TO THOSE LOST IN THE STORM

MAY 31, 1985

AND TO THE CHILDREN

ALL THE CHILDREN

LOVE FROM BILL, BEN, BEV, EDDIE, RICHIE, STAN, MIKE

THE LOSERS' CLUB

Spray-painted across it jagged red letters, also perfectly visible in the truck's headlights, was this further message:

Mr Gray knelt looking at this for nearly five minutes, ignoring the creeping numbness in Jonesy's extremities. (And why would he take care? Jonesy was just your basic rental job, drive it as hard as you want and butt out your cigarettes on the floormat.) He was trying to make sense of it. Storm? Children? Losers? Who or what was Pennywise? Most of all, where was the Standpipe, which Jonesy's memories had insisted was here?

At last he got up, limped back to the truck, got in, and turned up the heater. In the blast of hot air, Jonesy's body began to shake. Soon enough, Mr Gray was back at the locked door of the office, demanding an explanation.

'Why do you sound so angry?' Jonesy asked mildly, but he was smiling. Could Mr Gray sense that? 'Did you expect me to help you? Come on, pal — I don't know the specifics, but I have a pretty good idea what the overall plan is: twenty years from now and the whole planet is one big redheaded ball, right? No more hole in the ozone layer, but no more people, either.'

'Don't you smartass me! Don't you dare!'

Jonesy fought back the temptation to taunt Mr Gray into another tantrum. He didn't believe his unwelcome guest would be capable of huffing down the door between them no matter how angry he became, but what sense was there in putting that idea to the test? And besides, Jonesy was emotionally exhausted, his nerves jumping and his mouth full of a burnt-copper taste.

'How can it not be here?'

Mr Gray brought one hand down on the center of the steering wheel. The horn honked. Lad the border collie raised his head and looked at the man behind the wheel with large, nervous eyes. 'You can't lie to me! I have your memories!'

'Well . . . I did get a few. Remember?'

'Which ones? Tell me.'

'Why should I?' Jonesy asked. 'What'll you do for me?'

Mr Gray fell silent. Jonesy felt him accessing various files. Then, suddenly, smells began to waft into the room from under the door and through the heating and cooling vent. They were his favorite aromas: popcorn, coffee, his mother's fish chowder. His stomach immediately began to roar.

'Of course I can't promise you your mother's chowder,' Mr Gray said. 'But I'll feed you. And you're hungry, aren't you?'

'With you driving my body and pigging out on my emotions, it'd be a wonder if I wasn't,' Jonesy replied.

'There's a place south of here — Dysart's. According to you, it's open twenty-four hours a day, which is a way of saying all the time.

Or are you lying about that, too?'

'I never lied,' Jonesy replied. 'As you said, I can't. You've got the controls, you've got the memory banks, you've got everything but what's in here.'

'Where is there? How can there be a there?'

'I don't know,' Jonesy said truthfully. 'How do I know you'll feed me?'

'Because I have to,' Mr Gray said from his side of the door, and Jonesy realized Mr Gray was also being truthful. If you didn't pour gas into the machine from time to time, the machine stopped running. 'But if you satisfy my curiosity, I'll feed you the things you like. If you don't . . .'

The smells from under the door changed, became the greenly assaultive odor of broccoli and brussels sprouts.

'All right,' Jonesy said. 'I'll tell you what I can, and you feed me pancakes and bacon at Dysart's. Breakfast twenty-four hours a day, you know. Deal?'

'Deal. Open the door and we'll shake on it.'

Jonesy was surprised into a smile — it was Mr Gray's first attempt at humor, and really not such a bad one. He glanced into the rearview mirror and saw an identical smile on the mouth which was no longer his. That was a little creepy.

'Maybe we'll skip the handshake part,' he said.

'Tell me.'

'Yes, but a word of warning — break a promise to me, and you'll never get to make another one.'

'I'll keep it in mind.'

The truck sat at the top of Standpipe Hill, rocking slightly on its springs, its headlamps blazing out cylinders of snow-filled light, and Jonesy told Mr Gray what he knew. It was, he thought, the perfect place for a scary story.

The years of 1984 and '85 were bad ones in Derry. In the summer of 1984, three local teenagers had thrown a gay man into the Canal, killing him. In the ten months which followed, half a dozen children had been murdered, apparently by a psychotic who sometimes masqueraded as a clown.

'Who is this John Wayne Gacey?' Mr Gray asked. 'Was he the one who killed the children?'

'No, just someone from the midwest who had a similar modus operandi,' Jonesy said. 'You don't understand many of the cross-­connections my mind makes, do you? Bet there aren't many poets out where you come from.'

Mr Gray made no reply to this. Jonesy doubted if he knew what a poet was. Or cared.

'In any case,' Jonesy said, 'the last bad thing to happen was a kind of freak hurricane. It hit on May thirty-first, 1985. Over sixty people died. The Standpipe blew over. It rolled down that hill and into Kansas Street.' He pointed to the right of the truck, where the land sloped sharply away into the dark.

'Almost three quarters of a million gallons of water ran down Upmile Hill, then into downtown, which more or less collapsed. I was in college by then. The storm happened during my Finals Week. My Dad called and told me about it, but of course I knew — it was national news.'

Jonesy paused, thinking, looking around the office which was no longer bare and dirty but nicely finished (his subconscious had added both a couch that he had at home and an Eames chair he'd seen in the Museum of Modem Art catalogue, lovely but out of his financial reach) and really quite pleasant . . . certainly nicer than the blizzardy world his body's usurper was currently having to deal with.

'Henry was in school, too. Harvard. Pete was bumming around the West Coast, doing his hippie thing. Beaver was trying a junior college downstate. Majoring in hashish and video games, is what he said later.' Only Duddits had been here in Derry when the big storm blew through . . . but Jonesy discovered he didn't want to speak Duddits's name.

Mr Gray said nothing, but Jonesy got a clear sense of his impatience. Mr Gray cared only about the Standpipe. And how Jonesy had fooled him.

'Listen, Mr Gray — if there was any fooling going on, you did it to yourself I got a few of the DERRY boxes, that's all, and brought them in here while you were busy killing that poor soldier.'

'The poor soldiers came in ships from the sky and massacred all of my kind that they could find.'

'Spare me. You guys didn't come here to welcome us into the Galactic Book Circle.'

'Would things have been any different if we had?'

'You can also spare me the hypotheticals,' Jonesy said. 'After what you did to Pete and the Army guy, I could care less about having an intellectual discussion with you.'

'We do what we have to do.'

'That might be, but if you expect me to help you, you're mad.'

The dog was looking at Jonesy with even more unease appar­ently not used to masters who held animated conversations with themselves.

'The Standpipe fell over in 1985 — sixteen years ago — but you stole this memory?'

'Basically, yeah, although I don't think you'd have much luck with that in a court of law, since the memories were mine to begin with.'

'What else have you stolen?'

'That's for me to know and you to think about.'

There was a hard and ill-tempered thump at the door. Jonesy was once more reminded of the story about The Three Little Pigs. Huff and puff, Mr Gray; enjoy the dubious pleasures of rage.

But Mr Gray had apparently left the door.

'Mr Gray? 'Jonesy called. 'Hey, don't go 'way mad, okay?' Jonesy guessed that Mr Gray might be off on another infor­mation search. The Standpipe was gone but Derry was still here; ergo, the town's water had to be coming from somewhere. Did Jonesy know the location of that somewhere?

Jonesy didn't. He had a vague memory of drinking a lot of bottled water after coming back from college for the sum­mer, but that was all. Eventually water had started coming out of their taps again, but what was that to a twenty-one-year-old whose biggest concern had been getting into Mary Shratt's pants? The water came, you drank it. You didn't worry about where it came from as long as it didn't give you the heaves or the squatters.

A sense of frustration from Mr Gray? Or was that just his imagination? Jonesy most sincerely hoped not.

This had been a good one . . . what the four of them, in the days of their misspent youth, would undoubtedly have called 'a fuckin pisser'.

Roberta Cavell woke up from some unpleasant dream and looked to her right, half-expecting to see only darkness. But the comforting blue numbers were still glowing from the clock by her bed, so the power hadn't gone out. That was pretty amazing, considering the way the wind was howling.

1:04 A.M., the blue numbers said. Roberta turned on the bedside lamp — might as well use it while she could — and drank some water from her glass. Was it the wind that had awakened her? The bad dream? It had been bad, all right, something about aliens with deathrays and everyone running, but she didn't think that was it, either.

Then the wind dropped, and she heard what had waked her: Duddits's voice from downstairs. Duddits . . . singing? Was that possible? She didn't see how, considering the terrible afternoon and evening the two of them had put in.

'Eeeyer—eh!'' for most of the hours between two and five — Beaver's dead! Duddits seemingly inconsolable, finally bringing on a nosebleed. She feared these. When Duddits started bleeding, it was sometimes impossible to get him stopped without taking him to the hospital. This time she had been able to stop it by pushing cotton—wads into his nostrils and then pinching his nose high up, between the eyes. She had called Dr Briscoe to ask if she could give Duddits one of his yellow Valium tablets, but Dr Briscoe was off in Nassau, if you please. Some other doctor was on call, some whitecoat johnny who had never seen Duddits in his life, and Roberta didn't even bother to call him. She just gave Duddits the Valium, painted his poor dry lips and the inside of his mouth with one of the lemon—flavored glycerine swabs that he liked — the inside of his mouth was always developing cankers and ulcers. Even when the chemo was over, these persisted. And the chemo was over. None of the doctors — not Briscoe, not any of them — would admit it, and so the plastic catheter stayed in, but it was over. Roberta would not let them put her boy through that hell again.

Once he'd taken his pill, she got in bed with him, held him (being careful of his left side, where the indwelling catheter hid under a bandage), and sang to him. Not Beaver's lullaby, though. Not today.

At last he had begun to quiet, and when she thought he was asleep, she had gently pulled the cotton wads from his nostrils. The second one stuck a little, and Duddits's eyes had opened — that beautiful flash of green. His eyes were his true gift, she sometimes thought, and not that other business . . . seeing the line and all that went with it.

'Urnma?'

'Yes, Duddie.'

'Eeeyer in hen?'

She felt such sorrow at that, and at the thought of Beaver's absurd leather jacket, which he had loved so much and finally worn to tatters. If it had been someone else, anyone else but one of his four childhood friends, she would have doubted Duddie's premonition. But if Duddits said Beaver was dead, then Beaver almost certainly was.

'Yes, honey, I'm sure he's in heaven. Now go to sleep.'

For another long moment those green eyes had looked into hers, and she had thought he would start crying again — indeed, one tear, large and perfect, did roll down his stubbly cheek. It was so hard for him to shave now, sometimes even the Norelco started little cuts that dribbled for hours. Then his eyes had closed again and she had tiptoed out.

After dark, while she was making him oatmeal (all but the blandest foods were now apt to set off vomiting, another sign that the end was nearing), the whole nightmare started again. Terrified already by the increasingly strange news coming out of the Jefferson Tract, she had raced back to his room with her heart hammering. Duddits was sitting upright again, whipping his head from side to side in a child's gesture of negation. The nosebleed had re-started, and at each jerk of his head, scarlet drops flew. They spattered his pillowcase, his signed photograph of Austin Powers ('Groovy,baby!' was written across the bottom), and the bottles on the table: mouthwash, Compazine, Percocet, the multi-vitamins that seemed to do absolutely no good, the tall jar of lemon swabs.

This time it was Pete he claimed was dead, sweet (and not terribly bright) Peter Moore. Dear God, could it be true? Any of it? All of it?

The second bout of hysterical grief hadn't gone on as long, probably because Duddits was already exhausted from the first. She had gotten the nosebleed stanched again — lucky her — and had changed his bed, first helping him to his chair by the window. There he'd sat, looking out into the renewing storm, occasionally sobbing, sometimes heaving great, watery sighs that hurt her inside. Just looking at him hurt her: how thin he was, how pale he was, how bald he was. She gave him his Red Sox hat, signed across the visor by the great Pedro Martinez (you get so many nice things when you're dying, she sometimes mused), thinking his head would be cold there, so close to the glass, but for once Duddits wouldn't put it on. He only held it on his lap and looked out into the dark, his eyes big and unhappy.

At last she had gotten him back into bed, where once again her son's green eyes looked up at her with all their terrible dying brilliance.

'Eeet in hen, ooo?'

'I'm sure he is.' She hadn't wanted to cry, desperately hadn't wanted to — it might set him off again — but she could feel the tears brimming. Her head was pregnant with them, and the inside of her nose tasted of the sea each time she pulled in breath.

'In hen wif Eeeyer?'

'Yes, honey.'

'I eee Eeeyer n Eeet in hen?'

'Yes, you will. Of course you will. But not for a long while.'

His eyes had closed. Roberta had sat beside him on the bed, looking down at her hands, feeling sadder than sad, more alone than lonely.

Now she hurried downstairs and yes, it was singing, all right. Because she spoke such fluent Duddits (and why not? it had been her second language for over thirty years), she translated the rolling syllables without even thinking much about them: Scooby-Dooby-Doo,where are you? We got some work to do now. I've been telling you, Scooby-Doo, we need a helping hand, now.

She went into his room, not knowing what to expect. Certainly not what she found: every light blazing, Duddits fully dressed for the first time since his last (and very likely final, according to Dr Briscoe) remission. He had put on his favorite corduroy pants, his down vest over his Grinch tee-shirt, and his Red Sox hat. He was sitting in his chair by the window and looking out into the night. No frown now; no tears, either. He looked out into the storm with a bright-eyed eagerness that took her back to long before the disease, which had announced itself with such stealthy, easy-to-overlook symptoms: how tired and out of breath he got after just a short game of Frisbee in the back yard, how big the bruises were from even little thumps and bumps, and how slowly they faded. This was the way he used to look when . . .

But she couldn't think. She was too flustered to think.

'Duddits! Duddle, what—'

'Umma! Ere I unnox?'

Mumma! Where's my lunchbox?

'In the kitchen, but Duddie, it's the middle of the night. It's snowing! You aren't . . .'

Going anywhere was the way that one ended, of course, but the words wouldn't cross her tongue. His eyes were so brilliant, so alive. Perhaps she should have been glad to see that light so strongly in his eyes, that energy, but instead she was terrified.

'I eed I unnox! I eed I unch!'

I need my lunchbox, I need my lunch.

'No, Duddits.' Trying to be firm. 'You need to take off your clothes and get back into bed. That's what you need and all you need. Here. I'll help you.'

But when she approached, he raised his amis and crossed them over his narrow chest, the palm of his right hand pressed against his left cheek, the palm of his left against the right cheek. From earliest childhood, it was all he could muster in the way of defiance. It was usually enough, and it was now. She didn't want to upset him again, perhaps start another nosebleed. But she wasn't going to put up a lunch for him in his Scooby lunchbox at one-fifteen in the morning. Absolutely not.

She retreated to the side of his bed and sat down on it. The room was warm, but she was cold, even in her heavy flannel nightgown. Duddits slowly lowered his arms, watching her wanly.

'You can sit up if you want,' she said, 'but why? Did you have a dream, Duddie? A bad dream?'

Maybe a dream but not a bad one. Not with that eager look on his face, and now she recognized it well enough: it was the way he had looked so often back in the eighties, in the good years before Henry, Pete, Beaver, and Jonesy had all gone their separate ways, calling less frequently and coming by to see him less frequently still as they raced toward their grownup lives and forgot the one who had to stay behind.

It was the look he got when his special sense told him that his friends were coming by to play. Sometimes they'd all go off together to Strawford Park or the Barrens (they weren't supposed to go there but they did, both she and Alfie had known that they did, and one of their trips there had gotten them all on the front page of the newspaper). Sometimes Alfie or one of their moms or dads would take them to Airport Minigolf or to Fun Town in Newport, and on those days she would always pack Duddits sandwiches and cookies and a thermos of milk in his Scooby—Doo lunchbox.

He thinks his friends are coming. It must be Henry and Jonesy he's thinking of, because he says Pete and Beav—

Suddenly a terrible image came to her as she sat on Duddits's bed with her hands folded in her lap. She saw herself opening the door to a knock that came at the empty hour of three in the morning, not wanting to open it but helpless to stop herself. And the dead ones were there instead of the living ones. Beaver and Pete were there, returned to the childhood in which they had been living on the day she had first met them, the day they had saved Duddie from God knew what nasty trick and then brought him home safe. In her mind's eye Beaver was wearing his many-zippered motorcycle jacket and Pete was wearing the crewneck sweater of which he had been so proud, the one with NASA on the left breast. She saw them cold and pale, their eyes the lusterless grape-black glaze of corpses. She saw Beaver step forward — no smile for her now, no recognition of her now; when Joe 'Beaver' Clarendon put out his pallid starfish hands, he was all business. We've come for Duddits, Missus Cavell. We're dead, and now he is, too.

She clasped her hands tighter as a shudder twisted through her body. Duddits didn't see; he was looking out the window again, his face eager and expectant. And very softly, he began to sing again.

'Ooby-Ooby-Ooo, eh ah ooo? Eee aht-sum urk-ooo ooo ow . . .'

'Mr Gray?'

No answer. Jonesy stood at the door of what was now most definitely his office, not a trace of Tracker Brothers left except for the dirt on the windows (the matter-of-fact pornography of the girl with her skirt raised had been replaced by Van Gogh's Marigolds), feeling more and more uneasy. What was the bastard looking for?

'Mr Gray, where are you?'

No answer this time either, but there was a sense of Mr Gray returning . . . and he was happy. The son of a bitch was happy.

Jonesy didn't like that at all.

'Listen,' Jonesy said. Hands still pressed to the door of his sanctuary; forehead now pressed to it, as well. 'I've got a proposal for you, my friend — you're halfway human already; why not just go native? We can coexist, I guess, and I'll show you around. Ice cream's good, beer's even better. What do you say?'

He suspected Mr Gray was tempted, as only an essentially formless creature could be tempted when offered form — a trade right out of a fairy-tale.

Not tempted enough, however.

There was the spin of the starter, the roar of the truck's motor.

'Where are we going, chum? Always assuming we can get off Standpipe Hill, that is?'

No answer, only that disquieting sense that Mr Gray had been looking for something . . . and found it.

Jonesy hurried across to the window and looked out in time to see the truck's headlights sweep across the pillar erected to memorialize the lost. The plaque had drifted in again, which meant they must have been here awhile.

Slowly, carefully, now pushing its way through bumper-high drifts, the Dodge Ram started back down the hill.

Twenty minutes later they were on the turnpike again, once more headed south.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

HEROES

Owen couldn't raise Henry by calling out loud, the man was too deep in exhausted sleep, and so he called with his mind. He found this was easier as the byrus continued to spread. It was growing on three of the fingers on his right hand now, and had all but plugged the cup of his left ear with its spongy, itching growth. He had also lost a couple of teeth, although nothing seemed to be growing in the sockets, at least not yet.

Kurtz and Freddy had stayed clean, thanks to Kurtz's finely honed instincts, but the crews of the two surviving Blue Boy gunships, Owen's and Joe Blakey's, were lousy with byrus. Ever since talking to Henry in the shed, Owen had heard the voices of his compatriots, calling to each other across a previously unsuspected void. They were covering up the infection for now, as he himself was; lots of heavy winter clothing helped. But that wouldn't be possible for much longer, and they didn't know what to do.

In that regard, Owen supposed he was lucky. He at least had a wheel to which he could put his shoulder.

Standing outside the back of the shed and beyond the electrified wire, smoking another cigarette he didn't want, Owen went in search of Henry and found him working his way down a steep, brushy slope. Above him was the sound of kids playing baseball or softball. Henry was a boy, a teenager, and he was calling someone's name — Janey? Jolie? It didn't matter. He was dreaming, and Owen needed him in the real world. He had let Henry sleep as long as he could (almost an hour longer than he had really wanted to), but if they were going to get this show on the road, now was the time.

Henry, he called.

The teenager looked around, startled. There were other boys with him; three — no four of them, one peering into some kind of pipe. They were indistinct, hard to see, and Owen didn't care about them, anyway. Henry was the one he wanted, and not this pimply, startled version of him, either. Owen wanted the man.

Henry, wake up.

No, she's in there. We have to get her out. We—

I don't give a rat's ass about her, whoever she is. Wake up,

No, I—

It's time, Henry, wake up. Wake up. Wake

the fuck up!

Henry sat up with a gasp, not sure who or where he was. That was bad, but there was worse: he didn't know when he was. Was he eighteen or almost thirty-eight or somewhere in between? He could smell grass, hear the crack of a bat on a ball (a softball bat; it had been girls playing, girls in yellow shirts), and he could still hear Pete screaming She's in here! Guys, I think she's in here!

'Pete saw it, he saw the line,' Henry murmured. He didn't know exactly what he was talking about. The dream was already fading, its bright images being replaced by something dark. Something he had to do, or try to do. He smelled hay and, more faintly, the sweet-sour aroma of pot.

Mister, can you help us?

Big doe eyes. Marsha, her name had been. Things coming into focus now. Probably not, he'd answered her, then added but maybe.

Wake up, Henry! It's quarter of four, time to drop your cock and grab your socks.

That voice was stronger and more immediate than the others, overwhelming them and damping them out; it was like a voice from a Walkman when the batteries were fresh and the volume was turned all the way up to ten. Owen Underhill's voice. He was Henry Devlin. And if they were going to try this, the time was now.

Henry got up, wincing at the pain in his legs, his back, his shoulders, his neck. Where his muscles weren't screaming, the advancing byrus was itching abominably. He felt a hundred years old until he took his first step toward the dirty window, then decided it was more like a hundred and ten.

Owen saw the man's shape come into view inside the window and nodded, relieved. Henry was moving like Methuselah on a bad day, but Owen had something that would fix that, at least temporarily. He had stolen it from the brand-new infirmary, which was so busy no one had noticed him coming or going. And all the time he had protected the front of his mind with the two blocking mantras Henry had taught him: Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross and Yes we can-can, yes we can, yes we can-can, great gosh a'mighty. So far they seemed to be working — he'd gotten a few strange looks but no questions. Even the weather continued in their favor, the storm roaring on unabated.

Now he could see Henry's face at the window, a pale oval blur looking out at him.

I don't know about this, Henry sent. Man, I can hardly walk.

I can help with that. Stand clear of the window.

Henry moved back with no questions.

In one pocket of his parka, Owen had the small metal box (USMC stamped on the steel top) in which he kept his various IDs when he was on active duty — the box had been a present from Kurtz himself after the Santo Domingo mission last year, a fine irony. In his other pocket were three rocks which he had picked up from beneath his own helicopter, where the fall of snow was thin.

He took one of them — a good-sized chunk of Maine granite — then paused, appalled, as a bright image filled his mind. Mac Cavanaugh, the fellow from Blue Boy Leader who had lost two of his fingers on the op, was sitting inside one of the semi trailer-boxes in the compound. With him was Frank Bellson from Blakey's Blue Boy Three, the other gunship that had made it back to base. One of them had turned on a powerful eight-cell flashlight and set it on its base like an electric candle. Its bright glow sprayed up into the gloom. This was happening right now, not five hundred feet from where Owen stood with a rock in one hand and his steel box in the other. Cavanaugh and Bellson sat side by side on the floor of the trailer. Both wore what looked like heavy red beards. Luxuriant growth had burst apart the bandages over the stumps of Cavanaugh's fingers. They had service automatics, the muzzles in their mouths. Their eyes were linked. So were their minds. Bellson was counting down: Five . . . four . . . three . . .

'Boys, no!' Owen cried, but got no sense they heard him; their link was too strong, forged with the resolve of men who have made up their minds. They would be the first of Kurtz's command to do this tonight; Owen did not think they would be the last.

Owen? That was Henry. Owen, what's—

Then he tapped into what Owen was seeing and fell silent, horrified.

. . . two . . . one.

Two pistol-shots, muffled by the roar of the wind and four Zimmer electrical generators. Two fans of blood and brain-tissue appearing like magic over the heads of Cavanaugh and Bellson in the dim light. Owen and Henry saw Bellson's right foot give a final dying jump. It struck the barrel of the flashlight, and for a moment they could see Cavanaugh's and Bellson's distorted, byrus-speckled faces. Then, as the flashlight went rolling across the bed of the box, casting cartwheels of light on the aluminum side, the picture went dark, like the picture on a TV when the plug has been pulled.

'Christ,' Owen whispered. 'Good Christ.'

Henry had appeared behind the window again. Owen motioned him back, then threw the rock. The range was short, but his first shot missed anyway, bouncing harmlessly off the weathered boards to the left of the target. He took the second, pulled in a deep, settling breath, and threw. This one shattered the glass.

Got mail for you, Henry. Coming through.

He tossed the steel box through the hole where the glass had been.

It bounced across the shed floor. Henry picked the box up and undid the clasp. Inside were four foil-wrapped packets.

What are these?

Pocket rockets, Owen returned. How's your heart?

Okay, as far as I know.

Good, because that shit makes cocaine feel like Valium. There are two in each pack. Take three. Save the rest.

I don't have any water.

Owen sent a clear picture — south end of a northbound horse. Chew them, beautiful — you've got a few teeth left, don't you? There was real anger in this, and at first Henry didn't understand it, but then of course he did. If there was anything he should be able to understand this early morning, it was the sudden loss of friends.

The pills were white, unmarked by the name of any pharma­ceutical company, and terribly bitter in his mouth as they crumbled. Even his throat tried to pucker as he swallowed.

The effect was almost instantaneous. By the time he had tucked Owen's USMC box into his pants pocket, Henry's heartbeat had doubled. By the time he stepped back to the window, it had tripled, His eyes seemed to pulse from their sockets with each quick rap in his chest. This wasn't distressing, however; he actually found it quite pleasant. No more sleepiness, and his aches seemed to have flown away.

'Yow!' he called. 'Popeye should try a few cans of this shit!' And laughed, both because speaking now seemed so odd — archaic, almost — and because he felt so fine.

Keep it down, what do you say?

Okay! OKAY!

Even his thoughts seemed to have acquired a new, crystalline force, and Henry didn't think this was just his imagination. Although the light behind the old feed shed was a little less than in the rest of the compound, it was still strong enough for him to see Owen wince and raise a hand to the side of his head, as if someone had shouted directly into his ear.

Sorry, he sent.

It's all right. It's just that you're so strong. You must be covered with that shit.

Actually, I'm not, Henry returned. A wink of his dream came back to him: the four of them on that grassy slope. No, the five of them, because Duddits had been there, too.

Henry — do you remember where I said I'd be?

Southwest corner of the compound. All the way across from the barn, on the diagonal, But—

No buts. That's where I'll be. If you want a ride out of here, it's where you better be, too. It's . . . A pause as Owen checked his watch. If it was still working, it must be the kind you wind up, Henry thought. . . . two minutes to four. I'll give you half an hour, then if the folks in the barn haven't started to move, I'm going to short the fence.

Half an hour may not be long enough, Henry protested. Although he was standing still, looking out at Owen's form in the blowing snow, he was breathing fast, like a man in a race. His heart felt as if it was in a race.

It'll have to be, Owen sent. The fence is alarmed. 7here'll be sirens. Even more lights. A general alert. I'll give you five minutes after the shit starts hitting the fan — that's a three hundred count — and if you haven't shown up, I'm on my merry way.

You'll never find Jonesy without me

That doesn't mean I have to stay here and die with you, Henry. Patient. As if talking to a small child. If you don't make it to where I am in five minutes, there'll be no chance for either of us, anyway.

Those two men who just committed suicide . . . they're not the only ones who are fucked up.

I know.

Henry caught a brief mental glimpse of a yellow school bus with MILLINOCKET SCHOOL DEPT. printed up the side. Looking out the windows were two score of grinning skulls. They were Owen Underhill's mates, Henry realized. The ones he'd arrived with yesterday morning. Men who were now either dying or already dead.

Never mind them, Owen replied. It's Kurtz's ground support we have to worry about now. Especially the Imperial Valleys. If they exist, you better believe they'll follow orders and that they're well-trained. And training wins out over confusion every time — that's what training is for. If you stick around, they'll roast you and toast you. Five minutes is what you have once the alarms go. A three hundred count.

Owen's logic was hard to like and impossible to refute.

All right, Henry said. Five minutes.

You have no business doing this in the first place, Owen told him. The thought came to Henry encrusted with a complex filigree of emotion: frustration, guilt, the inevitable fear — in Owen Underhill's case, not of dying but of failure. If what you say is true, everything depends on whether or not we get out of here clean. For you to maybe put the entire world at risk because of a few hundred schmoes in a barn . . .

It's not the way your boss would do it, right?

Owen reacted with surprise — no words, but a kind of comic­book ! in Henry's mind. Then, even over the ceaseless howl and hoot of the wind, he heard Owen laugh.

You got me there, beautiful.

Anyway, I'll get them moving. I'm a motivational master.

I know you'll try. Henry couldn't see Owen's face, but felt him smiling. Then Owen spoke aloud. 'And after that? Tell me again.'

'Why?'

'Maybe because soldiers need motivation, too, especially when they're derailing. And belay the telepathy — I want you to say it out loud. I want to hear the word.'

Henry looked at the man shivering on the other side of the fence and said, 'After that we're going to be heroes. Not because we want to, but because there are no other options.'

Out in the snow and the wind, Owen was nodding. Nodding and still smiling. 'Why not?' he said. 'Just why the fuck not?'

In his mind, glimmering, Henry saw the image of a little boy with a plate raised over his head. What the man wanted was for the little boy to put the plate back — that plate that had haunted him so over the years and would forever stay broken.

Dreamless since childhood and thus unsane, Kurtz woke as he always did: at one moment nowhere, at the next completely awake and cognizant of his surroundings. Alive, hallelujah, oh yes, still in the big time. He turned his head and looked at the clock, but the goddam thing had gone off again in spite of its fancy anti-magnetic casing, flashing 12-12-12, like a stutterer caught on one word. He turned on the lamp beside the bed and picked up the pocket watch on the bedtable. Four-oh-eight.

Kurtz put it down again, swung his bare feet out on to the floor, and stood up. The first thing he became aware of was the wind, still howling like a woe-dog. The second was that the faraway mutter of voices in his head had disappeared entirely. The telepathy was gone and Kurtz was glad. It had offended him in an elemental, down-deep way, as certain sexual practices offended him. The idea that someone might be able to come into his very head, to be able to visit the upper levels of his mind . . . that had been horrible. The grayboys deserved to be wiped out for that alone, for bringing that disgustingly peculiar gift. Thank God it had proved ephemeral.

Kurtz shucked his gray workout shorts and stood naked in front of the mirror on the bedroom door, letting his eyes go up from his feet (where the first snarls of purple veins were beginning to show) to the crown of his head, where his graying hair stood up in a sleep-tousle. He was sixty, but not looking too bad; those busted veins on the sides of his feet were the worst of it. Had a bell of a good crank on him, too, although he had never made much use of it; women were, for the most part, vile creatures incapable of loyalty. They drained a man. In his secret unsane heart, where even his madness was starched and pressed and fundamentally not very interesting, Kurtz believed all sex was FUBAR. Even when it was done for procreation, the result was usually a brain-equipped tumor not much different from the shit-weasels.

From the crown of his head, Kurtz let his eyes descend again, slowly, looking for the least patch of red, the tiniest roseola blush. There was nothing. He turned around, looked at as much as he could see by craning back over his shoulder, and still saw nothing. He spread his buttocks, probed between them, slid a finger two knuckles deep into his anus, and felt nothing but flesh.

'I'm clean,' he said in a low voice as he washed his hands briskly in the Winnebago's little bathroom. 'Clean as a whistle.'

He stepped into his shorts again, then sat on his rack to slip into his socks. Clean, praise God, clean. A good word. Clean. The unpleasant feel of the telepathy — like sweaty skin pressed against sweaty skin — was gone. He wasn't supporting a single strand of Ripley; he had even checked his tongue and gums.

So what had awakened him? Why were there alarm bells clanging in his head?

Because telepathy wasn't the only form of extrasensory percep­tion. Because long before the grayboys knew there was such a place as Earth tucked away in this dusty and seldom-visited carrel of the great interstellar library, there had been a little thing called instinct, the specialty of uniform-wearing Homo saps such as himself.

'The hunch,' Kurtz said. 'The good old all-American hunch­ola.'

He put on his pants. Then, still bare-chested, he picked up the walkie which lay on the bedtable beside the pocket watch (four-sixteen now, and how the time seemed to be rushing, like a brakeless car plunging down a hill toward a busy intersection). The walkie was a special digital job, encrypted and supposedly unjammable . . . but one look at his supposedly impervious digital clock made him realize none of the gear was un-anything.

He clicked the SEND/SQUEAL button twice. Freddy Johnson came back quickly and not sounding too sleepy . . . oh, but now that crunch time was here, how Kurtz (who had been born Robert Coonts, name, name, what's in a name) longed for Underhill. Owen, Owen, he thought, why did you have to skid just when I needed you the most, son?

'Boss?'

'I'm moving Imperial Valley up to six. That's Imperial Valley at oh-six-hundred, come back and acknowledge me.'

He had to listen to why it was impossible, crap Owen would not have spouted in his weakest dream. He gave Freddy roughly forty seconds to vent before saying, 'Close your clam, you son of a bitch.'

Shocked silence from Freddy's end.

'We've got something brewing here. I don't know what, but it woke me up out of a sound sleep with the alarm bells ringing. Now I put all you fellows and girls together for a reason, and if you expect to be still drawing breath come suppertime, you want to get them moving. Tell Gallagher she may wind up on point. Acknowledge me, Freddy.'

'Boss, I acknowledge. One thing you should know — we've had four suicides that I know of There may have been more.'

Kurtz was neither surprised nor displeased. Under certain circumstances, suicide wasn't just acceptable, but noble — the true gentleman's final act.

'From the choppers?'

'Affirmative.'

'No Imperial Valleys.'

'No, boss, no Valleys.'

'All right. Floor it, buck. We got trouble. I don't know what it is, but I know it's coming. Big thunder.'

Kurtz tossed the walkie back on the table and continued dressing. He wanted another cigarette, but they were all gone.

A pretty good herd of milkers had once been stabled in Old Man Gosselin's barn, and while the interior might not have passed USDA standards as it now stood, the building was still in okay shape. The soldiers had strung some high-wattage bulbs that cast a brilliant glare over the stalls, the milking stations in the parlor, and the upper and lower lofts. They had also put in a number of heaters, and the barn glowed with a pulsing, almost feverish warmth. Henry unzipped his coat as soon as he stepped in, but still felt the sweat break out on his face. He supposed Owen's pills had something to do with that — he'd taken another outside the barn.

His first thought as he looked around was how similar the barn was to the various refugee camps he had seen: Bosnian Serbs in Macedonia, Haitian rebels after Uncle Sugar's Marines had landed in Port-au-Prince, the African exiles who had left their home countries because of disease, famine, civil war, or a combination of all three. You got used to seeing such things on the TV news, but the pictures always came from far away; the horror with which one viewed them was almost clinical. But this wasn't a place you needed a passport to visit. This was a cowbarn in New England. The people packed into it weren't wearing rags and dirty dashikis but parkas from Bean's, cargo pants (so perfect for those extra shotgun shells) from Banana Republic, underwear from Fruit of the Loom. The look was the same, though. The only difference he could discern was how surprised they all still seemed. This wasn't supposed to be happening in the land of Sprint Nickel Nights.

The internees pretty well covered the main floor, where hay had been spread (jackets on top of that). They were sleeping in little clumps or family groups. There were more of them in the lofts, and three or four to each of the forty stalls. The room was full of snores and gurgles and the groans of people dreaming badly. Somewhere a child was weeping. And there was piped-in Muzak: to Henry, this was the final bizarre touch. Right now the dozing doomed in Old Man Gosselin's barn were listening to the Fred Waring Orchestra float through a violin-heavy version of 'Some Enchanted Evening'.

Hyped as he was, everything stood out with brilliant, exclam­atory clarity. All the orange jackets and hats! he thought. Man! It's Halloween in hell!

There was also a fair amount of the red-gold stuff. Henry saw patches growing on cheeks, in ears, between fingers; he also saw patches growing on beams and on the electrical cords of several dangling lights. The predominant smell in here was hay, but Henry had no trouble picking up the smell of sulfur-tinged ethyl alcohol under it. As well as the snores, there was a lot of farting going on — it sounded like six or seven seriously untalented musicians tootling away on tubas and saxophones. Under other circumstances it would have been funny. . . or perhaps even in these, to a person who hadn't seen that weasel-thing wriggling and snarling on Jonesy's bloody bed.

How many of them are incubating those things? Henry wondered. The answer didn't matter, he supposed, because the weasels were ultimately harmless. They might be able to live outside their hosts in this barn, but outside in the storm, where the wind was blowing a gale and the chill-factor was below zero, they wouldn't have a chance.

He needed to talk to these people

No, that wasn't right. What he needed to do was scare the living hell out of them. Had to get them moving in spite of the warmth in here and the cold outside. There had been cows in here before; there were cows here again. He had to change them back into people ­scared, pissed-off people. He could do it, but not alone. And the clock was ticking, Owen Underhill had given him half an hour. Henry estimated that a third of that was already gone.

Got to have a megaphone, he thought. That's step one.

He looked around, spotted a burly, balding man sleeping on his side to the left of the door leading to the milking parlor, and walked over to take a closer look. He thought it was one of the guys he'd kicked out of the shed, but he wasn't sure. When it came to hunters, burly, balding men were a dime a peck.

But it was Charles, and the byrus was re-thatching what old Charlie no doubt referred to as his 'solar sex-panel'. Who needs Rogaine when you've got this shit going for you? Henry thought, then grinned.

Charles was good; better yet, Marsha was sleeping nearby, holding hands with Darren, Mr Bomber-joint-from-Newton. Byrus was now growing down one of Marsha's smooth cheeks. Her husband was still clean, but his brother-in-law — Bill, had that been his name? — was lousy with the stuff. Best-in-show, Henry thought.

He knelt by Bill, took his byrus-speckled hand, and spoke down into the tangled jungle of his bad dreams. Wake up, Bill. Wakey-wakey, We have to get out of here. And if you help me, we can. Wake up, Bill.

Wake up and be a hero.

It happened with a speed that was exhilarating.

Henry felt Bill's mind rising toward his, floundering out of the nightmares that had entangled it, reaching for Henry the way a drowning man will reach for the lifeguard who has swum out to save him. Their minds connected like couplers on a pair of freight-cars.

Don't talk, don't try to talk, Henry told him. Just hoId on. We need Marsha and Charles. The four of us should be enough.

What—

No time, Billy. Let's go.

Bill took his sister-in-law's hand. Marsha's eyes flashed open at once, almost as if she had been waiting for this, and Henry felt all the dials inside his head turn up another notch. She wasn't supporting as much growth as Bill, but perhaps had more natural talent. She took Charles's hand without a single question. Henry had an idea she had already grasped what was going on here, and what needed to be done. Thankfully, she also grasped the necessity of speed. They were going to bomb these people, then swing them like a club.

Charles sat with a jerk, eyes wide and bulging from their fatty sockets. He got up as if someone had goosed him. Now all four of them were on their feet, hands joined like participants in a s6xance . . . which, Henry reflected, this almost was.

Give it to me, he told them, and they did. The feeling was like having a magic wand placed in his hand.

Listen to me, he called.

Heads rose; some people sat up out of sound sleeps as if they had been electrified.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 707