"Trombone Charlie is back in town!" Frankie yelled, and they gave each other a high five.
Thurston and Carolyn stood in the bedroom doorway, covering their mutual nakedness in an embrace, staring at the cackling intruders. In the background, like voices in a bad dream, loudhailers continued to announce that the area was being evacuated. Most of the amplified voices were now retreating toward Little Bitch.
"I want that car gone when we get back," Junior said. "Or I will fuck you up."
They left. Carolyn dressed herself, then helped Thurston--his stomach hurt too much for him to bend over and put on his own shoes. By the time they were finished, both of them were crying. In the car, on their way back down the camp lane that led to Little Bitch Road, Carolyn tried to reach her father on her cell. She got nothing but silence.
At the intersection of Little Bitch and Route 119, a town police car was pulled across the road. A stocky female cop with red hair pointed at the soft shoulder, then waved at them to use it. Carolyn pulled over instead, and got out. She held up her puffy wrist.
"We were assaulted! By two guys calling themselves cops! One named Junior and one named Frankie! They--"
"Get your ass gone or I'll assault you myself," Georgia Roux said. "I ain't shittin, honeypie."
Carolyn stared at her, stunned. The whole world had turned sideways and slipped into a Twilight Zone episode while she was asleep. That had to be it; no other explanation made even marginal sense. They'd hear the Rod Serling voice-over anytime now.
She got back into the Volvo (the sticker on the bumper, faded but still readable: OBAMA '12! YES WE STILL CAN) and detoured around the police car. Another, older cop was sitting inside it, going over a checklist on a clipboard. She thought of appealing to him, then thought better of it.
"Try the radio," she said. "Let's find out if something really is going on."
Thurston turned it on and got nothing but Elvis Presley and the Jordanaires, trudging through "How Great Thou Art."
Carolyn snapped it off, thought of saying The nightmare is officially complete, and didn't. All she wanted was to get out of Weirdsville as soon as possible.
2
On the map, the Chester Pond camp road was a thin hooklike thread, almost not there. After leaving the Marshall cabin, Junior and Frankie sat for a moment in Frankie's car, studying this.
"Can't be anybody else down there," Frankie said. "Not at this time of the year. What do you think? Say fuck it and go back to town?" He cocked a thumb at the cabin. "They'll be along, and if they're not, who really gives a shit?"
Junior considered it for a moment, then shook his head. They had taken the Oath of Duty. Besides, he wasn't anxious to get back and face his father's pestering about what he'd done with the Reverend's body. Coggins was now keeping his girlfriends company in the McCain pantry, but there was no need for his dad to know that. At least not until the big man figured out how to nail Barbara with it. And Junior believed his father would figure it out. If there was one thing Big Jim Rennie was good at, it was nailing people.
Now it doesn't even matter if he finds out I left school, Junior thought, because I know worse about him. Way worse.
Not that dropping out seemed very important now; it was chump change compared to what was going on in The Mill. But he'd have to be careful, just the same. Junior wouldn't put it past his father to nail him, if the situation seemed to call for it.
"Junior? Earth to Junior."
"I'm here," he said, a little irritated. "Back to town?"
"Let's check out the other cabins. It's only a quarter of a mile, and if we go back to town, Randolph'll find something else for us to do."
"Wouldn't mind a little chow, though."
"Where? At Sweetbriar? Want some rat poison in your scrambled eggs, courtesy of Dale Barbara?"
"He wouldn't dare."
"You positive?"
"Okay, okay." Frankie started the car and backed down the little stub of driveway. The brightly colored leaves hung moveless on the trees, and the air felt sultry. More like July than October. "But the Massholes better be gone when we come back, or I just might have to introduce Titsy McGee to my helmeted avenger."
"I'll be happy to hold her down," Junior said. "Yippee-ki-yi-yay, motherfucker."
3
The first three cabins were clearly empty; they didn't even bother getting out of the car. By now the camp road was down to a pair of wheelruts with a grassy hump between them. Trees overhung it on both sides, some of the lower branches almost close enough to scrape the roof.
"I think the last one's just around this curve," Frankie said. "The road ends at this shitpot little boat land--"
"Look out!" Junior shouted.
They came out of the blind curve and two kids, a boy and a girl, were standing in the road. They made no effort to get out of the way. Their faces were shocked and blank. If Frankie hadn't been afraid of tearing the Toyota's exhaust system out on the camp road's center hump--if he'd been making any kind of speed at all--he would have hit them. Instead he stood on the brake, and the car stopped two feet short.
"Oh my God, that was close," he said. "I think I'm having a heart attack."
"If my father didn't, you won't," Junior said.
"Huh?"
"Never mind." Junior got out. The kids were still standing there. The girl was taller and older. Maybe nine. The boy looked about five. Their faces were pale and dirty. She was holding his hand. She looked up at Junior, but the boy looked straight ahead, as if examining something of interest in the Toyota's driver's side headlamp.
Junior saw the terror on her face and dropped to one knee in front of her. "Honey, are you okay?"
It was the boy who answered. He spoke while still examining the headlamp. "I want my mother. And I want my breffus."
Frankie joined him. "Are they real?" Speaking in a voice that said I'm joking, but not really. He reached out and touched the girl's arm.
She jumped a little, and looked at him. "Mumma didn't come back." She spoke in a low voice.
"What's your name, hon?" Junior asked.
"And who's your mommy?"
"I'm Alice Rachel Appleton," she said. "This is Aidan Patrick Appleton. Our mother is Vera Appleton. Our father is Edward Appleton, but he and Mommy got a divorce last year and now he lives in Plano, Texas. We live in Weston, Massachusetts, at Sixteen Oak Way. Our telephone number is--" She recited it with the toneless accuracy of a directory assistance recording.
Junior thought, Oh boy. More Massholes. But it made sense; who else would burn expensive gasoline just to watch the fucking leaves fall off the fucking trees?
Frankie was also kneeling now. "Alice," he said, "listen to me, sweetheart. Where is your mother now?"
"Don't know," Tears--big clear globes--began to roll down her cheeks. "We came to see the leaves. Also, we were going to go in the kayak. We like the kayak, don't we, Aide?"
"I'm hungry," Aidan said mournfully, and then he too began to cry.
Seeing them like that made Junior feel like crying himself. He reminded himself he was a cop. Cops didn't cry, at least not on duty. He asked the girl again where her mother was, but it was the little boy who answered.
"She went to get Woops."
"He means Whoopie Pies," Alice said. "But she went to get other stuff, too. Because Mr. Killian didn't caretake the cabin like he was supposed to. Mommy said I could take care of Aidan because I'm a big girl now and she'd be right back, she was only going to Yoder's. She just said don't let Aide go near the pond."
Junior was starting to get the picture. Apparently the woman had expected to find the cabin stocked with food--a few staples, at least--but if she'd known Roger Killian well, she would have known better than to depend on him. The man was a class-A dumbbell, and had passed his less-than-sterling intellect on to his entire brood. Yoder's was a nasty little store just across the Tarker's Mills town line specializing in beer, coffee brandy, and canned spaghetti. Ordinarily it would have been a twenty-minute ru
n there and another twenty back. Only she hadn't come back, and Junior knew why.
"Did she go Saturday morning?" he asked. "She did, didn't she?"
"I want her!" Aidan cried. "And I want my breffus ! My belly hurts!"
"Yes," the girl said. "Saturday morning. We were watching cartoons, only now we can't watch anything, because the electricity's broke."
Junior and Frankie looked at each other. Two nights alone in the dark. The girl maybe nine, the boy about five. Junior didn't like to think about that.
"Did you have anything to eat?" Frankie asked Alice Appleton. "Sweetheart? Anything at all?"
"There was a onion in the vegetable draw," she whispered. "We each had half. With sugar."
"Oh, fuck," Frankie said. Then: "I didn't say that. You didn't hear me say that. Just a second." He went back to the car, opened the passenger door, and began to rummage in the glove compartment.
"Where were you going, Alice?" Junior asked.
"To town. To look for Mommy and to find something to eat. We were going to walk past the next camp and then cut through the woods." She pointed vaguely north. "I thought that would be quicker."
Junior smiled, but he was cold inside. She wasn't pointing toward Chester's Mill; she was pointing in the direction of TR-90. At nothing but miles of tangled second-growth and boggy sumps. Plus the Dome, of course. Out there, Alice and Aidan would almost certainly have died of starvation; Hansel and Gretel minus the happy ending.
And we came so close to turning around. Jesus.
Frankie returned. He had a Milky Way. It looked old and squashed, but it was still in the wrapper. The way the children fixed their eyes on it made Junior think of the kids you saw on the news sometimes. That look on American faces was unreal, horrible.
"It's all I could find," Frankie said, stripping off the wrapper. "We'll get you something better in town."
He broke the Milky Way in two and gave a piece to each child. The candy was gone in five seconds. When he had finished his piece, the boy stuck his fingers knuckle-deep into his mouth. His cheeks hollowed rhythmically in and out as he sucked them.
Like a dog licking grease off a stick, Junior thought.
He turned to Frankie. "Never mind waiting until we get back to town. We're gonna stop at the cabin where the old man and the chick were. And whatever they got, these kids are going to get it."
Frankie nodded and picked up the boy. Junior picked up the little girl. He could smell her sweat, her fear. He stroked her hair as if he could stroke that oily reek away.
"You're all right, honey," he said. "You and your brother both.
You're all right. You're safe."
"Do you promise?"
"Yes."
Her arms tightened around his neck. It was one of the best things Junior had ever felt in his life.
4
The western side of Chester's Mill was the least populated part of town, and by quarter of nine that morning it was almost entirely clear. The only police car left on Little Bitch was Unit 2. Jackie Wettington was driving and Linda Everett was riding shotgun. Chief Perkins, a smalltown cop of the old school, would never have sent two women out together, but of course Chief Perkins was no longer in charge, and the women themselves enjoyed the novelty. Men, especially male cops with their endless yee-haw banter, could be tiring.
"Ready to go back?" Jackie asked. "Sweetbriar'll be closed, but we might be able to beg a cup of coffee."
Linda didn't reply. She was thinking about where the Dome cut across Little Bitch. Going out there had been unsettling, and not just because the sentries were still standing with their backs turned, and hadn't budged when she gave them a good morning through the car's roof speaker. It was unsettling because there was now a great big red X spray-painted on the Dome, hanging in midair like a sci-fi hologram. That was the projected point of impact. It seemed impossible that a missile fired from two or three hundred miles away could hit such a small spot, but Rusty had assured her that it could.
"Lin?"
She came back to the here and now. "Sure, I'm ready if you are."
The radio crackled. "Unit Two, Unit Two, do you read, over?"
Linda unracked the mike. "Base, this is Two. We hear you, Stacey, but reception out here isn't very good, over?"
"Everybody says the same," Stacey Moggin replied. "It's worse near the Dome, better as you get closer to town. But you're still on Little Bitch, right? Over."
"Yes," Linda said. "Just checked the Killians and the Bouchers. Both gone. If that missile busts through, Roger Killian's going to have a lot of roast chickens, over."
"We'll have a picnic. Pete wants to talk to you. Chief Randolph, I mean. Over."
Jackie pulled the cruiser to the side of the road. There was a pause with static crackling in it, then Randolph came on. He didn't bother with any overs, never had.
"Did you check the church, Unit Two?"
"Holy Redeemer?" Linda asked. "Over."
"That's the only one I know out there, Officer Everett. Unless a Hindu mosque grew overnight."
Linda didn't think Hindus were the ones who worshipped in mosques, but this didn't seem like the right time for corrections. Randolph sounded tired and grouchy. "Holy Redeemer wasn't in our sector," she said. "That one belonged to a couple of the new cops. Thibodeau and Searles, I think. Over."
"Check it again," Randolph said, sounding more irritable than ever. "No one's seen Coggins, and a couple of his parishioners want to canoodle with him, or whatever they call it."
Jackie put a finger to her temple and mimed shooting herself. Linda, who wanted to get back and check on her kids at Marta Edmunds's house, nodded.
"Roger that, Chief," Linda said. "Will do. Over."
"Check the parsonage, too." There was a pause. "Also the radio station. The damn thing keeps bellowing away, so there must be someone there."
"Will do." She started to say over and out, then thought of something else. "Chief, is there anything new on the TV? Has the President said anything? Over?"
"I don't have time to listen to every word that guy drops out of his silly mouth. Just go on and hunt up the padre and tell him to get his butt back here. And get your butts back, too. Out."
Linda racked the mike and looked at Jackie.
"Get our butts back there?" Jackie said. "Our butts ?"
"He's a butt," Linda said.
The remark was supposed to be funny, but it fell flat. For a moment they just sat in the idling car, not talking. Then Jackie spoke in a voice that was almost too low to be heard. "This is so bad."
"Randolph instead of Perkins, you mean?"
"That, and the new cops." She gave the last word verbal quotation marks. "Those kids. You know what? When I was punching in, Henry Morrison told me Randolph hired two more this morning. They came in off the street with Carter Thibodeau and Pete just signed em up, no questions asked."
Linda knew the sort of guys who hung out with Carter, either at Dipper's or at the Gas & Grocery, where they used the garage to tune up their finance-company motorcycles. "Two more ? Why? "
"Pete told Henry we might need em if that missile doesn't work. 'To make sure the situation doesn't get out of hand,' he said. And you know who put that idea in his head."
Linda knew, all right. "At least they're not carrying guns."
"A couple are. Not department issue; their personals. By tomorrow--if this doesn't end today, that is--they all will be. And as of this morning Pete's letting them ride together instead of pairing them with real cops. Some training period, huh? Twenty-four hours, give or take. Do you realize those kids now outnumber us?"
Linda considered this silently.
"Hitler Youth," Jackie said. "That's what I keep thinking. Probably overreacting, but I hope to God this thing ends today and I don't have to find out."
"I can't quite see Peter Randolph as Hitler."
"Me, either. I see him more as Hermann Goering. It's Rennie I think of when I think of Hitler." She put the cruiser in gear, made
a K-turn, and headed them back toward Christ the Holy Redeemer Church.
5
The church was unlocked and empty, the generator off. The parsonage was silent, but Reverend Coggins's Chevrolet was parked in the little garage. Peering in, Linda could read two stickers on the bumper. The one on the right: IF THE RAPTURE'S TODAY, SOMEBODY GRAB MY STEERING WHEEL! The one on the left boasted MY OTHER CAR IS A 10-SPEED.
Linda called the second one to Jackie's attention. "He does have a bike--I've seen him riding it. But I don't see it in the garage, so maybe he rode it into town. Saving gas."
"Maybe," Jackie said. "And maybe we ought to check the house to make sure he didn't slip in the shower and break his neck."
"Does that mean we might have to look at him naked?"
"No one said police work was pretty," Jackie said. "Come on."
The house was locked, but in towns where seasonal residents form a large part of the population, the police are adept at gaining entry. They checked the usual places for a spare key. Jackie was the one who found it, hanging on a hook behind a kitchen shutter. It opened the back door.
"Reverend Coggins?" Linda called, sticking her head in. "It's the police, Reverend Coggins, are you here?"
No answer. They went in. The lower floor was neat and orderly, but it gave Linda an uncomfortable feeling. She told herself it was just being in someone else's house. A religious person's house, and uninvited.
Jackie went upstairs. "Reverend Coggins? Police. If you're here, please make yourself known."
Linda stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up. The house felt wrong, somehow. That made her think of Janelle, shaking in the grip of her seizure. That had been wrong, too. A queer certainty stole into her mind: if Janelle were here right now, she would have another seizure. Yes, and start talking about queer things. Halloween and the Great Pumpkin, maybe.
It was a perfectly ordinary flight of stairs, but she didn't want to go up there, just wanted Jackie to report the place was empty so they could go on to the radio station. But when her partner called for her to come up, Linda did.