As it turned out, something presented itself pretty quickly—in the middle of the night (they’d opted to stay at the homes one more night in the off chance Ank might show), in the form of a battered school bus, which wheezed to a halt in front of the houses just after midnight and belched a cloud of smoke before dying without much ceremony. Nor did the resulting standoff last more than a few scant minutes, for the driver of the bus and Williams hit it off almost immediately, and before anyone knew it there was a line of kids filing from the bus—7 in all—and Williams was introducing Sheila to a man named Sammy, who had inherited the children when the Flashback hit a town called Pine Stump Junction and had been driving them north ever since.
“Trying to, anyway,” said Sammy, and added, “The d
