Something's pulling the air open like a wound - something's coming through - from our side? Oh Jason, is that what I do when I come through? But even in his own panic and confusion he knew it was not.
Jack had a good idea who would come through like this, like a rape in progress.
Jack began to run down the hill.
3
The ripping sound went on and on and on. Wolf was down on his knees in the stream, trying to help the second downed animal to its feet. The first floated limply downstream, its body tattered and mangled.
'Get up! God pound you, get up! Wolf!'
Wolf shoved and slapped as best he could at the cow-sheep who milled and backed into him, then got both arms around the drowning animal's midriff and pulled upward. 'WOLF! HERE AND NOW!' he screamed. The sleeves of his shirt split wide open along the biceps, reminding Jack of David Banner having one of the gamma-ray-inspired tantrums that turned him into The Incredible Hulk. Water sprayed everywhere and Wolf lurched to his feet, eyes blazing orange, blue overalls now soaked black. Water streamed from the nostrils of the animal, which Wolf held clutched against his chest as if it were an overgrown puppy. Its eyes were turned up to sticky whites.
'Wolf!' Jack screamed. 'It's Morgan! It's - '
'The herd!' Wolf screamed back. 'Wolf! Wolf! My God-pounding herd! Jack! Don't try - '
The rest was drowned out by a grinding clap of thunder that shook the earth. For a moment the thunder even covered that maddening, monotonous ripping sound. Almost as confused as Wolf's cattle, Jack looked up and saw a clear blue sky, innocent of clouds save for a few puffy white ones that were miles away.
The thunder ignited outright panic in Wolf's herd. They tried to bolt, but in their exquisite stupidity, many of them tried to do it by backing up. They crashed and splashed and were rolled underwater. Jack heard the bitter snap of a breaking bone, followed by the baaaa-ing scream of an animal in pain. Wolf bellowed in rage, dropped the cow-sheep he had been trying to save, and floundered toward the muddy far bank of the stream.
Before he could get there, half a dozen cattle struck him and bore him down. Water splashed and flew in thin, bright sprays. Now, Jack saw, Wolf was the one in danger of being simultaneously trampled and drowned by the stupid, fleeing animals.
Jack pushed into the stream, which was now dark with roiling mud. The current tried continually to push him off-balance. A bleating cow-sheep, its eyes rolling madly, splashed past him, almost knocking him down. Water sprayed into his face and Jack tried to wipe it out of his eyes.
Now that sound seemed to fill the whole world: RRRRRII-IPPPP - Wolf. Never mind Morgan, at least not for the moment. Wolf was in trouble.
His shaggy, drenched head was momentarily visible above the water, and then three of the animals ran right over him and Jack could only see one waving, fur-covered hand. He pushed forward again, trying to weave through the cattle, some still up, others floundering and drowning underfoot.
'Jack!' a voice bellowed over that ripping noise. It was a voice Jack knew. Uncle Morgan's voice.
'Jack!'
There was another clap of thunder, this one a huge oaken thud that rolled through the sky like an artillery shell.
Panting, his soaked hair hanging in his eyes, Jack looked over his shoulder . . . and directly into the rest area on I-70 near Lewisburg, Ohio. He was seeing it as if through ripply, badly made glass . . . but he was seeing it. The edge of the brick toilet was on the left side of that blistered, tortured patch of air. The snout of what looked like a Chevrolet pick-up truck was on the right, floating three feet above the field where he and Wolf had been sitting peacefully and talking not five minutes ago. And in the center, looking like an extra in a film about Admiral Byrd's assault on the South Pole, was Morgan Sloat, his thick red face twisted with murderous rage. Rage, and something else. Triumph? Yes. Jack thought that was what it was.
He stood at midstream in water that was crotch-deep, cattle passing on either side of him, baa-ing and bleating, staring at that window which had been torn in the very fabric of reality, his eyes wide, his mouth wider.
He's found me, oh dear God, he's found me.
'There you are, you little shithead!' Morgan bellowed at him. His voice carried, but it had a muffled, dead quality as it came from the reality of that world into the reality of this one. It was like listening to a man shout inside a telephone booth. 'Now we'll see, won't we? Won't we?'