Full Dark, No Stars

col apsed and the railing was broken in a couple of places, but yes, it was an actual porch, charming even in its dilapidation. Maybe because of its dilapidation. Tess supposed general store porches had become obsolete because they encouraged you to sit a spel and chat about basebal or the weather instead of just paying up and hustling your credit cards on down the road to some other place where

you could swipe them at the checkout. A tin sign hung askew from the porch roof. It was more faded than the Esso sign. She took a few steps closer, raising a hand to her forehead to shade her eyes. YOU

LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU. Which was a slogan for what, exactly?

She had almost plucked the answer from her mental junkheap when her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an engine. As she turned toward it, sure that the Zombie Bakers had come back

after al , the sound of the motor was joined by the scream of ancient brakes. It wasn’t the white van but an old Ford F-150 pickup with a bad blue paintjob and Bondo around the headlights. A man in bib overal s and a gimme cap sat behind the wheel. He was looking at the litter of wood scraps in the ditch.

“Hel o?” Tess cal ed. “Pardon me, sir?”

He turned his head, saw her standing in the overgrown parking lot, flicked a hand in salute, pul ed in beside her Expedition, and turned off his engine. Given the sound of it, Tess thought that an act

tantamount to mercy kil ing.

“Hey, there,” he said. “Did you pick that happy crappy up off the road?”

“Yes, al but the piece that got my left front tire. And—” And my phone doesn’t work out here, she almost added, then didn’t. She was a woman in her late thirties who went one-twenty soaking wet, and this was a strange man. A big one. “—and here I am,” she finished, a bit lamely.

“I’l change it forya if you got a spare,” he said, working his way out of his truck. “Do you?”

For a moment she couldn’t reply. The guy wasn’t big, she’d been wrong about that. The guy was a giant. He had to go six-six, but head-to-foot was only part of it. He was deep in the bel y, thick in the thighs, and as wide as a doorway. She knew it was impolite to stare (another of the world’s facts learned at her mother’s knee), but it was hard not to. Ramona Norvil e had been a healthy chunk of woman, but standing next to this guy, she would have looked like a bal erina.

“I know, I know,” he said, sounding amused. “You didn’t think you were going to meet the Jol y Green Giant out here in the wil iwags, didja?” Only he wasn’t green; he was tanned a deep brown. His

eyes were also brown. Even his cap was brown, although faded almost white in several places, as if it had been splattered with bleach at some point in its long life.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I was thinking you don’t ride in that truck of yours, you wear it.”

He put his hands on his hips and guffawed at the sky. “Never heard it put like that before, but you’re sort of right. When I win the lottery, I’m going to buy myself a Hummer.”

“Wel , I can’t buy you one of those, but if you change my tire, I’d be happy to pay you fifty dol ars.”

“You kiddin? I’l do it for free. You saved me a mess of my own when you picked up that scrapwood.”

“Someone went past in a funny truck with a skeleton on the side, but he missed it.”

The big guy had been heading for Tess’s flat front tire, but now he turned back to her, frowning. “Someone went by and didn’t offer to help you out?”

“I don’t think he saw me.”

“Didn’t stop to pick up that mess for the next fel ow, either, did he?”

“No. He didn’t.”

“Just went on his way?”

“Yes.” There was something about these questions she didn’t quite like. Then the big guy smiled and Tess told herself she was being sil y.

“Spare under the cargo compartment floor, I suppose?”

“Yes. That is, I think so. Al you have to do is—”

“Pul up on the handle, yep, yep. Been there, done that.”

As he ambled around to the back of her Expedition with his hands tucked deep into the pockets of his overal s, Tess saw that the door of his truck hadn’t shut al the way and the dome light was on.

Thinking that the F-150’s battery might be as battered as the truck it was powering, she opened the door (the hinge screamed almost as loudly as the brakes) and then slammed it closed. As she did, she

looked through the cab’s back window and into the pickup’s bed. There were several pieces of wood scattered across the ribbed and rusty metal. They were painted white and had nails sticking out of

them.

For a moment, Tess felt as if she were having an out-of-body experience. The ticking sign, YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU, now sounded not like an old-fashioned alarm clock but a ticking bomb.