The metal felt cold to his touch. He moved his finger away and touched the neck of the man inside the car.
Though the man's face was covered with blood and totally unrecognizable, Mark knew who he was.
For a moment he had an urge to wrench Martin Ames loose from the wreckage and tear his body limb from limb, leaving the remains wherever they fell.
But then the urge passed, and he turned away, silently disappearing into the night.
The wind was rising now, and Phil Collins tugged his jacket collar up around his neck, hunching his shoulders, resisting the urge to turn around and look up toward the mountains that rose around him.
He came to the corner of Aspen Street and turned right. He paused then, and his skin crawled with the uneasy sensation that he was being watched.
Now he did turn around, shading his eyes against the glare of the streetlamp that glowed overhead, but seeing nothing in the inky darkness; only a silent blackness that seemed to close in around him, a suffocating, strangely malignant stillness.
He told himself he was imagining things, but once more his pace quickened.
His house was dark as he approached it, and he had a fleeting moment of uncertainty as he tried to remember if he'd turned the porch light on or not. But of course he hadn't-it had still been broad daylight when he'd left the place a couple of hours before. He took the steps to the front porch in two quick bounds, then reached up to the ledge under the eaves for the key that he always left there.
A moment later he stepped through the front door and groped for the wall switch. The overhead light came on, washing the shadows from the living room.
Collins hesitated.
Something was wrong. His big German shepherd, who was invariably waiting for him by the door, was nowhere to be seen.
"Sparks?" he called out. "Where are you, boy?"
He heard a quick bark, followed by an eager whimpering, but the dog still didn't appear. Frowning deeply and with an odd prickling sensation running over the back of his neck, Collins moved through the living room into the small kitchen.
Sparks was crouched down by the door to the cellar, his muzzle pressed to the crack between the door and the floor.
He looked up as Collins came into the room and his tail wagged, but then he went back to his eager snuffling of the gap below the door.
Collins's frown deepened. There couldn't be anyone down there. He'd trained Sparks as a watchdog himself, and he knew the animal wouldn't let anyone into the house without his permission. He'd even had some complaints from the neighbors about the dog's fierceness; complaints he'd totally ignored.
"What is it, boy?" he asked. "What's wrong?"
The animal got to his feet, his tail wagging, and scratched eagerly at the closed door.
"Okay," Collins said, pulling the door open. "Go on down and get it, whatever it is."
The dog dashed down the steep flight of stairs and disappeared into the darkness.
Collins waited for a moment, listening. He could hear the shepherd whimpering eagerly, but there were no other sounds. Finally he reached for the light switch by the door and flipped it.
Nothing happened.
Cursing softly, Collins rummaged in the top drawer by the kitchen sink and found a flashlight. Its batteries were weak, but it glowed dimly when he pressed the switch. From another drawer he took a large butcher knife.
With the light held firmly in his left hand and the knife in his right, he started down the stairs.
When he came to the bottom, he stood in the darkness for a moment, listening. He could still hear Sparks, off to the right, making the eager whimpering noises that always emerged from his throat when Collins scratched him behind the ears.
But why?
There was no one there-there couldn't be.
He played the light in the direction of the sounds and suddenly froze. Reflected in the light, glowing strangely, were a pair of eyes.
Not the eyes of an animal.
But not the eyes of a human being, either.
They were something else, something Phil Collins had never seen before. And as he stared at them an icy finger of terror moved slowly down his spine.
He took a step forward, his fingers tightening on the knife. He knew he had to strike first, plunge the knife into the creature in the basement before it could attack him.
He had to kill it while it was still blinded by the glare of the flashlight.
Then, without warning, there was a sudden howl and Sparks lunged out of the darkness toward him. The knife clattered to the floor as Collins dropped it in shocked surprise. He raised his arms to fend off the animal, but it was too late.
Spark's jaws closed on his throat, and he felt razor-sharp teeth ripping into his flesh, felt his windpipe puncture, then felt a warm sticky gush as the animal's fangs ripped into his jugular vein. He sank to his knees. A scream rose in his throat as he groped wildly for the knife, but it was already too late, for his vocal cords had collapsed under the dog's furious attack and the knife was far out of his reach. He dropped sideways, sprawling, to the floor, then rolled over, face down on the concrete.
Sparks, snarling furiously, tore at the fallen body, ripping away large pieces of flesh and tossing them aside, then leaping to the attack once more.
At last a strange guttural voice spoke in the darkness, and it was over. The dog stopped its attack, whimpered once, then turned and trotted up the stairs.
Mark Tanner waited a moment, then stepped over the body of the football coach and started up the stairs himself.
Sparks was waiting for him by the back door.
Together the two of them slipped out into the night, moving silently through the darkness, away from the village and up into the foothills above the valley.
Mark had no idea what time it was when he reached the cave ten miles away from the valley. He'd lost all sense of time days ago and was now aware only of daytime and nighttime.
He slept in the daytime, curled up at the back of the cave he'd discovered on his third day in the mountains, always having carefully banked his small fire-the fire he never allowed to go entirely out-so that it would still have a few coals left when he awakened just before sunset and began preparing for the night's hunting.
His eyes had changed quickly, and now the glare of sunlight nearly blinded him. But at night his large pupils gathered in every trace of light and he could see clearly; watch the owls and bats flitting through the darkness, see the other creatures of the night as they crept about in the constant search for food.
He was one of the hunters now, too, and though he had survived those first few days on little more than water from the streams and a few fungi he'd risked sampling, he was quickly shifting over to a carnivorous diet.
He'd captured his first rabbit on the fourth day, but it had been crippled-nearly dead when he'd stumbled upon it. Nevertheless, he skinned it clumsily with a broken knife he'd scavenged from an empty campground, then cooked it on a skewer over the fire he'd spent hours trying to light the day before, when he first discovered the cave. For a while he'd been afraid someone would see the smoke of the fire and come looking for him, but he never let the flame burn too high, and the smoke was nothing more than a faint wisp that quickly dispersed in the constant breezes of the mountains.
Almost every night he'd found himself drawn back to the hills overlooking Silverdale. Tonight he'd known he was going down into the village itself almost as soon as he left the cave. It hadn't taken him long to make the trip, for his body had hardened and he could move tirelessly all night long.
He'd stopped twice on the way to the little valley where the town lay, the first time for only a few minutes. He'd heard a sound in the brush and paused, listening. But when he heard it again, he knew it was only the rustling of a mouse and went on.