Henry…I don’t know how to break it to you, but this isn’t high school basketball.
“No one gets hurt. No one gets killed. At least not when we’re swapping vehicles. Agree to that or I’m rolling out this door right now.”
Owen glanced at him. “You would, too, wouldn’t you? And goddam what your friend’s got planned for the world.” “my friend isn’t responsible for any of this. He’s been kidnapped.” “All right. No one gets hurt when we swap over. If we can help it. And no one gets killed. Except maybe us. Now where are we going?”
Derry.
That’s where he is? This last surviving alien?
I think so. In any case, I have a friend in Derry who can help us. He sees the line.
What line?
“Never mind,” Henry said, and thought: It’s complicated.
“What do you mean, complicated? And no bounce, no play what’s that?”
I’ll tell you while we’re driving south. If I can.
The Sno-Cat rolled toward the Interstate, a capsule preceded by the glare of its lights.
“Tell me again what we’re going to do,” Owen said.
“Save the world.”
“And tell me what that makes us-I need to hear it.”
“It makes us heroes,” Henry said. Then he put his head back and closed his eyes. In seconds he was asleep.
Part Three
QUABBIN
As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there;
He wasn’t there again today!
I wish, I wish he’d stay away.
Hughes Meams
Chapter Eighteen
THE CHASE BEGINS
1
Jonesy had no idea what time it was when the green DYSART’s Sign twinkled out of the snowy gloom-the Ram’s dashboard clock was bitched up, just flashing 12:00 A.M. over and over-but it was still dark and still snowing hard. Outside of Derry, the plows were losing their battle with the storm. The stolen Ram was “a pretty good goer”, as Jonesy’s Pop would have said, but it too was losing its battle, slipping and slueing more frequently in the deepening snow, fighting its way through the drifts with increasing difficulty. Jonesy had no idea where Mr Gray thought he was going, but Jonesy didn’t believe he would get there. Not in this storm, not in this truck.
The radio worked, but not very well; so far everything that came through was faint, blurred with static. He heard no time-checks, but picked up a weather report. The storm had switched over to rain from Portland south, but from Augusta to Brunswick, the radio said, the precipitation was a wicked mix of sleet and freezing rain. Most communities were without power, and nothing without chains on its wheels was moving.
Jonesy liked this news just fine.
2
When Mr Gray turned the steering wheel to head up the ramp toward the beckoning green sign, the Ram pickup slid broadside, spraying up great clouds of snow. Jonesy knew he likely would have gone off the exit ramp and into the ditch if he’d been in control, but he wasn’t. And although he was no longer immune to Jonesy’s emotions, Mr Gray seemed much less prone to panic in a stress situation. Instead of wrenching blindly against the skid, Mr Gray turned into it, held the wheel over until the slide stopped, then straightened the truck out again. The dog sleeping in the passenger footwell never woke up, and Jonesy’s pulse barely rose. If he had been in control, Jonesy knew, his heart would have been hammering like hell. But, of course, his idea of what to do with the car when it stormed like this was to put it in the garage.
Mr Gray obeyed the stop-sign at the top of the ramp, although Route 9 was a drifted wasteland in either direction. Across from the ramp was a huge parking lot brilliantly lit by arc-sodiums; beneath their glare, the wind-driven snow seemed to move like the frozen respiration of an enormous, unseen beast. On an ordinary night, Jonesy knew, that yard would have been full of rumbling diesel semis, Kenworths and Macks and Jimmy-Petes with their green and amber cab-lights glimmering. Tonight the area was almost deserted, except for the area marked LONGTERM SEE YARD MANAGER MUST HAVE TICKET. In there were a dozen or more freight-haulers, their edges softened by the drifts. Inside, their drivers would be eating, playing pinball, watching Spank-O-Vision in the truckers” lounge, or trying to sleep in the grim dormitory out back, where ten dollars got you a cot, a clean blanket, and a scenic view of a cinderblock wall. All of them no doubt thinking the same two thoughts: When can I roll? And How much is this going to cost me?
Mr Gray stepped down on the gas, and although he did it gently, as Jonesy’s file concerning winter driving suggested, all four of the pickup’s wheels spun, and the truck began to jitter sideways, digging itself in.
Go on! Jonesy cheered from his position at the office window. Go on, stick it! Stick it right up to the rocker-panels! Because when you’re stuck in a four-wheel drive, you’re really stuck!
Then the wheels caught-first the front ones, where the weight of the motor gave the Ram a little more traction-then the back ones. The Ram trundled across Route 9 and toward the sign marked ENTRANCE. Beyond it was another: WELCOME TO THE BEST TRUCK STOP IN NEW ENGLAND. Then the truck’s headlights picked out a third, snowcaked but readable: HELL, WELCOME TO THE BEST TRUCK STOP ON EARTH.
Is this the best truck stop on earth? Mr Gray asked.
Of course, Jonesy said. And then-he couldn’t help it-he burst out laughing.
Why do you do that? Why do you make that sound?
Jonesy realized an amazing thing, both touching and terrifying: Mr Gray was smiling with Jonesy’s mouth. Not much, just a little, but it was a smile. He doesn’t really know what laughter is, Jonesy thought. Of course he hadn’t known what anger was, either, but he had proved to be a remarkably fast learner; he could now tantrum with the best of them.
What you said struck me funny.
What exactly is funny?
Jonesy had no idea how to answer the question. He wanted Mr Gray to experience the entire gamut of human emotions, suspecting that humanizing his usurper might ultimately be his only chance of survival-we have met the enemy and he is us, Pogo had once said. But how did you explain funny to a collection of spores from another world? And what was funny about Dysart’s proclaiming itself the best truck stop on earth?
Now they were passing yet another sign, one with arrows pointing left and right. BIGUNS it said beneath the left arrow. And LITTLEUNS under the right.
Which are we? Mr Gray asked, stopping at the sign.
Jonesy could have made him retrieve the information, but what would have been the point? We’re a littleun, he said, and Mr Gray turned the Ram to the right. The tires spun a little and the truck lurched. Lad raised his head, let fly another long and fragrant fart, then whined. His lower midsection had swelled and distended; anyone who didn’t know better would no doubt have mistaken him for a bitch about to give birth to a good-sized litter.
There were perhaps two dozen cars and pickups parked in the littleuns” lot, the ones most deeply buried in snow belonging to the help-mechanics (always one or two on duty), waitresses, short-order cooks. The cleanest vehicle there, Jonesy saw with sharp interest, was a powder-blue State Police car with packed snow around the roof-lights. Being arrested would certainly put a spike in Mr Gray’s plans; on the other hand, Jonesy had already been present at three murder-sites, if you counted the cab of the pickup. No witnesses at the first two crime scenes, and probably no Gary Jones fingerprints, either, but here? Sure. Plenty of them. He could see himself standing in a courtroom somewhere and saying, But Judge, it was the alien inside me who committed those murders. It was Mr Gray. Another joke that Mr Gray wouldn’t get.
That worthy, meanwhile, had been rummaging again. Dry Farts, he said. Why do you call this place Dry Farts when the sign says Dysart’s?
It’s what Lamar used to call it, Jonesy said, remembering long, hilarious breakfasts here, usually going or coming back from Hole in the Wall. And this fit night into the tradition, didn’t it? My Dad called it that, too.
Is it funny?
Moderately, I guess. It’s a pun based on similar sounds. Puns are what we call the lowest form of humor.
Mr Gray parked in the rank closest to the lighted island of the restaurant, but all the way down from the State Police cruiser. Jonesy had no idea if Mr Gray understood the significance of the lightbars on top or not. He reached for the Ram’s headlight knob and pushed it in. He reached for the ignition, then stopped and issued several hard barks of laughter: “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”