But his hold slackened. A moment later his arms dropped to his sides. When another truck snored by overhead, Wolf cringed but managed to keep from grabbing Jack again. But he looked at Jack with a mute, trembling appeal that said Get me out of this, please get me out of this, I'd rather be dead than in this world.
Nothing I'd like better, Wolf, but Morgan's over there. Even if he weren't, I don't have the magic juice anymore.
He looked down at his left hand and saw he was holding the jagged neck of Speedy's bottle, like a man getting ready to do some serious barroom brawling. Just dumb luck Wolf hadn't gotten a bad cut when he grabbed Jack in his terror.
Jack tossed it away. Splash.
Two trucks this time - the noise was doubled. Wolf howled in terror and plastered his hands over his ears. Jack could see that most of the hair had disappeared from Wolf's hands in the flip - most, but not all. And, he saw, the first two fingers of each of Wolf's hands were exactly the same length.
'Come on, Wolf,' Jack said when the racket of the trucks had faded a little. 'Let's get out of here. We look like a couple of guys waiting to get baptized on a PTL Club special.'
He took Wolf's hand, and then winced at the panicky way Wolf's grip closed down. Wolf saw his expression and loosened up . . . a little.
'Don't leave me, Jack,' Wolf said. 'Please, please don't leave me.'
'No, Wolf, I won't,' Jack said. He thought: How do you get into these things, you ass**le? Here you are, standing under a turnpike overpass somewhere in Ohio with your pet werewolf. How do you do it? Do you practice? And, oh, by the way, what's happening with the moon, Jack-O? Do you remember?
He didn't, and with clouds blanketing the sky and a cold rain falling, there was no way to tell.
What did that make the odds? Thirty to one in his favor? Twenty-eight to two?
Whatever the odds were, they weren't good enough. Not the way things were going.
'No, I won't leave you,' he repeated, and then led Wolf toward the far bank of the stream. In the shallows, the decayed remains of some child's dolly floated belly-up, her glassy blue eyes staring into the growing dark. The muscles of Jack's arm ached from the strain of pulling Wolf through into this world, and the joint in his shoulder throbbed like a rotted tooth.
As they came out of the water onto the weedy, trashy bank, Jack began to sneeze again.
2
This time, Jack's total progress in the Territories had been half a mile west - the distance Wolf had moved his herd so they could drink in the stream where Wolf himself had later almost been drowned. Over here, he found himself ten miles farther west, as best he could figure. They struggled up the bank - Wolf actually ended up pulling Jack most of the way - and in the last of the daylight Jack could see an exit-ramp splitting off to the right some fifty yards up the road. A reflectorized sign read: ARCANUM LAST EXIT IN OHIO STATE LINE 15 MILES.
'We've got to hitch,' Jack said.
'Hitch?' Wolf said doubtfully.
'Let's have a look at you.'
He thought Wolf would do, at least in the dark. He was still wearing the bib overalls, which now had an actual OSHKOSH label on them. His homespun shirt had become a machine-produced blue chambray that looked like an Army-Navy Surplus special. His formerly bare feet were clad in a huge pair of dripping penny loafers and white socks.
Oddest of all, a pair of round steel-rimmed spectacles of the sort John Lennon used to wear sat in the middle of Wolf's big face.
'Wolf, did you have trouble seeing? Over in the Territories?'
'I didn't know I did,' Wolf said. 'I guess so. Wolf! I sure see better over here, with these glass eyes. Wolf, right here and now!' He looked out at the roaring turnpike traffic, and for just a moment Jack saw what he must be seeing: great steel beasts with huge yellow-white eyes, snarling through the night at unimaginable speeds, rubber wheels blistering the road. 'I see better than I want to,' Wolf finished forlornly.
3