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leaped over the closed door. But then she would’ve had to get the key out of her pocket, put it in the ignition, start the engine, slap the car into gear, execute a three-point turn, and slam the gas pedal to the floor. The grotesquely deformed men had been no more than ten feet from her on both sides. There just wouldn’t have been time.
    Damn it.
    A low-hanging branch hit her in the forehead and shattered as she charged onward through the woods. She trampled thick undergrowth and was thankful shewas wearing sneakers rather than the heavy, high-heeled boots she’d worn on her first visit to Hoke’s house. She moved between the trees in a random zigzag pattern, darting a hundred feet to her right, ten or twenty more straight ahead, another thirty or forty to the right again, and so on. Her gaze was shifting all the time, rapidly scanning the area immediately ahead of her for impediments, and she managed to avoid numerous rocks and vines with astonishing nimbleness and an almost balletic grace. All that time spent training in the gym and running her daily miles was paying off in ways she never would have imagined. A less well-conditioned woman wouldn’t have stood a chance. She was further aided by the gentle downhill slope of the land in this direction, which allowed her to set a pace she was certain the big, lumbering men behind her couldn’t possibly match.
    She heard the gentle trickle of water before she slipped through a thicker line of trees and saw the little stream winding through the woods. The stream was no more than three or four feet across. The water would come up to no higher than her knees. She could leap it easily or wade through within the space of a heartbeat or two. But the crystal-clear flow of water stopped her in her tracks. She stood panting at the edge of the stream for a moment and risked her first backward glance. There was no one behind her. She listened for sounds of pursuit and heard nothing. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. The men lived in these woods. They might not be able to match her speed, but they would be skilled at the art of stealthy tracking. It would behoove her not to linger long at the stream. If she stayed still long enough, they would eventually catch up to her. And if that happened, she doubted she’d be able to get away again.
    She didn’t feel winded yet—the half mile or so she’d come was nowhere near the limits of her usual endurancelevels—but this could be her last chance for a cool drink of water for some time. It would be smart to take advantage of it.
    Quickly, though.
    She dropped to her knees at the edge of the stream and set the .38 on the rocky ground. She pulled her long hair back and tied it in a loose knot. She knelt closer to the stream, dipped her cupped hands into the cool, amazingly clean water, lifted them, and drank. The water tasted wonderful. She dipped her hands into the stream again and again, slurping water down with abandon for several moments. Then she shook excess moisture from her hands and sat panting. She felt refreshed and more than ready to resume her flight from the hideously deformed men. But now that she’d allowed herself this brief pause, some disturbing thoughts and questions began to catch up to her.
    What were those things?
    They were men, but not normal men. They looked like…mutants. Like a generation of feral mountain men who’d grown up in the aftermath of an all-out nuclear war. She thought of the area she was in and searched her memory. Were there any nuclear power plants operating in these parts? Say there was one somewhere nearby. Was it possible there had been a Chernobyl-style accident, only on a smaller scale? The government might have hushed something like that up, same way the Russians did with the Chernobyl meltdown. Another thing to consider was the dirty bomb supposedly detonated by terrorists in nearby Dandridge. But no, that was too recent an event to account for the kind of deformities she’d