On their side of the highway there were a few houses, a boarded-up church called the Black Rock of the Redeemer (which Becky thought a queer name for a church, but this was Kansas), and a rotting Bowl-a-Drome that looked as if it might last have operated around the time the Trammps were committing pop-music arson by lighting a disco inferno. On the other side of 400 there was nothing but high green grass. It stretched all the way to a horizon that was both illimitable and unremarkable.
“Was that a-” Becky began. She was wearing a light coat unzipped over a midsection that was just beginning to bulge; she was well along into her sixth month.
He raised a hand without looking at her. He was looking at the grass. “Sh. Listen!”
They heard faint music coming from one of the houses. A dog gave a phlegmy triple bark-roop-roop-roop-and went still. Someone was hammering a board. And there was the steady, gentle susurration of the wind. Becky realized she could actually see the wind, combing the grass on the far side of the road. It made waves that ran away from them until they were lost in the distance.
Just when Cal was beginning to think they hadn’t, after all, heard anything-it wouldn’t be the first time they had imagined something together-the cry came again.
“Help! Please help me!” And: “I’m lost!”
This time the look they exchanged was full of alarmed understanding. The grass was incredibly tall. (For such an expanse of grass to be over six feet high this early in the season was an anomaly that wouldn’t occur to them until later.) Some little kid had wandered into it, probably while exploring, almost certainly from one of the houses down the road. He had become disoriented and wandered in even deeper. He sounded about eight, which would make him far too short to leap up and find his bearings that way.
“We should haul him out,” Cal said.
“Yep. Little rescue mission. Pull into the church parking lot. Let’s get off the side of the road.”
He left her on the margin of the highway and turned into the dirt lot of the Redeemer. A scattering of dust-filmed cars was parked here, windshields beetle bright in the glare of the sun. That all but one of these cars appeared to have been there for days-even weeks-was another anomaly that would not strike them until later.
While he took care of the car, Becky crossed to the other shoulder. She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted. “Kid! Hey, kid! Can you hear me?”
After a moment he called back: “Yes! Help me! I’ve been in here for DAYS!”
Becky, who remembered how little kids judged time, guessed that might mean twenty minutes or so. She looked for a path of broken or trampled grass where the kid had gone in (probably making up some video game or stupid jungle movie in his head as he did), and couldn’t see one. But that was all right; she pegged the voice as coming from her left, at about ten o’clock. Not too far in, either. Which made sense; if he’d gotten in very far, they wouldn’t have heard him even with the radio off and the windows open.
She was about to descend the embankment to the edge of the grass, when there came a second voice, a woman’s-hoarse and confused. She had the groggy rasp of someone who has just come awake and needs a drink of water. Badly.
“Don’t!” shouted the woman. “Don’t! Please! Stay away! Tobin, stop calling! Stop making noise, honey! He’ll hear you!”
“Hello?” Becky yelled. “What’s going on?”
Behind her, she heard a door slam. Cal, on his way across the street.
“We’re lost!” the boy shouted. “Please! Please, my mom is hurt, please! Please help!”
“No!” the woman said. “No, Tobin, no!”
Becky looked around to see what was taking Cal so long.
He had crossed a few dozen feet of the dirt parking lot and then hesitated by what looked like a first-generation Prius. It was filmed with a pale coat of road dust, almost completely obscuring the windshield. Cal hunched slightly, shielded his eyes with one hand, and squinted through the side window at something in the passenger seat. Frowning to himself for a moment, and then flinching, as if from a horsefly.