“I’m not sure I can-”
“You have to, Pete, now do it.”
For a moment there was nothing, and then he felt Pete’s hand slip under his coat, fumble, and catch hold of his belt. They shuffled across the narrow string of road in an awkward conga-line, through the staring yellow spotlight of the Scout’s remaining headlamp. On the far side of the overturned vehicle they were at least partly sheltered from the wind, and that was good.
The woman abruptly pulled her hands out of Henry’s and leaned forward, mouth opening. Henry stepped back, not wanting to be splattered when she let go… but instead of vomiting she belched, the loudest one yet. Then, while still bent over, she broke wind again. The sound was like nothing Henry had ever heard before, and he would have sworn he’d heard everything on the wards in western Massachusetts. She kept her feet, though, breathing through her nose in big horselike snuffles of air.
“Henry,” Pete said. His voice was hoarse with terror, awe, or both. “My God, look.”
He was staring up at the sky, jaw loose and mouth gaping. Henry followed his gaze and could hardly believe what he was seeing. Bright circles of light, nine or ten of them, cruised slowly across the low-hanging clouds. Henry had to squint to look at them. He thought briefly of spotlights stabbing the night sky at Hollywood film premieres, but of course there were no such lights out here in the woods, and if there had been he would have seen the beams themselves, rising in the snowy air. Whatever was projecting those lights was above or in the clouds, not below them. They ran back and forth, seemingly at random, and Henry felt a sudden atavistic terror invade him… except it actually seemed to rise up from inside, somewhere deep inside. All at once his spinal cord felt like a column of ice.
“What is it?” Pete asked, nearly whining. “Christ, Henry, what is it?”
“I don’t-”
The woman looked up, saw the dancing lights, and began to shriek. They were amazingly loud, those shrieks, and so full of terror they made Henry feel like shrieking himself “They’re back!” she screamed. “They’re back! They’re back!’Then she covered her eyes and put her head against the front tire of the overturned Scout. She quit screaming and only moaned, like something caught in a trap with no hope of getting free.
5
For some unknown length of time (probably no more than five minutes, although it felt longer) they watched those brilliant lights run across the sky-circling, skidding, hanging lefts and rights, appearing to leapfrog each other. At some point Henry became aware there were only five instead of nearly a dozen, and then there were only three. Beside him the woman with her face against the tire fatted again, and Henry realized they were standing out here in the middle of nowhere, gawping at some sort of storm-related celestial phenomenon which, while interesting, would contribute absolutely nothing toward getting them into a place that was dry and warm. He could remember the final reading on the tripmeter with perfect clarity: 12.7. They were nearly ten miles from Hole in the Wall, a good hike under the best of circumstances, and here they were in a storm only two steps below a blizzard. Plus, he thought, I’m the only one who can walk.
“Pete.” “It’s somethin, isn’t it?” Pete breathed. “They’re fucking UFOS, just like on The X-Files. What d’you suppose-”Pete.” He took Pete’s chin in his hand and turned his face away from the sky, to his own.
Overhead, the last two lights were paling.
“It’s some sort of electrical phenomenon, that’s all.”
“You think?” Pete looked absurdly disappointed.
“Yeah-something related to the storm. But even if it’s the first wave of the Butterfly Aliens from Planet Alnitak, it isn’t going to make any difference to us if we turn into Popsicles out here. Now I need you to help me. I need you to do that trick of yours. Can you?”
“I don’t know,” Pete said, venturing one final look at the sky. There was only one light now, and so dim you wouldn’t have known it was there if you hadn’t been looking for it. “Ma’am? Ma’am, they’re almost gone. Mellow out, okay?”
She made no reply, only stood with her face pressed against the tire. The streamers on her hat flapped and flew. Pete sighed and turned to Henry.
“What do you want?”
“You know the loggers” shelters along this road?” There were eight or nine of them, Henry thought, nothing but four posts each, with pieces of rusty corrugated tin on top for roofs. The pulpers stored cut logs or pieces of equipment beneath them until spring.
“Sure,” Pete said.
“Where’s the closest one? Can you tell me?”
Pete closed his eyes, raised one finger, and began moving it back and forth. At the same time he made a little ticking sound with the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. This had been a part of Pete ever since high school. It didn’t go back as far as Beaver’s gnawed pencils and chewed toothpicks, or Jonesy’s love of horror movies and murder stories, but it went back a long way. And it was usually reliable. Henry waited, hoping it would be reliable now.
The woman, her ears perhaps catching that small regular ticking sound beneath the boom of the wind, raised her head and looked around. There was a large dark smear across her forehead from the tire.
At last Pete opened his eyes. “Right up there,” he said, pointing in the direction of Hole in the Wall. “Go around that curve and then there’s a hill. Go down the other side of the hill and there’s a straight stretch. At the end of the straight there’s one of those shelters. It’s on the left. Part of the roof’s fallen in. A man named Stevenson had a nosebleed there once.”
“Yeah?”
“Aw, man, I don’t know.” And Pete looked away, as if embarrassed.
Henry vaguely remembered the shelter… and the fact that the roof had partially fallen in was good, or could be; if it had fallen the right way, it would have turned the wall-less shelter into a lean-to.
“How far?”
“Half a mile. Maybe three-quarters.”
“And you’re sure.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you walk that far on your knee?”
“I think so-but will she?”
“She better,” Henry said. He put his hands on the woman’s shoulders, turned her wide-eyed face to his, and moved in until they were almost nose to nose. The smell of her breath was awful-antifreeze with something oily and organic beneath it-but he stayed close, and made no move to draw back.
“We need to walk!” he told her, not quite shouting but speaking loudly and in a tone of command. “Walk with me now, on three! One, two, three!”
He took her hand and led her back around the Scout and into the road. There was one moment of resistance and then she followed with perfect docility, not seeming to feel the push of the wind when it struck them. They walked for about five minutes, Henry holding the woman’s gloved right hand in his left one, and then Pete lurched.
“Wait,” he said. “Bastardly knee’s tryin to lock up on me again.
While he bent and massaged it, Henry looked up at the sky. There were no lights up there now. “Are you all right? Can you make it?”
“I’ll make it,” Pete said. “Come on, let’s go.”
6
They made it around the curve all right and halfway up the hill all right and then Pete dropped, groaning and cursing and clutching his knee. He saw the way Henry was looking at him and made a peculiar sound, something caught between a laugh and a snarl. “Don’t you worry about me,” he said. “Petie-bird’s gonna make it.”
“You sure?”
“Ayuh.” And to Henry’s alarm (although there was amusement, too, that dark amusement which never seemed to leave him now), Pete balled his gloved hands into fists and began pounding on his knee.
“Pete-”
“Let go, you hump, let go!” Pete cried, ignoring him completely. And during this the woman stood slump-shouldered with the wind now at her back and the orange hat-ribbons blowing out in front of her, as silent as a piece of equipment that has been turned off.
“Pete?” “I’m all right now,” Pete said. He looked up at Henry with exhausted eyes… but they, too, were not without amusement. “Is this a total fuckarow or not?”
“It is. “’I don’t think I could walk all the way back to Derry, but I’ll get to that shelter.” He held out a hand. “Help me up, chief”
Henry took his old friend’s hand and pulled. Pete came up stiff-legged, like a man rising from a formal bow, stood still for a moment, then said: “Let’s go. I’m lookin forward to gettin out of this wind.” He paused, then added: “We should have brought a few beers.”