“Try the radio,” he said as the hideous little town at last began to fall behind them. “Find some tunes. Just no achy-breaky heart. I draw the line at that.”
“Okay.”
She bent forward toward the dash, glancing into the rearview mirror mounted outside her window as she did. For just a moment she thought she saw a wink of light back there, swinging in an arc. It could have been a flash-light, it could have been some peculiar reflection kicked across the glass by the dancing blinker, or it could have been just her imagination. She preferred to believe that last one. In any case it was gone now, smothered in flying dust. She thought briefly about mentioning it to Steve and decided not to. She didn’t think he’d want to go back and investigate, she thought he was every bit as freaked out as she was at this point, but it was wise never to underestimate a man’s capacity to play John Wayne.
But if there are people back there- She gave her head a small, decisive shake. No. She wasn’t falling for that. Maybe there were people alive back there, doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs, but there was also something very bad back there. The best thing they could do for any survivors who might remain in Desperation was to get help.
Besides, I didn’t really see anything. I’m almost sure I didn’t.
She turned on the radio, got a barrage of static all the way across the dial when she pushed the SEEK
button, turned it off again.
“Forget it, Steve. Even the local shitkicking station is-”
“What the fuck?” he asked in a high, screamy voice that was completely unlike his usual one. “What the blue fuck?”
“I don’t see-” she began, and then she did. Something ahead of them, some huge shape looming in the flying dust. It had big yellow eyes. She put her hands to her mouth, but they weren’t quite in time to catch her scream. Steve hit the brakes with both feet.
Cynthia, who hadn’t fastened her seatbelt, was thrown against the dashboard, just managing to get her forearms up in time to spare her head a bump.
“Christ almighty,” Steve said. His voice sounded a little more normal. “How the hell did that get in the road?”
“What is it?” she asked, and knew even before the question was out of her mouth. NoJurassicPark monstrosity (her first thought, God help her), and no oversized piece of mining equipment. No big yellow eyes, either. What she’d mistaken for eyes had been the reflection of their own headlights in a sheet of window-glass. A picture-window, to be exact. It was a trailer. In the road. Blocking the road.
Cynthia looked to her left and saw that the stake fence between the road and the trailer park had been knocked over. Three of the trailers-the biggest ones-were gone; she could tell where they had been by the cement-block foundations upon which they had sat.
Those trailers were now drawn across the road, the biggest in front, the others behind it like a secondary wall put up in case the main line of defense is breached. One of these latter two was the rusty Airstream on which theRattlesnakeTrailer Park ’s satellite dish had been mounted. The dish itself now lay upended at the edge of the park like a vast black hubcap. It had taken down some lady’s clothesline when it fell.
Pants and shirts flapped from it.
“Go around,” she said.
“I can’t on this side of the road-the dropoff’s too steep. The trailer park side’s pretty steep, too, but-”
“You can do it,” she said, fighting back the quiver in her voice. “And you owe me. I went in that house with you-”
“Okay, okay.” He reached for the transmission lever, probably meaning to drop it into the lowest gear, and then his hand froze in midair. He cocked his head. She heard it a second later and her first panicky thought was (they ‘re here oh Jesus they got in the truck somehow) of snakes. But this wasn’t the same.
This was a harsh whining sound, almost like a piece of paper caught in a fan, or- Something came falling out of the dancing air above them, something that looked like a big black stone. It hit the windshield hard enough to make a bullet-snarl of opacity at the point of impact and send long, silvery cracks shooting out in either direction. Blood-it looked black in this light-splatted across the glass like an inkblot. There was a nasty crack-crunch as the kamikaze accordioned in on itself, and for a moment she saw one of its merciless, dying eyes peering in at her. She screamed again, this time making no attempt to muffle it with her hands.
There was another hard thud, this one from over their heads. She looked up and saw the roof of the cab was dented down. “Steve, get us out of here!” she cried.
He turned on the wipers, and one of them pushed the squashed buzzard down onto the outside air vents.
It lay there in a lump like some bizarre tumor with a beak. The other wiper smeared blood and feathers across the glass in a fan. Sand immediately started to stick in this mess. Steve goosed the washer-fluid switch. The windshield cleared a little near the top, but the bottom part was hope-less; the hulk of the dead bird made it impossible for the wiper-blades to do their job.
“Steve,” she said. She heard his name coming out of her mouth but couldn’t feel it; her lips were numb.
And her midsection felt entirely gone. No liver, no lights, just an empty place filled with its own whistling windstorm. “Under the trailer. Coming out from under that trailer. See them?”
She pointed. He saw. The sand had drifted crosswise along the tar in east-west lines that looked like clutching fingers. Later, if the wind kept up at this pitch, those dunelets would fatten to arms, but now they were just fingers. Emerging from beneath the trailer, strutting like the vanguard of an advancing army, was a battalion of scorpions. She couldn’t tell how many-how could she, when she was still finding it difficult to believe she was seeing them at all? Less than a hundred, probably, but still dozens of them.
Dozens.
There were snakes crawling among and behind them, wriggling along in rapid s-shapes, sliding over the ridges of sand with the ease of water moccasins speeding across a pond.
They can’t get in here, she told herself, take it easy, they can’t get in!
No, and maybe they didn’t want to. Maybe they weren’t supposed to. Maybe they were supposed to-Came another of those harsh whickering sounds, this time on her side of the truck, and she leaned toward Steve, cringed toward Steve with her right arm held up to protect the side of her face. The buzzard hit the passenger window of the truck like a bomb filled with blood instead of explosive. The glass turned milky and sagged in toward her, holding for the time being. One of the buzzard’s wings flapped weakly at the windshield. The wiper on her side tore a chunk of it off.
“It’s all right!” he cried, almost laughing and putting an arm around her as he echoed her thought. “It’s okay, they can‘t get in!”
“Yes, they can!” she shouted back. “The birds can, if we stay here! If we give them time!
And the snakes
The scorpions.
“What? What are you saying?”
“Could they make holes in the tires?” It was the RV she was seeing in her mind’s eye, all its tires flat …
the RV, and the purplefaced man back there in the ranch- house, his face tattooed with holes in pairs, holes so small they looked almost like flecks of red pepper.
“They could, couldn’t they? Enough of them, all stinging and biting at once, they could.”
“No,” he said, and gave a strange little yawp of laughter. “Little bitty desert scorpions, four inches long, stingers no bigger than thorns, are you kidding?” But then the wind dropped momentarily, and from beneath them- already from beneath them-they heard scurrying, jostling sounds, and she saw something she could have skipped: he didn’t believe what he was saying. He wanted to, but he didn’t.
The cellular phone was lying all the way across the holding area, at the foot of a filecabinet with a PAT
BUCHANAN FOR PRESIDENT sticker on it. The gadget didn’t look broken, but- Johnny pulled up the antenna and flipped it open. The phone beeped and the S appeared, good, but there were no transmission-bars, bad. Very bad. Still, he had to try. He pushed the NAME/MENU button until STEVE
appeared, then squeezed the SEND button.
“Mr. Marinville.” It was Mary, standing in the door-way. “We have to go. The cop-”
“I know, I know, just a second.”