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ridge throws me to the ground. As I get closer, it becomes a bluish flicker, which is mad spooky—maybe it’s a ghost, or worse. In Zombie Cannibals , the decaying orbit of the satellite that caused the dead to rise from the grave produced this blue light that glowed out of the graves right before the zombies poked their heads up. So I try stealth: I hide behind trees. I crawl on hand and knee. Now I can see this dude pacing with the blue light, and I hear a voice muttering through the rain.
    The light snaps off, but I can still barely make out the dude. His long hair is silver and white. It pokes straight up like an afro and then cascades down the back.
    It isn’t hair—it’s a headdress.
    An Indian headdress.
    He turns toward me, arms at his sides, legs spread slightly. His lips form a hard, stoic line. His eyes glow in the dark.
    I stare into them.
    They stare back at me.

CHAPTER TWO

    we hitch
    My video game training says the situation calls for a little left trigger, with the A and X buttons tapped twice in unison.
    I ninjitsu out of the trees, helicoptering, no feeling but drizzle and wind until his jawbone turns to crumbling Cheetos beneath the toe of my Timberlands.
    Then: X, Y, X, Y, twice in succession. Fist punches bloody the midsection, sending baddy back into the brush.
    Select button.
    Arsenal menu.
    Chainsaw.
    The Activision sound card blasts a killer bee storm as I lower it and Cuisinart baddy into monster tree food.
    He is an Indian—blinged up like one, anyhow. He wears a leather headband with white and silver feathers that crest down his back. He has finger-painted a circle with lines poking out of it on his chest the way a kid would draw the sun. Old school yellow leather pants with fringe cover his bottom half, and he wears what looks like His Eminence’s bedroom slippers. His tats are badass, people. Swoops and swirls swish around his arms rockstarlike.
    When he doesn’t make a move to John Wayne Gacey me, I tell him about Arthur’s ankle, and he follows me into the woods. Afterward, while we hoof it around the brush looking for Arthur, I figure I’m stupid asking him for help. Maybe trusting some crazy guy fronting squaw isn’t my Mensa moment, but I’m too scared of the trees and the rain and the creeping things to care.
    TV and movie Indians superman it through fields and forests, flashing through trees and tall grass like stampeding wolves, but remain ghost quiet while the cowboys they sneak up on make a racket around their campfires.
    Not this guy. He’s a dork, stubbing his toes on the same roots where I stub mine, slipping and making a racket even though he doesn’t talk.
    The two of us dick around in the brush for a while, crashing into rocks and trees and sliding like goons. I yell, “Arthur!” the whole time and begin to get the worryshakes that I seriously lost the kid for good. But after a half hour, I hear a low, “Winthrop,” blip out from somewhere. We follow his voice and there he is, lying where I left him, little blue eyes gaping over what I harpooned in the way of help.
    Crazy Indian Guy keeps mute, and before Arthur has time to flinch, he stoops and swings him over a tatted shoulder like a sack of dog food, and we make for the exit, or whatever destination Crazy Indian Guy has in mind.
    Tapping the escape key is crossing my mind, people, truth be told. Arthur has his help. I’ve been lucky to find anybody, and now Arthur has his ambulance ride without me having to nursemaid him and give up the San Fran show. But it’s not like I’m leaving Arthur with a nuclear family in a house with a white picket fence, am I? What if he’s a serial killer? I can’t just leave him here to get Dahmered by Crazy Horse. So I keep on behind them, barking my shins on the slippery stuff and praying to the gods of civilization to show me a road.
     
    a change of orders
    The world had changed.
    Moments before, vengeance had been so sure. The two young ones had been alone. One had