Stephen King – Desperation

“Blocked? Blocked how?”

“A couple of house trailers,” he said.

“Where?”

“Near the mining company,” Cynthia said, “but that s not the only problem. There are a lot of dead people-”

“Tell me about it,” she said, and laughed shrilly “Collie’s gone nuts. I saw him kill half a dozen myself He drove after them in his cruiser and shot them down in the street. Like they were cattle andMain Street was the killing-floor.” She was still holding onto Steve, shaking him as she spoke, as if scolding him, but her eyes were everywhere. “We have to get off the street. If he catches us . . . come in here. It’s safe.

I’ve been in here since yesterday forenoon. He came in once. I hid under the desk in the office. I thought he’d follow the smell of my per fume and find me … come around the desk and find me but he didn’t.

Maybe he had a stuffy nose!”

She began to laugh hysterically, then abruptly slapped her own face to make herself stop.

It was funny, in a shocking way; the sort of thing the characters in old Warner Brothers cartoons sometimes did.

Cynthia shook her head. “Not the laundrymat. The movie theater. There are other people there.”

“I saw his shadow,” the woman said. She was still hold ing Steve by the shoulders and her face was still turned confidentially up to his, as if she thought he was Humphrey Bogart and she was Ingrid Bergman and there was a soft filter on the camera. “I saw his shadow, it fell across the desk and I was sure. . . but he didn’t, and I think we 11 be safe in the office while we think about what to do next-”

Cynthia reached out, took the woman’s chin in her hand, and turned it toward her.

“What are you doing?” the dark-haired woman asked angrily. “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?

“Getting your attention, I hope.”

Cynthia let go of the woman’s face, and be damned if she didn’t immediately turn back to Steve, every bit as brainless as a flower turning on its stalk to follow the sun, and resume her speed-rap.

“I was under the desk… and … and … we have to listen, we have to..

Cynthia reached out again, grasped the woman’s lower face again, turned it back in her direction again.

“Hon, read my lips. The theater. There are other people there.”

The woman looked at her, frowning as if she were trying to get the sense of this. Then she looked past

Cynthia’s shoulder at the chain-hung marquee of The American West.

“The old movieshow?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? I tried the door last night, after it got dark. It’s locked.”

“We’re supposed to go around to the back,” Steve said. “I have a friend, that’s where he told me to go.”

“How’d he do that?” the dark-haired woman asked suspiciously, but when Steve started walking in that direction, she went along. Cynthia fell in next to her, walking on the outside. “How could he do that?”

“Cellular phone,” Steve said.

“They don’t work very well around here as a rule,” the dark-haired woman said. “Too many mineral deposits.”

They walked under the theater’s marquee (a tumble-weed caught in an angle between the glassed-in ticket- booth and the lefthand door rattled like a maraca) and stopped on the far side. “There’s the alley,” Cynthia said. She started forward but the woman stayed where she was, frowning from Steve to Cynthia and then back to Steve again.

“What friend, what other people?” she asked. “How did they get here? How come that fuck Collie didn’t kill them?”

“Let’s save all that for later.” Steve took her ann.

She resisted his tug, and when she spoke this time, there was a catch in her voice.

“You’re taking me to him, aren’t you?”

“Lady, we don’t even know who you’re talking about Cynthia said. “Just for Christ’s sake will you come on!

“I hear a motor,” Steve said. His head was cocked to one side. “Coming from the south, I think.

Coming in this direction for sure.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Him,” she whispered.

“Him.” She looked over her shoulder, as if longing for the safety of the laundrymat, and then made her decision and bolted down the alley. By the time they got to the board fence running along the back of the theater, Cynthia and Steve were hurrying just to keep up.

“Are you sure . . •“ the woman began, and then a flashlight flicked, once, from farther down the building They were in single-file, Steve between the women, the one from the laundrymat ahead of him. He took her hand (very cold) in his right and reached back to Cynthia s (marginally warmer) with his left. The dark-haired woman led them slowly down the path. The flashlight blinked on again, this time pointed down at two stacked crates.

“Climb up and get on in here,” a voice whispered. It was one Steve was delighted to hear.

“Boss?”

“You bet.” Marinville sounded as if he might be smiling. “Love the coverall look-it’s so masculine. Get on in here, Steve.”

“There are three of us.”

“The more the merrier.

The dark-haired woman hiked her skirt in order to get up on the crates, and Steve could see the boss helping himself to an eyeful. Even the apocalypse couldn’t change some things, apparently.

Steve helped Cynthia up next, then followed. He turned around, slid partway in, then reached down and pushed the top crate off the one underneath. He didn’t know if it would be enough to fool the guy the dark-haired woman was so afraid of if he came back here snirfing around, but it was better than nothing.

He slid into the room, a wino-hideout if he had ever seen one, then grabbed the boss and hugged him.

Marinville laughed, sounding both surprised and pleased. “Just no tongue, Steve, I insist.”

Steve held him by the shoulders, grinning. “I thought you were dead. We found your scoot buried in the sand.”

“You found it?” Now Marinville sounded delighted. “Son of a bitch!”

“What happened to your face?”

Marinville held the lens of the flashlight under his chin, turning his lumpy, discolored face into something out of a horror movie. His nose looked like roadkill. His grin, although cheerful, made matters even worse. “If I made a speech to PENAmerica looking like this, do you think the assholes would finally listen?”

“Man,” Cynthia said, awed, “someone put a real hurt on you.”

“Entragian,” Marinville said gravely. “Have you met him?”

“No,” Steve said. “And judging from what I’ve heard and seen so far, I don’t want to.”

The bathroom door swung open, squalling on its hinges, and a kid stood there-short hair, pale face, blood- smeared Cleveland Indians tee-shirt. He had a flashlight in one hand, and he moved it quickly, picking out the newcomers’ faces one at a time. Things came together in Steve’s mind as neatly as jigsaw puzzle pieces. He supposed the kid’s shirt was the key connection.

“Are you Steve?” the boy asked.

Steve nodded. “That’s me. Steve Ames. This is Cynthia Smith. And you’re my phone pal.”

The boy smiled wanly at that.

“That was good timing, David. You’ll probably never know how good. It’s nice to meet you. David Carver, isn’t it?”

He stepped forward and shook the boy’s free hand, enjoying the look of surprise on his face. God knew the kid had surprised him, coming through on the phone that way.

“How do you know my last name?”

Cynthia took David’s hand when Steve let it go. She

shook it once, firmly. “We found your Humvee or Win-nebago or whatever it is. Steve there checked out your baseball cards.”

“Be honest,” Steve said to David. “Do you think Cleve-land’s ever gonna win the World Series?”

“I don’t care, just as long as I’m around to see them play another game,” David said with a trace of a smile.

Cynthia turned toward the woman from the laundry- mat, the one they might have shot if they’d had guns. “And this is-”

“Audrey Wyler,” the dark-haired woman said. “I’m a consulting geologist for Diablo Mining. At least, I was.” She scanned the ladies’ room with large dazed eyes, taking in the carton of liquor bottles, the bins of beer- cans, the fabulous fish swimming on one dirty tiled wall. “Right now I don’t know what I am.

What I feel like is meatloaf three days left over.”

She turned, little by little, toward Marinville as she spoke, much as she had turned toward Steve outside the laundrymat, and took up her original scripture.

“We have to get out of town. Your pal here says the road out is blocked, but I know another one. It’s goes from the staging area down at the bottom of the embankment out to Highway 50. It’s a mess, but there are ATVs in the motor-pool, half a dozen of them-”