Chapter 20

Before Hemingford Home’s destruction, Nebraska farmer Tom Tellford, an AA devotee walking his scrubland with his dog Dicky Boy, discovers a tiny cavelet near Goshen Road. Inside, he retrieves a pocketknife engraved “DG,” likely Sheriff Dale Gilbertson’s, and reports it to State Patrol lead Jerry Gaithers.

Investigators crowd the cramped hollow, theorizing fugitives Roy Kinneston and Tara Lynne Speckhoffer hid there with Gilbertson. Tom doubts anyone could fit. Drawn back later, Tom and Dicky Boy feel a powerful undertow as the cave briefly gapes into a glaring void; a dropped nitrile glove vanishes. Days on, the pull returns and impossible tire tracks appear leading from the still-small hole.

Meanwhile, TCPD Officers Greg Cormier and Maynard “Stinger” Stingley run radar outside Taylor City and spot a plate-less, olive-drab Jeep speeding toward Hemingford Home. They give chase into downtown. The Jeep blows a tire at a red light; the redheaded fugitives bail out—Tara with a pistol, Roy with a horn-muzzled rifle.

Roy’s weapon shears apart the TCPD cruiser and decapitates Stingley, then smashes the courthouse and civilians; Tara’s gun hammers pedestrians. Cormier, prone and burned, shoots Roy and wings him; Roy ruptures a gasoline tanker before falling. Cormier hits Tara; a camo-clad civilian unloads an automatic into her, and the gasoline ignites, killing both fugitives and many bystanders. Downtown is devastated with 23 dead and 37 injured.

Later, Gaithers studies bank CCTV showing Tara’s speed-blurred face with “DEAD PEOPLE DON’T CARE” carved into her forehead and an odd rear-deck label—“Binny Ding”—on the Jeep. The origin of the vehicle and the cavelet’s portal-like pull remain unexplained.