That big boom. Did it mean the United States of America had just gone to war against beings from another world? Was he now living in an H.G. Wells novel? Henry felt a hard, squeezing flutter under his breastbone. If so, this enemy might have more than a few hundred rusty Soviet Scuds to throw back at Uncle Sammy.
Let it go. You can’t do anything about any of that. What’s next for you, that’s the question. What’s next for you?
The rave of the jets had already faded to a mutter. He guessed that they would be back, though. Maybe with friends.
“Two paths diverged in a snowy wood, is that how it goes? Something like that, anyway.”
But following the snowmobile’s track any farther was really not an option. He’d lose it in the dark half an hour from now, and this new snowfall would wipe it out in any case. He would end up wandering and lost… as Jonesy very likely was now.
Sighing, Henry turned away from the snowmobile track and continued along the road.
13
By the time he neared the place where the Deep Cut joined up with the two-lane blacktop known as the Swanny Pond Road, Henry was almost too tired to stand, let alone ski. The muscles in his thighs felt like old wet teabags. Not even the lights on the northwestern horizon, now much brighter, or the sound of the motors and helicopters could offer him much comfort. Ahead of him was a final long, steep hill. On the other side, Deep Cut ended and Swanny Pond began. There he might actually encounter traffic, especially if there were troops being moved in.
“Come on,” he said. “Come on, come on, come on.” Yet he stood where he was awhile longer. He didn’t want to go over that hill. “Better Underhill than overhill,” he said. That seemed to mean something but it was probably just another idiotic non sequitur. Besides, there was nowhere else to go.
He bent, scooped up more snow-in the dark the double handful looked like a small pillowcase. He nibbled some, not because he wanted it but because he really didn’t want to start moving again. The lights coming from Gosselin’s were more understandable than the lights he and Pete had seen playing in the sky (They’re back! Becky had screamed, like the little girl sitting in front of the TV in that old Steven Spielberg movie), but Henry liked them even less, somehow. All those motors and generators sounded somehow… hungry.
“That’s right, rabbit,” he said. And then, because there really were no other options, he started up the last hill between him and a real road.
14
He paused at the top, gasping for breath and bent over his skipoles. The wind was stronger up here, and it seemed to go right through his clothing. His left leg throbbed where it had been gored by the turnsignal stalk, and he wondered again if he was incubating a little red-gold colony under the makeshift bandage. Too dark to see, and when the only possible good news would be no news, maybe that was just as well.
“Time slowed, reality bent, on and on the eggman went.” No yuks left in that one, so he started down the hill toward the T-junction where the Deep Cut Road ended.
This side of the hill was steeper and soon he was skiing rather than walking. He picked up speed, not knowing if what he felt was terror, exhilaration, or some unhealthy mix of the two. Certainly he was going too fast for the visibility, which was almost nil, and his abilities, which were as rusty as the clamps holding the skis to his boots. The trees blurred past on either side, and it suddenly occurred to him that all his problems might be solved at a stroke. Not the Hemingway Solution after all. Call this way out the Bono Solution.
His hat blew off his head. He reached for it automatically, one of his poles flailing out ahead of him, half-seen in the dark, and all at once his balance was gone. He was going to take a tumble. And maybe that was good, as long as he didn’t break his goddam leg. Falling would stop him, at least. He would just pick himself up, and-
Lights blazed out, big truck-mounted spotlights, and before his vision disappeared into dazzle, Henry glimpsed what might have been a flatbed pulp-truck pulled across the end of the Deep Cut Road. The lights were undoubtedly motion-sensitive, and there was a line of men standing in front of them,
“HALT!” a terrifying, amplified voice commanded. It could have been the voice of God. “HALT OR WE’ll FIRE!”
Henry went down hard and awkwardly. His skis shot off his feet. One ankle bent painfully enough to make him cry out. He lost one skipole; the other snapped off halfway up its shaft. The wind was knocked out of him in a large, frosty whoop of breath.
He slid, snowplowing with his wide-open crotch, then came to rest, bent limbs forming a shape something like a swastika.
His vision began to come back, and he heard feet crunching in the snow. He flailed and managed to sit up, not able to tell if anything was broken or not.
Six men were standing about ten feet down the hill from him, their shadows impossibly long and crisp on the diamond-dusted new snow. They were all wearing parkas. They all had clear plastic masks over their mouths and noses-these looked more efficient than the painters” masks Henry had found in the snowmobile shed, but Henry had an idea that the basic purpose was the same.
The men also had automatic weapons, all of them pointed at him. It now seemed rather lucky to Henry that he had left Jonesy’s Garand and his own Winchester back at the Scout. If he’d had a gun, he might have a dozen or more holes in him by now.
“I don’t think I’ve got it,” he croaked. “Whatever it is you’re worried about, I don’t think-”
“ON YOUR, FEET!” God’s voice again. Corning from the truck. The men standing in front of him blocked out at least some of the glare and Henry could see more men at the foot of the hill where the roads met. All of them had weapons, too, except for the one holding the bullhorn.
“I don’t know if I can g-”
“ON YOUR FEET NOW!” God commanded, and one of the men in front of him made an expressive little erking motion with the barrel of his gun.
Henry got shakily to his feet. His legs were trembling and the ankle he’d bent was outraged, but everything was holding together, at least for the time being. Thus ends the eggman’s journey, he thought, and began to laugh. The men in front of him looked at each other uneasily, and although they pointed their rifles at him again, he was comforted to see even that small demonstration of human emotion.
In the brilliant glow of the lights mounted on the pulper’s flatbed, Henry saw something lying in the snow-it had fallen from his pocket when he wiped out. Slowly, knowing they might shoot him anyway, he bent down.
“DON’T TOUCH THAT!” God cried from His loudspeaker atop the cab of the pulp-truck, and now the men down there also raised their weapons, a little hello darkness my old friend peeping from the muzzle of each.
“Bite shit and die,” Henry said-one of the Beav’s better efforts-and picked up the package. He held it out to the armed and masked men in front of him, smiling. “I come in peace for all mankind,” he said. “Who wants a hot dog?”
Chapter Twelve
JONESY IN THE HOSPITAL
1
This was a dream.
It didn’t feel like one, but it had to be. For one thing, he’d already been through March fifteenth once, and it seemed monstrously unfair to have to go through it again. For another, he could remember all sorts of things from the eight months between mid-March and mid-November-helping the kids with their homework, Carla on the phone with her friends (many from the Narcotics Anonymous program), giving a lecture at Harvard… and the months of physical rehab, of course. All the endless bends, all the tiresome screaming as his joints stretched themselves out again, oh so reluctantly. He telling Jeannie Morin, his therapist, that he couldn’t. She telling him that he could. Tears on his face, big smile on hers (that hateful undeniable junior-miss-smile), and in the end she had turned out to be right. He could, he was the little engine that could, but what a price the little engine had paid.
He could remember all those things and more: getting out of bed for the first time, wiping his ass for the first time, the night in early May when he’d gone to bed thinking I’m going to get through this for the first time, the night in late May when he and Carla had made love for the first time since the accident, and afterward he’d told her an old joke: How do porcupines fuck? Very carefully. He could remember watching fireworks on Memorial Day, his hip and upper thigh aching like a bastard; he could remember eating watermelon on the Fourth of July, spitting seeds into the grass and watching Carla and her sisters play badminton, his hip and upper leg still aching but not so fiercely; he could remember Henry calling in September-“Just to check in,” he’d said-and talking about all sorts of things, including the annual hunting trip to Hole in the Wall come November. “Sure I’m coming,” Jonesy had said, not knowing then how little he would like the feel of the Garand in his hands. They had talked about their work (Jonesy had taught the final three weeks of summer session, hopping around pretty spryly on one crutch by then), about their families, about the books they had read and the movies they had seen; Henry had mentioned again, as he had in January, that Pete was drinking too much. Jonesy, having already been through one substance-abuse war with his wife, hadn’t wanted to talk about that, but when Henry passed along Beaver’s suggestion that they stop in Derry and see Duddits Cavell when their week of hunting was over, Jonesy had agreed enthusiastically. It had been too long, and there was nothing like a shot of Duddits to cheer a person up. Also…