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He was being propelled past the dog. Hooper twisted his head, as if snapping at a fly, moving with more life than Wayne would’ve guessed possible. He bit, shutting his teeth on the Gasmask Man’s left ankle.

The Gasmask Man squealed and stumbled. Wayne thought, for an instant, that he might leap free, but the little man had long, powerful arms, like a baboon’s, and he got his forearm around Wayne’s throat.

“Oh, Mr. Manx,” the Gasmask Man said. “He’s biting! The dog is biting! He’s got his teeth in me!”

Manx raised the silver hammer and dropped it on Hooper’s head, like a man at a fair, using a sledgehammer to test his strength, hitting the target to see if he could ring a bell. Hooper’s skull crunched like a lightbulb under a boot heel. Manx hit him a second time to be sure. The Gasmask Man tore his foot free and turned sideways and kicked Hooper for good measure.

“You dirty dog!” the Gasmask Man cried. “I hope that hurt! I hope that hurt a lot!”

When Manx straightened up, there was fresh, wet blood glistening on his shirt in a rough Y shape. It seeped through the silk, trickling from some wound on the old man’s chest.

“Hooper,” Wayne said. He meant to scream it, but it came out as a whisper, barely audible even to himself.

Hooper’s white fur was stained all red now. It was like blood on snow. Wayne couldn’t look at what had been done to his head.

Manx bent over the dog, catching his breath. “Well. This pup has chased his last flock of pigeons.”

“You killed Hooper,” Wayne said.

Charlie Manx said, “Yes. It looks like I have. The poor thing. That is too bad. I have always tried to be a friend to dogs and children. I will try to make it up to you, young man. Consider that I owe you one. Put him in the car, Bing, and give him something to take his mind off his cares.”

The Gasmask Man shoved Wayne ahead of him, hopping along, keeping his weight off his right ankle.

The back door of the Rolls-Royce popped and swung wide. No one was sitting in the car. No one had touched the latch. Wayne was baffled—amazed, even—but did not linger on it. Things were moving quickly now, and he couldn’t afford to give it thought.

Wayne understood that if he climbed into the backseat, he would never climb out again. It would be like climbing into his own grave. Hooper, though, had tried to show him what to do. Hooper had tried to show him that even when you seemed completely overpowered, you could still show your teeth.

Wayne turned his head and sank his teeth into the fat man’s forearm. He locked his jaw and bit down until he tasted blood.

The Gasmask Man shrieked. “It hurts! He’s hurting me!”

His hand opened and shut. Wayne saw, in close focus, words written in black marker on the Gasmask Man’s palm:

PHONE

ACCIDENT

CAR

“Bing!” hissed Mr. Manx. “Shhh! Put him in the car and hush yourself!”

Bing—the Gasmask Man—grabbed a handful of Wayne’s hair and pulled. Wayne felt as if his scalp were being ripped up like old carpet. Still, he put one foot up, bracing it against the side of the car. The Gasmask Man moaned and punched Wayne in the side of the head.

It was like a flashbulb going off. Only instead of a flash of white light, it was a flash of blackness, behind his eyes. Wayne dropped the foot braced against the side of the car. As his vision cleared, he was pushed through the open door and fell onto all fours on the carpet.

“Bing!” Manx cried. “Close that door! Someone is coming! That dreadful woman is coming!”

“Your ass is grass,” the Gasmask Man said to Wayne. “Your ass is so much grass. And I am the lawn mower. I’m going to mow your ass, and then I’m going to f*ck it. I’m going to f*ck you right in the ass.”

“Bing, mind me now!”

“Mom!” screamed Wayne.

“I’m coming!” she shouted back, tiredly, her voice arriving from a great distance and without any particular urgency.

The Gasmask Man slammed the car door.

Wayne rose onto his knees. His left ear throbbed where he had been struck, burned against the side of his face. There was a nasty aftertaste of blood in his mouth.

He looked over the front seats and out the windshield.

A dark shape walked up the road. The mist played fun-house tricks with the optics, distorting and enlarging the shape. It looked like a grotesque hunchback pushing a wheelchair.

“Mom!” Wayne screamed again.

The front passenger-side door—which was on the left, where the steering wheel would’ve been in an American car—opened. The Gasmask Man climbed in, pulled the door shut behind him, then twisted in his seat and pointed a pistol in Wayne’s face.

“You want to shut your mouth,” the Gasmask Man said, “or I’ll drill you. I’ll pump you full of lead. How would you like that? Not too much, I bet!”

The Gasmask Man considered his right arm. There was a misshapen purple bruise where Wayne had bitten him, enclosed in parentheses of bright blood where Wayne’s teeth had broken the skin.

Manx slid behind the steering wheel. He put his silver mallet on the leather between him and the Gasmask Man. The car was running, the engine producing a deep, resonant purr that was felt more than heard, a kind of luxurious vibration.

The hunchback with the wheelchair came through the mist, until all at once it resolved into the shape of a woman walking a motorcycle, pushing it laboriously by the handlebars.