'I heard something,' the other said, resetting his hat carefully on his dirty-blond hair. 'Great big bang. You tellin me you didn't hear it? Boo-ya!'
'I didn't hear jack shit,' Nirvana Boy said. He held out his palms, which were now dirty (or perhaps just dirtier) and oozing blood from two or three minor scratches. 'Look at this - fuckin road-rash!'
'You'll live,' his friend said.
'Yeah, but -' Nirvana Boy noticed Ralph, leaning against his rusty whale of an Oldsmobile with his hands in his pockets, watching them. 'The fuck you lookin at?'
'You and your friend,' Ralph said. 'That's all.'
'That's all, huh?'
'Yep - the whole story.'
Nirvana Boy glanced at his friend, then back at Ralph. His eyes glowered with a purity of suspicion which, in Ralph's experience, could be found only here in the Old Cape. 'You got a problem?'
'Not me,' Ralph said. He had inhaled a great deal of Nirvana Boy's russet-colored aura and now felt quite a bit like Superman on a speed trip. He also felt like a child-molester. 'I was just thinking that we didn't talk much like you and your friend when I was a kid.'
Nirvana Boy regarded him insolently. 'Yeah? What'd you talk like?'
'I can't quite remember,' Ralph said,'but I don't think we sounded quite so much like shitheads.' He turned away from them as the screen door slammed. Lois came out of the Dunkin' Donuts with a large container of coffee in each hand. The boys, meanwhile, jumped on their fluorescent bikes and streaked off, Nirvana Boy giving Ralph one final distrustful look over his shoulder.
'Can you drink this and drive the car at the same time?' Lois asked, handing him a coffee.
'I think so,' Ralph said, 'but I don't really need it anymore. I'm fine, Lois.'
She glanced after the two boys, then nodded. 'Let's go.'
2
The world blazed all around them as they drove out Route 33 toward what had once been Barrett's Orchards, and they didn't have to slide even a single inch up the ladder of perception to see it. The city fell away and they drove through second-growth woods on fire with autumn. The sky was a blue lane above the road, and the Oldsmobile's shadow raced beside them, wavering across leaves and branches.
'God, it's so beautiful,' Lois said. 'Isn't it beautiful, Ralph?'
'Yes. It is.'
'You know what I wish? More than anything?'
He shook his head.
'That we could just pull over to the side of the road - stop the car and get out and walk into the woods a little way. Find a clearing, sit in the sun, and look up at the clouds. You'd say, "Look at that one, Lois, it looks like a horse." And I'd say,"Look over there, Ralph, it's a man with a broom." Wouldn't that be nice?'
'Yes,' Ralph said. The woods opened in a narrow aisle on their left; power-poles marched down the steep slope like soldiers. High-tension lines shone silver between them in the morning sunlight, gossamer as spiderwebs. The feet of the poles were buried in brazen drifts of red sumac, and when Ralph looked up above the slash he saw a hawk riding an air-current as invisible as the world of auras. 'Yes,' he said again. 'That would be nice. Maybe we'll even get a chance to do it sometime. But . . .'
'But what?'
'"Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else,"' Ralph said.
She looked at him, a little startled. 'What a terrible idea!'
'Yeah. I think most true ideas are terrible. It's from a book of poems called Cemetery Nights. Dorrance Marstellar gave it to me on the same day he slipped upstairs to my apartment and put the spray-can of Bodyguard into my jacket pocket.'
He glanced up into his rear-view mirror and saw at least two miles of Route 33 laid out behind them, a strip of black running through the fiery woods. Sunlight twinkled on chrome. A car. Maybe two or three. And coming fast, from the look.
'Old Dor,' she mused.
'Yes. You know, Lois, I think he's also a part of this.'
'Maybe he is,' Lois said. 'And if Ed's a special case, maybe Dorrance is, too.'
'Yes, that thought occurred to me. The most interesting thing about him - Old Dor, I mean, not Ed - is that I don't think Clotho and Lachesis know about him. It's like he's from an entirely different neighborhood.'
'What do you mean?'
'I'm not sure. But Mr C and Mr L never mentioned him, and that . . . that seems . . .'
He glanced back at the rear-view. Now there was a fourth car, behind the others but moving up fast, and he could see the blue flashers atop the closer three. Police cars. Headed for Newport? No, probably headed for someplace a little closer than that.
Maybe they're after us, Ralph thought. Maybe Lois's suggestion that the Richards woman forget we were there didn't hold.
But would the police send four cruisers after two golden-agers in a rustbucket Oldsmobile? Ralph didn't think so. Helen's face suddenly flashed into his mind. He felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach as he guided the Olds over to the side of the road.
'Ralph? What -' Then she heard the rising howl of the sirens and turned in her seat, alarm widening her eyes. The first three police cars roared past at better than eighty miles an hour, pelting Ralph's car with grit and sending crisp fallen leaves into dancing dervishes in their wake.
'Ralph!' she nearly screamed. 'What if it's High Ridge? Helen's out there! Helen and her baby!'
'I know,' Ralph said, and as the fourth police car slammed by them hard enough to rock the Oldsmobile on its springs, he felt that interior blink happen again. He reached for the transmission lever, and then his hand stopped in mid-air, still three inches from it. His eyes were fixed upon the horizon. The smudge there was less spectral than the obscene black umbrella they had seen hanging over the Civic Center, but Ralph knew it was the same thing: a deathbag.
3
'Faster!' Lois shouted at him. 'Go faster, Ralph!'
'I can't,' he said. His teeth were clamped together, and the words came out sounding squeezed. 'I've got it matted.' Also, he did not add, this is the fastest I've gone in thirty-five years, and I'm scared to death.
The needle quivered a hair's breadth beyond the eighty mark on the speedometer; the woods slid by in a blurred mix of reds and yellows and magentas; under the hood the engine was no longer just clacking but hammering like a platoon of blacksmiths on a binge. In spite of this, the fresh trio of police cars Ralph saw in his mirror were catching up easily.
The road curved sharply right up ahead. Denying every instinct, Ralph kept his foot away from the brake pedal. He did take it off the gas as they went into the curve . . . then mashed it back to the mat again as he felt the rear end trying to break loose on the back side. He was hunched over the wheel now, upper teeth clamped tightly on his lower lip, eyes wide open and bulging beneath the salt-and-pepper tangle of his eyebrows. The sedan's rear tires howled, and Lois fell into him, scrabbling at the back of her seat for purchase. Ralph clung to the wheel with sweaty fingers and waited for the car to flip. The Olds was one of the last true Detroit road-monsters, however, wide and heavy and low. It outlasted the curve, and on the far side Ralph saw a red farmhouse on the left. There were two barns behind it.
'Ralph, there's the turn!'
'I see.'
The new batch of police cars had caught up with them and were swinging out to pass. Ralph got as far over as he could, praying that none of them would rear-end him at this speed. None did; they zipped by in close bumper-to-bumper formation, swung left, and started up the long hill which led to High Ridge.
'Hang on, Lois.'
'Oh, I am, I am,' she said.
The Olds slid almost sideways as Ralph made the left onto what he and Carolyn had always called the Orchard Road. If the narrow country lane had been tarred, the big car probably would have rolled over like a stunt vehicle in a thrill-show. It wasn't, however, and instead of going door-over-roof the Olds just skidded extravagantly, sending up dry billows of dust. Lois gave a thin, out-of-breath shriek, and Ralph snatched a quick look at her.
'Go on!' She flapped
an impatient hand at the road ahead, and in that moment she looked so eerily like Carolyn that Ralph almost felt he was seeing a ghost. He wondered what Carol, who had nearly made a career out of telling him to go faster during the last five years of her life, would have made of this little spin in the country. 'Never mind me, just watch the road!'
More police cars were making the turn onto Orchard Road now. How many was that in all? Ralph didn't know; he'd lost count. Maybe a dozen in all. He steered the Oldsmobile over until the right two wheels were running on the edge of a nasty-looking ditch, and the reinforcements - three with DERRY POLICE printed in gold on the sides and two State Police cruisers - blew past, throwing up fresh showers of dirt and gravel. For just a moment Ralph saw a uniformed policeman leaning out of one of the Derry police cars, waving at him, and then the Olds was buried in a yellow cloud of dust. Ralph smothered a new and even stronger urge to climb on the brake by thinking of Helen and Nat. A moment later he could see again - sort of, anyway. The newest batch of police cars was already halfway up the hill.
'That cop was waving you off, wasn't he?' Lois asked.
'You bet.'
'They're not even going to let us get close.' She was looking at the black smudge on top of the hill with wide, dismayed eyes.
'We'll get as close as we need to.' Ralph checked the rear-view for more traffic and saw nothing but hanging road-dust.
'Ralph?'
'What?'
'Are you up? Do you see the colors?'
He took a quick look at her. She still looked beautiful to him, and marvellously young, but there was no sign of her aura. 'No,' he said. 'Do you?'
'I don't know. I still see that.' She pointed through the windshield at the dark smudge on top of the hill. 'What is it? If it's not a deathbag, what is it?'
He opened his mouth to tell her it was smoke, and there was only one thing up there likely to be on fire, but before he could get out a single word, there was a tremendous hot bang from the Oldsmobile's engine compartment. The hood jumped and even dimpled in one place, as if an angry fist had lashed up inside. The car took a single forward snap-jerk that felt like a hiccup; the red idiot-lights came on and the engine quit.
He steered the Olds toward the soft shoulder, and when the edge gave way beneath the rightside wheels and the car canted into the ditch, Ralph had a strong, clear premonition that he had just completed his last tour of duty as a motor vehicle operator. This idea was accompanied by absolutely no regret at all.
'What happened?' Lois nearly screamed.
'We blew a rod,' he said. 'Looks like it's shank's pony the rest of the way up the hill, Lois. Come on out on my side so you don't squelch in the mud.'
4
There was a brisk westerly breeze, and once they were out of the car the smell of smoke from the top of the hill was very strong. They started the last quarter-mile without talking about it, walking hand-in-hand and walking fast. By the time they saw the State Police cruiser slued sideways across the top of the road, the smoke was rising in billows above the trees and Lois was gasping for breath.
'Lois? Are you all right?'
'I'm fine,' she gasped. 'I just weigh too--'
Crack-crack-crack: pistol-shots from beyond the car blocking the road. They were followed by a hoarse, rapid coughing sound Ralph could easily identify from TV news stories about civil wars in third-world countries and drive-by shootings in third-world American cities: an automatic weapon set to rapid-fire. There were more pistol-shots, then the louder, rougher report of a shotgun. This was followed by a shriek of pain that made Ralph wince and want to cover his ears. He thought it was a woman's scream, and he suddenly remembered something which had been eluding him: the last name of the woman John Leydecker had mentioned. McKay, it had been. Sandra McKay.
That thought coming at this time filled him with unreasoning horror. He tried to tell himself that the screamer could have been anyone - even a man, sometimes men sounded like women when they had been hurt - but he knew better. It was her. It was them. Ed's crazies. They had mounted an assault on High Ridge.
More sirens from behind them. The smell of the smoke, thicker now. Lois, looking at him with dismayed, frightened eyes and still gasping for breath. Ralph glanced up the hill and saw a silver R.F.D. box standing at the side of the road. There was no name on it, of course; the women who ran High Ridge had done their best to keep a low profile and maintain their anonymity, much good it had done them today. The mailbox's flag was up. Somebody had a letter for the postman. That made Ralph think of the letter Helen had sent him from High Ridge - a cautious letter, but full of hope nevertheless.
More gunfire. The whine of a ricochet. Breaking glass. A bellow that might have been anger but was probably pain. The hungry crackle of hot flames gobbling dry wood. Warbling sirens. And Lois's dark Spanish eyes, fixed on him because he was the man and she'd been raised to believe that men knew what to do in situations like this.
Then do something! he yelled at himself. For Christ's sweet sake, do something!
But what? What?
'PICKERING!' a bullhorn-amplified voice bellowed from beyond the place where the road curved into a grove of young Christmas-tree-size spruces. Ralph could now see red sparks and licks of orange flame in the thickening smoke rising above the firs. 'PICKERING, THERE ARE WOMEN IN THERE! LET US SAVE THE WOMEN!'
'He knows there are women,' Lois murmured. 'Don't they understand that he knows that? Are they fools, Ralph?'
A strange, wavering shriek answered the cop with the bullhorn, and it took Ralph a second or two to realize that this response was a species of laughter. There was another chattering burst of automatic fire. It was returned by a barrage of pistol-shots and shotgun blasts.
Lois squeezed his hand with chilly fingers. 'What do we do, Ralph? What do we do now?'
He looked at the billowing gray-black smoke rising over the trees, then back down toward the police cars racing up the hill - over half a dozen of them this time - and finally back to Lois's pale, strained face. His mind had cleared a little - not much, but enough for him to realize there was really just one answer to her question.
'We go up,' he said.
5
Blink! and the flames shooting over the grove of spruces went from orange to green. The hungry crackling sound became muffled, like the sound of firecrackers going off inside a closed box. Still holding Lois's hand, Ralph led her around the front bumper of the State Police car which had been left as a roadblock.
The newly arrived police cars were pulling up behind the roadblock. Men in blue uniforms came spilling out of them almost before they had stopped. Several were carrying riot guns and most were wearing puffy black vests. One of them sprinted through Ralph like a gust of warm wind before he could dodge aside: a young man named David Wilbert who thought his wife might be having an affair with her boss at the real-estate office where she worked as a secretary. The question of his wife had taken a back seat (at least temporarily) to David Wilbert's almost overpowering need to pee, however, and to the constant, frightened chant that wove through his thoughts like a snake: ['You won't disgrace yourself, you won't disgrace yourself, you won't, you won't, you won't.']
'PICKERING!'the amplified voice bellowed, and Ralph found he could actually taste the words in his mouth, like small silver pellets. 'YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD, PICKERING! THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPON AND STEP OUT INTO THE YARD! LET US SAVE THE WOMEN!'
Ralph and Lois rounded the corner, unseen by the men running all around them, and came to a tangle of police cars parked at the place where the road became a driveway lined on both sides by pretty planter-boxes filled with bright flowers.
The woman's touch that means so much, Ralph thought.
The driveway opened into the dooryard of a rambling white farmhouse at least seventy years old. It was three storeys high, with two wings and a long porch which ran the length of the building and commanded a fabulous view toward the west, where dim blue mountains rose in the mid-morning light. This house with it
s peaceful view had once housed the Barrett family and their apple business and had more recently housed dozens of battered, frightened women, but one look was enough to tell Ralph that it would house no one at all come this time tomorrow morning. The south wing was in flames, and that side of the porch was catching; tongues of fire poked out the windows and licked lasciviously along the eaves, sending shingles floating upward in fiery scraps. He saw a wicker rocking chair burning at the far end of the porch. A half-knitted scarf lay over one of the rocker's arms; the needles dangling from it glowed white-hot. Somewhere a wind-chime was tinkling a mad repetitive melody.
A dead woman in green fatigues and a flak-jacket sprawled head-down on the porch steps, glaring at the sky through the blood-smeared lenses of her glasses. There was dirt in her hair, a pistol in her hand, and a ragged black hole in her midsection. A man lay draped over the railing at the north end of the porch with one booted foot propped on the lawn-glider. He was also wearing fatigues and a flak-jacket. An assault-rifle with a banana clip sticking out of it lay in a flower-bed below him. Blood ran down his fingers and dripped from his nails. To Ralph's heightened eye, the drops looked black and dead.
Felton, he thought. If the police are still yelling at Charlie Pickering - if Pickering's inside - then that must be Frank Felton. And what about Susan Day? Ed's down the coast somewhere - Lois seemed sure of that, and I think she's right - but what if Susan Day's in there? Jesus, is that possible?
He supposed it was, but the possibilities didn't matter - not now. Helen and Natalie were almost certainly in there, along with God knew how many other helpless, terrorized women, and that did matter.
There was the sound of breaking glass from inside the house, followed by a soft explosion - almost a gasp. Ralph saw new flames jump up behind the panes of the front door.
Molotov cocktails, he thought. Charlie Pickering finally got a chance to throw a few. How wonderful for him.
Ralph didn't know how many cops were crouched behind the cars parked at the head of the driveway - it looked like at least thirty - but he picked out the two who had busted Ed Deepneau at once. Chris Nell was crouched behind the front tire of the Derry police car closest to the house, and John Leydecker was down on one knee beside him. Nell was the one with the bullhorn, and as Ralph and Lois approached the police strongpoint, he glanced at Leydecker. Leydecker nodded, pointed at the house, then pushed his palms at Nell in a gesture Ralph read easily: Be careful. He read something more distressing in Chris Nell's aura - the younger man was too excited to be careful. Too stoked. And at that instant, almost as if Ralph's thought had caused it to happen, Nell's aura began changing color. It cycled from pale blue to dark gray to dead black with gruesome speed.