp the accelerator and cut right into traffic. She wondered what a car crash would feel like from inside the cave.

But instead of going onto the highway, Maledicta threw the Buick into reverse and started backing down the on-ramp. "Oh G.o.d," Mouse said, cringing, as another car appeared behind them. "Ah, you c.o.c.ksucker," Maledicta exclaimed. Steering one-handed, she swerved around the other car; the Centurion's fender sc.r.a.ped a guard rail, but there was no collision. Maledicta repeated the maneuver a few seconds later, dodging around another car. And then they were at the bottom of the ramp, coasting backwards onto West Bridge Street. "f.u.c.k but I'm good," Maledicta praised herself.

She braked and shifted into drive. She should have gone straight forward, taking the underpa.s.s to the eastbound side of the Interstate, but once again she behaved unexpectedly, pulling a U-turn and driving back towards Autumn Creek.

"Hey," cried Mouse, "what are you doing? You're going the wrong way!"

She tried to step forward and take the body back, but found that she couldn't. It wasn't even a question of a struggle, like the last time Maledicta had tried to keep the body from her; Mouse simply couldn't get beyond the cave mouth.

"You're going the wrong way!" Mouse repeated, frustrated. "We're going to lose Andrew!"

"The f.u.c.k we are," said Maledicta. "That's a long-haul truck he's on; it'll stay on the f.u.c.king Interstate, and we'll f.u.c.king catch up to it, no problem. But" -- she nicked a finger at the gauges on the Buick's dashboard -- "before we drive over the f.u.c.king Cascades, we need gas. Gas and supplies."

"Oh," said Mouse. "Oh, OK, that's fine then. . . but let me drive. . ."

Maledicta laughed. "f.u.c.k you."

There was a gas station and convenience store right next to the west bridge; Maledicta drove in there and pulled up to the self-service pumps. She started one of the pumps running, using a Sh.e.l.l credit card that Mouse had never seen before (come to think of it, Mouse couldn't specifically recall ever buying gas before). While the Buick's tank filled, she went into the convenience store to get junk food and cigarettes.

As Maledicta pawed through a Hostess display rack, Mouse made another attempt to retake control of the body. No use: it was as though an invisible barrier had been stretched across the cave mouth, a force field that only got stronger the harder she fought against it.

"Give it up, f.u.c.king give it up, baby. . ." Maledicta sang. She went to the register and tossed two packages of Ding Dongs on the counter. "Winstons," she told the clerk. "Unfiltered."

The clerk reached up to a rack above his head. Mouse, still pushing futilely against the barrier, tried calling to him: "Help!. . . Help!" The clerk dropped Maledicta's Winstons next to the Ding Dongs and began ringing up the purchase.

"Hey," Maledicta asked him, "do you hear something?"

The clerk gave her a blank look. "Like what?"

"Sounded like a f.u.c.king mouse squeaking."

"Probably just my new shoes," the clerk said. He demonstrated by squeaking a heel against the floor behind the counter.

"Yeah," Maledicta laughed, "that must be it."

Maledicta paid and returned to the car. Mouse, defeated, tried to resign herself to captivity inside her own head. But when Maledicta still didn't head for the Interstate, Mouse lost her composure again: "What are you doing?"

"Jesus f.u.c.king Christ," Maledicta said, puffing on one of her new Winstons. "Get off my a.s.s."

"We're supposed to be following Andrew! We --"

"I want to get a f.u.c.king drink first."

"There's no time for that!"

"If you don't get off my f.u.c.king a.s.s," Maledicta warned, "I'm going to stop the f.u.c.king car and not go another mile until I smoke every f.u.c.king cigarette in this pack. And then I'm still going to get a drink. You can't f.u.c.king handle that, then go back down in the cave and sleep -- it's what you're f.u.c.king best at anyway."

There was a liquor store on Bridge Street, but it had closed at nine o'clock, so Maledicta went to a bar instead. As they swung around to park, Mouse recognized Julie Sivik's Cadillac among the other cars along the curb. She thought she might have seen Julie sitting in the Cadillac, too, but because Maledicta controlled the view, Mouse couldn't look around to make sure.

"Hey," said Mouse, as Maledicta lit a fresh cigarette and hopped out of the Buick. "Hey wait, turn right, is that Julie over there?"

"Who the f.u.c.k cares?" Maledicta said, and entered the bar.

This late on a weeknight, the bar was almost empty -- just a few couples in booths (including a raucous pair of drunks near the back), and no one at all at the bar counter except the woman tending it.

The bartender was a vampire: white skin, black hair, black eye shadow, black lipstick, black nail polish, and stainless-steel piercings in her nose, eyebrows, and both cheeks. Mouse thought she looked hideous. Maledicta thought she looked hideous, too, and for that very reason warmed to her -- briefly.

"Popov," Maledicta said, stepping up to the bar. "No ice."

"Ah," said the vampire, sourly. "The good stuff."

As the vampire poured her a shot of cheap vodka, Maledicta asked: "How much for the whole f.u.c.king bottle, to go?"

"We don't do carry-out," the vampire informed her. "Liquor store's down the street."

"Liquor store's closed," Maledicta said.

"Well, that's too bad then, huh?"

"I'll give you forty f.u.c.king dollars," Maledicta offered, holding up Mouse's wallet.

"Wow!" exclaimed the vampire sarcastically. "Forty f.u.c.king dollars! Let me think about it. . .

no!"

"Lousy c.u.n.t," Maledicta muttered, as the vampire replaced the bottle on its shelf. She picked up the shot and downed it in one angry gulp. Up in the cave mouth, Mouse heard a soft sc.r.a.ping sound and saw Malefica come crawling forward, panther-like.

Then someone behind them said: "Mouse?"

Maledicta looked around. It was Julie Sivik. "f.u.c.k off," Maledicta greeted her, and turned back to the bar.

"Maledicta," said Julie.

Maledicta turned around again. "Well," she said, "I see somebody's got a big f.u.c.king mouth."

Then she shrugged, and held up her shot gla.s.s. "You drinking?"

"What?" said Julie, as if she hadn't noticed they were in a bar. "Oh. . . oh G.o.d, no, no more for me tonight. The past couple hours I've been, well, hiding, I guess. . . but I'm on my way home now, so I just thought I'd stop and get my car, and then I saw you coming in here. . ."

"Uh-huh," Maledicta said, already bored with this story.

"Anyway, listen, have you seen Andrew? I don't want to see him," Julie added hastily, "but I'm a little worried about him, and I wanted to make sure he made it home OK. And I thought, if you're still here in town this time of night -- "

"You're the one who got him s.h.i.tfaced," Maledicta guessed. "Good f.u.c.king job."

"s.h.i.tfaced," Julie echoed. "So you have seen him, then. . ."

"f.u.c.k yeah," said Maledicta, grinning. "We saw him."

"Is he OK? Did he get home?"

"For about ten seconds," Maledicta told her. "Then he f.u.c.king took off again."

"Took off?"

"He said he was leaving town. . . what the f.u.c.k did you do to him, anyway? I've never seen anyone so f.u.c.king upset before."

"Don't do this," Mouse spoke up, from the cave mouth. "This is mean."

"He told you he was leaving town?" said Julie. "What does that -- you don't mean leaving for good, do you?"