Kineo Town Manager: 'I Don't Know What They 23 page

Still, with Mr Gray gone, he might be able to get out of the office. Not to regain control; if he tried that, the redblack cloud would report him and Mr Gray would return from his scouting expedition at once. Jonesy would almost certainly be seized before he could retreat to the safety of the Tracker Brothers office with its bulletin board and its dusty floor and its one dirt—crusted window on the world . . . only there were four crescent—shaped clean patches in that dirt, weren't there? Patches where four boys had once leaned their foreheads, hoping to see the picture that was pinned to the bulletin board now: Tina Jean Schlossinger with her skirt up.

No, seizing control was far beyond his ability and he'd better accept that, bitter as it was.

But he might be able to get to his files.

Was there any reason to risk it? Any advantage? There might be, if he knew what Mr Gray wanted. Beyond a ride, that was. And speaking of that, a ride where?

The answer was unexpected because it came in Duddits's voice: Ow. Ih-her Ay onna oh ow.

Mr Gray wanna go south.

Jonesy stepped back from his dirty window on the world. There wasn't much to be seen out there just now, anyway; snow and dark and shadowy trees. This morning's snow had been the appetizer; here was the main course.

Mr Gray wanna go south.

How far? And why? What was the big picture?

On these subjects Duddits was silent.

Jonesy turned and was surprised to see that the route-map and the picture of the girl were no longer on the bulletin board. Where they had been were four color snapshots of four boys. Each had the same background, Derryjunior High, and the same caption beneath: SCHOOL DAYS, 1978. Jonesy himself on the far left, face split in a trusting ear-to-ear grin that now broke his heart. Beav next to him, the Beav's grin revealing the missing tooth in front, victim of a skating fall, which had been replaced by a false one a year or so later . . . before high school, anyway. Pete, with his broad, olive-tinted face and his shame­fully short hair, mandated by his father, who said he hadn't fought in Korea so his kid could look like a hippie. And Henry on the end, Henry in his thick glasses that made Jonesy think of Danny Dunn, Boy Detective, star of the mysteries Jonesy had read as a kid.

Beaver, Pete, Henry. How he had loved them, and how unfairly sudden the severing of their long friendship had been. No, it wasn't a bit fair—

All at once the picture of Beaver Clarendon came alive, scaring the hell out of Jonesy. Beav's eyes widened and he spoke in a low voice. 'His head was off, remember? It was laying in the ditch and his eyes were full of mud. What a fuckarow! I mean, Jesus-Christ-bananas.'

Oh my God, Jonesy thought, as it came back to him — the one thing about that first hunting trip to Hole in the Wall that he had forgotten . . . or suppressed. Had all of them suppressed it? Maybe so. Probably so. Because over the years since, they had talked about everything in their childhoods, all those shared memories . . . except that one.

His head was qff. . . his eyes were full of mud.

Something had happened to them then, something that had to do with what was happening to him now.

If only I knew what it was, Jonesy thought. If I only knew.

Andy Janas had lost the other three trucks in his little squadron ­had gotten ahead of them because they weren't used to driving in shit like this and he was. He had grown up in northern Minnesota, and you better believe he was used to it. He was by himself in one of Chevrolet's finer Army vehicles, a modified four-wheel-drive pickup, and he had the four-wheel drive engaged tonight. His father hadn't raised any fools.

Still, the turnpike was mostly clear; a couple of Army plows had gone by an hour or so ago (he would be catching up to them soon, he guessed, and when he did he would cut speed and fall in behind them like a good boy), and no more than two or three inches had piled up on the concrete since then. The real problem was the wind, which lifted the fluff and turned the road into a ghost. You had the reflectors to guide you, though. Keeping the reflectors in sight was the trick those other gomers didn't understand . . . or maybe with the convoy trucks and the Humvees, the headlights were set too high to pick the reflectors up properly. And when the wind really gusted, even the reflectors disappeared; the goddam world went totally white and you had to take your foot off the go-pedal until the air stilled again and just try to stay on course in the meantime. He would be all right, and if anything happened, he was in radio contact and more plows would be coming up behind, keeping the southbound barrel of the turnpike open all the way from Presque Isle to Millinocket.

In the back of his truck were two triple-wrapped packages. In one were the bodies of two deer which had been killed by the Ripley. In the other — this Janas found moderately to seriously gruesome ­was the body of a grayboy turning slowly to a kind of reddish-orange soup. Both were bound for the docs at Blue Base, which had been set up at a place called . . .

Janas looked up at the driver's visor. There, held in place by a rubber band, was a piece of notepaper and a ballpoint pen. Scrawled on the paper was GOSSELIN'S STO, TAKE EX 16, TURN L.

He'd be there in an hour. Maybe less. The docs would undoubt­edly tell him they had all the animal samples they needed and the deer-carcasses would be burned, but they might want the grayboy, if the little fella hadn't turned entirely to mush. The cold might retard that process a little bit, but whether it did or didn't was really none of Andy Janas's nevermind. His concern was to get there, turn over his samples, and then await debriefing from whoever was in charge of asking questions about the q—zone's northern — and most quiet ­perimeter. While he was awaiting, he would grab some hot coffee and a great big plate of scrambled eggs. If the right someone was around, he might even be able to promote something to spike his coffee with. That would be good. Get a little buzz going, then just hunker down and

pull over

Janas frowned, shook his head, scratched his ear as if something — a flea, perhaps — had bitten him there. The goddam wind gusted hard enough to shake the truck. The turnpike disappeared and so did the reflectors. He was encased in total white again and he had no doubt that this scared the everloving bejabbers out of the other guys, but not him, he was Mr Minnesota-Twins-Taking-Care-of-Business, just puff the old foot off the gas (and never rm'nd the brake, when you were driving in a snowstorm the brake was the best way he knew to turn a good n'de bad), just coast and wait for

pull over

'Huh?' He looked at the radio, but there was nothing there, just static and dim background chatter.

pull over

'Ow!' Janas cried, and grabbed at his head, which suddenly hurt like a motherfucker. The olive-green pickup swerved, skidded, then came back under control as his hands automatically steered into the skid. His foot was still off the gas and the Chevy's speedometer needle unwound rapidly.

The plows had made a narrow path down the center of the two southbound lanes. Now Janas steered into the thicker snow to the right of this path, the truck's wheels spurning up a haze of snow which the wind quickly whipped away. The guardrail reflectors were very bright, glaring in the dark like cat's eyes.

Pull over here

Janas screamed with pain. From a great distance he heard himself shouting, 'Okay, okay, I am! just stop it! Quit yanking me!' Through watering eyes he saw a dark form rear up on the far side of the guardrails not fifty feet ahead. As the headlights struck the shape fully, he saw it was a man wearing a parka.

Andy Janas's hands no longer felt like his own. They felt like gloves with someone else's hands inside them. This was an odd and entirely unpleasant sensation. They turned the steering wheel farther to the left entirely without his help, and the pickup truck coasted to a stop in front of the man in the parka.

This was his chance, with Mr Gray's attention entirely diverted. Jonesy sensed that if he thought about it he would lose his courage, so he didn't think. He simply acted, knocking back the bolt on the office door with the heel of his hand and yanking the door open.

He had never been inside Tracker Brothers as a kid (and it had been gone since the big storm of '85), but he was pretty sure that it had never looked like what he saw now. Outside the dingy office was a room so vast Jonesy couldn't see the end of it. Overhead were endless acres of fluorescent bars. Beneath them, stacked inenormous columns, were millions of cardboard boxes.

No, Jonesy thought. Not millions. Trillions.

Yes, probably trillions was closer. Thousands of narrow aisles ran between them. He was standing at one edge of eternity's own warehouse, and the idea of finding anything in it was ludicrous. If he ventured away from the door into his office hideout, he would become lost in no time. Mr Gray wouldn't need to bother with him; Jonesy would wander until he died, lost in a mind-boggling wasteland of stored boxes.

That's not true. I could no more get lost in there than I could in my own bedroom. Nor will I have to hunt for what I want. 7his is my place. Welcome to your own head, big boy.

The concept was so huge that it made him feel weak . . . only he couldn't afford to be weak right now, or to hesitate. Mr Gray, everyone's favorite invader from the Great Beyond, wouldn't be occupied with the truck driver for long, If Jonesy meant to move some of these files to safety, he had to do itright now. The question was, which ones?

Duddits, his mind whispered. This has something to do with Duddits. You know it does. He's been o your mind a lot lately. The other guys were thinking of him, too. Duddits is what held you and Henry and Pete and Beaver together — you've always known that, but now you know something else, as well. Don't you?

Yes. He knew that his accident in March had been caused by thinking he'd seen Duddits once again being teased by Richie Grenadeau and his friends. Only 'teased' was a ludicrously inapt word for what had been going on behind Tracker Brothers that day, wasn't it? Tortured was the word. And when he'd seen that torture being reenacted, he had plunged into the street without looking, and—

His head was off, Beaver suddenly said from the storeroom's overhead speakers, his voice so loud and sudden it made Jonesy cringe. It was laying in the ditch and his eyes were full of mud, A d sooner or later every murderer pays the price. What a fuckarow!

Richie's head. Richie Grenadeau's head. And Jonesy had no time for this. He was a trespasser in his own head now, and he'd do well to move quickly.

When he had first looked out at this enormous storeroom, all the boxes had been plain and unmarked. Now he saw that those at the head of the row closest to him were labeled in black grease-pencil: DUDDITS. Was that surprising? Fortuitous? Not at all. They were his memories, after all, stored flat and neatly folded in each of the trillions of boxes, and when it came to memory, the healthy mind was able to access them pretty much at will.

Need something to move them with, Jonesy thought, and when he looked around he was not exactly amazed to see a bright red hand-dolly. This was a magic place, a make-it-up-as-you-go-along place, and the most marvelous thing about it, Jonesy supposed, was that everybody had one.

Moving quickly, he stacked some of the boxes marked DUDDITS on the dolly and ran them into the Tracker Brothers office at a trot. He dumped them by tipping the dolly forward, spilling them across the floor. Untidy, but he could worry about the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval later.

He ran back out, feeling for Mr Gray, but Mr Gray was still with the truck-driver . . . Janas, his name was. There was the cloud, but the cloud didn't sense him. It was as dumb as . . . well, as dumb as fungus.

Jonesy got the rest of the DUDDITS boxes, and saw that the next stack had also acquired scribbled grease-pencil labels. These latter said DERRY,and there were too many to take. The question was whether or not he needed to take any of them.

He pondered this as he pushed the second load of memory-­boxes into the office. Of course the Derry boxes would be stacked near the Duddits boxes; memory was both the act and the art of association. The question remained whether or not his Derry memories mattered. How was he supposed to know that when he didn't know what Mr Gray wanted?

But he did know.

Mr Gray wanna go south.

Derry was south.

Jonesy sprinted back into the memory storehouse, pushing the dolly ahead of him. He'd take as many of the boxes marked DERRY as he could, and hope they were the right ones. He would also hope that he sensed Mr Gray's return in time. Because if he was caught out here, he would be swatted like a fly.

Janas watched, horrified, as his left hand reached out and opened the driver's-side door of his truck, letting in the cold, the snow, and the relentless wind. 'Don't hurt me anymore, mister, please don't, you can have a ride if you want a ride, just don't hurt me anymore, my head—'

Something suddenly rushed through Andy Janas's mind. It was like a whirlwind with eyes. He felt it prying into his current orders, his expected arrival time at Blue Base . . . and what he knew of Derry, which was nothing. His orders had taken him through Bangor, he'd never been to Derry in his life.

He felt the whirlwind pull back and had one moment of delirious relief — I don't have what it needs, it's going to let me go ­— and then understood that the thing in his mind had no intention of letting him go. It needed the truck, for one thing. It needed to shut his mouth, for another.

Janas put up a brief but bitterly energetic struggle. It was this unexpected resistance that allowed Jonesy time to remove at least one stack of the boxes marked DERRY. Then Mr Gray once more resumed his place at Janas's motor controls.

Janas saw his hand shoot out and up to the driver's-side visor. His hand gripped the ballpoint pen and yanked it free, snapping the rubber band which held it.

No! Janas shouted, but it was too late. He caught a shiny zipping glitter as his hand, which was gripping the ballpoint like a dagger, plunged the pen into his staring eye. There was a popping sound and he jittered back and forth behind the wheel like a badly managed puppet, his fist digging the pen in deeper and deeper, up to the halfway mark, then to the three-quarter mark, his split eyeball now running down the side of his face like a freakish tear. The tip struck something that felt like thin gristle, bound up for a moment, then passed through into the meat of his brain.

You bastard, he thought, what are you, you bas—

There was a final brilliant flash of light inside his head and then everything went dark. Janas slumped forward over the wheel. The pickup's horn began to blow.

Mr Gray hadn't gotten much from Janas — mostly that unexpected struggle for control at the end — but one thing which came through clearly was that Janas wasn't on his own. The transport column of which he had been a part had strung out because of the storm, but they were all headed to the same place, which Janas had identified in his mind as both Blue Base and Gosselin's. There was a man there that Janas had been afraid of, the man in charge, but Mr Gray could not have cared less about Creepy Kurtz/the boss/Crazy Abe. Nor did he have to care, since he had no intention of going anywhere near Gosselin's store. This place was different and this species, although only semi-sentient, composed mostly of emotions, was different, too. They fought. Mr Gray had no idea why, but they did.

Best to finish it quickly. And to that end, he had discovered an excellent delivery system.

Using Jonesy's hands, Mr Gray pulled Janas from behind the wheel and carried him to the guardrails. He threw the body over the side, not bothering to watch as it tumbled down the slope to the frozen streambed. He went back to the truck, looked fixedly at the two plastic-wrapped bundles in the back, and nodded. The animal corpses were good for nothing. The other, though . . . that would be useful. It was rich with what he needed.

He looked up suddenly, Jonesy's eyes widening in the blowing snow. The owner of this body was out of its hiding place. Vulnerable. Good, because that consciousness was starting to annoy him, a constant muttering (sometimes rising to a panicky squeal) on the lower level of his thought-process.

Mr Gray paused a moment longer, trying to make his mind blank, not wanting Jonesy to have the slightest warning . . . and then he pounced.

He didn't know what he had expected, but not this. Not this dazzling white light.

Jonesy was nearly caught out. Would have been caught out if not for the fluorescents with which he had lit his mental storeroom. This place might not actually exist, but it was real enough to him, and that made it real enough to Mr Gray when Mr Gray arrived.

Jonesy, who was pushing the dolly filled with boxes marked DERRY, saw Mr Gray appear like magic at the head of a corridor of high-stacked cartons. It was the rudimentary humanoid that had been standing behind him at Hole in the Wall, the thing he had visited in the hospital. The dull black eyes were finally alive, hungry. It had crept up, caught him outside his office refuge, and it meant to have him.

But then its bulge of a head recoiled, and before its three­-fingered hand shielded its eyes (it had no lids, not even any lashes), Jonesy saw an expression on its gray sketch of a face that had to be bewilderment. Maybe even pain. It had been out there, in the snowy dark, disposing of the driver's body. It had come in here unprepared for the discount-mart glare. He saw something else, too: The invader had borrowed its expression of surprise from the host. For a moment, Mr Gray was a horrible caricature of Jonesy himself.

Its surprise gave Jonesy just enough time. Pushing the dolly ahead of him almost without realizing it and feeling like the impris­oned princess in some fucked—up fairy—tale, he ran into the office. He sensed rather than saw Mr Gray reaching out for him with his three-fingered hands (the gray skin was raw-looking, like very old uncooked meat), and slammed the office door just ahead of their clutch. He bumped the dolly with his bad hip as he spun around — he accepted that he was inside his own head, but all of this was nevertheless completely real — and just managed to run the bolt before Mr Gray could turn the knob and force his way in. Jonesy engaged the thumb-lock in the center of the doorknob for good measure. Had the thumb-lock been there before, or had he added it? He couldn't remember.

Jonesy stepped back, sweating, and this time ran his butt into the handle of the dolly. In front of him, the doorknob turned back and forth, back and forth. Mr Gray was out there, in charge of the rest of his mind — and his body, as well — but he couldn't get in here. Couldn't force the door, didn't have the heft to break it down, didn't have the wit to pick the lock.

Why? How could that be?

'Duddits,' he whispered. 'No bounce, no play.'

The doorknob rattled. 'Let me in!' Mr Gray snarled, and to Jonesy he didn't sound like an emissary from another galaxy but like anyone who has been denied what he wants and is pissed off about it. Was that because he was interpreting Mr Gray's behavior in terms which he, Jonesy, understood? Humanizing the alien? Translating him?

'Let . . . me . . . IN!'

Jonesy responded without thinking: 'Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.' And thought: To which you say, 'Then I'll huff. . . and I'll PUFF . . . and I'll BLO W your house in!'

But Mr Gray only rattled the knob harder than ever. He was not used to being balked in this manner (or in any manner, Jonesy guessed) and was very pissed. Janas's momentary resistance had startled him, but this was resistance on a whole other level.

'Where are you?' Mr Gray called angrily. 'How can you be in there? Come out!'

Jonesy didn't reply, only stood among the tumbled boxes, listening. He was almost positive Mr Gray couldn't get in, but it would be just as well not to provoke him.

And after a little more knob-rattling, he sensed Mr Gray leaving him.

Jonesy went to the window, stepping over the tumbled boxes marked DUDDITS and DERRY to get there, and stared out into the snowy night.

Mr Gray climbed Jonesy's body back behind the wheel of the truck, slammed the door, and pushed the accelerator. The truck bolted forward, then lost purchase. All four wheels spun, and the truck skidded into the guardrails with a jarring bang.

'Fuck!' Mr Gray cried, accessing Jonesy's profanity almost with­out being aware of it. 'Jesus-Christ-bananas! Kiss my bender! Doodly­fuck! Bite my bag!'

Then he stopped and accessed Jonesy's driving skills again. Jonesy had some information on driving in weather like this, but nowhere near as much as Janas had possessed. Janas was gone, however, his files erased. What Jonesy knew would have to do. The important thing was to get beyond what Janas had thought of as the 'q-zone'. Beyond the q-zone he would be safe. Janas had been clear about that.

Jonesy's foot pressed down on the gas pedal again, much more gently this time. The truck started to move. Jonesy's hands steered the Chevrolet back into the fading path left by the plow.

Under the dash, the radio crackled to life. 'Tubby One, this is Tubby Four. I got a rig off the road and turned over on the median. Do you copy?'

Mr Gray consulted the files. What Jonesy knew about military communication was skimpy, mostly gleaned from books and some­thing called the movies, but it might do. He took the mike, felt for the button Jonesy seemed to think would be on the side, found it, pushed it. 'I copy,' he said. Would Tubby Four be able to tell that Tubby One was no longer Andy Janas? Based on Jonesy's files, Mr Gray doubted it.

'A bunch of us are going to get him up, see if we can get him back on the road. He's got the goddam food, you copy?'

Mr Gray pushed the button. 'Got the goddam food, copy.'

A longer pause, long enough for him to wonder if he'd said something wrong, stepped in some kind of a trap, and then the radio said: 'We'll have to wait for the next bunch of plows, I guess. You might as well keep rolling, over?' Tubby Four sounded disgusted. Jonesy's files suggested that might be because Janas, with his superior driving skills, had gotten too far ahead to help. All this was good. He would've kept moving in any case, but it was good to have Tubby Four's official sanction, if that's what it was.

He checked Jonesy's files (which he now saw as Jonesy saw them — boxes in a vast room) and said, 'Copy. Tubby One, over and out.' And, as an afterthought: 'Have a nice night.'

The white stuff was horrible. Treacherous. Nonetheless, Mr Gray risked driving a little faster. As long as he was in the area controlled by Creepy Kurtz's armed force, he might be vulnerable. Once out of the net, however, he would be able to complete his business very quickly.

What he needed had to do with a place called Derry, and when Mr Gray went into the big storeroom again, he discovered an amazing thing: his unwilling host had either known that or sensed it, because it was the Derry files Jonesy had been moving when Mr Gray had returned and almost caught him.

Mr Gray searched the boxes that were left with sudden anxiety, and then relaxed.

What he needed was still here.

Lying on its side near the box which contained the most important information was another box, very small and very dusty. Written on the side in black pencil was the word DUDDITS. If there were other Duddits-boxes, they had been removed. Only this one had been overlooked.

More out of curiosity than anything else (his curiosity also borrowed from Jonesy's store of emotions), Mr Gray opened it. Inside was a bright yellow container made of plastic. Outlandish figures capered upon it, figures Jonesy's files identified as both cartoons and the Scooby-Doos. On one end was a sticker reading I BELONG TO DUDDITS CAVELL, 19 MAPLE LANE, DERRY, MAINE. IF THE BOY I BELONG TO IS LOST, CALL

This was followed by numbers too faint and illegible to read, probably a communication-code Jonesy no longer remembered. Mr Gray tossed the yellow plastic container, probably meant for carrying food, aside. It could mean nothing . . . although if that was really the case, why had Jonesy risked his existence getting the other DUDDITS-boxes (as well as some of those marked DERRY) to safety?

DUDDITS=CHILDHOOD FRIEND. Mr Gray knew this from his initial encounter with Jonesy in 'the hospital' . . . and if he had known what an annoyance Jonesy would turn out to be, he would have erased his host's consciousness right then. Neither the term CHILDHOOD nor the term FRIEND had any emotional resonance for Mr Gray, but he understood what they meant. What he didn't understand was how Jonesy's childhood friend could have anything to do with what was happening tonight.

One possibility occurred to him: his host had gone mad. Being turned out of his own body had driven him insane, and he'd simply taken the boxes closest to the door of his perplexing stronghold, assigning them in his madness an importance they did not actually have.

'Jonesy,' Mr Gray said, speaking the name with Jonesy's vocal cords. These creatures were mechanical geniuses (of course they would have to be, to survive in such a cold world), but their thought-processes were odd and crippled: rusty mentation sunk in corrosive pools of emotion. Their telepathic abilities were minus; the transient telepathy they were now experiencing thanks to the byrus and the kim ('flashlights', they called them) bewildered and frightened them. It was difficult for Mr Gray to believe they hadn't murdered their entire species yet. Creatures incapable of real thought were maniacs — this was surely beyond argument.

Meanwhile, no answer from the creature in that strange, impreg­nable room.

'Jonesy.'

Nothing. But Jonesy was listening. Mr Gray was sure of it.

'There is no necessity for this suffering, Jonesy. See us for what we are — not invaders but saviors. Buddies.'

Mr Gray considered the various boxes. For a creature that couldn't actually think much, Jonesy had an enormous amount of storage capacity. Question for another day: why would beings who thought so poorly have so much retrieval capability? Did it have to do with their overblown emotional makeup? And the emotions were disturbing. He found Jonesy's emotions very disturbing. Always there. Always on call. And so much of them.

'War. . . famine . . . ethnic cleansing . . . killing for peace . . . massacring the heathen for Jesus . . . homosexual people beaten to death . . . bugs in bottles, the bottles sitting on top of missiles aimed at every city in the world . . . come on, Jonesy, compared to type-four anthrax, what's a little byrus between friends? Jesus-Christ-bananas, you'll all be dead in fifty years, anyway! This is good! Relax and enjoy it!'

'You made that guy stick a pen in his eye.'

Grumpy, but better than nothing. The wind gusted, the pickup skidded, and Mr Gray rode with it, using Jonesy's skills. The visibility was almost nil; he had dropped to twenty miles an hour and might do well to pull over completely for awhile once he cleared Kurtz's net. Meanwhile, he could chat with his host. Mr Gray doubted that he could talk Jonesy out of his room, but chatting at least passed the time.

'I had to, buddy. I needed the truck. I'm the last one.'

'And you never lose.'

'Right,' Mr Gray agreed.

'But you've never had a situation like this, have you? You've never had someone you can't get at.'

Was Jonesy taunting him? Mr Gray felt a ripple of anger. And then he said something Mr Gray had already thought of himself.

'Maybe you should have killed me in the hospital. Or was that only a dream?'

Mr Gray, unsure what a dream was, didn't bother responding. Having this barricaded mutineer in what by now should have been Mr Gray's mind and his alone was increasingly annoying. For one thing, he didn't like thinking of himself as 'Mr Gray' — that was not his concept of himself or the species-mind of which he was a part; he did not even like to think of himself as 'he', for he was both sexes and neither. Yet now he was imprisoned by these concepts, and would be as long as the core being of Jonesy remained unabsorbed. A terrible thought occurred to Mr Gray: what if it was his concepts that had no meaning?

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 599