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HALLOWEEN COMES EARLY 2 page

To be fair, most people are, like Mabel’s female honor guard, more than willing to help one another. Those who have remembered to bring water share it with those who did not, and most drink sparingly. There are idiots in every crowd, though, and those in this one pig the water freely and without thought. Some folks munch cookies and crackers that will leave them thirstier later on. Mary Lou Costas’s baby begins to cry fretfully beneath the Red Sox cap, which is much too big for her. Mary Lou has brought a bottle of water, and she now begins to dab the baby’s overheated cheeks and neck with it. Soon the bottle will be empty.

Henry grabs Pamela Chen and again points to Mary Lou. “Take that bottle and fill it from what we brought,” he says. “Try not to let too many people see you, or it’ll all be gone before noon.”

She does as told, and Henry thinks, There’s one at least who might actually make a good smalltown cop, if she ever wanted the job.

Nobody bothers to watch where Pamela is going. That’s good. When the buses come, these folks will forget all about being hot and thirsty, for a while. Of course, after the visitors go … and with a long walk back to town staring them in the face …

An idea hits him. Henry scopes out his “officers” and sees a lot of dumbbells but few people he trusts; Randolph has taken most of the halfway decent ones on some sort of secret mission. Henry thinks it has to do with the drug operation Andrea accused Rennie of running, but he doesn’t care what it is. All he knows is that they aren’t here and he can’t run this errand himself.

But he knows who could, and hails him over.

“What do you want, Henry?” Bill Allnut asks.

“Have you got your keys to the school?”

Allnut, who’s been the Middle School janitor for thirty years, nods. “Right here.” The key ring hanging from his belt glitters in the hazy sun. “Always carry em, why?”

“Take unit Four,” Henry says. “Go back to town as fast as you can without running over any latecomers. Get one of the schoolbuses and bring it out here. One of the forty-four seaters.”

Allnut doesn’t look pleased. His jaw sets in a Yankee way Henry—a Yankee himself—has seen all his life, knows well, and hates. It’s a penurious look that says I gutta take care of m’self, chummy. “You can’t get all these people in one schoolbus, are you nuts?”

“Not all,” Henry says, “just the ones who won’t be able to make it back on their own.” He’s thinking of Mabel and the Corso girl’s overheated baby, but of course by three this afternoon there will be more who can’t walk all the way back to town. Or maybe at all.

Bill Allnut’s jaw sets even more firmly; now his chin is sticking out like the prow of a ship. “Nossir. My two sons and their wives are coming, they said so. They’re bringing their kids. I don’t want to miss em. And I ain’t leaving m’wife. She’s all upset.”

Henry would like to shake the man for his stupidity (and outright throttle him for his selfishness). Instead he demands Allnut’s keys and asks to be shown which one opens the motor pool. Then he tells Allnut to go back to his wife.



“I’m sorry, Henry,” Allnut says, “but I gut to see m’kids n grand-kids. I deserve to. I didn’t ask the lame, the halt, n the blind to come out here, and I shouldn’t have to pay for their stupidity.”

“Ayup, you’re a fine American, no question about that,” Henry says. “Get out of my sight.”

Allnut opens his mouth to protest, thinks better of it (perhaps it’s something he sees on Officer Morrison’s face), and shuffles away. Henry yells for Pamela, who does not protest when told she’s to go back to town, only asks where, what, and why. Henry tells her.

“Okay, but … are those schoolbuses standard shift? Because I can’t drive a standard.”

Henry shouts the question to Allnut, who is standing at the Dome with his wife Sarah, both of them eagerly scanning the empty highway on the other side of the Motton town line.

“Number Sixteen is a standard!” Allnut shouts back. “All the rest are automatics! And tell her to mind the interlock! Them buses won’t start unless the driver fastens his seatbelt!”

Henry sends Pamela on her way, telling her to hurry as much as prudence will allow. He wants that bus ASAP.

At first the people at the Dome stand, anxiously watching the empty road. Then most of them sit down. Those who have brought blankets spread them. Some shade their heads from the hazy sun with their signs. Conversation lags, and Wendy Goldstone can be heard quite clearly when she asks her friend Ellen where the crickets are—there’s no singing in the high grass. “Or have I gone deaf?” she asks.

She hasn’t. The crickets are either silent or dead.

In the WCIK studio, the airy (and comfortably cool) center space resounds to the voice of Ernie “The Barrel” Kellogg and His Delight Trio rocking out on “I Got a Telephone Call from Heaven and It Was Jesus on the Line.” The two men aren’t listening; they’re watching the TV, as transfixed by the split-screen images as Marta Edmunds (who’s on her second Bud and has forgotten all about the corpse of old Clayton Brassey under the sheet). As transfixed as everyone in America, and—yes—the world beyond.

“Look at them, Sanders,” Chef breathes.

“I am,” Andy says. He’s got CLAUDETTE on his lap. Chef has offered him a couple of hand grenades as well, but this time Andy has declined. He’s afraid he might pull the pin on one and then freeze. He saw that in a movie once. “It’s amazing, but don’t you think we better get ready for our company?”

Chef knows Andy’s right, but it’s hard to look away from the side of the screen where the copter is tracking the buses and the large video truck that leads the parade. He knows every landmark they’re passing; they are recognizable even from above. The visitors are getting close now.

We’re all getting close now, he thinks.

“Sanders!”

“What, Chef?”

Chef hands him a Sucrets tin. “The rock will not hide them; the dead tree gives no shelter, nor the cricket relief. Just which book that’s in slips my mind.”

Andy opens the tin, sees six fat home-rolled cigarettes crammed in there, and thinks: These are soldiers of ecstasy. It is the most poetic thought of his life, and makes him feel like weeping.

“Can you give me an amen, Sanders?”

“Amen.”

The Chef uses the remote control to turn off the TV. He’d like to see the buses arrive—stoned or not, paranoid or not, he’s as fond of a happy reunion story as anyone—but the bitter men might come at any time.

“Sanders!”

“Yes, Chef.”

“I’m going to get the Christian Meals on Wheels truck out of the garage and park it on the far side of the supply building. I can settle in behind it and have a clear view of the woods.” He picks up GOD’S WARRIOR. The grenades attached to it dangle and swing. “The more I think of it, the more sure I am that’s the way they’ll come. There’s an access road. They probably think I don’t know about it, but”—Chef’s red eyes gleam —“the Chef knows more than people think.”

“I know. I love you, Chef.”

“Thank you, Sanders. I love you, too. If they come from the woods, I’ll let them get out in the open and then cut them down like wheat at harvest-time. But we can’t put all our eggs in one basket. So I want you to go out front to where we were the other day. If any of them come that way—”

Andy raises CLAUDETTE.

“That’s right, Sanders. But don’t be hasty. Draw out as many as you can before you start shooting.”

“I will.” Sometimes Andy is struck by the feeling that he must be living in a dream; this is one of those times. “Like wheat at harvest-time.”

“Yea verily. But listen, because this is important, Sanders. Don’t come right away if you hear me start shooting. And I won’t come right away if I hear you start. They might guess we’re not together, but I’m wise to that trick. Can you whistle?”

Andy sticks a couple of fingers in his mouth and lets loose a piercing whistle.

“That’s good, Sanders. Amazing, in fact.”

“I learned it in grammar school.” When life was much simpler, he does not add.

“Don’t do it unless you’re in danger of being overwhelmed. Then I’ll come. And if you hear me whistle, run like hell to reinforce my position.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s have a smoke on it, Sanders, what do you say?”

Andy seconds the motion.

On Black Ridge, at the edge of the McCoy orchard, seventeen exiles from town stand against the smudged skyline like Indians in a John Ford Western. Most are staring in fascinated silence at the silent parade of people moving out Route 119. They are almost six miles distant, but the size of the crowd makes it impossible to miss.

Rusty’s the only one who’s looking at something closer, and it fills him with a relief so great it seems to sing. A silver Odyssey van is speeding along Black Ridge Road. He stops breathing as it approaches the edge of the trees and the glow-belt, which is now invisible again. There is time for him to think how horrible it would be if whoever is driving—Linda, he assumes—blacked out and the van crashed, but then it’s past the danger point. There might have been the smallest swerve, but he knows even that could have been his imagination. They’ll be here soon.

They are standing a hundred yards to the left of the box, but Joe McClatchey thinks he can feel it, just the same: a little pulse that digs at his brain each time the lavender light shines out. That might just be his mind playing tricks on him, but he doesn’t think so.

Barbie is standing next to him, with his arm around Miz Shumway. Joe taps him on the shoulder and says, “This feels bad, Mr. Barbara. All those people together. This feels awful. ”

“Yes,” Barbie says.

“They’re watching. The leatherheads. I can feel them.”

“So can I,” Barbie says.

“Me too,” Julia says, in a voice almost too low to hear.

In the conference room of the Town Hall, Big Jim and Carter Thibodeau watch silently as the split-screen image on the TV gives way to a shot at ground level. At first the image is jerky, like video of an approaching tornado or the immediate aftermath of a car-bombing. They see sky, gravel, and running feet. Someone mutters, “Come on, hurry up.”

Wolf Blitzer says, “The pool-coverage truck has arrived. They’re obviously hurrying, but I’m sure that in a moment … yes. Oh my goodness, look at that.”

The camera steadies on the hundreds of Chester’s Mill residents at the Dome just as they rise to their feet. It’s like watching a large group of open-air worshippers rising from prayer. The ones at the front are being jostled against the Dome by the ones behind; Big Jim sees flattened noses, cheeks, and lips, as if the townspeople are being pressed against a glass wall. He feels a moment of vertigo and realizes why: this is the first time he’s seeing from the outside. For the first time the enormity of it and the reality of it strike home. For the first time he is truly frightened.

Faintly, slightly deadened by the Dome, comes the sound of pistol shots.

“I think I’m hearing gunfire,” Wolf says. “Anderson Cooper, do you hear gunfire? What’s happening?”

Faintly, sounding like a call from a satellite phone originating deep in the Australian outback, Cooper comes back: “Wolf, we’re not there yet, but I’ve got a small monitor and it looks like—”

“I see it now,” Wolf says. “It appears to be—”

“It’s Morrison,” Carter says. “The guy’s got guts, I’ll say that much.”

“He’s out as of tomorrow,” Big Jim replies.

Carter looks at him, eyebrows raised. “What he said at the meeting last night?”

Big Jim points a finger at him. “I knew you were a bright boy.”

At the Dome, Henry Morrison isn’t thinking about last night’s meeting, or bravery, or even doing his duty; he’s thinking that people are going to be crushed against the Dome if he doesn’t do something, and quick. So he fires his gun into the air. Taking the cue, several other cops—Todd Wendlestat, Rance Conroy, and Joe Boxer—do the same.

The shouting voices (and the cries of pain from the people at the front who are being squashed) give way to shocked silence, and Henry uses his bullhorn: “SPREAD OUT! SPREAD OUT, GODDAMMIT! THERE’S ROOM FOR EVERYONE IF YOU JUST SPREAD THE FUCK OUT !”

The profanity has an even more sobering effect on them than thegunshots, and although the most stubborn ones remain on the highway (Bill and Sarah Allnut are prominent among them; so are Johnny and Carrie Carver), the others begin to spread along the Dome. Some head to the right, but the majority shuffle to the left, into Alden Dinsmore’s field, where the going’s easier. Henrietta and Petra are among them, weaving slightly from liberal applications of Canada Dry Rocket.

Henry holsters his weapon and tells the other officers to do the same. Wendlestat and Conroy comply, but Joe Boxer continues to hold his snubnosed.38—a Saturday-night special if Henry has ever seen one.

“Make me,” he sneers, and Henry thinks: It’s all a nightmare. I’ll wake up soon in my own bed and I’ll go to the window and stand there looking out at a beautiful crisp fall day.

Many of those who have chosen to stay away from the Dome (a disquieting number have remained in town because they’re beginning to experience respiratory problems) are able to watch on television. Thirty or forty have gravitated to Dipper’s. Tommy and Willow Anderson are at the Dome, but they’ve left the roadhouse open and the big-screen TV on. The people who gather on the honky-tonk hardwood floor to watch do so quietly, although there is some weeping. The HDTV images are crystal clear. They are heartbreaking.

Nor are they the only ones who are affected by the sight of eight hundred people lining up along the invisible barrier, some with their hands planted on what appears to be thin air. Wolf Blitzer says, “I have never seen such longing on human faces. I …” He chokes up. “I think I better let the images speak for themselves.”

He falls silent, and that’s a good thing. This scene needs no narration.

At his press conference, Cox said, Visitors will debark and walk… visitors will be allowed within two yards of the Dome, we consider that a safe distance. Nothing like that happens, of course. As soon as the doors of the buses open, people spill out in a flood, calling the names of their nearest and dearest. Some fall and are briskly trampled (one will be killed in this stampede and fourteen will be injured, half a dozen seriously). Soldiers who attempt to enforce the dead zone directly in front of the Dome are swept aside. The yellow DO NOT CROSS tapes are knocked down and disappear in the dust raised by running feet. The newcomers swarm forward and spread out on their side of the Dome, most crying and all of them calling for their wives, their husbands, their grandparents, their sons, their daughters, their fiancées. Four people have either lied about their various electronic medical devices or forgotten about them. Three of these die immediately; the fourth, who didn’t see his battery-powered hearing-aid implant on the list of forbidden devices, will linger in a coma for a week before expiring of multiple brain hemorrhages.

Little by little they sort themselves out, and the pool TV cameras see it all. They observe the townspeople and the visitors pressing their hands together, with the invisible barrier between; they watch them try to kiss; they examine men and women weeping as they look into each other’s eyes; they note the ones who faint, both inside the Dome and out, and those who fall to their knees and pray facing each other with their folded hands raised; they record the man on the outside who begins hammering his fists against the thing keeping him from his pregnant wife, hammering until his skin splits and his blood beads on thin air; they peer at the old woman trying to trace her fingers, the tips pressed white and smooth against the unseen surface between them, over her sobbing granddaughter’s forehead.

The press helicopter takes off again and hovers, sending back images of a double human snake spread over a quarter of a mile. On the Motton side, the leaves flame and dance with late October color; on the Chester’s Mill side they hang limp. Behind the towns-folk—on the road, in the fields, caught in the bushes— are dozens of discarded signs. At this moment of reunion (or almost-reunion), politics and protest have been forgotten.

Candy Crowley says: “Wolf, this is without a doubt the saddest, strangest event I’ve witnessed in all my years of reporting.”

Yet human beings are nothing if not adaptable, and little by little the excitement and the strangeness begin to wear off. The reunions merge into the actual visiting. And behind the visitors, those who have been overwhelmed—on both sides of the Dome—are being carried away. On The Mill side, there’s no Red Cross tent to drag them to. The police put them in such scant shade as the police cars allow, to wait for Pamela Chen and the schoolbus.

In the police station, the WCIK raiding party is watching with the same silent fascination as everyone else. Randolph lets them; there is a little time yet. He checks the names off on his clipboard, then motions Freddy Denton to join him on the front steps. He has expected grief from Freddy for taking over the head honcho role (Peter Randolph has been judging others by himself his whole life), but there is none. This is a far bigger deal than rousting scuzzy old drunks out of convenience stores, and Freddy is delighted to hand off the responsibility. He wouldn’t mind taking credit if things went well, but suppose they don’t? Randolph has no such qualms. One unemployed troublemaker and a mild-mannered druggist who wouldn’t say shit if it was in his cereal? What can possibly go wrong?

And Freddy discovers, as they stand on the steps Piper Libby tumbled down not so long ago, that he isn’t going to be able to duck the leadership role completely. Randolph hands him a slip of paper. On it are seven names. One is Freddy’s. The other six are Mel Sear-les, George Frederick, Marty Arsenault, Aubrey Towle, Stubby Norman, and Lauren Conree.

“You will take this party down the access road,” Randolph says. “You know the one?”

“Yep, busts off from Little Bitch this side of town. Sloppy Sam’s father laid that little piece of roa—”

“I don’t care who laid it,” Randolph says, “just drive to the end of it. At noon, you take your men through the belt of woods there. You’ll come out in back of the radio station. Noon, Freddy. That doesn’t mean a minute before or a minute after.”

“I thought we were all supposed to go in that way, Pete.”

“Plans have changed.”

“Does Big Jim know they’ve changed?”

“Big Jim is a selectman, Freddy. I’m the Police Chief. I’m also your superior, so would you kindly shut up and listen?”

“Soh-ree, ” Freddy says, and cups his hands to his ears in a way that is impudent, to say the least.

“I’ll be parked down the road that runs past the front of the station. I’ll have Stewart and Fern with me. Also Roger Killian. If Bushey and Sanders are foolish enough to engage you—if we hear shooting from behind the station, in other words—the three of us will swoop in and take them from behind. Have you got it?”

“Yeah.” It actually sounds like a pretty good plan to Freddy.

“All right, let’s synchronize watches.”

“Uh … sorry?”

Randolph sighs. “We have to make sure they’re the same, so noon comes at the same time for both of us.”

Freddy still looks puzzled, but he complies.

From inside the station, someone—it sounds like Stubby—shouts: “Whoop, another one bites the dust! The fainters’re stacked up behind them cruisers like cordwood!” This is greeted by laughter and applause. They are pumped up, excited to have pulled what Melvin Searles calls “possible shootin duty.”

“We saddle up at eleven fifteen,” Randolph tells Freddy. “That gives us almost forty-five minutes to watch the show on TV.”

“Want popcorn?” Freddy asks. “We got a whole mess of it in the cupboard over the microwave.”

“Might as well, I guess.”

Out at the Dome, Henry Morrison goes to his car and helps himself to a cool drink. His uniform is soaked through with sweat and he can’t recall ever feeling so tired (he thinks a lot of that is down to bad air—he can’t seem to completely catch his breath), but on the whole he is satisfied with himself and his men. They have managed to avoid a mass crushing at the Dome, nobody has died on this side—yet—and folks are settling down. Half a dozen TV cameramen race to and fro on the Motton side, recording as many heartwarming reunion vignettes as possible. Henry knows it’s an invasion of privacy, but he supposes America and the world beyond may have a right to see this. And on the whole, people don’t seem to mind. Some even like it; they are getting their fifteen minutes. Henry has time to search for his own mother and father, although he’s not surprised when he doesn’t see them; they live all the way to hell and gone up in Derry, and they’re getting on in years now. He doubts if they even put their names in the visitor lottery.

A new helicopter is beating in from the west, and although Henry doesn’t know it, Colonel James Cox is inside. Cox is also not entirely displeased with the way Visitors Day has gone so far. He has been told no one on the Chester’s Mill side seems to be preparing for a press conference, but this doesn’t surprise or discommode him. Based on the extensive files he has been accumulating, he would have been more surprised if Rennie had put in an appearance. Cox has saluted a lot of men over the years, and he can smell a bully-pulpit coward a mile away.

Then Cox sees the long line of visitors and the trapped townspeople facing them. The sight drives James Rennie from his mind. “Isn’t that the damndest thing,” he murmurs. “Isn’t that just the damndest thing anyone ever saw.”

On the Dome side, Special Deputy Toby Manning shouts: “Here comes the bus!” Although the civilians barely notice—they are either raptly engaged with their relatives or still searching for them—the cops raise a cheer.

Henry walks to the back of his cruiser, and sure enough, a big yellow schoolbus is just passing Jim Rennie’s Used Cars. Pamela Chen may not weigh more than a hundred and five pounds soaking wet, but she’s come through bigtime, and with a big bus.

Henry checks his watch and sees that it’s twenty minutes past eleven. We’re going to get through this, he thinks. We’re going to get through this just fine.

On Main Street, three big orange trucks are rolling up Town Common Hill. In the third one, Peter Randolph is crammed in with Stew, Fern, and Roger (redolent of chickens). As they head out 119 northbound toward Little Bitch Road and the radio station, Randolph is struck by a thought, and barely restrains himself from smacking his palm against his forehead.

They have plenty of firepower, but they have forgotten the helmets and Kevlar vests.

Go back and get them? If they do that, they won’t be in position until quarter past twelve, maybe even later. And the vests would almost certainly turn out to be a needless precaution, anyway. It’s eleven against two, and the two are probably stoned out of their gourds.

Really, it should be a tit.

Andy Sanders was stationed behind the same oak he’d used for cover the first time the bitter men came. Although he hadn’t taken any grenades, he had six ammo clips stuck in the front of his belt, plus four more poking into the small of his back. There were another two dozen in the wooden crate at his feet. Enough to hold off an army … although he supposed if Big Jim actually sent an army, they’d take him out in short order. After all, he was just a pill-roller.

One part of him couldn’t believe he was doing this, but another part—an aspect of his character he might never have suspected without the meth—was grimly delighted. Outraged, too. The Big Jims of the world didn’t get to have everything, nor did they get to take everything away. There would be no negotiation this time, no politics, no backing down. He would stand with his friend. His soul-mate. Andy understood that his state of mind was nihilistic, but that was all right. He had spent his life counting the cost, and stoned don’t­give-a-shit-itis was a delirious change for the better.

He heard trucks approaching and checked his watch. It had stopped. He looked up at the sky, and judged by the position of the yellow-white blear that used to be the sun that it must be close to noon.

He listened to the swelling sound of diesel engines, and when the sound diverged, Andy knew his compadre had smelled out the play—smelled it out as surely as any wise old defensive lineman on a Sunday day afternoon. Some of them were swinging around toward the back of the station to the access road there.

Andy took one more deep drag of his current fry-daddy, held his breath as long as he could, then huffed it out. Regretfully, he dropped the roach and stepped on it. He didn’t want any smoke (no matter how deliciously clarifying) to give away his position.

I love you, Chef, Andy Sanders thought, and pushed off the safety of his Kalashnikov.

There was a light chain across the rutted access road. Freddy, behind the wheel of the lead truck, did not hesitate, simply hit it and snapped it with the grill. The lead truck and the one behind it (piloted by Mel Searles) headed into the woods.

Stewart Bowie was behind the wheel of the third truck. He stopped in the middle of Little Bitch Road, pointed at the WCIK radio tower, then looked at Randolph, who was jammed against the door with his HK semiauto between his knees.

“Go another half a mile,” Randolph instructed, “then pull up and kill the engine.” It was just eleven thirty-five. Excellent. Plenty of time.

“What’s the plan?” Fern asked.

“The plan is we wait until noon. When we hear shooting, we roll at once, and take them from behind.”

“These trucks is pretty noisy,” Roger Killian said. “What if those guys hear em comin? We’ll lose that whatdoyoucallit, elephant of surprise.”

“They won’t hear us,” Randolph said. “They’ll be sitting in the station, watching television in air-conditioned comfort. They’re not going to know what hit them.”

“Shouldn’t we have gotten some bulletproof vests or something?” Stewart asked.

“Why carry all that weight on such a hot day? Stop worrying. Ole Cheech and Chong there are going to be in hell before they even know they’re dead.”

Shortly before twelve o’clock, Julia looked around and saw that Barbie was gone. When she walked back to the farmhouse, he was loading canned goods into the rear of the Sweetbriar Rose van. He’d put several bags in the stolen phone company van as well.

“What are you doing? We just unloaded those last night.”

Barbie turned a strained, unsmiling face toward her. “I know, and I think we were wrong to do it. I don’t know if it’s being close to the box or not, but all at once I seem to feel that magnifying glass Rusty talked about right over my head, and pretty soon the sun’s going to come out and start shining through it. I hope I’m wrong.”

She studied him. “Is there more stuff? I’ll help you if there is. We can always put it back later.”

“Yes,” Barbie said, and gave her a strained grin. “We can always put it back later.”

At the end of the access road there was a small clearing with a long-abandoned house in it. Here the two orange trucks pulled up, and the raiding party disembarked. Teams of two swung down long, heavy duffle

bags that had been stenciled with the words HOME-LAND SECURITY. On one of the bags some wit had added REMEMBER THE ALAMO in Magic Marker. Inside were more HK semiautos, two Mossberg pump shotguns with eight-round capacity, and ammo, ammo, ammo.

“Uh, Fred?” It was Stubby Norman. “Shouldn’t we have vests, or somethin?”

“We’re hitting them from behind, Stubby. Don’t worry about it.”

Freddy hoped he sounded better than he felt. He had a gutful of butterflies.

“Do we give em a chance to surrender?” Mel asked. “I mean, Mr. Sanders being a selectman and all?”

Freddy had thought about this. He’d also thought about the Honor Wall, where photographs of the three Chester’s Mill cops who had died in the line of duty since World War II were hung. He had no urge to have his own photo on that wall, and since Chief Randolph hadn’t given him specific orders on this subject, he felt free to issue his own.

“If their hands are up, they live,” he said. “If they’re unarmed, they live. Anything else, they fucking die. Anyone got a problem with that?”

No one did. It was eleven fifty-six. Almost showtime.

He surveyed his men (plus Lauren Conree, so hard-faced and small-busted she almost could have passed for one), pulled in a deep breath, and said: “Follow me. Single-file. We’ll stop at the edge of the woods and scope things out.”

Randolph’s concerns about poison ivy and poison oak proved groundless, and the trees were spaced widely enough to make the going quite easy, even loaded down with ordnance. Freddy thought his little force moved through the clumps of juniper they couldn’t avoid with admirable stealth and silence. He was starting to feel that this was going to be all right. In fact, he was almost looking forward to it. Now that they were actually on the move, the butterflies in his stomach had flown away.


Date: 2015-12-17; view: 534


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