he promised the kid

If anything went wrong en route, if for the first time chaos failed to serve Corky, he would kill the boy rather than surrender him to anyone. He wouldn’t even use young Manheim as a trade for his own survival. Cowardice had no place in the valiant lives of those who would [583] usher in the collapse of society and raise a new world from the rubble. “Anyone stops me,” he promised the kid, “I’ll blow your brains out—pop, pop, pop—and make you the biggest object of worldwide mourning since Princess Di.” He made the corner of the house. At some distance to the left lay the reflection pond at the center of the turnaround in front of the mansion. He was still traveling on the tributary driveway, which would join the main drive in fifty or sixty yards. Just beyond the reach of the headlights, something so strange occurred that Corky cried out in surprise, and when the twin beams revealed the true nature of the obstacle ahead, terror seized him. He jammed his foot down on the brakes so hard that he put the car into a spin.   Moloch said that he would blow Fric’s brains out, but Fric had more immediate worries because the itching between his shoulders was real this time, not imaginary, and it quickly spread to the back of his neck. He had expected to suffer an attack the moment that he’d been spritzed in the face, but perhaps the drug that Moloch administered had, as a side effect, delayed the asthmatic response. Now here it came, and with a vengeance. Fric began to wheeze. His chest tightened, and he couldn’t get enough breath. He didn’t have his inhaler. As bad, maybe worse: He remained semiparalyzed, unable to claw himself up from a slack-limbed slump into a full sitting position. He had to be more upright to use the muscles of his chest walls and of his neck to squeeze out every trapped breath. Worse still: The feeble effort he made to sit upright instead caused him to slide farther down. In fact he seemed about to slip off the seat. [584] His legs buckled and twisted upon themselves, folding into the knee space in front of the dashboard, and his butt hung off the edge of the seat. From the waist to his neck, he was lying flat on the seat, his head tipped up against the back of it. He felt his airways narrowing.