“I spent four days in the Coppers. Fishing, taking plctures. Photography’s what I do for fun. Great days.
Then, – – three nights ago, I came back. Went right to my house, which is north of town.”
“What brought you back?” Steve asked. “It wasn’t bad weather on the way, was it?”
“No. I had my little radio with me, and all I heard was fair and hot.”
“All I heard, too,” Steve said. “This shit’s a total mystery.”
“I had a meeting scheduled with Allen Symes the company comptroller, to summarize the switchover from rainbirds to heads and emitters. He was flying in fromArizona . I was supposed to meet him at Hernando’s Hide away atnine o’clock , the morning before last.
That’s what we’d taken to calling the lab and the offices out there on r the edge of town.
Anyway, that’s why I’m wearing this damned dress, because of the meeting and because Frank Geller told me that Symes doesn’t-didn’t-like women -. in jeans. I know everything was okay when I got back from my camping trip, because that’s when Frank called _ me and told me to wear a dress to the meeting. That night, around seven.”
“Who’s Frank Geller?” Steve asked.
“Chief mining engineer,” Billingsley said. “In charge of reopening the China Pit. At least he was.” He gave ~-
Audrey a questioning look.
She nodded. “Yes. He’s dead.”
“Three nights ago,” Marinville mused. “Everything in Desperation was peachy three nights ago, at least as far as you know.”
“That’s right. But the next time I saw Frank, he was hung up on a hook. And one of his hands was gone.
“We saw him,” Cynthia said, and shivered. “We saw his hand, too. At the bottom of an aquarium.”
“Before all that, during the night, I woke up at least twice. The first time I thought it was thunder, but the second time it sounded like gunshots. I decided I’d been dreaming and went back to sleep, but that must be around the time he. . . got started. Then, when I got to the mining office . .
At first, she said, she hadn’t sensed anything wrong- certainly not from the fact that Brad Josephson wasn’t at his desk. Brad never was, if he could help it. So she had gone out back to Hernando’s Hideaway, and there she had seen what Steve and Cynthia would come along and see themselves not long after-bodies on hooks. Apparently everyone who had come in that morning. One of them, dressed in a string tie and dress boots that would have tickled a country-and-western singer, had been Allen Symes. He had come all the way fromPhoenix to die in Desperation.
“If what you say is right,” she said to Steve, “Entragian must’ve gotten more of the mining people later on. I didn’t count-I was too scared to even think of counting them-but there couldn’t have been more than seven when I was there. I froze. I might even have blacked out for a little while, I can’t say for sure.
Then I heard gun-shots. No question what they were that time. And someone screaming. Then there were more gunshots and the screaming stopped.”
She went back to her car, not running-she said she was afraid that panic would take her over if she started running-and then drove into town. She intended to report what she’d found to Jim Reed. Or, if Jim was out on county business, as he often was, to one of his deputies, Entragian or Pearson.
“I didn’t run to the car and I didn’t go speeding into town, but I was in shock, just the same. I remember feeling around in the glove compartment for my cigarettes, even though I haven’t smoked in five years.
Then I saw two people go running through the intersection. You know, under the blinker-light?”
They nodded.
“The town’s new police-car came roaring through right after them. Entragian was driving it, but I didn’t know that then. There were three or four gunshots, and the people he was chasing were thrown onto the sidewalk one right by the grocery store, the other just past it. There was blood. A lot. He never slowed, just went on through the intersection,
heading west, and pretty soon I heard more shots. I’m pretty sure I heard him yelling ‘Yee haw,’ too.
“I wanted to help the people he’d shot if I could. I drove up a little way, parked, and got out of my ca That’s probably what saved my life, getting out of my car. Because everything that moved, Entragian killed it Anyone. Anything. Everything. There were cars and trucks sitting dead in the street like toys, all zigzagged here and there, at least a dozen of them. There was an El Camino truck turned on its side up by the hardware store.
Tommy Ortega’s, I think. That truck was almost his girlfriend.”
“I didn’t see anything like that,” Johnny said. “The Street was clear when he brought me in.”
“Yeah-the son of a bitch keeps his room picked up you have to give him that. He didn’t want anyone wandering into town and wondering what had happened that s what I think.
He hasn’t done much more than sweep the mess under the rug, but it’ll hold for awhile.
Especially with this goddamn storm.”
“Which wasn’t forecast,” Steve said thoughtfully.
‘~Right, which wasn’t forecast.”
“What happened then?” David asked.
“I ran up to the people he shot. One of them was Evelyn Shoenstack, the lady who runs the Cut n Curl and works part-time in the library. She was dead with her brains all over the sidewalk.”
Mary winced. Audrey saw it and turned toward her.
“That’s something else you need to remember. If he can see you and he decides to shoot you, you’re gone.” She passed her eyes over the rest of them, apparently wanting to be sure they didn’t think she was joking. Or exaggerating. “He’s a dead shot. Accent on the dead.”
“We’ll keep it in mind,” Steve said.
“The other one was a delivery guy. He was wearing a Tastykake uniform. Entragian got him in the head, too, but he was still alive.” She spoke with a calm Johnny recognized.
He had seen it inVietnam , in the aftermath of half a dozen firefights. He’d seen it as a noncombatant, of course, notebook in one hand, pen in the other, A tape recorder slung over his shoulder on a strap with a peace sign pinned to it. Watching and listening and taking notes and feeling like an outsider. Feeling jealous. The bitter thoughts which had crossed his mind then-eunuch in the harem, piano-player in the whorehouse-now struck him as insane.
“The year I was twelve, my old man gave me a .22,” Audrey Wyler said. “The first thing I did was to go out-side our house inSedalia and shoot a jay. When I went over to it, it was still alive, too, It was trembling all over, staring straight ahead, and its beak was opening and closing, very slowly. I’ve never in my whole life wanted so badly to take something back. I got down on my knees beside it and waited for it to be finished. It seemed that I owed it that much. It just went on trembling all over until it died. The Tastykake man was trembling like that. He was looking down the street past me, although there wasn’t anybody there, and his forehead was covered with tiny beads of sweat. His head was all pushed out of shape, and there was white stuff on his shoulder. I had this crazy idea at first that it was Styrofoam poppers-you know, the packing stuff people put in the box when they mail something fragile?-and then I saw it was bone chips. From his, you know, his skull.”
“I don’t want to hear any more of this,” Ralph said abruptly.
“I don’t blame you,” Johnny said, “but I think we need to know. Why don’t you and your boy take a little walk around backstage? See what you can find.”
Ralph nodded, stood up, and took a step toward David.
“No,” David said. “We have to stay.”
Ralph looked at him uncertainly.
David nodded. “I’m sorry, but we do,” he said.
Ralph stood where he was a moment longer, then sat down again.
During this exchange, Johnny happened to look over at Audrey. She was staring at the boy with an expression r that could have been fear or awe or both. As if she had never seen a creature quite like him.
Then he thought of the crackers coming out of that bag like clowns out of the little car at the circus, and he wondered if any of them had ever seen a creature quite like David Carver. He thought of the transmission-bars, and Billingsley saying not even Houdini could have done it. Because of the head. They were concentrating on the buzzards and the spiders and the coyotes, on rats that jumped Out of stacks of tires and houses that might be full of rattlesnakes; most of all they were concentrating on Entragian, who spoke in tongues and shot like Buffalo Bill. But what about David? Just what, exactly, was he?