The swimming eyes. The infirm twitch, barely perceptible, at the corner of his mouth. It was easy to forget that Kurtz had blown a man’s foot off not ten minutes ago.
Owen thought: If I help him do this, it doesn’t matter if I actually pull a trigger or not, I’m as damned as the men who herded the Jews into the showers at Bergen-Belsen.
“If we start at eleven, we can be done at eleven-thirty,” Kurtz said. “Noon at the very worst. Then it’s behind us.”
“Except for the dreams.”
“Yes. Except for them. Will you help me, Owen?”
Owen nodded. He had come this far, and wouldn’t let go of the rope now, damned or not. At the very least he could help make it merciful… as merciful as any mass murder could be. Later he would be struck by the lethal absurdity of this idea, but when you were with Kurtz, up close and with his eyes holding yours, perspective was a joke. His madness was probably much more infectious than the Ripley, in the end.
“Good.” Kurtz slumped back in his rocker, looking relieved and drained. He took out his cigarettes again, peered in, then held the pack out. “Two left. Join me?”
Owen shook his head. “Not this time, boss.”
“Then get on out of here. If necessary, shag ass over to the infirmary and get some Sonata.”
“I don’t think I’ll need that,” Owen said. He would, of course he needed it already-but he wouldn’t take it. Better to be awake. “All right, then. Off you go.” Kurtz let him get as far as the door. “And Owen?”
Owen turned back, zipping his parka. He could hear the wind out there now. Building, starting to blow seriously, as it had not during the relatively harmless Alberta Clipper that had come through that morning.
“Thanks,” Kurtz said. One large and absurd tear overspilled his left eye and ran down his cheek. Kurtz seemed unaware. In that moment Owen loved and pitied him. In spite of everything, which included knowing better. “Thank you, buck.”
7
Henry stood in the thickening snow, turned away from the worst of the wind and looking over his left shoulder at the Winnebago, waiting for Underhill to come back out. He was alone now-the storm had driven the rest of them back into the barn, where there was a heater. Rumors would already be growing tall in the warmth, Henry supposed. Better the rumors than the truth that was right in front of them.
He scratched at his leg, realized what he was doing, and looked around, turning in a complete circle. No prisoners; no guards. Even in the thickening snow the compound was almost as bright as noonday, and he could see well in every direction. For the time being, at least, he was alone.
Henry bent and untied the shirt knotted around the place where the turnsignal stalk had cut his skin. He then spread the slit in his bluejeans. The men who had taken him into custody had made this same examination in the back of the truck where they had already stored five other refugees (on the way back to Gosselin’s they had picked up three more). At that point he had been clean.
He wasn’t clean now. A delicate thread of red lace grew down the scabbed center of the wound. If he hadn’t known what he was looking for, he might have mistaken it for a fresh seep of blood.
Byrus, he thought. Ah, fuck. Goodnight, Mrs Calabash, wherever you are.
A flash of light winked at the top of his vision. Henry straightened and saw Underhill just pulling the door of the Winnebago shut. Quickly, Henry retied the shirt around the hole in his jeans and then approached the fence. A voice in his head asked what he’d do if he called to Underhill and the man just kept on going. That voice also wanted to know if Henry really intended to give Jonesy up.
He watched Underhill trudge toward him in the glare of the security lights, his head bent against the snow and the intensifying wind.
8
The door closed. Kurtz sat looking at it, smoking and slowly rocking. How much of his pitch had Owen bought? Owen was bright, Owen was a survivor, Owen was not without idealism… and Kurtz thought Owen had bought it all, with hardly a single dicker. Because in the end most people believed what they wanted to believe. John Dillinger had also been a survivor, the wiliest of the thirties desperadoes, but he had gone to the Biograph Theater with Anna Sage just the same. Manhattan Melodrama had been the show, and when it was over, the feds had shot Dillinger down in the alley beside the theater like the dog he was. Anna Sage had also believed what she wanted to believe, but they deported her ass back to Poland just the same.
No one was going to leave Gosselin’s Market tomorrow except for his picked cadre-the twelve men and two women who made up Imperial Valley. Owen Underhill would not be among them, although he could have been. Until Owen had put the grayboys on the common channel, Kurtz had been sure he would be. But things changed. So Buddha had said, and on that one, at least, the old chink heathen had spoken true.
“You let me down, buck,” Kurtz said. He had lowered his mask to smoke, and it bobbed against his grizzled throat as he spoke. “You let me down.” Kurtz had let Owen Underhill get away with letting him down once. But twice?
“Never,” Kurtz said. “Never in life.”
Chapter Fourteen
GOING SOUTH
1
Mr Gray ran the snowmobile down into a ravine which held a small frozen creek. He drove north along this for the remaining mile to 1-95. Two or three hundred yards from the lights of the army vehicles (there were only a few now, moving slowly in the thickening snow), he stopped long enough to consult the part of Jonesy’s mind that he-it-could get at. There were files and files of stuff that wouldn’t fit into Jonesy’s little office stronghold, and Mr Gray found what he was looking for easily enough. There was no switch to turn off the Arctic Cat’s headlight. Mr Gray swung Jonesy’s legs off the snowmobile, looked for a rock, picked it up with Jonesy’s right hand, and smashed the headlight dark. Then he remounted and drove on. The Cat’s fuel was almost gone, but that was all right; the vehicle had served its purpose.
The pipe which carried the creek beneath the turnpike was big enough for the snowmobile, but not for the snowmobile and its rider. Mr Gray dismounted again. Standing beside the snowmobile, he revved the throttle and sent the machine bumping and yawing into the pipe. It went no more than ten feet before stopping, but that was far enough to keep it from being seen from the air if the snow lightened, allowing low-level recon.
Mr Gray set Jonesy to climbing up the turnpike embankment. He stopped just shy of the guardrails and lay down on his back. Here he was temporarily protected from the worst of the wind. The climb had released a last little cache of endorphins, and Jonesy felt his kidnapper sampling them, enjoying them the way Jonesy himself might have enjoyed a cocktail, or a hot drink after watching a football game on a brisk October afternoon.
He realized, with no surprise, that he hated Mr Gray.
Then Mr Gray as an entity-something that could actually be hated-was gone again, replaced by the cloud Jonesy had first experienced back in the cabin when the creature’s head had exploded. It was going out, as it had gone out in search of Emil Brodsky. It had needed Dawg because the information about how to get the snowmobile started hadn’t been in Jonesy’s files. Now it needed something else. A ride was the logical assumption.
And what was left here? What was left guarding the office where the last shred of Jonesy cowered-Jonesy who had been turned out of his own body like lint out of a pocket? The cloud, of course; the stuff Jonesy had breathed in. Stuff that should have killed him but had for some reason not done so.
The cloud couldn’t think, not the way Mr Gray could. The man of the house (who was now Mr Gray instead of Mr Jones) had departed, leaving the place under the control of the thermostats, the refrigerator, the stove. And, in case of trouble, the smoke detector and the burglar alarm, which automatically dialed the police.
Still, with Mr Gray gone, he might be able to get out of the office. Not to regain control; if he tried that, the redblack cloud would report him and Mr Gray would return from his scouting expedition at once. Jonesy would almost certainly be seized before he could retreat to the safety of the Tracker Brothers office with its bulletin board and its dusty floor and its one dirt-crusted window on the world… only there were four crescent-shaped clean patches in that dirt, weren’t there? Patches where four boys had once leaned their foreheads, hoping to see the picture that was pinned to the bulletin board now: Tina Jean Schlossinger with her skirt up.
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