s I was going up the stair

I met a man who wasn't there;

He wasn't there again today!

I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

Hughes Meams

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE CHASE BEGINS

1

Jonesy had no idea what time it was when the green DYSART'S Sign twinkled out of the snowy gloom - the Ram's dashboard clock was bitched up, just flashing 12:00 A.M. over and over - but it was still dark and still snowing hard. Outside of Derry, the plows were losing their battle with the storm. The stolen Ram was 'a pretty good goer', as Jonesy's Pop would have said, but it too was losing its battle, slipping and slueing more frequently in the deepening snow, fighting its way through the drifts with increasing difficulty. Jonesy had no idea where Mr Gray thought he was going, but Jonesy didn't believe he would get there. Not in this storm, not in this truck.

The radio worked, but not very well; so far everything that came through was faint, blurred with static. He heard no time-checks, but picked up a weather report. The storm had switched over to rain from Portland south, but from Augusta to Brunswick, the radio said, the precipitation was a wicked mix of sleet and freezing rain. Most communities were without power, and nothing without chains on its wheels was moving.

Jonesy liked this news just fine.

2

When Mr Gray turned the steering wheel to head up the ramp toward the beckoning green sign, the Ram pickup slid broadside, spraying up great clouds of snow. Jonesy knew he likely would have gone off the exit ramp and into the ditch if he'd been in control, but he wasn't. And although he was no longer immune to Jonesy's emotions, Mr Gray seemed much less prone to panic in a stress situation. Instead of wrenching blindly against the skid, Mr Gray turned into it, held the wheel over until the slide stopped, then straightened the truck out again. The dog sleeping in the passenger footwell never woke up, and Jonesy's pulse barely rose. If he had been in control, Jonesy knew, his heart would have been hammering like hell. But, of course, his idea of what to do with the car when it stormed like this was to put it in the garage.

Mr Gray obeyed the stop-sign at the top of the ramp, although Route 9 was a drifted wasteland in either direction. Across from the ramp was a huge parking lot brilliantly lit by arc-sodiums; beneath their glare, the wind-driven snow seemed to move like the frozen respiration of an enormous, unseen beast. On an ordinary night, Jonesy knew, that yard would have been full of rumbling diesel semis, Kenworths and Macks and Jimmy-Petes with their green and amber cab-lights glimmering. Tonight the area was almost deserted, except for the area marked LONG-TERM SEE YARD MANAGER MUST HAVE TICKET. In there were a dozen or more freight-haulers, their edges softened by the drifts. Inside, their drivers would be eating, playing pinball, watching Spank-O-Vision in the truckers' lounge, or trying to sleep in the grim dormitory out back, where ten dollars got you a cot, a clean blanket, and a scenic view of a cinderblock wall. All of them no doubt thinking the same two thoughts: When can I roll? And How much is this going to cost me?

Mr Gray stepped down on the gas, and although he did it gently, as Jonesy's file concerning winter driving suggested, all four of the pickup's wheels spun, and the truck began to jitter sideways, digging itself in.

Go on! Jonesy cheered from his position at the office window. Go on, stick it! Stick it right up to the rocker-panels! Because when you're stuck in a four-wheel drive, you're really stuck!

Then the wheels caught - first the front ones, where the weight of the motor gave the Ram a little more traction - then the back ones. The Ram trundled across Route 9 and toward the sign marked ENTRANCE. Beyond it was another: WELCOME TO THE BEST TRUCK STOP IN NEW ENGLAND. Then the truck's headlights picked out a third, snowcaked but readable: HELL, WELCOME TO THE BEST TRUCK STOP ON EARTH.

Is this the best truck stop on earth? Mr Gray asked.

Of course, Jonesy said. And then - he couldn't help it - he burst out laughing.

Why do you do that? Why do you make that sound?

Jonesy realized an amazing thing, both touching and terrifying: Mr Gray was smiling with Jonesy's mouth. Not much, just a little, but it was a smile. He doesn't really know what laughter is, Jonesy thought. Of course he hadn't known what anger was, either, but he had proved to be a remarkably fast learner; he could now tantrum with the best of them.

What you said struck me funny.

What exactly is funny?

Jonesy had no idea how to answer the question. He wanted Mr Gray to experience the entire gamut of human emotions, suspecting that humanizing his usurper might ultimately be his only chance of survival - we have met the enemy and he is us, Pogo had once said. But how did you explain funny to a collection of spores from another world? And what was funny about Dysart's proclaiming itself the best truck stop on earth?

Now they were passing yet another sign, one with arrows pointing left and right. BIGUNS it said beneath the left arrow. And LITTLEUNS under the right.

Which are we? Mr Gray asked, stopping at the sign.

Jonesy could have made him retrieve the information, but what would have been the point? We're a littleun, he said, and Mr Gray turned the Ram to the right. The tires spun a little and the truck lurched. Lad raised his head, let fly another long and fragrant fart, then whined. His lower midsection had swelled and distended; anyone who didn't know better would no doubt have mistaken him for a bitch about to give birth to a good-sized litter.

There were perhaps two dozen cars and pickups parked in the littleuns' lot, the ones most deeply buried in snow belonging to the help - mechanics (always one or two on duty), waitresses, short-order cooks. The cleanest vehicle there, Jonesy saw with sharp interest, was a powder-blue State Police car with packed snow around the roof-lights. Being arrested would certainly put a spike in Mr Gray's plans; on the other hand, Jonesy had already been present at three murder-sites, if you counted the cab of the pickup. No witnesses at the first two crime scenes, and probably no Gary Jones fingerprints, either, but here? Sure. Plenty of them. He could see himself standing in a courtroom somewhere and saying, But Judge, it was the alien inside me who committed those murders. It was Mr Gray. Another joke that Mr Gray wouldn't get.

That worthy, meanwhile, had been rummaging again. Dry Farts, he said. Why do you call this place Dry Farts when the sign says Dysart's?

It's what Lamar used to call it, Jonesy said, remembering long, hilarious breakfasts here, usually going or coming back from Hole in the Wall. And this fit night into the tradition, didn't it? My Dad called it that, too.

Is it funny?

Moderately, I guess. It's a pun based on similar sounds. Puns are what we call the lowest form of humor.

Mr Gray parked in the rank closest to the lighted island of the restaurant, but all the way down from the State Police cruiser. Jonesy had no idea if Mr Gray understood the significance of the lightbars on top or not. He reached for the Ram's headlight knob and pushed it in. He reached for the ignition, then stopped and issued several hard barks of laughter: 'Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!'

How'd that feel? Jonesy asked, more than a little curious. A little apprehensive, too.

'Like nothing,' Mr Gray said flatly, and turned off the ignition. But then, sitting there in the dark with the wind howling around the cab of the truck, he did it again, and with a little more conviction: 'Ha! Ha, ha, ha!' In his office refuge, Jonesy shivered. It was a creepy sound, like a ghost trying to remember how to be human.

Lad didn't like it either. He whined again, looking uneasily at the man behind the steering wheel of his master's truck.

3

Owen was shaking Henry awake, and Henry responded reluctantly. He felt as if he had gone to sleep only seconds ago. His limbs all seemed to have been dipped in cement.

'Henry.'

'I'm here.' Left leg itching. Mouth itching even worse; the goddam byrus was growing on his lips now, too. He rubbed it off with his forefinger, surprised at how easily it broke free. Like a crust.

'Listen up. And look. Can you look?'

Henry looked up the road, which was now dim and snow?-ghostly - Owen had pulled the Sno-Cat over and turned off the lights. Farther along, there were mental voices in the dark, the auditory equivalent of a campfire. Henry went to them. There were four of them, young men with no seniority in . . . in . . .

Blue Group, Owen whispered. This time we're Blue Group.

Four young men with no seniority in Blue Group, trying not to be scared . . . trying to be tough . . . voices in the dark . . . a little campfire of voices in the dark . . .

By its light, Henry discovered he could see dimly: snow, of course, and a few flashing yellow lights illuminating a turnpike entrance ramp. There was also the lid of a pizza carton seen in the light of an instrument panel. It had been turned into a tray. On it were Saltines, several blocks of cheese, and a Swiss Army knife. The Swiss Army knife belonged to the one named Smitty, and they were all using it to cut the cheese. The longer Henry looked, the better he saw. It was like having your eyes adjust to the dark, but it was more than that too: what he saw had a creepy-giddy depth, as if all at once the physical world consisted not of three dimensions but of four or five. It was easy enough to understand why: he was seeing through four sets of eyes, all at the same time. They were huddled together in the

Humvee, Owen said, delighted. It's a fucking Humvee, Henry! Custom-equipped for snow, too! Bet you anything it is!

The young men were sitting close together, yes, but still in four different places, looking at the world from four different points of view, and with four different qualities of eyesight, ranging from eagle-eye sharp (Dana from Maybrook, New York) to the merely adequate. Yet somehow Henry's brain was processing them, just as it turned multiple still images on a reel of film into a moving picture. This wasn't like a movie, though, nor like some tricky 3-D image. It was an entirely new way of seeing, the kind that could produce a whole new way of thinking.

If this shit spreads, Henry thought, both terrified and wildly excited, if it spreads . . .

Owen's elbow thumped into his side. 'Maybe you could save the seminar for another day,' he said. 'Look across the road.'

Henry did so, employing his unique quadruple vision and realizing only belatedly that he had done more than look; he had moved their eyeballs so he could peer over to the far side of the turnpike. Where he saw more blinking lights in the storm.

'It's a choke-point,' Owen muttered. 'One of Kurtz's insurance policies. Both exits blocked, no movement onto the turnpike without authorization. I want the Humvee, it's the best thing we could have in a shitstorm like this, but I don't want to alert the guys on the other side. Can we do that?'

Henry experimented with their eyes again, moving them. He discovered that as soon as they weren't all looking at the same thing, his sense of godlike four- or five-dimensional vision evaporated, leaving him with a nauseating, shattered perspective his processing equipment couldn't cope with. But he was moving them. Not much, just their eyeballs, but . . .

I think we can if we work together, Henry told him. Get closer. And stop talking out loud. Get in my head. Link up.

Suddenly Henry's head was fuller. His vision clarified again, but this time the perspective wasn't quite as deep. Only two sets of eyes instead of four: his and Owen's.

Owen put the Sno-Cat into first gear and crept forward with the lights off. The engine's low growl was lost beneath the constant shriek of the wind, and as they closed the distance, Henry felt his hold on those minds ahead tightening.

Holy shit, Owen said, half-laughing and half-gasping.

What? That is it?

It's you, man - it's like being on a magic carpet. Christ, but you're strong.

You think I'm strong, wait'll you meet Jonesy.

Owen stopped the Sno-Cat below the brow of a little hill. Beyond it was the turnpike. Not to mention Bernie, Dana, Tommy, and Smitty, sitting in their Humvee at the top of the southbound ramp, eating cheese and crackers off their makeshift tray. He and Owen were safe enough from discovery. The four young men in the Humvee were clean of the byrus and had no idea they were being scoped.

Ready? Henry asked,

I guess. The other person in Henry's head, cool as that storied cucumber when Kurtz and the others had been shooting at them, was now nervous. You take the lead, Henry. I'm just flying support this mission.

Here we go.

What Henry did next he did instinctively, binding the four men in the Humvee together not with images of death and destruction, but by impersonating Kurtz. To do this he drew on both Owen Underhill's energy - much greater than his own, at this point - and Owen Underhill's vivid knowledge of his OIC. The act of binding gave him a brilliant stab of satisfaction. Relief, as well. Moving their eyes was one thing; taking them over completely was another. And they were free of the byrus. That could have made them immune. Thank God it had not.

There's a Sno-Cat over that rise east of you, laddies, Kurtz said. Want you to take it back to base. Right now, if you please - no questions, no comments, just get moving. You'll find the quarters a little tight compared to your current accommodations, but I think you can all fit in, praise Jesus. Now move your humps, God love you.

Henry saw them getting out, their faces calm and blank around the eyes. He started to get out himself, then saw Owen was still sitting in the Sno-Cat's driver's seat, his own eyes wide. His lips moved, forming the words in his head: Move your humps, God love you.

Owen! Come on!

Owen looked around, startled, then nodded and pushed out through the canvas hanging over his side of the 'Cat.

4

Henry stumbled to his knees, picked himself up, and looked wearily into the streaming dark. Not far to go, God knew it wasn't, but he didn't think he could slog through another twenty feet of drifted snow, let alone a hundred and fifty yards. On and on the eggman went, he thought, and then: I did it. 7hat's the answer, Of course. I offed myself and now I'm in hell. This is the eggman in h -

Owen's arm went around him . . . but it was more than his arm. He was feeding Henry his strength.

Thank y -

Thank me later. Sleep later, too. For now, keep your eye on the ball.

There was no ball. There were only Bernie, Dana, Tommy, and Smitty trooping through the snow, a line of silent somnambulists in coveralls and hooded parkas. They trooped east on the Swanny Pond Road toward the Sno-Cat while Owen and Henry struggled on west, toward the abandoned Humvee. The cheese and Saltines had also been abandoned, Henry realized, and his stomach rumbled.

Then the Humvee was dead ahead. They'd drive it away, no headlights at first, low gear and quiet-quiet-quiet, skirting the yellow flashers at the base of the ramp, and if they were lucky, the fellows guarding the northbound ramp would never know they were gone.

If they do see us, could we make them forget? Owen asked. Give them - oh, I don't know - give them amnesia?

Henry realized they probably could.

Owen?

What?

If this ever got out, it would change eve thing. Everything.

A pause as Owen considered this. Henry wasn't talking about knowledge, the usual coin of Kurtz's bosses up the food-chain; he was talking about abilities that apparently went well beyond a little mind-reading.

I know, he replied at last.

5

They headed south in the Humvee, south into the storm. Henry Devlin was still gobbling crackers and cheese when exhaustion turned out the lights in his overstimulated head.

He slept with crumbs on his lips.

And dreamed of Josie Rinkenhauer.

6

Half an hour after it caught fire, old Reggie Gosselin's barn was no more than a dying dragon's eye in the booming night, waxing and waning in a black socket of melted snow. From the woods east of the Swanny Pond Road came the pop-pop-pop of rifle fire, heavy at first, then diminishing a little in both frequency and volume as the Imperial Valleys (Kate Gallagher's Imperial Valleys now) pursued the escaped detainees. It was a turkey shoot, and not many of the turkeys were going to get away. Enough of them to tell the tale, maybe, enough to rat them all out, but that was tomorrow's worry.

While this was going on - also while the traitorous Owen Underhill was getting farther and farther ahead of them - Kurtz and Freddy Johnson stood in the command post (except, Freddy supposed, it was now nothing but a Winnebago again; that feeling of power and importance had gone), flipping playing-cards into a hat.

No longer telepathic in the slightest, but as sensitive to the men under him as ever - that his command had been reduced to a single soldier really made no difference - Kurtz looked at Freddy and said, 'Make haste slowly, buck - that's one saw that's still sharp.' 'Yes, boss,' Freddy said without much enthusiasm.

Kurtz flipped the two of spades. It fluttered down through the air and landed in the hat. Kurtz crowed like a child and prepared to flip again. There was a knock at the 'Bago's door. Freddy turned in that direction, and Kurtz fixed him with a forbidding look. Freddy turned back and watched Kurtz flip another card. This one started out well, then went long and landed on the cap's bill. Kurtz muttered something under his breath, then nodded at the door. Freddy, with a mental prayer of thanks, went to open it.

Standing on the top step was Jocelyn McAvoy, one of the two female Imperial Valleys. Her accent was soft country Tennessee; the face under the boy-cropped blonde hair was hard as stone. She was holding a spectacularly non-reg Israeli burp-gun by the strap. Freddy wondered where she had gotten such a thing, then decided it didn't matter. A lot of things had ceased to matter, most of them in the last hour or so.

'Joss,' Freddy said. 'What's up with your bad self?' 'Delivering two Ripley Positives as ordered.' More shooting from the woods, and Freddy saw the woman's eyes shift minutely in that direction. She wanted to get back over there across the road, wanted to bag her limit before the game was gone. Freddy knew how she felt.

'Send them in, lassie,' Kurtz said. He was still standing over the cap on the floor (the floor that was still faintly stained with Cook's Third Melrose's blood), still holding the deck of cards in his hand, but his eyes were bright and interested. 'Let's see who you found.' Jocelyn gestured with her gun. A male voice at the foot of the stairs growled, 'The fuck up there. Don't make me say it twice.' The first man to step past Jocelyn was tall and very black. There was a cut down one of his cheeks and another on his neck. Both cuts had been clogged with Ripley. More was growing in the creases in his brow. Freddy knew the face but not the name. The old man, of course, knew both. Freddy supposed he remembered the names of all the men he had commanded, both the quick and the dead.

'Cambry!' Kurtz said, eyes lighting even more brightly. He dropped the playing cards into the hat, approached Cambry, seemed about to shake hands, thought better of it, and snapped off a salute instead. Gene Cambry did not return it. He looked sullen and disoriented. 'Welcome to the justice League of America.'

'Spotted him running through the woods along with the detainees he was supposed to be guarding,' Jocelyn McAvoy said. Her face was expressionless; all her contempt was in her voice.

'Why not?' Cambry asked. He looked at Kurtz. 'You were going to kill me, anyway. Kill all of us. Don't bother lying about it, either. I can see it in your mind.'

Kurtz wasn't discomfited by this in the slightest. He rubbed his hands together and smiled at Cambry in a friendly way. 'Do a good job and p'raps you'll change my mind, buck. Hearts were made to be broken and minds were made to be changed, that's a big praise God. Who else have you got for me, Joss?'

Freddy regarded the second figure with amazement. Also with pleasure. The Ripley could not have found a better home, in his humble opinion. Nobody liked the son of a bitch much in the first place.

'Sir . . . boss . . . I don't know why I'm here . . . I was in proper pursuit of the escapees when this . . . this . . . I'm sorry, I have to say it, when this officious bitch pulled me out of the sweep area and . . .'

'He was running with them,' McAvoy said in a bored voice. 'Running with them and infected up the old wazoo.'

'A he!' said the man in the doorway. 'A total lie! I'm perfectly clean! One hundred per cent - '

McAvoy snatched off the watchcap her second prisoner was wearing. The man's thinning blond hair was much thicker now, and appeared to have been dyed red.

'I can explain, sir,' Archie Perlmutter said, his voice fading even as he spoke. 'There is . . . you see . . . Then it died away entirely.

Kurtz was beaming at him, but he had donned his filter-mask again - they all had - and it gave his reassuring smile an oddly sinister look, the expression of a child molester inviting a little kid in for a piece of pie.

'Pearly, it's going to be all right,' Kurtz said. 'We're going for a ride, that's all. There's someone we need to find, someone you know - '

'Owen Underhill,' Perlmutter whispered.

'That's right, buck,' Kurtz said. He turned to McAvoy. 'Bring this soldier his clipboard, McAvoy. I'm sure he'll feel better once he has his clipboard. Then you can carry on hunting, which I feel quite sure you're eager to do.'

'Yes, boss.'

'But first, watch this - a little trick I learned back in Kansas.' Kurtz sprayed the cards. In the crazy blizzard-wind coming through the door, they flew every whichway. Only one landed faceup in the hat, but it was the ace of spades.

7

Mr Gray held the menu, looking at the lists of stuff - meatloaf, sliced beets, roast chicken, chocolate silk pie - with interest and an almost total lack of understanding. Jonesy realized it wasn't just not knowing how food tasted; Mr Gray didn't know what taste was. How could he? When you cut to the chase, he was nothing but a mushroom with a high IQ.

Here came a waitress, moving under a vast tableland of frozen ash-blonde hair. The badge on her not inconsiderable bosom read WELCOME TO DYSART'S, I AM YOUR WAITRESS DARLENE.

'Hi, hon, what can I get you?'

'I'd like scrambled eggs and bacon. Crisp, not limp.'

'Toast?'

'How about canpakes?'

She raised her eyebrows and looked at him over her pad. Beyond her, at the counter, the State Trooper was eating some kind of drippy sandwich and talking with the short-order cook.

'Sorry - cakepans, I meant to say.'

The eyebrows went higher. Her question was plain, blinking at the front of her mind like a neon sign in a saloon window: was this guy a mushmouth, or was he making fun of her?

Standing at his office window, smiling, Jonesy relented.

'Pancakes,' Mr Gray said.

'Uh-huh, I sort of figured. Coffee with that?'

'Please.'

She snapped her pad closed and started away. Mr Gray was back at the locked door of Jonesy's office at once, and furious all over again.

How could you do that? he asked. How could you do that from in there? An ill-natured thump as Mr Gray hit the door. And he was more than angry, Jonesy realized. He was frightened, as well. Because if Jonesy could interfere, everything was in jeopardy.

I don't know, Jonesy said, and truthfully enough. But don't take it so hard. Enjoy your breakfast. I was just fucking with you a little.

Why? Still furious. Still drinking from the well of Jonesy's emotions, and liking it in spite of himself. Why would you do that?

Call it payback for trying to roast me in my office while I was sleeping, Jonesy said.

With the restaurant section of the truck stop almost deserted, Darlene was back with the food in no time. Jonesy considered seeing if he could gain control of his mouth long enough to say something outrageous (Darlene, can I bite your hair? was what came to mind), and thought better of it.

She set his plate down, gave him a dubious look, then started away. Mr Gray, looking at the bright yellow lump of eggs and the dark twigs of bacon (not just crispy but almost incinerated, in the great Dysart's tradition) through Jonesy's eyes, was feeling the same dubiety.

Go on, Jonesy said. He was standing at his office window, watching and waiting with amusement and curiosity. Was it possible that the bacon and eggs would kill Mr Gray? Probably not, but it might at least make the hijacking motherfucker good and sick. Go on, Mr Gray, eat up. Bon - fuckin-app��tit.

Mr Gray consulted Jonesy's files on the proper use of the silverware, then picked up a tiny clot of scrambled eggs on the tines of his fork, and put them in Jonesy's mouth.

What followed was both amazing and hilarious. Mr Gray gobbled everything in huge bites, pausing only to drown the pan?cakes in fake maple syrup. He loved it all, but most particularly the bacon.

Flesh! Jonesy heard him exulting - it was almost the voice of the creature in one of those corny old monster movies from the thirties. Flesh! Flesh! This is the taste of flesh!

Funny . . . but maybe not all that funny, either. Maybe sort of horrible. The cry of a new-made vampire.

Mr Gray looked around, ascertained that he wasn't being watched (the State Bear was now addressing a large piece of cherry pie), then picked up the plate and licked the grease from it with big swipes of Jonesy's tongue. He finished by licking the sticky syrup from the ends of his fingers.

Darlene returned, poured more coffee, looked at the empty dishes. 'Why, you get a gold star,' she said. 'Anything else?'

'More bacon,' Mr Gray said. He consulted Jonesy's files for the correct terminology, and added: 'A double order.'

And may you choke on it, Jonesy thought, but now without much hope.

'Gotta stoke the stove,' Darlene said, a comment Mr Gray didn't understand and didn't bother hunting down in Jonesy's files. He put two sugars in his coffee, looked around to make sure he wasn't observed, then poured the contents of a third packet down his throat. Jonesy's eyes half-closed for a few seconds as Mr Gray drowned happily in the bliss of sweet.

You can have that any time you want it, Jonesy said through the door. Now he supposed he knew how Satan felt when he took Jesus up on the mountaintop and tempted him with all the cities of the earth. Not good; not really bad; just doing the job, selling the product.

Except . . . check that. It did feel good, because he knew he was getting through. He wasn't opening stab-wounds exactly, but he was at least pricking Mr Gray. Making him sweat little blood-beads of desire.

Give it up, Jonesy coaxed. Go native. You can spend years exploring my senses. They're pretty sharp; I'm still under forty.

No reply from Mr Gray. He looked around, saw no one looking his way, poured fake maple syrup into his coffee, slurped it, and looked around again for his supplemental bacon. Jonesy sighed. This was like being with a strict Muslim who has somehow wound up on a Las Vegas holiday.

On the far side of the restaurant was an arch with a sign reading TRUCKERS' LOUNGE & SHOWERS above it. In the short hallway beyond, there was a bank of pay telephones. Several drivers stood there, no doubt explaining to spouses and bosses that they wouldn't be back on time, they'd been shut down by a surprise storm in Maine, they were at Dysart's Truck Stop (known to the cognoscenti as Dry Farts, Jonesy thought) south of Derry and here they would likely remain until at least noon tomorrow.

Jonesy turned from the office window with its view of the truck stop and looked at his desk, now covered with all his old and comforting clutter. There was his phone, the blue Trimline. Would it be possible to call Henry on it? Was Henry even still alive? Jonesy thought he was. He thought that if Henry were dead, he would have felt the moment of his passing - more shadows in the room, perhaps. Elvis has left the building, Beaver had often said when he spotted a name he knew in the obits. What a fuckitt pisser. Jonesy didn't think Henry had left the building just yet. It was even possible that Henry had an encore in mind.

8

Mr Gray didn't choke on his second order of bacon, but when his lower belly suddenly cramped up, he let out a dismayed roar. You poisoned me!

Relax, Jonesy said. You just need to make a little room, my friend.

Room? What do you -

He broke off as another cramp gripped his gut.

I mean that we had better hurry along to the little boys' room, Jonesy said. Good God, didn't all those abductions you guys did in the sixties teach you anything about the human anatomy?

Darlene had left the check, and Mr Gray picked it up.

Leave her fifteen per cent on the table, Jonesy said. It's a tip.

How much is fifteen per cent?

Jonesy sighed. These were the masters of the universe that the movies had taught us to fear? Merciless, star-faring conquerors who didn't know how to take a shit or figure a tip?

Another cramp, plus a fairly silent fart. It smelled, but not of ether. Thank God for small favors, Jonesy thought. Then, to Mr Gray: Show me the check.

Jonesy looked at the green slip of paper through his office window.

Leave her a buck and a half And when Mr Gray seemed dubious: This is good advice I'm giving you, my friend. More and she remembers you as the night's big tipper. Less, and she remembers you as a chintz.

He sensed Mr Gray checking for the meaning of chintz in Jonesy's files. Then, without further argument, he left a dollar and two quarters on the table. With that taken care of, he headed for the cash register, which was on the way to the men's room.

The cop was working his pie - with slightly suspicious slowness, Jonesy thought - and as they passed him, Jonesy felt Mr Gray as an entity (an ever more human entity) dissolve, going out to peek inside the cop's head. Nothing out there now but the redblack cloud, running Jonesy's various maintenance systems.

Quick as a flash, Jonesy grabbed the phone on his desk. For a moment he hesitated, unsure.

just dial 1-800-HENRY, Jonesy thought.

For a moment there was nothing . . . and then, in some other somewhere, a phone began to ring.

9

'Pete's idea,' Henry muttered.

Owen, at the wheel of the Humvee (it was huge and it was loud, but it was equipped with oversized snow tires and rode the storm like the QE2), looked over. Henry was asleep. His glasses had slid down to the end of his nose. His eyelids, now delicately fuzzed with byrus, rippled as the eyeballs beneath them moved. Henry was dreaming. About what? Owen wondered. He supposed he could dip into his new partner's head and have a look, but that seemed perverse.

'Pete's idea,' Henry repeated. 'Pete saw her first.' And he sighed, a sound so tired that Owen felt bad for him. No, he decided, he didn't want any part of what was going on in Henry's head. Another hour to Derry, more if the wind stayed high. Better to just let him sleep.

10

Behind Derry High School is the football field where Richie Grenadeau once strutted his stuff, but Richie is five years in his teenage hero's grave, just another small-town car-crash James Dean. Other heroes have risen, thrown their passes, and moved on. It's not football season now, anyway. It's spring, and on the field there is a gathering of what look like birds - huge red ones with black heads. These mutant crows are laughing and talking as they sit in their folding chairs, but Mr Trask, the principal, has no problem being heard; he's at the podium on the makeshift stage, and he's got the mike.

'One last thing before I dismiss you!' he booms. 'I won't tell you not to throw your mortarboards at the end of the ceremony, I know from years of experience I might as well be talking to myself on that score - '

Laughter, cheers, applause.

' - but I'm telling you to PICK THEM UP AND TURN THEM IN OR YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THEM!'

There are a few boos and some raspberries, Beaver Clarendon's the loudest.

Mr Trask gives them a final surveying look. 'Young men and women, members of the Class of '82, 1 think I speak for the entire faculty when I say I'm proud of you. This concludes rehearsal, so . . .'

The rest is lost, amplification or no amplification; the red crows rise in a gusty flap of nylon, and they fly. Tomorrow at noon they will fly for good; although the three crows laughing and grabassing their way toward the parking lot where Henry's car is parked do not realize it, the childhood phase of their friendship is now only hours from the end. They don't realize it, and that is probably just as well.

Jonesy snatches Henry's mortarboard, slaps it on top of his own, and books for the parking lot.

'Hey, asshole, give that back!' Henry yells, and then he snatches Beaver's. Beav squawks like a chicken and runs after Henry, laughing. So the three of them swoop across the grass and behind the bleachers, graduation robes billowing around their jeans. Jonesy has two hats on his head, the tassels swinging in opposite directions, Henry has one (far too big; it's sitting on his ears), and Beaver runs bareheaded, his long black hair flowing out behind him and a toothpick jutting from his mouth.

Jonesy is looking back as he runs, taunting Henry ('Come on, Mr Basketball, ya run like a girl'), and almost piles into Pete, who is looking at DERRY DOIN'S, the glassed-in notice-board by the north entrance to the parking lot. Pete, who is graduating from nothing but the Junior class this year, grabs Jonesy, bends him backward like a guy doing a tango with some beautiful chick, and kisses him square on the mouth. Both mortarboards tumble off Jonesy's head, and he screams in surprise.

'Queerboy!' Jonesy yells, rubbing frantically at his mouth . . . but he's starting to laugh, too. Pete's an oddity - he'll go along quietly for weeks at a time, Norman Normal, and then he'll break out and do something nutso. Usually the nutso comes out after a couple of beers, but not this afternoon.

'I've always wanted to do that, Gariella,' Pete says sentimentally. 'Now you know how I really feel.'

'Fuckin queerboy, if you gave me the syph, I'll kill you!' Henry arrives, snatches his mortarboard off the grass, and swats Jonesy with it. 'There's grass-stains on this,' Henry says. 'If I have to pay for it, I'll do a lot more than just kiss you, Gariella.'

'Don't make promises you can't keep, fuckwad,' Jonesy says.

'Beautiful Gariella,' Henry says solemnly.

The Beav comes steaming up, puffing around his toothpick. He takes Jonesy's mortarboard, peers into it, and says, 'There's a come-stain in this one. Ain't I seen enough on my own sheets to know?' He draws in a deep breath and bugles to the depart?ing seniors in their Derry-red graduation gowns: 'Gary Jones beats off in his graduation hat! Hey, everybody, listen up, Gary Jones beats off - '

Jonesy grabs him, pulls him to the ground, and the two of them roll over and over in billows of red nylon. Both mortarboards are cast off to one side and Henry grabs them to keep them from getting crushed.

'Get off me!' Beaver cries. 'You're crushin me! Jesus-Christ?-bananas! For God's sake - '

'Duddits knew her,' Pete says. He has lost interest in their foolery, doesn't feel much of their high spirits anyway (Pete is perhaps the only one of them who senses the big changes that are coming). He's looking at the notice-board again. 'We knew her, too. She was the one who always stood outside The Petard Academy. "Hi, Duddie," she'd go.' When he says Hi, Duddie, Pete's voice goes up high, becomes momentarily girlish in a way that is sweet rather than mocking. And although Pete isn't a particularly good mimic, Henry knows that voice at once. He remembers the girl, who had fluffy blonde hair and great brown eyes and scabbed knees and a white plastic purse which contained her lunch and her BarbieKen. That's what she always called them, BarbieKen, as if they were a single entity.

Jonesy and Beav also know who Pete's imitating, and Henry knows, too. There is that bond among them; it's been among them for years now. Them and Duddits. Jonesy and the Beav can't remember the little blonde girl's name any more than Henry can ?only that her last one was something impossibly long and clunky. And she had a crush on the Dudster, which was why she always waited for him outside The Retard Academy.

The three of them in their graduation gowns gather around Pete and look at the DERRY DOIN's board.

As always, the board is crammed with notices - bake sales and car washes, tryouts for the Community Players version of The Fantasticks, summer classes at Fenster, the local junior college, plus plenty of hand-printed student ads - buy this, sell that, need ride to Boston after graduation, looking for roommate in Providence.

And, way up in the corner, a photo of a smiling girl with acres of blonde hair (frizzy rather than fluffy now) and wide, slightly puzzled eyes. She's no longer a little girl - Henry is surprised again and again by how the children he grew up with (including himself) have disappeared - but he would know those dark and puzzled eyes anywhere.

MISSING, says the single block-capital word under the photo.

And below that, in slightly smaller type: JOSETTE RINKENHAUER, LAST SEEN STRAWFORD PARK SOFTBALL FIELD, JUNE 7, 1982. Below this there is more copy, but Henry doesn't bother reading it. Instead he reflects on how odd Derry is about missing children - not like other towns at all. This is June eighth, which means the Rinkenhauer girl has only been gone a day, and vet this poster has been tacked way up in the comer of the notice-board (or moved there), like somebody's afterthought. Nor is that all. There was nothing in the paper this morning - Henry knows, because he read it. Skimmed through it, anyway, while he was slurping up his cereal. Maybe it was buried way back in the Local section, he thinks, and knows at once that's it. The key word is buried. Lots of things are buried in Derry. Talk of missing children, for instance. There have been a lot of child disappearances here over the years - these boys know it, it certainly crossed their minds on the day they met Duddits Cavell, but nobody talks much about it. It's as if the occasional missing kid is the price of living in such a nice, quiet place. At this idea Henry feels a dawning indignation stealing in first to mix with and then replace his former goofy happiness. She was sweet, too, with her BarbieKen. Sweet like Duddits. He remembers how the four of them would deliver Duddits to school - all those walks - and how often she'd be outside, Josie Rinkenhauer with her scabby knees and her great big plastic purse: 'Hi, Duddie.' She was sweet.

And still is, Henry thinks. She's -

'She's alive,' Beaver says flatly. He takes the chewed-up toothpick out of his mouth, looks at it, and drops it to the grass. 'Alive and still around. Isn't she?'

'Yeah,' Pete says. He's still looking at the picture, fascinated, and Henry knows what Pete is thinking, almost the same thing as he is: she grew up. Even Josie, who in a fairer life might have been Doug Cavell's girlfriend. 'But I think she's . . . you know . . .'

'She's in deep shit,' Jonesy says. He has stepped out of his gown and now folds it over his arm.

'She's stuck,' Pete says dreamily, still looking at the picture. His finger has begun to go back and forth, tick-tock, tick-tock.

'Where?' Henry asks, but Pete shakes his head. So does Jonesy.

'Let's ask Duddits,' Beaver says suddenly. And they all know why. There is no need of discussion. Because Duddits sees the line. Duddits

11

' - sees the line!' Henry shouted suddenly, and jerked upright in the passenger seat of the Humvee. It scared the bell out of Owen, who was deep in some private place where there was only him and the storm and the endless line of reflectors to tell him he was still on the road. 'Duddits sees the line!'

The Humvee swerved, skidded, came back under control. 'Jesus, man!' Owen said. 'Give me a little warning next time before you blow your top, would you?'

Henry ran a hand down his face, drew in a deep breath, and let it out. 'I know where we're going and what we have to do - '

'Well, good - '

' - but I have to tell you a story so you'll understand.'

Owen glanced at him. 'Do you understand?'

'Not everything, but more than I did.'

'Go ahead. We've got an hour before Derry. Is that time enough?'

Henry thought it would be more than enough, especially talking mind to mind. He started at the beginning - what he now understood the beginning to be. Not the coming of the grays, not the byrus or the weasels, but four boys who had been hoping to see a picture of the Homecoming Queen with her skirt pulled up, no more than that. As Owen drove, his mind filled with a series of connected images, more like a dream than a movie. Henry told him about Duddits, about their first trip to Hole in the Wall, and Beaver puking in the snow. He told Owen about all those walks to school, and about the Duddits version of the game: they played and Duddits pegged. About the time they had taken Duddits to see Santa Claus - what a fuckin pisser that had been. And about how they had seen Josie Rinkenhauer's picture on the DERRY DOIN's board the day before the three older boys graduated. Owen saw them going to Duddits's house on Maple Lane in Henry's car, the gowns and mortarboard caps piled in back; saw them saying hi to Mr and Mrs Cavell, who were in the living room with an ashy-pale man in a Derry Gas coverall and a weeping woman

- Roberta Cavell has her arm around Ellen Rinkenhauer's shoulders and is telling her it will be all right, she knows that God won't let anything happen to dear little Josie.

It's strong, Owen thought dreamily. Man, what this guy's got is so strong. How can that be?

The Cavells barely look at the boys, because the boys are such frequent visitors here at 19 Maple Lane, and the Rinkenhauers are too deep in their terror to even notice them. They have not touched the coffee Roberta has served. He's in his room, guys, Alfie Cavell says, giving them a wan smile. And Duddits, looking up at them from his GI Joe figures - he has all of them - gets up as soon as he sees them in the doorway. Duddits never wears his shoes in his room, always his bunny slippers that Henry gave him for his last birthday - he loves the bunny slippers, will wear them until they are nothing but pink rags held together with strapping tape - but his shoes are on now. He has been waiting for them, and although his smile is as sunny as ever, his eyes are serious. Eh ee own? Duddits asks - Where we goin? And -

'You were all that way?' Owen whispered. He supposed Henry had already told him that, but until now he hadn't understood what Henry meant. 'Even before this?' He touched the side of his face, where a thin fuzz of byrus was now growing down his cheek.

'Yes. No. I don't know. Just be quiet, Owen. Listen.'

And Owen's head once more filled up with those images from 1982.

12

By the time they get to Strawford Park it's four-thirty and a bunch of girls in yellow DERRY HARDWARE shirts are on the softball field, all of them with their hair in near-identical ponytails that have been threaded through the backs of their caps. Most have braces on their teeth. 'My, my - they flubbin and dubbin,' Pete says, and maybe they are, but they sure look like they're having fun. Henry is having no fun at all, his stomach is full of butterflies, and he's glad to see Jonesy at least looks the same, solemn and scared. Pete and Beaver don't have a whole lot of imagination between them; he and old Gariella have too much. To Pete and the Beav, this is just Frank and Joe Hardy stuff, Danny Dunn stuff. But to Henry it's different.

To not find Josie Rinkenhauer would be bad (because they could, he knows they could), but to find her dead . . .

'Beav,' he says.

Beaver has been watching the girls. Now he turns to Henry. 'What?'

'Do you still think she's alive?'

'I . . .' Beav's smile fades, and he looks troubled. 'I dunno, man. Pete?'

But Pete shakes his head. 'I thought she was, back at school - ?shit, that picture almost talked to me - but now . . .' He shrugs.

Henry looks at Jonesy, who also shrugs, then spreads his hands: Dunno. So Henry turns to Duddits.

Duddits is looking at everything from behind what he calls his ooo ays, Duddits-ese for cool shades - wraparounds with silver mirrored surfaces. Henry thinks the ooo ays make Duddits look like Ray Walston in My Favorite Martian, but he'd never say such a thing to Duds, or think it at him. Duds is also wearing Beaver's mortarboard hat; he particularly likes to blow the tassel.

Duddits has no selective perception; to him the wino looking for returnables over by the trash barrels, the girls playing softball, and the squirrels running around on the branches of the trees are equally fascinating. It is part of what makes him special. 'Duddits,' Henry says. 'There's this girl you went to school with at the Academy, her name was Josie? Josie Rinkenhauer?'

Duddits looks politely interested because his friend Henry is talking to him, but there is no recognition of the name, and why would there be? Duds can't remember what he had for breakfast, so why would he remember a little girl he went to school with three or four years ago? Henry feels a wave of hope?lessness, which is strangely mixed with amusement. What were they thinking about?

Josie,' Pete says, but he doesn't look very hopeful, either. 'We used to tease you about how she was your girlfriend, remember? She had brown eyes . . . all this blonde hair sticking out from her head . . . and . . .' He sighs disgustedly. 'Fuck.'

'Ay ih, iffun-nay,' Duddits says, because this usually makes them smile: same shit, different day. It doesn't work, so Duddits tries another one: 'No-wounce, no-lay.'

'Yeah,' Jonesy says. 'No bounce, no play, that's right. We might as well take him home, guys, this isn't gonna - '

'No,' Beaver says, and they all look at him. Beaver's eyes are both bright and troubled. He's chewing on the toothpick in his mouth so fast and hard that it jitters up and down between his lips like a piston. 'Dreamcatcher,' he says.

13

'Dreamcatcher?' Owen asked. His voice seemed to come from far away, even to his own ears. The Humvee's headlights conned the endless snowy wasteland ahead, which resembled a road only because of the marching yellow reflectors. Dreamcatcher, he thought, and once more his head filled up with Henry's past, almost drowning him in the sights and sounds and smells of that day on the edge of summer:

Dreamcatcher.

14

'Dreamcatcher,' Beav says, and they understand each other as they sometimes do, as they think (mistakenly, Henry will later realize) all friends do. Although they have never spoken directly of the dream they all shared on their first hunting trip to Hole in the Wall, they know Beaver believed that it had somehow been caused by Lamar's dreamcatcher. None of the others have tried to tell him differently, partly because they don't want to challenge Beaver's superstition about that harmless little string spiderweb and mostly because they don't want to talk about that day at all. But now they understand that Beaver has latched onto at least half a truth. A dreamcatcher has indeed bound them, but not Lamar's.

Duddits is their dreamcatcher.

'Come on,' Beaver says quietly. 'Come on, you guys, don't be afraid. Grab hold of him.'

And so they do, although they are afraid a little anyway; Beaver., too.

Jonesy takes Duddits's right hand, which has become so clever with machinery out there at Voke. Duddits looks surprised, then smiles and closes his fingers over Jonesy's. Pete takes Duddits's left hand. Beaver and Henry crowd in and slip their arms around Duddits's waist.

And so the five of them stand beneath one of Strawford Park's vast old oaks, with a lace of Junelight and shadows dappling their faces. They are like boys in a huddle before some big game. The softball girls in their bright yellow shirts ignore them; so do the squirrels; so does the industrious wino, who is putting together a bottle of dinner one empty soda-can at a time.

Henry feels the light steal into him and understands that the light is his friends and himself, they make it together, that lovely lace of light and green shadow, and of them all, Duddits shines brightest. He is their hall; without him there is no bounce, there is no play. He is their dreamcatcher, he makes them one. Henry's heart fills up as it never will again (and the void of that lack will grow and darken as the years pile up around him), and he thinks: Is it to find one lost retarded girl who probably matters to no one but her parents? Was it to kill one brainless bully-boy, joining together to somehow make him drive off the road, doing it, oh for God's sake doing it in our sleep? Can that be all? Something so great, something so wondrous, for such tiny matters? Can that be all?

Because if it is - he thinks this even in the ecstasy of their joining - then what is the use? What can anything possibly mean?

Then that and all thought is swept away by the force of the experience. The face of Josie Rinkenhauer rises in front of them, a shifting image that is composed first of four perceptions and memories . . . then a fifth, as Duddits understands who it is they're making all this fuss about.

When Duddits weighs in, the image grows a hundred times brighter, a hundred times sharper. Henry hears someone - Jonesy - gasp, and he would gasp himself, if he had the breath to do so. Because Duddits may be retarded in some ways, but not in this way; in this way, they are the poor stumbling enfeebled idiots and Duddits is the genius.

'Oh my God,' Henry hears Beaver cry, and in his voice there are equal parts ecstasy and dismay.

Because Josie is standing here with them. Their differing per?ceptions of her age have turned her into a child of about twelve, older than she was when they first encountered her waiting outside The Retard Academy, surely younger than she must be now. They have settled on a sailor dress with an unsteady color that cycles from blue to pink to red to pink to blue again. She is holding the great big plastic purse with BarbieKen peeking out the top and her knees are splendidly scabby. Ladybug earrings appear and disappear below her lobes and Henry thinks Oh yeah, I remember those and then they steady into the mix.

She opens her mouth and says, Hi, Duddie. Looks around and says, Hi, you guys.

Then, just like that, she's gone. Just like that they are five instead of six, five big boys standing under the old oak with June's ancient light printing their faces and the excited cries of the softball girls in their cars. Pete is crying. So is Jonesy. The wino is gone - he's apparently collected enough for his bottle - but another man has come, a solemn man dressed in a winter parka in spite of the day's warmth. His left check is covered with red stuff that could be a birthmark, except Henry knows it isn't. It's byrus. Owen Underhill has joined them in Strawford Park, is watching them, but that's all right; no one sees this visitor from the far side of the dreamcatcher except for Henry himself.

Duddits is smiling, but he looks puzzled at the tears on two of his friends' cheeks. 'Eye-ooo ine?' he asks Jonesy - why you cryin?

'It doesn't matter,' Jonesy says. When he slips his hand out of Duddits's, the last of the connection breaks. Jonesy wipes at his face and so does Pete. Beav utters a sobbing little laugh.

'I think I swallowed my toothpick,' he says.

'Nah, there it is, ya fag,' Henry says, and points to the grass, where the chewed-up pick is lying.

'Fine Osie?' Duddits asks.

'Can you, Duds?' Henry asks.

Duddits walks toward the softball field, and they follow him in a respectful little cluster. Duds walks right past Owen but of course doesn't see him; to Duds, Owen Underhill doesn't exist, at least not yet. He walks past the bleachers, past third base, past the little snackbar. Then he stops.

Beside him, Pete gasps.

Duddits turns and looks at him, bright-eyed and interested, almost laughing. Pete is holding out one finger, ticking it back and forth, looking past the moving finger at the ground. Henry follows his gaze and for a moment thinks he sees something - a bright flash of yellow on the grass, like paint - and then it's gone. There's only Pete, doing what he does when he's using his special remembering gift.

'Ooo you eee-a yine, Eete?' Duddits inquires in a fatherly way that almost makes Henry laugh - Do you see the line, Pete?

'Yeah,' Pete says, bug-eyed. 'Fuck, yeah.' He looks up at the others. 'She was here, you guys! She was right here!'

They walk across Strawford Park, following a line only Duddits and Pete can see while a man only Henry can see follows along behind them. At the north end of the park is a rickety board fence with a sign on it: D.B.&A. P,.R. PROPERTY KEEP OUT! Kids have been ignoring this sign for years, and it's been years since the Derry, Bangor, and Aroostook actually ran freights along the spur through The Barrens, anyway. But they see the train-tracks when they push through a break in the fence; they are down at the bottom of the slope, gleaming rustily in the sun.

The slope is steep, a-riot with poison sumac and poison ivy, and halfway down they find Josie Rinkenhauer's big plastic purse. It is old now and sadly battered - mended in several places with friction tape - but Henry would know that purse anywhere. .

Duddits pounces on it happily, yanks it open, peers inside. 'ArbyEn!' he announces, and pulls them out. Pete, meanwhile, has foraged on, bent over at the waist, grim as Sherlock Holmes on the trail of Professor Moriarty. And it is Pete Moore who actually finds her, looking wildly around at the others from a filthy concrete drainpipe that pokes out of the slope and tangled foliage: 'She's in here!' Pete screams deliriously. Except for two flaring patches of color on his checks, his face is as pale as paper. 'Guys, I think she's in here!'

There is an ancient and incredibly complex system of drains and sewers beneath Derry, a town which exists in what was once swampland shunned even by the Micmac Indians who lived all around it. Most of the sewer-system was built in the thirties, with New Deal money, and most of it will collapse in 1985, during the big storm that will flood the town and destroy the Derry Standpipe. Now the pipes still exist. This one slopes downward as it bores into the hill. josie Rinkenhauer ventured in, fell, then slid on fifty years' worth of dead leaves. She went down like a kid on a slide and lies at the bottom. She has exhausted herself in her efforts to climb back up the greasy, crumbling incline; she has eaten the two or three cookies she had in the pocket of her pants and for the last series of endless hours - twelve, perhaps fourteen - has only lain in the reeking darkness, listening to the faint hum of the outside world she cannot reach and waiting to die.

Now at the sound of Pete's voice, she raises her head and calls with all of her remaining strength: 'Help mee! I can't get out! Pleeease, help meee!'

It never occurs to them that they should go for an adult ?perhaps for Officer Nell, who patrols this neighborhood. They are crazy to get her out; she has become their responsibility. They won't let Duddits in, they maintain at least that much sanity, but the rest of them create a chain into the dark without so much as thirty seconds' discussion: Pete first, then the Beav, then Henry, then Jonesy, the heaviest, as their anchor.

In this fashion they crawl into the sewage-smelling dark (there's the stench of something else, too, something old and nasty beyond belief), and before he's gotten ten feet Henry finds one of Josie's sneakers in the muck. He puts it in a back pocket of his jeans without even thinking about it.

A few seconds later, Pete calls back over his shoulder: 'Whoa, stop.'

The girl's weeping and pleas for help are very loud now, and Pete can actually see her sitting at the bottom of the leaf-lined slope. She's peering up at them, her face a smudged white circle in the gloom.

They stretch their chain farther, being as careful as they can despite their excitement. Jonesy has got his feet braced against a huge chunk of fallen concrete. Josie reaches up . . . gropes . . . cannot quite touch Pete's outstretched hand. At last, when it seems they must admit defeat, she scrambles a little way up. Pete grabs her scratched and filthy wrist.

'Yeah!' he screams triumphantly. 'Gotcha!'

They pull her carefully back up the pipe toward where Duddits is waiting, holding up her purse in one hand and the two dolls in the other, shouting in to Josie not to worry, not to worry because he's got BarbieKen. There's sunlight, fresh air, and as they help her out of the pipe -

15

There was no telephone in the Humvee - two different radios but no telephone. Nevertheless, a phone rang loudly, shattering the vivid memory Henry had spun between them and scaring the hell out of both of them.

Owen jerked like a man coming out of a deep sleep and the Humvee lost its tenuous hold on the road, first skidding and then going into a slow and ponderous spin, like a dinosaur dancing.

'Holy fuck - '

He tried to turn into the skid. The wheel only spun, turning with sick ease, like the wheel of a sloop that has lost its rudder. The Humvee went backward down the single treacherous lane that was left on the southbound side of 1-95, and at last fetched up askew in the snowbank on the median side, headlights opening a cone of snowy light back in the direction they had come.

Brring! Brring! Brring! Out of thin air.

It's in my head, Owen thought. I'm projecting it, but I think it's actually in my head, more goddam telep -

There was a pistol on the seat between them, a Glock. Henry picked it up, and when he did, the ringing stopped. He put the muzzle against his ear with his entire fist wrapped around the gunbutt.

Of course, Owen thought. Makes perfect sense. He got a call on the Glock, that's all. Happens all the time.

'Hello,' Henry said. Owen couldn't hear the reply, but his companion's tired face lit in a grin. 'Jonesy! I knew it was you!'

Who else would it be? Owen wondered. Oprah Winfrey?

'Where - '

Listening.

'Did he want Duddits, Jonesy? Is that why . . .' Listening again. Then: 'The Standpipe? Why . . .. Jonesy? Jonesy?'

Henry held the pistol against the side of his head a moment longer, then looked at it without seeming to realize what it was.

He laid it on the seat again. The smile had gone.

'He hung up. I think the other one was coming back. Mr Gray, he calls him.'

'He's alive, your buddy, but you don't look happy about it.' It was Henry's thoughts that weren't happy about it, but there was no longer any need to say this. Happy at first, the way you were always happy when someone you liked gave you a little ringy-dingy on the old Glock, but not happy now. Why?

'He - they - are south of Derry. They stopped to eat at a truck stop called Dysart's . . . only Jonesy called it Dry Farts, like when we were kids. I don't think he even knew it. He sounded scared.'

'For himself? For us?'

Henry gave Owen a bleak look. 'He says he's afraid Mr Gray means to kill a State Trooper and take his cruiser. I think that was mostly it. Fuck.' Henry struck his leg with his fist.

'But he's alive.'

'Yeah,' Henry said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. 'He's immune. Duddits . . . you understand about Duddits now?'

No. I doubt if you do, either, Henry . . . but maybe I understand enough.

Henry lapsed into thoughtspeak - it was easier. Duddits changed us - being with Duddits changed s. When Jonesy got hit by that car in Cambridge, it changed him again. The brainwaves of people who undergo near-death experiences often change, I saw a Lancet article on that just last year. For Jonesy it must mean this Mr Gray can use him without infecting him or wearing him out. And it's also enabled him to keep from being subsumed, at least so far.

'Subsumed?'

Co-opted. Gobbled up. Then aloud: 'Can you get us out of this snowbank?'

I think so.

'That's what I was afraid of,' Henry said glumly.

Owen turned to him, face greenish in the glow of the dashboard instruments. 'What the fuck is wrong with you?'

Christ, don't you understand? How many ways do I have to tell you this? 'He's still in there! Jonesy!'

For the third or fourth time since his and Henry's run had started, Owen was forced to leap over the gap between what his head knew and what his heart knew. 'Oh. I see.' He paused. 'He's alive. Thinking and alive. Making phone calls, even.' He paused again. 'Christ.'

Owen tried the Hummer in low forward and got about six inches before all four wheels began to spin. He geared reverse and drove them backward into the snowbank - crunch. But the Hummer's rear end came up a little on the packed snow, and that was what Owen wanted. When he went back to low, they'd come out of the snowbank like a cork out of a bottle. But he paused a moment with the brake pressed under the sole of his boot. The Hummer had a rough, powerful idle that shook the whole frame. Outside, the wind snarled and howled, sending snow-devils skating down the deserted turnpike.

'You know we have to do it, don't you?' Owen said. 'Always assuming we're able to catch him in the first place. Because whatever the specifics might be, the general plan is almost certainly general contamination. And the math - '

'I can do the math,' Henry said. 'Six billion people on Spaceship Earth, versus one Jonesy.'

'Yep, those are the numbers.'

'Numbers can lie,' Henry said, but he spoke bleakly. Once the numbers got big enough, they didn't, couldn't lie. Six billion was a very big number.

Owen let off the brake and laid on the accelerator. The Humvee rolled forward - a couple of feet, this time - started to spin, then caught hold and came roaring out of the snowbank like a dinosaur. Owen turned it south.

Tell me what happened after you pulled the kid out of the drainpipe.

Before Henry could do so, one of the radios under the dash crackled. The voice that followed came through loud and clear - its owner might have been sitting there in the Hummer with them.

'Owen? You there, buck?'

Kurtz.

16

It took them almost an hour to get the first sixteen miles south of Blue Base (the former Blue Base), but Kurtz wasn't worried. God would take care of them, he was quite sure of that.

Freddy Johnson was driving them (the happy quartet was packed into another snow-equipped Humvee). Perlmutter was in the passenger seat, handcuffed to the doorhandle. Cambry was likewise cuffed in back. Kurtz sat behind Freddy, Cambry behind Pearly. Kurtz wondered if his two press-ganged laddie-bucks were conspiring in telepathic fashion. Much good it would do them, if they were. Kurtz and Freddy both had their windows rolled down, although it rendered the Humvee colder than old Dad's outhouse in January; the heater was on high but simply couldn't keep up. The open windows were a necessity, however. Without them, the atmosphere of the Hummer would quickly become uninhabitable, as sulfurous as a poisoned coalmine. Only the smell on top wasn't sulfur but ether. Most of it seemed to be coming from Perlmutter. The man kept shifting in his seat, sometimes groaning softly under his breath. Cambry was hot with Ripley and growing like a wheat field after a spring rain, and he had that smell - Kurtz was getting it even with his mask on. But Pearly was the chief offender, shifting in his seat, trying to fart noiselessly (the one-cheek sneak, they had called such a maneuver back in the dim days of Kurtz's childhood), trying to pretend that suffocating smell wasn't coming from him. Gene Cambry was growing Ripley; Kurtz had an idea that Pearly, God love him, was growing something else.

To the best of his ability, Kurtz concealed these thoughts behind a mantra of his own: Davis and Roberts, Davis and Roberts, Davis and Roberts.

'Would you please stop that?' Cambry asked from Kurtz's right. 'You're driving me crazy.'

'Me too,' Perlmutter said. He shifted in his seat and a low pffft sound escaped him. The sound of a deflating rubber toy, perhaps.

'Oh, man, Pearly!' Freddy cried. He unrolled his window further, letting in a swirl of snow and cold air. The Humvee skated and Kurtz braced himself, but then it steadied again. 'Would you please quit with the fuckin anal perfume?'

'I beg your pardon,' Perlmutter said stiffly. 'if you're insinuating that I broke wind, then I have to tell you - '

'I'm not insinuatin anything,' Freddy said. 'I'm telling you to quit stinkin the place up or - '

Since there was no satisfactory way in which Freddy could complete this threat - for the time being they needed two telepaths, a primary and a backup - Kurtz broke in smoothly. 'The story of Edward Davis and Franklin Roberts is an instructive one, because it shows there's really nothing new under the sun. This was in Kansas, back when Kansas really was Kansas . . .'

Kurtz, a pretty decent storyteller, took them back to Kansas during the Korean conflict. Ed Davis and Franklin Roberts had owned similar smallhold farms not far from Emporia, and not far from the farm owned by Kurtz's family (which had not quite been named Kurtz). Davis, never bolted together tightly in the first place, grew increasingly certain that his neighbor, the offensive Roberts, was out to steal his farm. Roberts was spreading tales about him in town, Ed Davis claimed. Roberts was poisoning his crops, Roberts was putting pressure on the Bank of Emporia to foreclose the Davis farm.

What Ed Davis had done, Kurtz said, was to catch him a rabid raccoon and put it in the henhouse - his own henhouse. The coon had slaughtered those chickens right and left, and when he was plumb wore out with killing, praise God, Farmer Davis had blown Mr Coon's black-and-gray-striped head off.

They were silent in the rolling, chilly Humvee, listening.

Ed Davis had loaded all those dead chickens - and the dead raccoon - into the back of his International Harvester and had driven over onto his neighbor's property with them and by the dark of the moon had chucked his truckload of corpses down both of Franklin Roberts's wells - the stock-well and the house-well. Then, the next night, high on whiskey and laughing like hell, Davis had called his enemy on the phone and told him what he had done. Been pretty hot today, ain't it? the lunatic had inquired, laughing so hard Franklin Roberts could barely make him out. Which did you and them girls of yours get, Roberts? The coon-water or the chicken-water? I can't tell you, because I don't remember which ones I chucked down which well! Ain't that a shame?

Gene Cambry's mouth was trembling at the left corner, like the mouth of a man who has suffered a serious stroke. The Ripley growing along the crease of his brow was now so advanced that Mr Cambry looked like a man whose forehead had been split open.

'What are you saying?' he asked. 'Are you saying me and Pearly are no better than a couple of rabid chickens?'

'Watch how you talk to the boss, Cambry,' Freddy said. His mask bobbed up and down on his face.

'Hey man, fuck the boss. This mission is over"

Freddy raised a hand as if to swat Cambry over the back of the seat. Cambry jutted his truculent, frightened face forward to shorten the range. 'Go on, Bubba. Or maybe you want to check your hand first, make sure there aren't no cuts on it. Cause one little cut is all it takes.'

Freddy's hand wavered in the air for a moment, then returned to the wheel.

'And while you're at it, Freddy, you want to watch your back. You think the boss is going to leave witnesses, you're crazy.'

'Crazy, yes,' Kurtz said warmly, and chuckled. 'Lots of farmers go crazy, or they did then before Willie Nelson and Farm Aid, God bless his heart. Stress of the life, I suppose. Poor old Ed Davis wound up in the VA - he was in Big Two, you know - and not long after the thing with the wells, Frank Roberts sold out, moved to Wichita, got work as a rep for Allis-Chalmers. And neither well was actually polluted, either. He had a state water inspector out to do some tests, and the inspector said the water was good. Rabies doesn't spread like that, anyway, he said. I wonder if the Ripley does?'

'At least call it by its right name,' Cambry nearly spat. 'It's byrus.'

'Byrus or Ripley, it's all the same,' Kurtz said. 'These fellows are trying to poison our wells. To pollute our precious fluids, as somebody or other once said.'

'You don't care a damn about any of that!' Pearly spat - Freddy actually jumped at the venom in Perlmutter's voice. 'All you care about is catching Underhill.' He paused, then added in a mournful voice: 'You are crazy, boss.'

'Owen!' Kurtz cried, chipper as a chipmunk. 'Almost forgot about him! Where is he, fellows?'

'Up ahead,' Cambry said sullenly. 'Stuck in a fucking snowbanks'

'Outstanding!' Kurtz shouted. 'Closing in!'

'Don't get your face fixed. He's pulling it out. Got a Hummer, just like us. You can drive one of those things straight through downtown hell if you know what you're doing. And he seems to.'

'Shame. Did we make up any ground?'

'Not much,' Pearly said, then shifted, grimaced, and passed more gas.

'Fuuck,' Freddy said, low.

'Give me the mike, Freddy. Common channel. Our friend Owen likes the common channel.'

Freddy handed the mike back on its kinked cord, made an adjustment to the transmitter bolted to the dash, then said, 'Give it a try, boss.'

Kurtz depressed the button on the side of the mike. 'Owen.' You there, buck?'

Silence, static, and the monotonous howl of the wind. Kurtz was about to depress the SEND button and try again when Owen came back - clear and crisp, moderate static but no distortion. Kurtz's face didn't change - it held the same look of pleasant interest - but his heartbeat kicked up several notches.

'I'm here.'

'Lovely to hear you, bucko! Lovely! I estimate you are our location plus about fifty. We just passed Exit 39, so I'd say that's about right, wouldn't you?' They had actually just passed Exit 36, and Kurtz thought they were quite a bit closer than fifty miles. Half that, maybe.

Silence from the other end.

'Pull over, buck,' Kurtz advised Owen in his kindliest, sanest voice. 'It's not too late to save something out of this mess. Our careers are shot, no question about that, I guess - dead chickens down a poisoned well - but if you've got a mission, let me share it. I'm an old man, son, and all I want is to salvage something a little decent from - '

'Cut the shit, Kurtz.' Loud and clear from all six of the Hummer's speakers, and Cambry actually had the nerve to laugh. Kurtz marked him with a vile look. Under other circumstances that look would have turned Cambry's black skin gray with terror, but this was not other circumstances, other circumstances had been cancelled, and Kurtz felt an uncharacteristic bolt of fear. It was one thing to know intellectually that things had gone tits-up; it was another when the truth landed in your gut like a heavy sack of meal.

'Owen . . . laddie-buck - '

'Listen to me, Kurtz. I don't know if there's a sane brain-cell left in your head, but if there is, I hope it's paying attention. I'm with a man named Henry Devlin. Ahead of us - probably a hundred ahead of us now - is a friend of his named Gary Jones. Only it's not really him anymore. He's been taken over by an alien intelligence he calls Mr Gray.'

Gary. . . Gray, Kurtz thought. By their anagrams shall ye know em

'Nothing that happened in the Jefferson Tract matters,' came the voice from the speakers. 'The slaughter you planned is redundant, Kurtz - kill em or let em die on their own, they're not a threat.'

'You hear that?' Perlmutter asked hysterically. 'No threat! No - '

'Shut up,' Freddy said, and backhanded him. Kurtz hardly noticed. He was sitting bolt-upright in the back seat, eyes glaring. Redundant? Was Owen Underhill telling him that the most impor?tant mission of his life had been redundant?

' - environment, do you understand? They can't live in this ecosystem. Except for Gray. Because he happened to find a host who is fundamentally different. So here it is. If you ever stood for anything, Kurtz - if you can stand for anything now - you'll stop chasing us and let us take care of business. Let us take care of Mr Jones and Mr Gray. You may be able to catch us, but it's extremely doubtful that you can catch them. They're too far south. And we think Gray has a plan. Something that will work.'

'Owen, you're overwrought,' Kurtz said. 'Pull over. Whatever needs to be done, we'll do it together. We'll - '

'If you care, you'll quit,' Owen said. His voice was flat. 'That's it. Bottom line. I'm over and out.'

'Don't do that, buck!' Kurtz shouted. 'Don't do that, I forbid you to do that!'

There was a click, very loud, and then hissy silence from the speaker. 'He's gone,' Perlmutter said. 'Pulled the mike out. Turned off the receiver. Gone.'

'But you heard him, didn't you?' Cambry asked. 'There's no sense in this. Call it off.'

A pulse beat in the center of Kurtz's forehead. 'As though I'd take his word for anything, after what he participated in back there.'

'But he was telling the truth!' Cambry brayed. He turned fully to Kurtz for the first time, his eyes wide, the corners clogged with dabs of the Ripley, or the byrus, or whatever you wanted to call it. His spittle sprayed Kurtz's cheeks, his forehead, the surface of his breathing mask. 'I heard his thoughts! So did Pearly! HE WAS TELLING THE STONE TRUTH! HE - '

Once again moving with a speed that was eerie, Kurtz drew the nine-millimeter from the holster on his belt and fired. The report inside the Humvee was deafening. Freddy shouted in surprise and jerked the wheel again, sending the Humvee into a diagonal skid through the snow. Perlmutter screamed, turning his horrified, red-speckled face to look into the back seat. For Cambry it was merciful - his brains were out the back of his head, through the broken window, and blowing in the storm in the time it might have taken him to raise a protesting hand.

Didn't see that coming at all, did you buck? Kurtz thought. Telepathy didn't help you one damn bit there, did it?

'No,' Pearly said dolorously. 'You can't do much with someone who doesn't know what he's going to do until it's done. You can't do much with a crazyman.'

The skid was back under control. Freddy was a superior motorman, even when he had been startled out of his wits.

Kurtz pointed the nine at Perlmutter. 'Call me crazy again. Let me hear you.'

'Crazy,' Pearly said immediately. His lips stretched in a smile, opening over a line of teeth in which there were now several vacancies. 'Crazy-crazy-crazy. But you won't shoot me for it. You shot your backup, and that's all you can afford.' His voice was rising dangerously. Cambry's corpse lolled back against the door, tufts of hair blowing around his misshapen head in the cold wind coming through the window.

'Hush, Pearly,' Kurtz said. He felt better now, back in control again. Cambry had been worth that much, at least. 'Get a grip on your clipboard and just hush. Freddy?'

'Yes, boss.'

'Are you still with me?'

'All the way, boss.'

'Owen Underhill is a traitor, Freddy, can you give me a big praise God on that?'

'Praise God.' Freddy sat ramrod-straight behind the wheel, staring into the snow and the cones of the Humvee's headlights.

'Owen Underhill has betrayed his country and his fellow-men. He - '

'He betrayed you,' Perlmutter said, almost in a whisper.

'That's right, Pearly, and you don't want to overestimate your own importance, son, that's one thing you don't want to do, because you never know what a crazyman is going to do next, you said so yourself '

Kurtz looked at the back of Freddy's broad neck.

'We're going to take Owen Underhill down - him and this Devlin fellow, too, if Devlin's still with him. Understood?'

'Understood, boss.'

'Meanwhile, let's lighten the load, shall we?' Kurtz produced the handcuff key from his pocket. He reached behind Cambry, wriggled his hand into the cooling goo that hadn't exited through the window, and at last found the doorhandle. He unlocked the cuff and five seconds or so later Mr Cambry, praise God, rejoined the food-chain.

Freddy, meanwhile, had dropped one hand into his crotch, which itched like hell. His armpits, too, actually, and -

He turned his head slightly and saw Perlmutter staring at him - big dark eyes in a pallid, red-spotted face.

'What are you looking at?' Freddy asked.

Perlmutter turned away without saying anything more. He looked out into the night.