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Tony tried to dismiss his uneasiness and to appeal again to his common sense. Certainly, there can not be such a poster, as well as there can not be such a Broadway and such a business area of Manhattan... But since they do exist, and since a bus does go here–probably, after all it is more reasonable to wait for the bus and ask the driver about the route...

If only this bus would not be even worse than that school bus.

He stepped under the bus stop roof where the darkness was even more dense, and shivered in fright. It seemed to him that in a corner someone was squatting–someone thickset and twisted, with broad shoulders... and with no head.

In the following instant Tony, who already felt arrows of icy horror piercing his stomach, understood that he was looking at a wheelchair. A simple one, without a motor. Empty.

Well, a wheelchair abandoned at a bus stop is probably not the most usual object... but also not the most frightening, is it? There could be plenty of reasons why it had been left here... how
ever, none of them came to Tony's mind. Anyway, he did not believe that a miracle of healing had happened here. Anywhere, but not here.

He moved closer to the wheelchair. In the darkness he could discern only its black silhouette, and hardly even that. Tony extended a hand and touched the back. His fingers immediately came across some slits... long vertical cuts. The wheelchair's back was not simply cut–it was slashed to pieces. And.. the torn matter was sticky.

Tony hastily jerked his hand back. His fingers came unstuck with an unpleasant sound, as if the mutilated wheelchair did not want to release them. He reflexively tried to wipe them against the seat... But there it was even worse.

A whole pool, yes.

Cold, thickening, but still not dried up completely.

Tony looked around in panic–and his eyes again found the billboard.

The faces had changed again.

The girl's face now expressed a spitefully malicious tri
umph. The triumph of a very bad, very spoiled child who for a very long time, probably weeks and months, had thought over and prepared a delightfully vile dirty trick–and who had succeeded with it at last. And the old woman... on her face an expression of incomparable horror stiffened. A horror from which even young and healthy people lose control over their intestines and bladder–and old people usually just do not survive such horror. Actually, Tony was not sure at all that he was looking at a picture of a living person, instead of a posthumous grimace disfigured by an agony.

And at this moment he felt almost the same horror. Horror at the sight of faces on paper, which live–and die...

But from the depth of his consciousnesses came a saving thought–"What if it was not paper at all? Modern technologies, a superflat display–OLED or electronic ink... But no"–he pushed his face up to the billboard–"It's not any kind of display, it's the most ordinary poster..."

"Rotten hell!" he thought. What an idiot he is! He was simply looking at the other side of the billboard from within the bus stop! Obviously, different posters were placed on different sides!

Yes, of course. Everything has a reasonable explanation. And we will ignore questions about who needs
such
advertising–either one, or another variant of it...

And now go and look at other side of the billboard.

"What for?" Tony objected to himself. He knew, yes, knew already that it was the same picture which he had seen approaching the stop. Because anything else is simply impossible. So, there is no need, absolutely no need to look there. Only he will not wait for the bus at this stop. (Tony once again looked askance at the wheelchair.) No, he will not.

He wiped his hand against a glass wall. Despite the dark
ness, long traces of bloodstained fingers appeared quite distinctly. And now he noticed that they were not the first on this wall. And it was unlikely that all his predecessors simply wiped soiled hands. Some, seemingly, limply fell with bloody palms against the bus stop wall, and some vainly tried to catch hold of smooth glass when they were dragged...

"Perhaps, it is just ordinary paint," Tony told himself. "Local guys having fun..." Nevertheless, he quickly walked farther along the street without looking back. The bus still could come from ahead–if indeed there was one-way traffic and if the M13 bus operated at night...

"That's the wrong question," a malicious internal voice noted. "Certainly it operates at night. The question is whether this bus operates in the daytime..."

Ahead in the gloom two shining eyes appeared. Yellow. Round. Unblinking.

"Headlights," Tony told himself. "This must be the bus. But it stops only at bus stops."

But one could not say that Logan regretted it. To tell the truth, with each second he desired even less to meet this bus, whether it intended to stop or not. Partly because again he did not hear any engine noise. And also because he could not even dis
cern a silhouette. The headlights–if they were headlights–were approaching absolutely silently.

Tony understood that if he turned back and ran, this thing would overtake him somewhere right near the stop. But ahead one more crossroads loomed. If he managed to get there first, he would have a chance to turn...

But he still did not run. He yet remained too sane a person to run away from a bus. He just quickened his pace. Even so, the headlights neared not as quickly as could be expected of a bus. But also not so slowly as he would like.

As he walked closer, he felt he wouldn't be in time to reach the crossroads.

"What nonsense," he told himself, "this just a bus, or, well, maybe, some other vehicle... And even if there are any nasty guys inside, they hardly have any business with me..." But at the same time, another voice in his brain named an absolutely different reason not to run: he should not show that
thing
that he is afraid.

Now he discerned a vague silhouette in the darkness and fog. It really seemed to be the bus. Without any light, except the headlights–without even a route indicator in front. And still ap
proaching completely silently, without even a garbage rustle under its wheels.

Only several yards remained to the crossroads. And only a few more–to the bus. Tony broke down and ran.

They reached the crossroads simultaneously. Logan jerkily darted round the corner, quickly moving to the left. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the long dark frame (unlike usual New York buses, this one obviously was not white), square holes of black windows, dimly glowing symbols "M13" on one side, and lower–an inscription along the side: "ARE YOU FREE FROM SIN?" The bus was so close that Tony felt a wave of warm air coming from it. For a moment Logan was certain that the irreparable had happened, he had given himself away, and now this thing would turn and pick up his trail...

No. It just passed by. Of course, it is simply a bus follow
ing its route, and it is silly to addle his brain with any nonsense... Curiously enough, the stern inscription on the side of the bus convinced him more than anything else: it was simply an advertising of some religious organization. Tony had seen it several times in the daylight, in a normal city. And, unlike other posters in this weird night, it looked the same then as now.

But had he just imagined it or had he really seen at the last moment vertical pupils inside the headlights? Pupils which turned in his direction?

And that warm wave that had poured over him... in it there was no smell of gasoline and oil which could be expected from a working machine. It resembled much more the hot stinking breath from the chops of a big animal. And more likely a scavenger than a predator.

Tony ran for about hundred yards, then slowed to a walk, panting and telling himself that there were no grounds for panic. Everything has an explanation, even in this crazy place. Perhaps, after sunrise, he'll even laugh at his fears. (The thought that he would have to stay here until morning did not pain him as much as earlier–not because Tony began to like this place any better, but because he had started to get used to the inevitability... or to that which more and more seemed inevitable.) He darted a glance along the street stretching into fog–as empty and dark as as previ
ously, then listened–it was absolutely silent. However, this silence was not calming. It seemed deliberate, unnatural–he realized that he was not hearing even his own footsteps, as if fog, like cotton wool, absorbed sounds. Tony stopped and forcefully stamped his right foot, wishing to overcome this oppressive silence. Old asphalt under his foot cracked, crumbling to pieces, and Tony fell knee deep in the wide open hole.

"Shit!" he muttered, having fallen to his left knee and try
ing to pull out his right leg. This, however, was not so easy. Apparently, underground water approaching close to the surface had affected the street from below, and his leg plunged into a dense viscous dirt, dirt which, without asphalt above, would be a real bog... Logan, still feeling more rage and vexation than fear (now his trousers were ruined for sure!), pulled his leg harder, then, without having succeeded, rested both hands against the asphalt–and felt it continue to break and crumble under his palms, like thin ice on a swamp surface...

"Hooey!" Tony thought. "I can't sink in the middle of a New York street!"

But he felt the real horror only in the following instant when he realized that his leg had not simply got stuck in a cold dense bog–but was being
pulled
downwards. He felt something blunt and strong (fingers? tentacles? jaws?) close on his ankle and drag it deeper...

His leg was already sunk to the groin. "Help," Tony des
perately shouted, though several seconds ago the notion of calling for aid in
this
area would have seemed a bad idea to him. Even now, having heard the hoarse sound of his own voice, he looked around with more fear than hope.

And saw in the fog two burning eyes–headlights. Ap
proaching.

"Bus M13," Logan thought. "It's followed me. Or I've just called it and now it'll come for my soul..." Tony realized, though too late, that, while running away, he had again jumped out from the sidewalk to the middle of the street. And now this damned bus does not need to do anything supernatural, it will simply squash the helpless victim in a trap...

Tony lay down on the street, seizing the unbroken portion of asphalt, and furiously heaved his body in an attempt to free his right leg. It looked as is he might even win back some inches, but the headlights behind him were inexorably closing. There was no engine noise so far, but the crunch and rustle under its wheels became clearer and clearer. One more jerk–horror on the verge of madness gave extra force to Logan–and he succeeded in freeing his leg almost to the knee. At that moment, right behind him, something crunched with an especially vile sound–probably, the bus had crushed a dead bird–and Tony understood that he wouldn't be in time. He screwed up his eyes, expecting the blow...

But no blow followed. Wheels rustled to the right of him and stopped. Logan opened his eyes without believing that he was still alive.

The vehicle stood opposite him and it was not the M13 bus. It was much smaller white truck. With improbable relief, Logan recognized a USPS truck, with a blue eagle head and the motto on the side.

Tony did not ask why a postal truck was driving at night. Express delivery–what could be easier and more commonplace? Everything has a reasonable explanation and that thing holding his ankle is simply heavy dirt. The driver of the truck will now help him to get out and will explain how to reach normal trans
portation. Maybe the driver will even agree to give him a lift, though this is against the rules... And all this idiotic phantasmagoria, at last, will end!

The driver's door lock clicked and a foot in a laced boot stepped onto the roadway. And at the same moment Tony noticed that the motto on the side of the truck differed a little from what he had gotten used to.

Instead of "We deliver for you," was written "We deliver you." To be more exact, "We de·liver you," with either a dot or a tiny hyphen separating "de" from "liver."

We rip out your liver.

And the eagle's head looked too predatory and spiteful. Logan at once remembered the myth about the eagle tormenting the liver of Prometheus.

The door opened more widely with an unpleasant scratch. The driver, a bulky bald Negro, got out of the truck. And turned his face to Logan.

Or what he had instead of a face.

Seeing it, Tony screamed... or rather, squealed, without controlling himself at all. A high cheekboned white skull looked at him. At the same time, there was black flesh on each side of the head and Tony distinguished the silhouette of chubby cheeks and a fat neck. But between them there was only the deathly white
ness of bone, long ago and completely cleared of flesh either by knife or by decomposition. However this skull had a nose–bone white too, but a nose, instead of a triangular hole appropriate to a decayed corpse.

"What's wrong with you?" the dreadful driver inquired in a sepulchral, but almost friendly voice. And Tony, as frightened as he was, noticed that on this terrible whitish mask there was not only a nose, but also lips moving to shape words. Nevertheless he could not squeeze out of his throat anything articulate and only spasmodically twitched, trying to free his leg.