HE CHASE CONTINUES

1

Mr Gray enjoyed bingeing on human emotions, Mr Gray enjoyed human food, but Mr Gray most definitely did not enjoy evacuating Jonesy's bowels. He refused to look at what he'd produced, simply snatched up his pants and buttoned them with hands that trembled slightly.

Jesus, aren't you going to wipe? Jonesy asked. At least flush the damned toilet!

But Mr Gray only wanted to get out of the stall. He paused long enough to run his hands beneath the water in one of the basins, then turned toward the exit.

Jonesy was not exactly surprised to see the State Trooper push in through the door.

'Forgot to zip your fly, my friend,' the Trooper said.

'Oh. So I did. Thank you, officer.'

'Come from up north, did you? Big doins up there, the radio says. When you can hear it, that is. Space aliens, maybe.'

'I only came from Derry,' Mr Gray said. 'I wouldn't know.'

'What brings you out on a night like this, could I ask?'

Tell him a sick friend, Jonesy thought, but felt a prickle of despair. He didn't want to see this, let alone be a part of it.

'A sick friend,' Mr Gray said.

'Really. Well, sir, I'd like to see your license and regis - '

Then the Trooper's eyes came up double zeros. He walked in stilted strides toward the wall with the sign on it reading SHOWERS ARE FOR TRUCKERS ONLY. He stood there for a moment, trembling, trying to fight back . . . and then began to beat his head against the tile in big, sweeping jerks. The first strike knocked his Stetson off. On the third the claret began to flow, first beading on the beige tiles, then splattering them in dark ropes.

And because he could do nothing to stop it, Jonesy scrambled for the phone on his desk.

There was nothing. Either while he had been eating his second order of bacon or taking his first shit as a human being, Mr Gray had cut the line. Jonesy was on his own.

2

In spite of his horror - or perhaps because of it - Jonesy burst out laughing as his hands wiped the blood from the tiled wall with a Dysart's towel. Mr Gray had accessed Jonesy's knowledge concerning body concealment and/or disposal, and had found the motherlode. As a lifelong connoisseur of horror movies, suspense novels, and mysteries, Jonesy was, in a manner of speaking, quite the expert. Even now, as Mr Gray dropped the bloody towel on the chest of the Trooper's sodden uniform (the Trooper's jacket had been used to wrap the badly bludgeoned head), a part of Jonesy's mind was running the disposal of Freddy Miles's corpse in The Talented Mr Ripley, both the film version and Patricia Highsmith's novel. Other tapes were running, as well, so many overlays that looking too deeply made Jonesy dizzy, the way he felt when looking down a long drop. Nor was that the worst part. With Jonesy's help, the talented Mr Gray had discovered something he liked more than crispy bacon, even more than bingeing on Jonesy's well of rage.

Mr Gray had discovered murder.

3

Beyond the showers was a locker room. Beyond the lockers was a hallway leading to the truckers' dorm. The hall was deserted. On the far side of it was a door which opened on the rear of the building, where there was a snow-swirling cul-de-sac, now deeply drifted. Two large green Dumpsters emerged from the drifts. One hooded light cast a pallid glow and tall, lunging shadows. Mr Gray, who learned fast, searched the Trooper's body for his car keys and found them. He also took the Trooper's gun and put it in one of the zippered pockets of Jonesy's parka. Mr Gray used the bloodstained towel to keep the door to the cul-de-sac from latching shut, then dragged the body behind one of the Dumpsters.

All of it, from the Trooper's gruesome induced suicide to Jonesy's re-entry to the back hall, took less than ten minutes. Jonesy's body felt light and agile, all weariness gone, at least for the time being: he and Mr Gray were enjoying another burst of endorphin euphoria. And at least some of this wetwork was the responsibility of Gary Ambrose Jones. Not just the body-disposal knowledge, but the bloodthirsty urges of the id under the thin candy frosting of 'it's just make-believe'. Mr Gray was in the driver's seat ?Jonesy was at least not burdened with the idea that he was the primary murderer - but he was the engine.

Maybe we deserve to be erased, Jonesy thought as Mr Gray walked back through the shower-room (looking for blood-splatters with Jonesy's eyes and bouncing the Trooper's keys in one of Jonesy's palms as he went). Maybe we deserve to be turned into nothing but a bunch of red spores blowing in the wind. That might be the best thing, God help us.

4

The tired-looking woman working the cash-register asked him if he'd seen the Trooper.

'Sure did,' Jonesy said. 'Showed him my driver's license and registration, as a matter of fact.'

'Been a bunch of mounties in ever since late afternoon,' the cashier said. 'Storm or no storm. They're all nervous as hell. So's everyone else. If I wanted to see folks from some other planet, I'd rent me a video. You heard anything new?'

'On the radio they're saying it's all a false alarm, he replied, zipping his jacket. He looked at the windows between the restaurant and the parking lot, verifying what he had already seen: with the combination of frost on the glass and the snow outside, the view was nil. No one in here was going to see what he drove away in.

'Yeah? Really?' Relief made her look less tired. Younger.

'Yeah. Don't be looking for your friend too soon, darlin. He said he had to lay a serious loaf.'

A frown creased the skin between her eyebrows. 'He said that?'

'Good night. Happy Thanksgiving. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.'

Some of that, Jonesy hoped, was him. Trying to get through. To be noticed.

Before he could see if it was noticed, the view before his office window revolved as Mr Gray turned him away from the cash-register. Five minutes later he was heading south on the turnpike again, the chains on the Trooper's cruiser thrupping and zinging, allowing him to maintain a steady forty miles an hour.

Jonesy felt Mr Gray reaching out, reaching back. Mr Gray could touch Henry's mind but not get inside it - like Jonesy, Henry was to some degree different. No matter; there was the man with Henry, Overhill or Underhill. From him, Mr Gray was able to get a good fix. They were seventy miles behind, maybe more . . . and pulling off the turnpike? Yes, pulling off in Derry.

Mr Gray cast back farther yet, and discovered more pursuers. Three of them . . . but Jonesy felt this group's main focus was not Mr Gray, but Overhill/Underhill. He found that both incredible and inexplicable, but it seemed to be true. And Mr Gray liked that just fine. He didn't even bother to look for the reason why Overhill/Underhill and Henry might be stopping.

Mr Gray's main concern was switching to another vehicle, a snowplow, if Jonesy's driving skills would allow him to operate it. It would mean another murder, but that was all right with the increasingly human Mr Gray.

Mr Gray was just getting warmed up.

5

Owen Underhill is standing on the slope very near to the pipe which juts out of the foliage, and he sees them help the muddy, wild-eyed girl - Josie - out of the pipe. He sees Duddits (a large young man with shoulders like a football player's and the improbable blonde hair of a movie idol) sweep her into a hug, kissing her dirty face in big smacks. He hears her first words: 'I want to see my Mommy.'

It's good enough for the boys; there's no call to the police, no call for an ambulance. They simply help her up the slope, through the break in the board fence, across Strawford Park (the girls in yellow have been replaced by girls in green; neither they nor their coach pay any attention to the boys or their filthy, draggle-haired prize), and then down Kansas Street to Maple Lane. They know where Josie's Mommy is. Her Daddy, too.

Not just the Rinkenhauers, either. When the boys get back, there are cars parked the length of the block on both sides of the Cavell house. Roberta was the one who proposed calling the parents of Josie's friends and classmates. They will search on their own, and they will paper the town with the MISSING, posters, she says. Not in shadowy, out-of-the-way places (which is where missing children posters in Derry tend to wind up) either, but where people must see them. Roberta's enthusiasm is enough to light some faint hope in the eyes of Ellen and Hector Rinkenhauer.

The other parents respond, too - it is as if they have just been waiting to be asked. The calls started shortly after Duddits and his friends trooped out the door (to play, Roberta assumed, and someplace close by, because Henry's old jalopy is still parked in the driveway), and by the time the boys return, there are almost two dozen people crammed into the Cavells' living room, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. The man currently addressing them is a guy Henry has seen before, a lawyer named Dave Bocklin. His son, Kendall, sometimes plays with Duddits. Ken Bocklin also has Down's, and he's a good enough guy, but he's not like Duds. Get serious, though - who is?

The boys stand at the entrance to the living room, Josie among them. She is once more carrying her great big purse, with Barbie?Ken tucked away inside. Even her face is almost clean, because Beaver, seeing all the cars, has done a little work on it with his handkerchief out in the driveway. ('Tell you what, it made me feel funny,' the Beav confides later, after all the hoopdedoo and fuckaree has died down. 'Here I'm cleanin up this girl, she's got the bod of a Playboy Bunny and the brain, roughly speaking, of a lawn-sprinkler.') At first no one sees them but Mr Bocklin, and Mr Bocklin doesn't seem to realize what he's looking at, because he goes right on talking.

'So what we need to do, folks, is divide up into a number of teams, let's say three couples to each . . . each team . . . and we'll . . . we . . . we Mr Bocklin slows like one of those toys you need to wind up and then just stands there in front of the Cavells' TV, staring. There's a nervous rustle among the hastily assembled parents, who don't understand what can be wrong with him - he was going along so confidently.

'Joise,' he says in a flat, uninflected voice utterly unlike his usual confident courthouse boom.

'Yes,' says Hector Rinkenhauer, 'that's her name. What's up, Dave? Are you all r - '

'Josie,' Dave says again, and raises a trembling hand. To Henry (and hence to Owen, who is seeing this through Henry's eyes) he looks like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come pointing at Ebenezer Scrooge's grave.

One face turns . . . two. . . four . . . Alfie Cavell's eyes, huge and unbelieving behind his specs . . . and finally, Mrs Rinkenhauer's.

'Hi, Mom,' Josie says nonchalantly. She holds up her purse. 'Duddie found my BarbieKen. I was stuck in a - '

The rest is blotted out by the woman's shriek of joy. Henry has never heard such a cry in his life, and although it is wonderful, it is also somehow terrible.

'Fuck me Freddy,' Beaver says . . . low, under his breath. Jonesy is holding Duddits, who has been frightened by the scream.

Pete looks at Henry and gives a little nod: We did okay.

And Henry nods back. Yeah, we did.

It may not have been their finest hour, but surely it is a close second. And as Mrs Rinkenhauer sweeps her daughter into her arms, now sobbing, Henry taps Duddits on the arm. When Duddits turns to look at him, Henry kisses him softly on the cheek. Good old Duddits, Henry thinks. Good old -

6

'This is it, Owen,' Henry said quietly. 'Exit 27.'

Owen's vision of the Cavell living room popped like a soap bubble and he looked at the looming sign: KEEP RIGHT FOR EXIT 27 - KANSAS STREET. He could still hear the woman's happy, unbelieving cries echoing in his ears.

'You okay?' Henry asked.

'Yeah. At least I guess so.' He turned up the exit ramp, the Humvee shouldering its way through the snow. The clock built into the dashboard had gone as dead as Henry's wristwatch, but he thought he could see the faintest lightening in the air. 'Right or left at the top of the ramp? Tell me now, because I don't want to risk stopping.'

'Left, left.'

Owen swung the Hummer left under a dancing blinker-light, rode it through another skid, and then moved south on Kansas Street. It had been plowed, and not that long ago, but it was drifting in again already.

'Snow's letting up,' Henry said.

'Yeah, but the wind's a bitch. You're looking forward to seeing him, aren't you? Duddits.'

Henry grinned. 'A little nervous about it, but yeah.' He shook his head. 'Duddits, man . . . Duddits just makes you feel good. He's a tribble. You'll see for yourself I just wish we weren't busting in like this at the crack of dawn.'

Owen shrugged. Can't do anything about it, the gesture said.

'They've been over here on the west side for four years, I guess, and I've never even been to the new place.' And, without even realizing, went on in mindspeak: They moved after Alfie died.

Did you - And then, instead of words, a picture: people in black under black umbrellas. A graveyard in the rain. A coffin on trestles with R.I.P. ALFIE carved on top.

No, Henry said, feeling ashamed. None of us did.

But Henry didn't know why they hadn't gone, although a phrase occurred to him: The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on. Duddits had been an important (he guessed the word he actually wanted was vital) part of their childhood. And once that link was broken, going back would have been painful. Painful was one thing, uselessly painful another. He understood something now. The images he associated with his depression and his growing certainty of suicide - the trickle of milk on his father's chin, Barry Newman hustling his doublewide butt out of the office - had been hiding another, more potent, image all along: the dreamcatcher. Hadn't that been the real source of his despair? The grandiosity of the dreamcatcher concept coupled to the banality of the uses to which the concept had been put? Using Duddits to find Josie Rinkenhauer had been like discovering quantum physics and then using it to build a video game. Worse, discovering that was really all quantum physics was good for. Of course they had done a good thing - without them, Josie Rinkenhauer would have died in that pipe like a rat in a rainbarrel. But - come on - it wasn't as if they'd rescued a future Nobel Peace Prize winner -

I can't follow everything that just went through your head, Owen said, suddenly deep in Henry's mind, but it sounds pretty goddam arrogant. Which street?

Stung, Henry glared at him. 'We haven't been back to see him lately, okay? Could we just leave it at that?'

'Yes,' Owen said.

'But we all sent him Christmas cards, okay? Every year, which is how I know they moved to Dearborn Street, 41 Dearborn Street, West Side Derry, make your right three streets up.'

'Okay. Calm down.'

'Fuck your mother and die.'

'Henry - '

'We just fell out of touch. It happens. Probably never happened to a Mr Perfection like your honored self, but to the rest of us . . . the rest of us . . .' Henri looked down, saw that his fists were clenched, and forced them to roll open.

'Okay, I said.'

'Probably Mr Perfection stays in touch with all his junior-high-?school friends, right? You guys probably get together once a year to snap bras, play your Motley Crue records, and eat Tuna Surprise just like they used to serve in the cafeteria.'

'I'm sorry if I upset you.'

'Oh, bite me. You act like we fucking abandoned him.' Which, of course, was pretty much what they had done.

Owen said nothing. He was squinting through the swirling snow, looking for the Dearborn Street sign in the pallid gray light of early morning . . . and there it was, just up ahead. A plow passing along Kansas Street had plugged the end of Dearborn, but Owen thought the Humvee could beat its way past.

'It's not like I stopped thinking about him,' Henry said. He started to continue by thought, then switched back to words again. Thinking about Duddits was too revealing. 'We all thought about him. In fact, Jonesy and I were going to go see him this spring. Then Jonesy had his accident, and I forgot all about it. Is that so surprising?'

'Not at all,' Owen said mildly. He swung the wheel hard to the right, flicked it back the other way to control the skid, then floored the accelerator. The Hummer hit the packed and crusty wall of snow hard enough to throw both of them forward against their seatbelts. Then they were through, Owen jockeying the wheel to keep from hitting the drifted-in cars parked on either side of the street.

'I don't need a guilt-trip from someone who was planning to barbecue a few hundred civilians,' Henry grumbled.

Owen stamped on the brake with both feet, throwing them forward into their harnesses again, this time hard enough to lock them. The Humvee skidded to a diagonal stop in the street.

'Shut the fuck up.'

Don't be talking shit you don't understand.

'I'm likely going to be a'

dead man because of

'you, so why don't you just keep all your fucking'

self-indulgent

(picture of a spoiled-looking kid with his lower lip stuck out)

'rationalizing bullshit'

to yourself.

Henry stared at him, shocked and stunned. When was the last time someone had talked to him that way? The answer was probably never.

'I only care about one thing,' Owen said. His face was pale and strained and exhausted. 'I want to find your Typhoid Jonesy and stop him. All right? Fuck your precious tender feelings, fuck how tired you are, and fuck you. I'm here.'

'All right,' Henry said.

'I don't need lessons in morality from a guy planning to blow his overeducated, self-indulgent brains out.'

'Okay.'

'So fuck your mother and die.'

Silence inside the Humvee. Nothing from outside but the monotonous vacuum-cleaner shriek of the wind.

At last Henry said, 'Here's what we'll do. I'll fuck your mother, then die; you fuck my mother, then die. At least we'll avoid the incest taboo.'

Owen began to smile. Henry smiled back.

Mat're Jonesy and Mr Gray doing? Owen asked Henry. Can you tell?

Henry licked at his lips. The itching in his leg had largely stopped, but his tongue tasted like an old piece of shag rug. 'No. They're cut off. Gray's responsible for that, probably. And your fearless leader? Kurtz? He's getting closer, isn't he?'

'Yeah. If we're going to maintain any kind of lead on him at all, we better make this quick.'

'Then we will.' Owen scratched the red stuff on the side of his face, looked at the bits of red that came off on his fingers, then got moving again.

Number 41, you said?

Yeah. Owen?

What?

I'm scared.

Of Duddits?

Sort of, yeah.

Why?

I don't know.'

Henry looked at Owen bleakly.

I feel like there's something wrong with him.

7

It was her after-midnight fantasy made real, and when the knock came at the door, Roberta was unable to get up. Her legs felt like water. The night was gone, but it had been replaced by a pallid, creepy morning light that wasn't much better, and they were out there, Pete and Beav, the dead ones had come for her son.

The fist fell again, booming, rattling the pictures on the walls.

One of them was a framed front page of the Derry News, the photo showing Duddits, his friends, and Josie Rinkenhauer, all of them with their arms around each other, all of them grinning like mad (how well Duddits had looked in that picture, how strong and normal) below a headline reading HIGH-SCHOOL CHUMS PLAY DETECTIVE, FIND MISSING GIRL.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

No, she thought, I'll just sit here and eventually they'll go away, they'll have to go away, because with dead people you have to invite them in and if I just sit tight -

But then Duddits was running past her rocker - running, when these days just walking wore him out, and his eyes were full of their old blazing brightness, such good boys they had been and such happiness they had brought him, but now they were dead, they had come to him through the storm and they were dead -

'Duddie, no!' she screamed, but he paid her no attention. He rushed past that old framed picture - Duddits Cavell on the front page, Duddits Cavell a hero, would wonders never cease - and she heard what he was shouting just as he opened the door on the dying storm:

'Ennie! Ennie! ENNIE!'

8

Henry opened his mouth - to say what he never knew, because nothing came out. He was thunderstruck, dumbstruck. This wasn't Duddits, couldn't be - it was some sickly uncle or older brother, pale and apparently bald beneath his pushed-back Red Sox cap. There was stubble on his cheeks, crusts of blood around his nostrils, and deep dark circles beneath his eyes. And yet -

'Ennie! Ennie! Ennie!'

The tall, pale stranger in the doorway threw himself into Henry's arms with all of Duddie's old extravagance, knocking him backward on the snowy step not by force of his weight - he was as light as milkweed fluff - but simply because Henry was unprepared for the assault. If Owen hadn't steadied him, he and Duddits would have gone tumbling into the snow.

'Ennie! Ennie!'

Laughing. Crying. Covering him with those big old Duddits smackeroos. Deep in the storehouse of his memory, Beaver Clarendon whispered, If you guys tell anybody he did that . . . And Jonesy: Yeah, yeah, you'll never chum with us again, ya fuckin wank. It was Duddits, all right, kissing Henry's byrus-speckled cheeks . . . but the pallor on Duddits's cheeks, what was that? He was so thin - no, beyond thin, gaunt - and what was that? The blood in his nostrils, the smell drifting off his skin . . . not the smell that had been coming from Becky Shue, not the smell of the overgrown cabin, but a deathly smell just the same.

And here was Roberta, standing in the hall beside a photo?graph of Duddits and Alfie at the Derry Days carnival, riding the carousel, dwarfing their wild-eyed plastic horses and laugh?ing.

Didn't go to Alfie's funeral, but sent a card, Henry thought, and loathed himself

She was wringing her hands together, her eyes full of tears, and although she had put on weight at breast and hip, although her hair was now almost entirely gray, it was her, she was still she, but Duddits . . . oh boy, Duddits . . .

Henry looked at her, his arms wrapped around the old friend who was still crying his name. He patted at Duddits's shoulder blade. It felt insubstantial beneath his palm, as fragile as the bone in a bird's wing.

'Roberta,' he said. 'Roberta, my God! What's wrong with him?'

'ALL,' she said, and managed a wan smile. 'Sounds like a laundry detergent, doesn't it? It stands for acute lymphocytic leukemia. He was diagnosed nine months ago, and by then curing him was no longer an option. All we've been doing since then is fighting the clock.'

'Ennie!' Duddits exclaimed. The old goofy smile illuminated his gray and tired face. 'Ay ih, iffun-nay!'

'That's right,' Henry said, and began to cry. 'Same shit, differ?ent day.'

'I know why you're here,' she said, 'but don't. Please, Henry.

I'm begging you. Don't take my boy away from me. He's dying.'

9

Kurtz was about to ask Perlmutter for an update on Underhill and his new friend - Henry was the new friend's name, Henry Devlin - when Pearly let out a long, ululating scream, his face turned up to the roof of the Humvee. Kurtz had helped a woman have a baby in Nicaragua (and they always call us the bad guys, he thought sentimentally), and this scream reminded him of hers, heard on the shores of the beautiful La Juvena River.

'Hold on, Pearly!' Kurtz cried. 'Hold on, buck! Deep breaths, now!'

'Fuck you!' Pearly screamed. 'Look what you got me into, you dirty cunt! FUCK YOU!'

Kurtz did not hold this against him. Women said terrible things in childbirth, and while Pearly was definitely one of the fellas, Kurtz had an idea that he was going through something as close to childbirth as any man had ever experienced. He knew it might be wise to put Perlmutter out of his misery -

'You better not,' Pearly groaned. Tears of pain were rolling down his red-bearded cheeks. 'You better not, you lizard-skin old fuck.'

'Don't you worry, laddie, Kurtz soothed, and patted Perlmutter's shivering shoulder. From ahead of them came the steady clanking rumble of the plow Kurtz had persuaded to break trail for them (as gray light began to creep back into the world, their speed had risen to a giddy thirty-five miles an hour). The plow's taillights glowed like dirty red stars.

Kurtz leaned forward, looking at Perlmutter with bright-eyed interest. It was very cold in the back seat of the Humvee because of the broken window, but for the moment Kurtz didn't notice this. The front of Pearly's coat was swelling outward like a balloon, and Kurtz once more drew his nine-millimeter,

'Boss, if he pops - '

Before Freddy could finish, Perlmutter produced a deafening fart. The stench was immediate and enormous, but Pearly appeared not to notice. His head lolled back against the seat, his eyes half-?lidded, his expression one of sublime relief

'Oh my fuckin GRANDMOTHER!' Freddy cried, and cranked his window all the way down despite the draft already coursing through the vehicle.

Fascinated, Kurtz watched Perlmutter's distended belly deflate. Not yet, then. Not yet and probably just as well. It was possible that the thing growing inside Perlmutter's works might come in handy. Not likely, but possible. All things served the Lord, said the Scripture, and that might include the shit-weasels.

'Hold on, soldier,' Kurtz said, patting Pearly's shoulder with one hand and putting the nine on the seat beside him with the other. 'You just hold on and think about the Lord.'

'Fuck the Lord,' Perlmutter said sullenly, and Kurtz was mildly amazed. He never would have dreamed Perlmutter could have so much profanity in him.

Ahead of them, the plow's taillights flashed bright and pulled over to the right side of the road.

'Oh-oh,' Kurtz said.

'What should I do, boss?'

'Pull right in behind him,' Kurtz said. He spoke cheerfully, but picked the nine-millimeter up off the seat again. 'We'll see what our new friend wants.' Although he believed he knew. 'Freddy, what do you hear from our old friends? Are you picking them up?'

Very reluctantly, Freddy said, 'Only Owen. Not the guy with him or the guys they're chasing. Owen's off the road. In a house. Talking with someone.'

'A house in Derry?'

'Yeah.'

And here came the plow's driver, striding through the snow in great green gumrubber boots and a hooded parka fit for an Eskimo. Wrapped around the lower part of his face was a vast woolen muffler, its ends flying out behind him in the wind, and Kurtz didn't have to be telepathic to know the man's wife or mother had made it for him.

The plowman leaned in the window and wrinkled his nose at the lingering aroma of sulfur and ethyl alcohol. He looked doubtfully at Freddy, at the only-half-conscious Perlmutter, then at Kurtz in the back seat, who was leaning forward and looking at him with bright-eyed interest. Kurtz thought it prudent to hold his weapon beneath his left knee, at least for the time being.

'Yes, Cap'n?' Kurtz asked.

'I've had a radio message from a fella says his name is Randall.' The plowman raised his voice to be heard over the wind. His accent was pure downeast Yankee. 'Gen'rul Randall. Claimed to be talkin to me by satellite relay straight from Cheyenne Mountain in Wyomin.'

'Name means nothing to me, Cap,' Kurtz said in the same bright tone - absolutely ignoring Perlmutter, who groaned 'You lie, you lie, you lie.'

The plow driver's eyes flicked to him, then returned to Kurtz. 'Fella gave me a code phrase. Blue exit. Mean anything to you?'

"'The name is Bond, James Bond,"' Kurtz said, and laughed. 'Someone's pulling your leg, Cap.'

'Said to tell you that your part of the mission's over and your country thanks you.'

'Did they mention anything about a gold watch, laddie-buck?' Kurtz asked, eyes sparkling.

The plowman licked his lips. It was interesting, Kurtz thought. He could see the exact moment the plowman decided he was dealing with a lunatic. The exact moment.

'Don't know nawthin bout no gold watch. Just wanted to tell you I can't take you any further. Not without authorization, that is.'

Kurtz produced the nine from where it had been hiding under his knee and pointed it into the plowman's face. 'Here's your authorization, buck, all signed and filed in triplicate. Will it suit?' The plowman looked at the gun with his long Yankee eyes. He did not look particularly afraid. 'Ayuh, that looks to be in order.' Kurtz laughed. 'Good man! Very good man! Now let's get going. And you want to speed it up a little, God love you. There's someone in Derry I have to' Kurtz searched for le mot juste, and found it 'to debrief'

Perlmutter half-groaned, half-laughed. The plowman glanced at him.

'Don't mind him, he's pregnant,' Kurtz said in a confiding tone. 'Next thing you know, he'll be yelling for oysters and dill pickles.'

'Pregnant,' the plowman echoed. His voice was perfectly flat.

'Yes, but never mind that. Not your problem. The thing is, buck' - Kurtz leaned forward, speaking warmly and confidentially over the barrel of his nine-millimeter - 'this fellow I have to catch is in Derry now. I expect he'll be back on the road again before too long, I'd guess he must know I'm coming for his ass - '

'He knows, all right,' Freddy Johnson said. He scratched the side of his neck, then dropped his hand into his crotch and scratched there.

' - but in the meantime,' Kurtz continued, 'I think I can make up some ground. Now do you want to put your elderly ass in gear, or what?'

The plowman nodded and went walking back to the cab of his plow. The light was brighter now. This light very likely belongs to the last day of my life, Kurtz thought with mild wonder.

Perlmutter began uttering a low sound of pain. It growled along for a bit, then rose to a scream. Perlmutter clutched his stomach again.

'Jesus,' Freddy said. 'Lookit his gut, boss. Rising like a loaf of bread.'

'Deep breaths,' Kurtz said, and patted Pearly's shoulder with a benevolent hand. Ahead of them, the plow had begun to move again. 'Deep breaths, laddie. Relax. You just relax and think good thoughts.'

10

Forty miles to Derry. Forty miles between me and Owen, Kurtz thought. Not bad at all. I'm coming for you, buck. Need to take you to school. Teach you what you forgot about crossing the Kurtz Line.

Twenty miles later and they were still there - this according to both Freddy and Perlmutter, although Freddy seemed less sure of himself now. Pearly, however, said they were talking to the mother - Owen and the other one were talking to the mother. The mother didn't want to let him go.

'Let who go?' Kurtz asked. He hardly cared. The mother was holding them in Derry, allowing them to close the distance, so God bless the mother no matter who she was or what her motivations might be.

'I don't know,' Pearly said. His guts had been relatively still ever since Kurtz's conversation with the plowman, but he sounded exhausted. 'I can't see. There's someone, but it's like there's no mind there to look into.'

'Freddy?'

Freddy shook his head. 'Owen's gone for me. I can barely hear the plow guy. It's like . . . I dunno . . . like losing a radio signal.'

Kurtz leaned forward over the seat and took a close look at the Ripley on Freddy's cheek. The stuff in the middle was still bright red - orange, but around the edges it appeared to be turning an ashy white.

It's dying, Kurtz thought. Either Freddy's system is killing it or the environment is. Owen was right. I'll be damned.

Not that it changed anything. The line was still the line, and Owen had stepped over it.

'The plow guy,' Perlmutter said in his tired voice.

'What about the plow guy, buck?'

Only there was no need for Perlmutter to answer. Up ahead, twinkling in the blowing snow, was a sign reading EXIT 32 - GRANDVIEW/GRANDVIEW STATION. The plow suddenly sped up, raising its blade as it did so. All at once the Humvee was running in slippery powder again, better than a foot of it. The plowman didn't bother with his blinker, simply took the exit at fifty, yanking up a tall rooster-tail of snow in his wake.

'Follow him?' Freddy asked. 'I can run him down, boss!' Kurtz mastered a strong urge to tell Freddy to go ahead - they'd run the long-eyed Yankee son of a bitch to earth and teach him what happened to folks who crossed the line. Give him a little dose of Owen Underhill's medicine. Except the plow was bigger than the Hummer, a lot bigger, and who knew what might happen if they got into a game of bumper cars?

'Stay on the pike, laddie,' Kurtz said, settling back. 'Eyes on the prize.' Still, he watched the plow angling off into the frigid, windy morning with real regret. He couldn't even hope the damn Yankee had caught a hot dose from Freddy and Archie Perlmutter, because the stuff didn't last.

They went on, speed dropping back to twenty in the drifts, but Kurtz guessed conditions would improve as they got farther south. The storm was almost over.

'And congratulations,' he told Freddy.

'Huh?'

Kurtz patted him on the shoulder. 'You appear to be get?ting better.' He turned to Perlmutter. 'I don't know about you, laddie-buck.'

11

A hundred miles north of Kurtz's position and less than two miles from the junction of back roads where Henry had been taken, the new commander of the Imperial Valleys - a woman of severe good looks, in her late forties - stood beside a pine tree in a valley which had been code - named Clean Sweep One. Clean Sweep One was, quite literally, a valley of death. Piled along its length were heaps of tangled bodies, most wearing hunter orange. There were over a hundred in all. If the corpses had ID, it had been taped around their necks. The majority of the dead were wearing their driver's licenses, but there were also Visa and Discover cards, Blue Cross cards, and hunting licenses. One woman with a large black hole in her forehead had been tagged with her Blockbuster Video card.

Standing beside the largest pile of bodies, Kate Gallagher was finishing a rough tally before writing her second report. In one hand she held a Palm Pilot computer, a tool that Adolf Eichmann, that famous accountant of the dead, would certainly have envied. The Pilots hadn't worked earlier, but now most of the cool electronics gear seemed to be back on-line.

Kate wore earphones and a mike suspended in front of her mouth-and-nose mask. Occasionally she would ask someone for clarification or give an order. Kurtz had chosen a successor who was both enthusiastic and efficient. Totting up the bodies here and elsewhere, Gallagher estimated that they had bagged at least sixty per cent of the escapees. The John Q's had fought, which was certainly a surprise, but in the long run, most of them just weren't survivors. It was as simple as that.

'Yo, Katie-Kate.'

Jocelyn McAvoy appeared through the trees at the south end of the valley, her hood pushed back, her short hair covered by a scarf of green silk, her burp-gun slung over her shoulder. There was a splash of blood across the front of her parka.

'Scared you, didn't I?' she asked the new OIC.

'You might have raised my blood pressure a point or two.'

'Well, Quadrant Four is clear, maybe that'll lower it a little.' McAvoy's eyes sparkled. 'We got over forty. Jackson has got hard numbers for you, and speaking of hard, right about now I could really use a hard - '

'Excuse me? Ladies?'

They turned. Emerging from the snow-covered brush at the north end of the valley was a group of half a dozen men and two women. Most were wearing orange, but their leader was a squat tugboat of a man wearing a regulation Blue Group coverall under his parka. He was also still wearing his transparent face-mask, although below his mouth there was a Ripley soul-patch which was definitely non-reg. All of the newcomers had automatic weapons.

Gallagher and McAvoy had time to exchange a single wide?-eyed, caught-with-our-pants-down look. Then Jocelyn McAvoy went for her burp-gun and Kate Gallagher went for the Browning she had propped against the tree. Neither of them made it. The thunder of the guns was deafening. McAvoy was thrown nearly twenty feet through the air. One of her boots came off.

'That's for Larry!' one of the orange-clad women was screaming. 'That's for Larry, you bitches, that's for Larry!'

12

When the shooting was over, the squat man with the Ripley goatee assembled his group near the facedown corpse of Kate Gallagher, who had graduated ninth in her class at West Point before running afoul of the disease that was Kurtz. The squat man had appropriated her gun, which was better than his own.

'I'm a firm believer in democracy,' he said, 'and you folks can do what you want, but I'm heading north now. I don't know how long it'll take me to learn the words to "O Canada", but I'm going to find out.'

'I'm going with you,' one of the men said, and it quickly became apparent that they were all going with him. Before they left the clearing the leader bent down and plucked the Palm Pilot out of a snowdrift.

'Always wanted one of these,' said Emil 'Dawg' Brodsky. 'I'm a sucker for the new technology.'

They left the valley of death from the direction they'd entered it, heading north. From around them came isolated pops and bursts of gunfire, but for all practical purposes, Operation Clean Sweep was also over.

13

Mr Gray had committed another murder and stolen another vehicle, this time a DPW plow. Jonesy didn't see it happen. Mr Gray, having apparently decided he couldn't get Jonesy out of his office (not, at least, until he could devote all his time and energy to the problem), had decided to do the next best thing, which was to wall him off from the outside world. Jonesy now thought he knew how Fortunato must have felt when Montresor bricked him up in the wine-cellar.

It happened not long after Mr Gray put the State Trooper's car back in the turnpike's southbound lane (there was just the one, at least for the time being, and that was treacherous). Jonesy was in a closet at the time, following up what seemed to him to be an absolutely brilliant idea.

Mr Gray had cut off his telephone service? Okay, he would simply create a new form of communication, as he had created a thermostat to cool the place down when Mr Gray tried to force him out by overloading him with heat. A fax machine would be just the thing, he decided. And why not? All the gadgets were symbolic, only visualizations to help him first focus and then exercise powers that had been in him for over twenty years. Mr Gray had sensed those powers, and after his initial dismay had moved very efficiently to keep Jonesy from using them. The trick was to keep finding ways around Mr Gray's roadblocks, just as Mr Gray himself kept finding ways to move south.

Jonesy closed his eyes and visualized a fax like the one in the History Department office, only he put it in the closet of his new office. Then, feeling like Aladdin rubbing the magic lamp (only the number of wishes he was granted seemed infinite, as long as he didn't get carried away), he also visualized a stack of paper and a Berol Black Beauty pencil lying beside it. Then he went into the closet to see how he'd done.

Pretty well, it appeared at first glance . . . although the pencil was a tad eerie, brand-new and sharpened to a virgin point, but still gnawed all along the barrel. Yet that was as it should be, wasn't it? Beaver was the one who had used Black Beauty pencils, even way back in Witcham Street Grammar. The rest of them had carried the more standard yellow Eberhard Fabers.

The fax looked perfect, sitting there on the floor beneath a dangle of empty coathangers and one jacket (the bright orange parka his mother had bought him for his first hunting trip, then made him promise - with his hand over his heart - to wear every single moment he was out of doors), and it was humming in an encouraging way.

Disappointment set in when he knelt in front of it and read the message in the lighted window: GIVE UP JONESY COME OUT.

He picked up the phone on the side of the machine and heard Mr Gray's recorded voice: 'Give up, Jonesy, come out. Give up, Jonesy, come o - '

A series of violent bangs, almost as loud as thunderclaps, made him cry out and jump to his feet. His first thought was that Mr Gray was using one of those SWAT squad door-busters, battering his way in.

It wasn't the door, though. It was the window, and in some ways that was even worse. Mr Gray had put industrial gray shutters steel, they looked like - across his window. Now he wasn't just imprisoned; he was blind, as well.

Written across the inside, easily readable through the glass: GIVE UP COME OUT. Jonesy had a brief memory of The Wizard of Oz - SURRENDER DOROTHY Written across the sky - and wanted to laugh. He couldn't. Nothing was funny, nothing was ironic. This was horrible.

'No!' he shouted. 'Take them down! Take them down, damn you!'

No answer. Jonesy raised his hands, meaning to shatter the glass and beat on the steel shutters beyond, then thought, Are you crazy? That's what he wants! The minute you break the glass, those shutters disappear and Mr Gray is in here. And you're gone, buddy.

He was aware of movement - the heavy rumble of the plow.

Where were they by now? Waterville? Augusta? Even farther south? Into the zone where the precip had fallen as rain? No, probably not, Mr Gray would have switched the plow for something faster if they had gotten clear of the snow. But they would be clear of it, and soon. Because they were going south.

Going where?

I might as well be dead already, Jonesy thought, looking discon?solately at the closed shutter with its taunt of a message. I might as well be dead right now.

14

In the end it was Owen who took Roberta Cavell by the arms and - with one eye on the racing clock, all too aware that every minute and a half brought Kurtz a mile closer - told her why they had to take Duddits, no matter how ill he was. Even in these circumstances, Henry didn't know if he could have uttered the phrase fate of the world may depend on it with a straight face. Underhill, who had spent his life carrying a gun for his country, could and did.

Duddits stood with his arm around Henry, staring raptly down at him with his brilliant green eyes. Those eyes, at least, had not changed. Nor had the feeling they'd always had when around Duddits - that things were either perfectly all right or soon would be.

Roberta looked at Owen, her face seeming to grow older with every sentence he spoke. It was as if some malign time-lapse photography were at work.

'Yes,' she said, 'yes, I understand you want to find Jonesy - to catch him - but what does he want to do? And if he came here, why didn't he do it here?'

'Ma'am, I can't answer those questions - '

'War,' Duddits said suddenly. 'Onesy ont war.'

War? Owen's mind asked Henry, alarmed. What war?

Never mind, Henry responded, and all at once the voice in Owen's head was faint, hard to hear. We have to go.

'Ma'am. Mrs Cavell.' Owen took her arms again, very gently. Henry loved this woman a lot, although he had ignored her quite cruelly over the last dozen years or so, and Owen knew why he'd loved her. It came off her like a sweet smoke. 'We have to go.'

'No. Oh please say no.' The tears coming again. Don't do that, lady, Owen wanted to say. Things are bad enough already. Please don't do that.

'There's a man coming. A very bad man. We have to be gone when he gets here.'

Roberta's distracted, sorrowing face filled with resolution. 'All right, then. If you have to. But I'm coming with you.'

'Roberta, no,' Henry said.

'Yes! Yes, I can take care of him . . . give him his pills . . . his Prednisone . . . I'll make sure to bring his lemon swabs and - '

'Umma, oo ay ere.'

'No, Duddie, no !'

'Umma, oo ay ere! Ayfe! Ayfe!' Safe, safe. Duddits growing agitated now.

'We really don't have any more time,' Owen said.

'Roberta,' Henry said. 'Please.'

'Let me come!' she cried. 'He's all I have!'

'Umma,' Duddits said. His voice was not a bit childish. 'Ooo . . . ay . . . ERE.'

She looked at him fixedly, and her face sagged. 'Allnight,' she said. 'Just one more minute. I have to get something.'

She went into Duddits's room and came back with a paper bag, which she handed to Henry.

'It's his pills,' she said. 'He has his Prednisone at nine o'clock. Don't forget or he gets wheezy and his chest hurts. He can have a Percocet if he asks, and he probably will ask, because being out in the cold hurts him.'

She looked at Henry with sorrow but no reproach. He almost wished for reproach. God knew he'd never done anything which had made him feel this ashamed. It wasn't just that Duddits had leukemia; it was that he'd had it for so long and none of them had known.

'Also his lemon swabs, but only on his lips, because his gums bleed a lot now and the swabs sting him. There's cotton for his nose if it bleeds. Oh, and the catheter. See it there on his shoulder?' Henry nodded. A plastic tube protruding from a packing of bandage. Looking at it gave him a weirdly strong feeling of d��j�� vu.

'If you're outside, keep it covered . . . Dr Briscoe laughs at me, but I'm always afraid the cold will get down inside . . . a scarf will work . . . even a handkerchief breaking through.

She was crying again, the sobs

'Roberta - ' Henry began. Now he was looking at the clock, too.

'I'll take care of him,' Owen said. 'I saw my Pop through to the end of it. I know about Prednisone and Percocet.' And more: bigger steroids, better painkillers. At the end, marijuana, methadone, and finally pure morphine, so much better than heroin. Morphine, death's sleekest engine.

He felt her in his head, then, a strange, tickling sensation like bare feet so light they barely touched down. Tickly, but not unpleasant. She was trying to make out if what he'd said about his father was the truth or a lie. This was her little gift from her extraordinary son, Owen realized, and she had been using it so long she no longer even knew she was doing it . . . like Henry's friend Beaver chewing on his toothpicks. It wasn't as powerful as what Henry had, but it was there, and Owen had never in his life been so glad he had told the truth.

'Not leukemia, though,' she said.

'Lung cancer. Mrs Cavell, we really have to - '

'I need to get him one more thing.'

'Roberta, we can't - ' Henry began.

'In a flash, in a flash.' She darted for the kitchen.

Owen felt really frightened for the first time. 'Kurtz and Freddy and Perlmutter - Henry, I can't tell where they are! I've lost them!'

Henry had unrolled the top of the bag and looked inside. What he saw there, lying on top of the box of lemon-flavored glycerine swabs, transfixed him. He replied to Owen, but his voice seemed to be coming from the far end of some previously undisclosed - hell, unsuspected - valley. There was such a valley, he knew that now. A trough of years. He would not, could not, say he had never suspected that such geography existed, but how in God's name could he have suspected so little?

'They just passed Exit 29,' he said. 'Twenty miles behind us now. Maybe even closer.'

'What's wrong with you?'

Henry reached into the brown bag and brought out the little creation of string, so like a cobweb, which had hung over Duddits's bed here, and over the bed at the Maple Lane house before Alfie had died.

'Duddits, where did you get this?' he asked, but of course he knew. This dreamcatcher was smaller than the one which had hung in the main room at Hole in the Wall, but was otherwise its twin.

'Eeeyer,' Duddits said. He had never taken his eyes off Henry. It was as if he could still not entirely believe that Henry was here. 'Eeeyer ent ooo cee. Or eye Issmuss ass-eek.'

Although his mind-reading ability was fading rapidly as his body beat back the byrus, Owen understood this easily enough; Beaver sent to me, Duddits said. For my Christmas last week. Down's sufferers had difficulty expressing concepts of time past and time to come, and Owen suspected that to Duddits the past was always last week, the future always next week. It seemed to Owen that if everyone thought that way, there would be a lot less grief and rancor in the world.

Henry looked at the little string dreamcatcher a moment longer, then returned it to the brown bag just as Roberta bustled back in. Duddits broke into a huge grin when he saw what she'd gone for. 'Oooby-Doo!' he cried. 'Ooby-Doo unnox!' He took it and gave her a kiss on each cheek.

'Owen,' Henry said. His eyes were bright. 'I have some extremely good news.'

'Tell me.'

'The bastards just hit a detour - jackknifed tractor - trailer just shy of Exit 28. It's going to cost them ten, maybe twenty minutes.'

'Thank Christ. Let's use them.' He glanced at the coat-tree in the corner. Hanging from it was a huge blue duffel coat with RED SOX WINTER BALL printed on the back in bright scarlet. 'That yours, Duddits?'

'Ine!' Duddits said, smiling and nodding. 'I-acket.' And, as Owen reached for it: 'Ooo saw us ine Osie.' He got that one, too, and it sent a chill up his back. You saw us find Josie.

So he had . . . and Duddits had seen him. Only last night, or had Duddits seen him on that day, nineteen years ago? Did Duddits's gift also involve a kind of time travel?

This wasn't the time to ask such questions, and Owen was almost glad.

'I said I wouldn't pack his lunchbox, but of course I did. In the end, I did.'

Roberta looked at it - at Duddits holding it, shifting it from hand to hand as he struggled into the enormous parka, which had also been a gift from the Boston Red Sox. His face was unbelievably pale against the bright blue and even brighter yellow of the lunchbox. 'I knew he was going. And that I wasn't.' Her eyes searched Henry's face. 'Please may I not go, Henry?'

'If you do, you could die in front of him,' Henry said - hating the cruelty of it, also hating how well his life's work had prepared him to push the right buttons. 'Would you want him to see that, Roberta?'

'No, of course not.' And, as an afterthought, hurting him all the way to the center of his heart: 'Damn you.'

She went to Duddits, pushed Owen aside, and quickly ran up her son's zip per. Then she took him by the shoulders, pulled him down, and fixed him with her eyes. Tiny, fierce little bird of a woman. Tall, pale son, floating inside his parka. Roberta had stopped crying.

'You be good, Duddie.'

'I eee ood, Umma.'

'You mind Henry.'

'I-ill, Umma. I ine Ennie.'

'Stay bundled up.'

'I-ill.'

Still obedient, but a little impatient now, wanting to be off, and how all this took Henry back: trips to get ice cream, trips to play minigolf (Duddits had been weirdly good at the game, only Pete had been able to beat him with any consistency), trips to the movies; always you mind Henry or you mind Jonesy or you mind your friends; always you be good, Duddie and I ee oood, Umma.

She looked him up and down.

'I love you, Douglas. You have always been a good son to me, and I love you so very much. Give me a kiss, now.'

He kissed her; her hand stole out and caressed his beard-sandy cheek. Henry could hardly bear to look, but he did look, was as helpless as any fly caught in any spiderweb. Every dreamcatcher was also a trap.

Duddits gave her another perfunctory kiss, but his brilliant green eyes shifted between Henry and the door. Duddits was anxious to be off. Because he knew the people after Henry and his friend were close? Because it was an adventure, like all the adventures the five of them had had in the old days? Both? Yes, probably both. Roberta let him go, her hands leaving her son for the last time.

'Roberta,' Henry said. 'Why didn't you tell any of us this was happening? Why didn't you call?'

'Why didn't you ever come?'

Henry might have asked another of his own - Why didn't Duddits call? - but the very question would have been a lie. Duddits had called repeatedly since March, when Jonesy had had his accident. He thought of Pete, sitting in the snow beside the overturned Scout, drinking beer and writing DUDDITS over and over again in the snow. Duddits, marooned in Never-Never Land and dying there, Duddits sending his messages and receiving back only silence. Finally one of them had come, but only to take him away with nothing but a bag of pills and his old yellow lunchbox. There was no kindness in the dreamcatcher. They had meant only good for Duddits, even on that first day; they had loved him honestly. Still, it came down to this.

'Take care of him, Henry.' Her gaze shifted to Owen. 'You too. Take care of my son.'

Henry said, 'We'll try.'

15

There was no place to turn around on Dearborn Street; every driveway had been plowed under. In the strengthening morning light, the sleeping neighborhood looked like a town deep in the Alaskan tundra. Owen threw the Hummer in reverse and went flying backward down the street, the bulky vehicle's rear end wagging clumsily from side to side. Its high steel bumper smacked some snow-shrouded vehicle parked at the curb, there was a tinkle of breaking glass, and then they again burst through the frozen roadblock of snow at the intersection, swerving wildly back into Kansas Street, pointing toward the turnpike. During all this Duddits sat in the back seat, perfectly complacent, his lunchbox on his lap.

Henry, why did Duddits say Jonesy wants war? What war?

Henry tried to send the answer telepathically, but Owen could no longer hear him. The patches of byrus on Owen's face had all turned white, and when he scratched absently at his cheek, he pulled clumps of the stuff out with his nails. The skin beneath looked chapped and irritated, but not really hurt. Like getting over a cold, Henry marvelled. Really not more serious than that.

'He didn't say war, Owen.'

'War,' Duddits agreed from the back seat. He leaned forward to look at the big green sign reading 95 SOUTHBOUND. 'Onesy ont war.

Owen's brow wrinkled; a dust of dead byrus flakes sifted down like dandruff. 'What - '

'Water,' Henry said, and reached back to pat Duddit's bony knee. 'Jonesy wants water is what he was trying to say. Only it's not Jonesy who wants it. It's the other one. The one he calls Mr Gray.'

16

Roberta went into Duddits's room and began to pick up the litter of his clothes - the way he left them around drove her crazy, but she supposed she wouldn't have to worry about that anymore. She had been at it scarcely five minutes before a weakness overcame her legs, and she had to sit in his chair by the window. The sight of the bed, where he had come to spend more and more of his time, haunted her. The dull morning light on the pillow, which still bore the circular indentation of his head, was inexpressibly cruel.

Henry thought she'd let Duddits go because they believed the future of the whole world somehow hinged on finding Jonesy, and finding him fast. But that wasn't it. She had let him go because it was what Duddits wanted. The dying got signed baseball caps; the dying also got to go on trips with old friends.

But it was hard.

Losing him was so hard.

She put her handful of tee-shirts to her face in order to blot out the sight of the bed and there was his smell: Johnson's shampoo, Dial soap, and most of all, worst of all, the arnica cream she put on his back and legs when his muscles hurt.

In her desperation she reached out to him, trying to find him with the two men who had come like the dead and taken him away, but his mind was gone.

He's blocked himself off from me, she thought. They had enjoyed (mostly enjoyed) their own ordinary telepathy over the years, perhaps only different in minor degree from the telepathy most mothers of special children experienced (she had heard the word rapport over and over again at the support-group meetings she and Alfie sometimes attended), but that was gone now. Duddits had blocked himself off, and that meant he knew something terrible was going to happen.

He knew.

Still holding the shirts to her face and inhaling his scent, Roberta began to cry again.

17

Kurtz had been okay (mostly okay) until they saw the road-flares and blue police lightbars flashing in the grim morning light, and beyond it, a huge semi lying on its side like a dead dinosaur. Standing out front, so bundled up his face was completely invisible, was a cop waving them toward an exit ramp.

'Fuck!' Kurtz spat. He had to fight an urge to draw the nine and just start spraying away. He knew that would be disaster - there were other cops running around the stalled semi - but he felt the urge, all but ungovernable, just the same. They were so close! Closing in, by the hands of the nailed-up Christ! And then stopped like this! 'Fuck, fuck, fuck!'

'What do you want me to do, boss?' Freddy had asked. Impassive behind the wheel, but he had drawn his own weapon - an automatic rifle - across his lap. 'If I nail it, I think we can skate by on the night. Gone in sixty seconds.'

Again Kurtz had to fight the urge to just say Yeah, punch it, Freddy, and if one of those bluesuits gets in the way, bust his gut for him. Freddy might get by . . . but he might not. He wasn't the driver he thought he was, that Kurtz had already ascertained. Like too many pilots, Freddy had the erroneous belief that his skills in the sky were mirrored by skills on the ground. And even if they did get by, they'd be marked. And that was not acceptable, not after General Yellow-Balls Randall had hollered Blue Exit. His Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card had been revoked. He was strictly a vigilante now.

Got to do the smart thing, he thought. That's why they pay me the big bucks.

'Be a good boy and just go the way he's pointing you,' Kurtz said. 'In fact, I want you to give him a wave and a big thumb's-up when you take the ramp. Then keep moving south and get back on the turnpike at your earliest opportunity.' He sighed. 'Lord love a duck.' He leaned forward, close enough to Freddy to see the whitening fuzz of Ripley in his right ear. He whispered, ardent as a lover, 'And if you ditch us, laddie-buck, I'll put a round in the back of your neck.' Kurtz touched the place where the soft nape joined the hard skull. 'Right here.'

Freddy's wooden-Indian face didn't change. 'Yes, boss.' Next, Kurtz had gripped the now-nearl- - comatose Perlmutter by the shoulder and had shaken him until Pearly's eyes at last fluttered open.

'Lea' me 'lone, boss. Need to sleep.'

Kurtz placed the muzzle of his nine-millimeter against the back of his former aide's head. 'Nope. Rise and shine, buck. Time for a little debriefing.'

Pearly had groaned, but he had also sat up. When he opened his mouth to say something, a tooth had tumbled out onto the front of his parka. The tooth had looked perfect to Kurtz. Look, Ma, no cavities.

Pearly said that Owen and his new buddy were still stopped, still in Derry. Very good. Yummy. Not so good fifteen minutes later, as Freddy sent the Humvee trudging down another snow-covered entrance ramp and back onto the turnpike. This was Exit 28, only one interchange away from their target, but a miss was as good as a mile.

'They're on the move again,' Perlmutter said. He sounded weak and washed out.

'Goddammit!' He was full of rage - sick and useless rage at Owen Underhill, who now symbolized (at least to Abe Kurtz) the whole sorry, busted operation.

Pearly uttered a deep groan, a sound of utter, hollow despair. His stomach had begun to rise again. He was clutching it, his cheeks wet with perspiration. His normally unremarkable face had become almost handsome in his pain.

Now he let another long and ghastly fart, a passage of wind which seemed to go on and on. The sound of it made Kurtz think of gadgets they'd constructed at summer camp a thousand or so years ago, noisemakers that consisted of tin cans and lengths of waxed string. Bullroarers, they'd called them.

The stench that filled the Humvee was the smell of the red cancer growing in Pearly's sewage-treatment plant, first feeding on his wastes, then getting to the good stuff. Pretty horrible. Still, there was an upside. Freddy was getting better and Kurtz had never caught the damned Ripley in the first place (perhaps he was immune; in any case, he had taken off the mask and tossed it indifferently in back fifteen minutes ago). And Pearly, although undoubtedly ill, was also valuable, a man with a really good radar jammed up his ass. So Kurtz patted Perlmutter on the shoulder, ignoring the stench. Sooner or later the thing inside him would get out, and that would likely mean an end to Pearly's usefulness, but Kurtz wouldn't worry about that until he had to.

'Hold on,' Kurtz said tenderly. 'Just tell it to go back to sleep again.'

'You . . . fucking . . . idiot!' Perlmutter gasped.

'That's right,' Kurtz agreed. 'Whatever you say, buck.' After all, he was a fucking idiot. Owen had turned out to be a cowardly coyote, and who had put him in the damn henhouse?

They were passing Exit 27 now. Kurtz looked up the ramp and fancied he could almost see the tracks of the Hummer Owen was driving. Somewhere up there, on one side of the overpass or the other, was the house to which Owen and his new friend had made their inexplicable detour. Why?

'They stopped to get Duddits,' Perlmutter said. His belly was going down again and the worst of his pain seemed to have passed. For now, at least.

'Duddits? What kind of name is that?'

'I don't know. I'm picking this up from his mother. Him I can't see. He's different, boss. It's almost as if he's a grayboy instead of human.'

Kurtz felt his back prickle at that.

'The mother thinks of this guy Duddits as both a boy and a man,' Pearly said. This was the most unprompted communication from him Kurtz had gotten since they'd left Gosselin's. Perlmutter sounded almost interested, by God.

'Maybe he's retarded,' Freddy said.

Perlmutter glanced over at Freddy. That could be. Whatever he is, he's sick.' Pearly sighed. 'I know how he feels.'

Kurtz patted Perlmutter's shoulder again. 'Chin up, laddie. What about the fellows they're after? This Gary Jones and the supposed Mr Gray?' He didn't much care, but there was the possibility that the course and progress of Jones - and Gray, if Gray existed outside of Owen Underhill's fevered imagination - would impact upon the course and progress of Underhill, Devlin, and . . . Duddits?

Perlmutter shook his head, then closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat again. His little spate of energy and interest seemed to have passed. 'Nothing,' he said. 'Blocked off.'

'Maybe not there at all?'

'Oh, something's there,' Perlmutter said. 'It's like a black hole.' Dreamily, he said: 'I hear so many voices. They're already sending in the reinforcements . . .'

As if Perlmutter had conjured it, the biggest convoy Kurtz had seen in twenty years appeared in the northbound lanes of 1-95. First came two enormous plows, as big as elephants, running side by side with their clifflike blades spurning up snow on either side, baring both lanes all the way down to the pavement. Behind them, a pair of sand-trucks, also running in tandem. And behind the sand-trucks, a double line of Army vehicles and heavy ordnance. Kurtz saw shrouded shapes on flatbed haulers and knew they could only be missiles. Other flatbeds held radar dishes, range-finders, God knew what else. Interspersed among them were big canvasback troop-carriers, their headlamps glaring in the brightening daylight. Not hundreds of men but thousands, prepared for God knew what ?World War Three, hand-to-hand combat with two-headed creatures or maybe the intelligent bugs from Starship Troopers, plague, madness, death, doomsday. If any of Katie Gallagher's Imperial Valleys were still operating up there, Kurtz hoped they would soon cease what they were doing and head for Canada. Raising their hands in the air and calling out Il n'y a pas d'infection ici wouldn't do them any good, certainly; that ploy had already been tried. And it was all so meaningless. In his heart of hearts, Kurtz knew Owen had been right about at least one thing: it was over up there. They could shut the barn door, praise God, but the horse had been stolen.

'They're going to close it down for good,' Perlmutter said. 'The Jefferson Tract just became the fifty-first state. And it's a police state.'

'You can still key on Owen?'

'Yes,' Perlmutter said absently. 'But not for long. He's getting better, too. Losing the telepathy.'

'Where is he, buck?'

'They just passed Exit 25. They might have fifteen miles on us. Not much more.'

'Want me to punch it a little?' Freddy asked.

They had lost their chance to head Owen off because of the goddam semi. The last thing in the world Kurtz wanted was to lose another chance by skidding off the road.

'Negative,' Kurtz said. 'For the time being, I think we'll just lay back and let em run.' He crossed his arms and looked out at the linen-white world passing by. But now the snow had stopped, and as they continued south, road conditions would doubtless improve.

It had been an eventful twenty-four hours. He had blown up an alien spacecraft, been betrayed by the man he had regarded as his logical successor, had survived a mutiny and a civilian riot, and to top it all off, he had been relieved of his command by a sunshine soldier who had never heard a shot fired in anger. Kurtz's eyes slipped shut. After a few moments, he dozed.

18

Jonesy sat moodily behind his desk for quite awhile, sometimes looking at the phone which no longer worked, sometimes at the dreamcatcher which hung from the ceiling (it wafted in some barely felt air - current), sometimes at the new steel shutters with which that bastard Gray had blocked his vision. And always that low rumble, both in his ears and shivering his buttocks as he sat in his chair. It could have been a rather noisy furnace, one in need of servicing, but it wasn't. It was the plow, beating its way south and south and south. Mr Gray behind the wheel, likely wearing a DPW cap stolen from his most recent victim, horsing the plow along, working the wheel with Jonesy's muscles, listening to developments on the plow's CB with Jonesy's ears.

So, Jonesy, how long you going to sit here feeling sorry for yourself?

Jonesy, who had been slumping in his seat - almost dozing, in fact - straightened up at that. Henry's voice. Not arriving telepathi?cally - there were no voices now, Mr Gray had blocked all but his own - but, rather, coining from his own mind. Nonetheless, it stung him.

I'm not feeling sorry for myself, I'm blocked off! Not liking the sulky, defensive quality of the thought; vocalized, it would no doubt have come out as a whine. Can't fall out, can't see out, can't go out, I don't know where you are, Henry, but I'm in a goddam isolation booth.

Did he steal your brains?

'Shut up.' Jonesy rubbed at his temple.

Did he take your memories?

No. Of course not. Even in here, with a double-locked door between him and those billions of labeled cartons, he could recall wiping a booger on the end of Bonnie Deal's braid in first grade (and then asking that same Bonnie to dance at the seventh-grade Harvest Hop six years later), watching carefully as Lamar Clarendon taught them to play the game (known as cribbage to the low and the uninitiated), seeing Rick McCarthy come out of the woods and thinking he was a deer. He could remember all those things. There might be an advantage in that, but Jonesy was damned if he knew what it was. Maybe because it was too big, too obvious.

To be stuck like this after all the mysteries you've read, his mind's version of Henry taunted him. Not to mention all those science-fiction movies where the aliens arrive, everything from The Day the Earth Stood Still to The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. All of that and you still can't figure this guy out? Can't follow his smoke down from the sky and see where he's camped?

Jonesy rubbed harder at his temple. This wasn't ESP, it was his own mind, and why couldn't he shut it up? He was fucking trapped, so what difference did it make, anyway? He was a motor without a transmission, a cart without a horse; he was Donovan's Brain, kept alive in a tank of cloudy fluid and dreaming useless dreams.

What does he want? Start there.

Jonesy looked up at the dreamcatcher, dancing in the vague currents of warm air. Felt the rumble of the plow, strong enough to vibrate the pictures on the walls. Tina Jean Schlossinger, that had been her name, and supposedly there had been a picture of her in here, a picture of her holding her skirt up so you could see her pussy, and how many adolescent boys had been caught by such a dream?

Jonesy got up - almost leaped up - and began to pace around the office, limping only a little. The storm was over, and his hip hurt a bit less now.

Think like Hercule Poirot, he told himself Exercise those little gray cells. Never mind your memories for the time being, think about Mr Gray. Think logically. What does he want?

Jonesy stopped. What Gray wanted was obvious, really. He had gone to the Standpipe - where the Standpipe had been, anyway ?because he wanted water. Not just any water; drinking water. But the Standpipe was gone, destroyed in the big blow of '85 - ha, ha, Mr Gray, gotcha last - and Derry's current water supply was north and east, probably not reachable because of the storm, and not concentrated in one place, anyway. So Mr Gray had, after consulting Jonesy's available store of knowledge, turned south again. Toward -

Suddenly it was all clear. The strength ran out of his legs and he collapsed to the carpeted floor, ignoring the flare of pain in his hip.

The dog. Lad. Did he still have the dog?

'Of course he does,' Jonesy whispered. 'Of course the son of a bitch does, I can smell him even in here. Fartin just like McCarthy.'

This world was inimical to the byrus, and this world's inhabitants fought with a surprising vigor which arose from deep wells of emotion. Bad luck. But now the last surviving grayboy had had an unbroken chain of good luck; he was like some daffy in-the-zone Vegas crapshooter rolling a string of sevens: four, six, eight, oh goddam, a dozen in a row. He had found Jonesy, his Typhoid Mary, had invaded him and conquered him. He had found Pete, who had gotten him where he wanted to go after the flashlight ?the kim - had given out. Next, Andy Janas, the Minnesota boy. He had been hauling the corpses of two deer killed by the Ripley. The deer had been useless to Mr Gray . . . but Janas had also been hauling the decomposing body of one of the aliens.

Fruiting bodies, Jonesy thought randomly. Fruiting bodies, what's that from?

No matter. Because Mr Gray's next seven had been the Dodge Ram, old Mr I ? MY BORDER COLLIE. What had Gray done? Fed some of the gray's dead body to the dog? Put the dog's nose to the corpse and forced him to inhale of that fruiting body? No, eating was much more likely; c'mon, boy, chow time. Whatever process started the weasels, it began in the gut, not the lungs. Jonesy had a momentary image of McCarthy lost in the woods. Beaver had asked What the hell have you been eating? Woodchuck turds? And what had McCarthy replied? Bushes and things. . . I don't know just what . . . I was just so hungry, you know. . .

Sure. Hungry. Lost, scared, and hungry. Not noticing the red splotches of byrus on the leaves of some of the bushes, the red speckles on the green moss he crammed into his mouth, gag?ging it down because somewhere back there in his tame oh-gosh oh-dear lawyer's life, he had read that you could eat moss if you were lost in the woods, that moss wouldn't hurt you. Did everyone who swallowed some of the byrus (grains of it, almost too small to be seen, floating in the air) incubate one of the vicious little monsters that had torn McCarthy apart and then killed the Beav? Probably not, no more than every woman who had unprotected sex got pregnant. But McCarthy had caught and so had Lad.

'He knows about the cottage,' Jonesy said.

Of course. The cottage in Ware, some sixty miles west of Boston. And he'd know the story of the Russian woman, everyone knew it; Jonesy had passed it on himself. It was too gruesomely good not to pass on. They knew it in Ware, in New Salem, in Cooleyville and Belchertown, Hardwick and Packardsville and Pelham. All the surrounding towns. And what, pray tell, did those towns surround?

Why, the Quabbin, that was what they surrounded. Quabbin Reservoir. The water supply for Boston and the adjacent metro?politan area. How many people drank their daily water from the Quabbin? Two million? Three? Jonesy didn't know for sure, but a lot more than had ever drunk from the supply stored in the Derry Standpipe. Mr Gray, rolling seven after seven, a run for the ages and now only one away from breaking the bank.

Two or three million people. Mr Gray wanted to introduce them to Lad the border collie, and to Lad's new friend.

And delivered in this new medium, the byrus would take.