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Valentine found another road, got on it, and took it for a mile until it intersected with one in even worse condition, but at least he was heading south.
"We're still being followed," Duvalier said. "Looks like a motorcycle."
Valentine didn't need the confirmation. He felt them behind, a presence, the way you felt a thunderstorm long before its first rumble.
"Stop the car, my David," Ahn-Kha said. The Golden One hoisted his puddler, then waited until they could hear the faint blatt of the motorcycle engine.
"Cover your ears," Ahn-Kha said.
The gun boomed. Gail screamed. Valentine watched the motorcycle light shift, wink out.
"That'll learn 'em," Duvalier said.
Valentine put the car in gear again. He watched the colon blink on the dashboard clock. Had all this happened in only twenty minutes?
He pushed the Lincoln, daring himself to wreck it, locked on to a distance a hundred yards in front of the car as if watching for downed tree limbs was the be-all, and end-all of his life. Which it might be, if he struck a big enough object in the dark.
"They're still behind," Ahn-Kha observed ten minutes, or six hundred or so clock flashes, later. "Gaining, it would appear. Perhaps they have Hummers."
"Shouldn't have shot that poor Cup," Thatcher said. "They wouldn't be after us like this otherwise. I bet there's a locator in this rig."
"You people are crazy," Gail said. "They say I'm the one who causes problems. They must have never met you." Her voice sounded raw and tired.
Valentine crossed legworm trail after legworm trail, recent mounds with just the beginnings of growth on them.
Ahn-Kha coughed again. "My David, I have a suggestion."
"I don't want to hear it," Valentine shot back.
"They are going to catch up with this truck sooner or later. Would it not be better if we weren't all in it when they did?"
"Ahn-"
"Let him talk," Duvalier said.
"I cannot walk far. Let me lead them on a wild Grog hunt. When they catch up, I will grunt and pretend that I am simple. They will think a trick has been played, that a poor dumb Grog has been put at the wheel to lead them away."
"Lots of Grogs know how to drive. They're good at it," Thatcher said.
Valentine looked at Duvalier, but she wasn't listening, or was only half listening. Her lips were moving in steady rhythm.
"Four minutes behind," she said. "I marked that hilltop."
She began to fiddle with her explosive-packed Spam cans, a detonator, and a fuse. She threw one out on one side of the road, and then the other went into the opposite ditch.
"You'll have to get royal-flush lucky to take one of them out," Thatcher said.
"I'm not trying for that. I just want to fool them into thinking they've been ambushed."
Valentine drove past a burning barn, collapsed down to the foundation and mostly sending up smoke by now. The Lincoln plunged into a thicket and he had to slow down. He found another legworm track and cut off the road again, splashing through a stream. The wheels briefly spun as they came up the other side, then they were out into broken country again. Following the legworm trail, he found yet another farm service road running along a rounded, wooded hill. They were in real back country now. It would be dangerous to go off-road-not that the roads in this part of Kentucky were much better.
"They're still behind," Duvalier said.
Valentine wanted to wrench the steering wheel free of its mount, throw it out the window, turn around, and smash the Lincoln into their pursuers-
"Enough, my David," Ahn-Kha said. "Let me take the wheel."
"Val, it's the only way," Duvalier said.
