By the light of the moon

and burned and drowned and blew away human civilization and
most of the animal kingdom, as though all life were pestilence.
    When they reached the town of Safford, about forty minutes after
they exited the interstate, Shepherd said, 'Fries not flies, fries
not flies, fries not flies....'
    Maybe it was time to stop and devise a plan of action, or maybe
they had not yet analyzed their situation to a degree that allowed
for planning, but in either case, Dylan and Shep were in want of
the dinner they had missed. And Jilly expressed the need for a
drink.
    'First we need new license plates,' Dylan said. 'When they trace
that Cadillac to you, they'll go unit to unit in the motel, looking
for you. When they find you've lit out and that Shep and I didn't
stay the night we'd paid for, they might link us.'
    'No might about it. They will,' she said.
    'The motel records have the make, model, license-plate number.
At least we can change the plate number and not be so easily
made.'
    On a quiet residential street, Dylan parked, took screwdrivers
and pliers from the Expedition tool kit, and went looking for
Arizona plates. He found an easily detached pair on a pickup in the
driveway of a weather-silvered cedar ranch house with a dead front
lawn.
    Throughout the theft, his heart pounded. The guilt he felt was
out of proportion to such a minor crime, but his face burned with
shame at the prospect of being caught in the act.
    After he had purloined the plates, he drove around town until he
found a school. The parking lot was deserted at this hour. In those
shadows, he replaced his California plates with the Arizona
pair.
    'With luck,' he said as he got behind the wheel once more, 'the
owner of that pickup won't notice the plates missing until
tomorrow.'
    'I hate trusting in luck,' Jilly said. 'I've never had
much.'
    'Fries not flies,' Shepherd reminded them.
    A few minutes later, when Dylan parked in front of a restaurant
adjacent to a motel, he said, 'Let me see the pin. Your toad
button.'
    She unpinned the smiling amphibian from her blouse but withheld
it. 'What do you want it for?'
    'Don't worry. It's not going to set me off like the other one
did. That's over. That business is finished.'
    'Yeah, but what if?' she worried.
    He handed the car keys to her.
    Reluctantly, she exchanged the pin for the keys.
    Thumb on the toad face, forefinger against the back of the pin,
Dylan felt a quiver of psychic spoor, the impression of more than
one individual, perhaps Grandma Marjorie overlaid by Jillian
Jackson, but neither invoked in him the compulsion to
hurry-move-find-do that had harried him to the house on Eucalyptus
Avenue.
    Dropping the button in the little trash basket in the console,
he said, 'Nothing. Or next to nothing. It wasn't the pin itself
that set me off. It was... Marjorie's impending death that somehow
I sensed on the first pin. Does that make sense?'
    'Only here in Nutburg, USA, where we seem to live now.'
    'Let's get you that drink,' he said.
    'Two.'
    Crossing the parking lot to the front door of the restaurant,
Shep walked between them. He carried Great Expectations with
the little battery-powered light attached, reading intently as he
walked.
    Dylan had considered taking the book away from him, but Shepherd
had been through a lot this evening. His routines had been
disrupted, which usually filled him with anxiety. Worse, he had
endured more excitement in a couple hours than he had experienced
in the previous ten years, and Shepherd O'Conner usually had no
ability to cope with excitement.
    Being directly addressed by too many strangers at an art show
could tax his tolerance for conversational stimulation even though
he never replied to any of them. Too much lightning in a
thunderstorm or too much thunder, or too much roaring rain, for
that matter, could fill his capacity for commotion to overflowing,
whereupon he would succumb to a panic attack.
    Indeed, that Shep had not panicked at the motel, that he had not
curled up like a defensive pill bug and had not shaken with spasms
of apprehension when he'd seen the burning Coupe DeVille, that he
hadn't squealed and pulled his hair at some point during Dylan's
reckless drive to Marjorie's house – these were great wonders
if not miracles of self-control compared to his customary behavior
when confronted by the more mundane agitations of daily life.
    Right now, Great Expectations was his life raft in an
evening swamped by turmoil. Clinging to the book, he was able to
convince