"Sit down, Mr. Drayton," he invited.
I looked around for Amanda, but she was already halfway up the aisle. She didn't look back. Our act of love in the dark already seemed something out of a fantasy, impossible to believe even in this weird daylight. I sat down.
"Have a donut." He held the box out.
I shook my head. "All that white sugar is death. Worse than cigarettes."
That made him laugh a little bit. "In that case, have two."
I was surprised to find a little laughter left inside me--he had surprised it out, and I liked him for it. I did take two of his donuts. They tasted pretty good. I chased them with a cigarette, although it is not normally my habit to smoke in the mornings.
"I ought to get back to my kid," I said. "He'll be waking up."
Miller nodded. "Those pink bugs," he said. "They're all gone. So are the birds. Hank Vannerman said the last one hit the windows around four. Apparently the...the wildlife...is a lot more active when it's dark."
"You don't want to tell Brent Norton that," I said. "Or Norm."
He nodded again and didn't say anything for a long time. Then he lit a cigarette of his own and looked at me. "We can't stay here, Drayton," he said.
"There's food. Plenty to drink."
"The supplies don't have anything to do with it, and you know it. What do we do if one of the big beasties out there decides to break in instead of just going bump in the night? Do we try to drive it off with broom handles and charcoal lighter fluid?"
Of course he was right. Perhaps the mist was protecting us in a way. Hiding us. But maybe it wouldn't hide us for long, and there was more to it than that. We had been in the Federal for eighteen hours, more or less, and I could feel a kind of lethargy spreading over me, not much different from the lethargy I've felt on one or two occasions when I've tried to swim too far. There was an urge to play it safe, to just stay put, to take care of Billy (and maybe to bang Amanda Dumfries in the middle of the night, a voice murmured), to see if the mist wouldn't just lift, leaving everything as it had been.
I could see it on the other faces as well, and it suddenly occurred to me that there were people now in the Federal who probably wouldn't leave under any circumstance. The very thought of going out the door after all that had happened would freeze them.
Miller had been watching these thoughts cross my face, maybe. He said, "There were about eighty people in here when that damn fog came. From that number you subtract the bag-boy, Norton, and the four people that went out with him, and that man Smalley. That leaves seventy-three."
And subtracting the two soldiers, now resting under a stack of Purina Puppy Chow bags, it made seventy-one.
"Then you subtract the people who have just opted out," he went on. "There are ten or twelve of those. Say ten. That leaves about sixty-three. But--" He raised one sugar-powdered finger. "Of those sixty-three, we've got twenty or so that just won't leave. You'd have to drag them out kicking and screaming."
"Which all goes to prove what?"
"That we've got to get out, that's all. And I'm going. Around noon, I think. I'm planning to take as many people as will come. I'd like you and your boy to come along."
"After what happened to Norton?"
"Norton went like a lamb to the slaughter. That doesn't mean I have to, or the people who come with me."
"How can you prevent it? We have exactly one gun."
"And lucky to have that. But if we could make it across the intersection, maybe we could get down to the Sportsman's Exchange on Main Street. They've got more guns there than you could shake a stick at."
"That's one 'if' and one 'maybe' too many."
"Drayton," he said, "it's an iffy situation."
That rolled very smoothly off his tongue, but he didn't have a little boy to watch out for.
"Look, let it pass for now, okay? I didn't get much sleep last night, but I got a chance to think over a few things. Want to hear them?"
"Sure."
He stood up and stretched. "Take a walk over to the window with me."
We went through the checkout lane nearest the bread racks and stood at one of the loopholes. The man who was keeping watch there said, "The bugs are gone."
Miller slapped him on the back. "Go get yourself a coffee--and, fella, I'll keep an eye out."
"Okay. Thanks."
He walked away, and Miller and I stepped up to his loophole. "So tell me what you see out there," he said.
I looked. The litter barrel had been knocked over in the night, probably by one of the swooping bird-things, spilling a trash of papers, cans, and paper shake cups from the Dairy Queen down the road all over the hottop. Beyond that I could see the rank of cars closest to the market fading into whiteness. That was all I could see, and I told him so.
"That blue Chevy pickup is mine," he said. He pointed and I could see just a hint of blue in the mist. "But if you think back to when you pulled in yesterday, you'll remember that the parking lot was pretty jammed, right?"
I glanced back at my Scout and remembered I had only gotten the space close to the market because someone else had been pulling out. I nodded.
Miller said, "Now couple something else with that fact, Drayton. Norton and his four...what did you call them?"
"Flat-Earthers."
"Yeah, that's good. Just what they were. They go out, right? Almost the full length of that clothesline. Then we heard those roaring noises, like there was a goddamn herd of elephants out there. Right?"
"It didn't sound like elephants," I said. "It sounded like--" Like something from the primordial ooze was the phrase that came to mind, but I didn't want to say that to Miller, not after he had clapped that guy on the back and told him to go get a coffee-and like the coach jerking a player from the big game. I might have said it to Ollie, but not to Miller. "I don't know what it sounded like," I finished lamely.
"But it sounded big."
"Yeah." It had sounded pretty goddamn big.
"So how come we didn't hear cars getting bashed around? Screeching metal? Breaking glass?"
"Well, because--" I stopped. He had me. "I don't know."
Miller said, "No way they were out of the parking lot when whatever-it-was hit them. I'll tell you what I think. I think we didn't hear any cars getting around because a lot of them might be gone. Just...gone. Fallen into the earth, vaporized, you name it. Strong enough to splinter these beams and twist them out of shape and knock stuff off the shelves. And the town whistle stopped at the same time."
I was trying to visualize half the parking lot gone. Trying to visualize walking out there and just coming to a brand-new drop in the land where the hottop with its neat yellow-lined parking slots left off. A drop, a slope...or maybe an out-and-out precipice falling away into the featureless white mist...
After a couple of seconds I said, "If you're right, how far do you think you're going to get in your pickup?"
"I wasn't thinking of my truck. I was thinking of your four-wheel-drive."
That was something to chew over, but not now. "What else is on your mind?"
Miller was eager to go on. "The pharmacy next door, that's on my mind. What about that?"
I opened my mouth to say I didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about, and then shut it with a snap. The Bridgton Pharmacy had been doing business when we drove in yesterday. Not the Laundromat, but the drugstore had been wide open, the doors chocked with rubber doorstops to let in a little cool air--the power outage had killed their air-conditioning, of course. The door to the pharmacy could be no more than twenty feet from the door of the Federal market. So why--
"Why haven't any of those people turned up over here?" Miller asked for me. "It's been eighteen hours. Aren't they hungry? They're sure not over there eating Dristan and Stayfree Mini-pads."
"There's food," I said. "They're always selling food items on special. Sometimes it's animal crackers, sometimes it's those toaster pastries, all sorts of things. Plus the candy rack."
"I just don't believe they'd stick with stuff like that when there's all kinds of stuff over here."
"What are you getting at?"
"What I'm getting at is that I want to get out but I don't want to be dinner for some refugee from a grade-B horror picture. Four or five of us could go next door and check out the situation in the drugstore. As sort of a trial balloon."
"That's everything?"
"No, there's one other thing."
"What's that?"
"Her," Miller said simply, and jerked his thumb toward one of the middle aisles. "That crazy cunt. That witch."
It was Mrs. Carmody he had jerked his thumb at. She was no longer alone; two women had joined her. From their bright clothes I guessed they were probably tourists or summer people, ladies who had maybe left their families to "just run into town and get a few things" and were now eaten up with worry over their husbands and kids. Ladies eager to grasp at almost any straw. Maybe even the black comfort of a Mrs. Carmody.
Her pantsuit shone out with its same baleful resplendence. She was talking, gesturing, her face hard and grim. The two ladies in their bright clothes (but not as bright as Mrs. Carmody's pantsuit, no, and her gigantic satchel of a purse was still tucked firmly under one doughy arm) were listening raptly.
"She's another reason I want to get out, Drayton. By tonight she'll have six people sitting with her. If those pink bugs and the birds come back tonight, she'll have a whole congregation sitting with her by tomorrow morning. Then we can start worrying about who she'll tell them to sacrifice to make it all better. Maybe me, or you, or that guy Hatlen. Maybe your kid."
"That's idiocy," I said. But was it? The cold chill crawling up my back said not necessarily. Mrs. Carmody's mouth moved and moved. The eyes of the tourist ladies were fixed on her wrinkled lips. Was it idiocy? I thought of the dusty stuffed animals drinking at their looking-glass stream. Mrs. Carmody had power. Even Steff, normally hardheaded and straight-from-the-shoulder, invoked the old lady's name with unease.
That crazy cunt, Miller had called her. That witch.
"The people in this market are going through a section-eight experience for sure," Miller said. He gestured at the red-painted beams framing the show-window segments...twisted and splintered and buckled out of shape. "Their minds probably feel like those beams look. Mine sure as shit does. I spent half of last night thinking I must have flipped out of my gourd, that I was probably in a straitjacket in Danvers, raving my head off about bugs and dinosaur birds and tentacles and that it would all go away just as soon as the nice orderly came along and shot a wad of Thorazine into my arm." His small face was strained and white. He looked at Mrs. Carmody and then back at me. "I tell you it might happen. As people get flakier, she's going to look better and better to some of them. And I don't want to be around if that happens."
Mrs. Carmody's lips, moving and moving. Her tongue dancing around her old lady's snaggle teeth. She did look like a witch. Put her in a pointy black hat and she would be perfect. What was she saying to her two captured birds in their bright summer plumage?
Arrowhead Project? Black Spring? Abominations from the cellars of the earth? Human sacrifice?
Bullshit.
All the same--
"So what do you say?"
"I'll go this far," I answered him. "We'll try going over to the drug. You, me, Ollie if he wants to go, one or two others. Then we'll talk it over again." Even that gave me the feeling of walking out over an impossible drop on a narrow beam. I wasn't going to help Billy by killing myself. On the other hand, I wasn't going to help him by just sitting on my ass, either. Twenty feet to the drugstore. That wasn't so bad.
"When?" he asked.
"Give me an hour."
"Sure," he said.
IX
The Expedition to the Pharmacy.
I told Mrs. Turman, and I told Amanda, and then I told Billy. He seemed better this morning; he had eaten two donuts and a bowl of Special K for breakfast. Afterward I raced him up and down two of the aisles and even got him giggling a little. Kids are so adaptable that they can scare the living shit right out of you. He was too pale, the flesh under his eyes was still puffed from the tears he had cried in the night, and his face had a horribly used look. In a way it had become like an old man's face, as if too much emotional voltage had been running behind it for too long. But he was still alive and still able to laugh...at least until he remembered where he was and what was happening.
After the windsprints we sat down with Amanda and Hattie Turman and drank Gatorade from paper cups and I told him I was going over to the drugstore with a few other people.
"I don't want you to," he said immediately, his face clouding.
"It'll be all right, Big Bill. I'll bring you a Spider-Man comic book."
"I want you to stay here." Now his face was not just cloudy; it was thundery. I took his hand. He pulled it away. I took it again.
"Billy, we have to get out of here sooner or later. You see that, don't you?"
"When the fog goes away..." But he spoke with no conviction at all. He drank his Gatorade slowly and without relish.
"Billy, it's been almost one whole day now."
"I want Mommy."
"Well, maybe this is the first step on the way to getting back to her."
Mrs. Turman said, "Don't build the boy's hopes up, David."
"What the hell," I snapped at her, "the kid's got to hope for something."
She dropped her eyes. "Yes. I suppose he does."
Billy took no notice of this. "Daddy...Daddy, there are things out there. Things."
"Yes, we know that. But a lot of them--not all, but a lot--don't seem to come out until it's nighttime."
"They'll wait," he said. His eyes were huge, centered on mine. "They'll wait in the fog...and when you can't get back inside, they'll come to eat you up. Like in the fairy stories." He hugged me with fierce, panicky tightness. "Daddy, please don't go."
I pried his arms loose as gently as I could and told him that I had to. "But I'll be back, Billy."
"All right," he said huskily, but he wouldn't look at me anymore. He didn't believe I would be back. It was on his face, which was no longer thundery but woeful and grieving. I wondered again if I could be doing the right thing, putting myself at risk. Then I happened to glance down the middle aisle and saw Mrs. Carmody there. She had gained a third listener, a man with a grizzled cheek and a mean and rolling bloodshot eye. His haggard brow and shaking hands almost screamed the word hangover. It was none other than your friend and his, Myron LaFleur. The fellow who had felt no compunction at all about sending a boy out to do a man's job.
That crazy cunt. That witch.
I kissed Billy and hugged him hard. Then I walked down to the front of the store--but not down the housewares aisle. I didn't want to fall under her eye.
Three-quarters of the way down, Amanda caught up with me. "Do you really have to do this?" she asked.
"Yes, I think so."
"Forgive me if I say it sounds like so much macho bullshit to me." There were spots of color high on her cheeks and her eyes were greener than ever. She was highly--no, royally--pissed.
I took her arm and recapped my discussion with Dan Miller. The riddle of the cars and the fact that no one from the pharmacy had joined us didn't move her much. The business about Mrs. Carmody did.
"He could be right," she said.
"Do you really believe that?"
"I don't know. There's a poisonous feel to that woman. And if people are frightened badly enough for long enough, they'll turn to anyone that promises a solution."
"But human sacrifice, Amanda?"
"The Aztecs were into it," she said evenly. "Listen, David. You come back. If anything happens...anything...you come back. Cut and run if you have to. Not for me, what happened last night was nice, but that was last night. Come back for your boy."
"Yes. I will."
"I wonder," she said, and now she looked like Billy, haggard and old. It oc
curred to me that most of us looked that way. But not Mrs. Carmody. Mrs. Carmody looked younger somehow, and more vital. As if she had come into her own. As if...as if she were thriving on it.
We didn't get going until 9:30 A.M. Seven of us went: Ollie, Dan Miller, Mike Hatlen, Myron LaFleur's erstwhile buddy Jim (also hungover, but seemingly determined to find some way to atone), Buddy Eagleton, myself. The seventh was Hilda Reppler. Miller and Hatlen tried halfheartedly to talk her out of coming. She would have none of it. I didn't even try. I suspected she might be more competent than any of us, except maybe for Ollie. She was carrying a small canvas shopping basket, and it was loaded with an arsenal of Raid and Black Flag spray cans, all of them uncapped and ready for action. In her free hand she held a Spaulding Jimmy Connors tennis racket from a display of sporting goods in Aisle 2.
"What you gonna do with that, Mrs. Reppler?" Jim asked.
"I don't know," she said. She had a low, raspy, competent voice. "But it feels right in my hand." She looked him over closely, and her eye was cold. "Jim Grondin, isn't it? Didn't I have you in school?"
Jim's lips stretched in an uneasy egg-suck grin. "Yes'm. Me and my sister Pauline."
"Too much to drink last night?"
Jim, who towered over her and probably outweighed her by one hundred pounds, blushed to the roots of his American Legion crewcut. "Aw, no--"
She turned away curtly, cutting him off. "I think we're ready," she said.
All of us had something, although you would have called it an odd assortment of weapons. Ollie had Amanda's gun, Buddy Eagleton had a steel pinchbar from out back somewhere. I had a broom handle.
"Okay," Dan Miller said, raising his voice a bit. "You folks want to listen up a minute?"
A dozen people had drifted down toward the OUT door to see what was going on. They were loosely knotted, and to their right stood Mrs. Carmody and her new friends.
"We're going over to the drugstore to see what the situation is there. Hopefully, we'll be able to bring something back to aid Mrs. Clapham." She was the lady who had been trampled yesterday, when the bugs came. One of her legs had been broken and she was in a great deal of pain.