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of Rainbow Falls. A blinking red GPS indicator showed the current position of the truck. A green line traced a route that the driver was evidently meant to follow. At the top of the screen were the words TRANSPORT #3 SCHEDULE . Beside those words, two boxes offered options, one labeled LIST , the other MAP . The second box was currently highlighted.
    Deucalion pressed a forefinger to LIST . The map vanished from the screen, and an assignment list appeared in its place. The third address was highlighted— THE FALLS INN —at the corner of Beartooth Avenue and Falls Road. Evidently that would have been the truck’s next stop.
    Along the right side of the touch screen, in a vertical line, were five boxes, each labeled with a number. The 3 was highlighted.
    When Deucalion put a forefinger to the 1, the list on the screen was replaced with a different series of addresses. The legend at the top now read TRANSPORT #1 SCHEDULE .
    Here, too, the third line was highlighted. The two-man crew of Transport #1 had evidently successfully collected the people at the first two addresses and perhaps conveyed them to their doom. Their next stopappeared to be KBOW, the radio station that served not only Rainbow Falls but also the entire surrounding county.
    Having replaced the employees of the telephone company with identical replicants earlier in the evening, thereby seizing control of all land-line phones and cell-phone towers, Victor’s army would next take control of KBOW, preventing the transmission of a warning either to residents of the town or to the people in the smaller surrounding communities.
    Deucalion switched to MAP and saw that the radio station was on River Road, toward the northeastern end of the city limits, about two miles from his current position. Transport #1 was scheduled to arrive there in less than four minutes to collect KBOW’s evening staff. This suggested that the assault on the radio station might already have begun. If the route he followed to KBOW was the one that the truck’s navigation system recommended, the show would be over by the time he arrived there.
    He opened the driver’s door, swung out of the truck—and stepped from Russell Street onto the radio-station parking lot.

chapter 3
    Mr. Lyss drove around going nowhere in the snow while he tried to think what to do next. Nummy O’Bannon rode with him, going to the same nowhere, because Nummy didn’t drive but he was good at riding.
    Nummy felt kind of bad about riding in this car because Mr. Lyss stole it, and stealing was never good. Mr. Lyss said the keys were in the ignition, so the owner wanted anyone to use it who might need it. But they had hardly gone a mile before Nummy realized that was a lie.
    “Grandmama she used to say, if you can’t buy what somebody else has or either make it for your own self, then you shouldn’t keep on always wanting it. That kind of wanting is called envy, and envy can make you into a thief faster than butter melts in a hot skillet.”
    “Well, excuse me for being too damn stupid to build us a car from scratch,” Mr. Lyss said.
    “I didn’t say you was stupid. I don’t call nobody names. That’s not nice. I been called enough myself.”
    “I like calling people names,” Mr. Lyss said. “I get a thrill out of it. I
delight
in calling people names. I been known to make little children cry, the names I call them. Nobody’s going to tell me I can’t do something that gives me so much innocent pleasure.”
    Mr. Lyss wasn’t as scary as he looked earlier in the day. His short-chopped gray hair still stood out every which way, like it was shocked by all the mean thoughts in his head. His face was squinched as if he just bit hard into a lemon, his eyes were as dangerous-blue as gas flames, shreds of dry skin curled on his cracked lips, and his teeth were gray. He seemed like he could get along fine without food or water, just so he had his anger to feed on. But some of the scary had gone out of him.