WHEN SHE PEEKS BETWEEN the blinds she sees that police vehicles have begun arriving and that helicopters have begun to circle the motel. But there’s more: the motor home from the day before—the one with the parabolic antennae on top—has pulled in behind the patrol cars, followed by the pickup and travel-trailer from the train incident.
"Frodo, stay, please," she says, before slipping through the bathroom window and escaping into the rainy dark—a dark full of searching helicopters and reflected police lights—until she trips over something while crossing the empty field behind the motel and realizes with horror that it is another human body. Then she is sliding and tumbling down a muddy bank and into a pool of fetid water, which swallows her and spits her back out, at which instant, while g
