“I hung onto the idea that he couldn’t have gotten everyone, that there had to be others like me, who saw what was going on in time to get their heads down. Some would get out. They’d call the State Police. I kept telling myself it was wiser, at least for the time being, to wait. Then the storm came, and I decided to try to use it for cover. I’d sneak back to the mining office. There’s an ATV in the garage of the Hideaway-”
Steve nodded. “We saw it. Got a little cart filled with rock samples behind it.”
“My idea was to unhook the gondola and drive north-west back to Highway 50. I could grab a compass out of a supply cabinet, so even in the blow I’d be okay. Of course I knew I might go falling into a crevasse or something, but that didn’t seem like much of a risk, not after what I’d seen. And I had to get out. Two nights in a laundrymat… hey, you try it. I was getting ready to do it when you two came along.”
“I damn near brained you,” Steve said. “Sorry about that.”
She smiled wanly, then looked around once more. “And the rest you know,” she said.
I don’t agree, Johnny Marinville thought. The throb in his nose was increasing again. He wanted a drink, and badly. Since that would be madness-for him, anyway- he pulled the bottle of aspirin out of his pocket and took two with a sip of spring-water. I don’t think we know any-thing. Not yet, anyway.
Mary Jackson said: “What do we do now? How do we get out of this mess? Do we even try, or do we wait to be rescued?”
For a long time no one replied. Then Steve shifted in the chair he was sharing with Cynthia and said,
“We can’t wait. Not for long, anyway.
“Why do you say that?” Johnny asked. His voice was curiously gentle, as if he already knew the answer to this question.
“Because somebody should’ve gotten away, gotten to a phone outside of town and pulled the plug on the murder- machine. No one did, though. Even before the storm started, no one did. Something very powerful’s happening here, and I think that counting on help from the outside may only get us killed. We have to count on each other, and we have to get out as soon as possible. That’s what I believe.”
“I’m not going without finding out what happened to my mom,” David said.
“You can’t think that way, son,” Johnny said.
“Yes I can. I am.”
“No,” Billingsley said. Something in his voice made David raise his head. “Not with other lives at stake.
Not when you’re . . . special, the way you are. We need you, son.
“That’s not fair,” David almost whispered.
“No,” Billingsley agreed. His lined face was stony. “It ain’t.”
Cynthia said, “It won’t do your mother any good if you-and the rest of us-die trying to find her, kiddo.
On the other hand, if we can get out of town, we could come back with help.”
“Right,” Ralph said, but he said it in a hollow, sick way.
“No, it’s not right,” David said. “It’s a crock of shit, that’s what it is.”
“David!”
The boy surveyed them, his face fierce with anger and sick with fright. “None of you care about my mother, not one of you. Even you don’t, Dad.”
“That’s untrue,” Ralph said. “And it’s a cruel thing to say.”
“Yeah,” David said, “but I think it’s true, just the same. I know you love her, but I think you’d leave her because you believe she’s already dead.” He fixed his father with his gaze, and when Ralph looked down at his hands, tears oozing out of his swollen eye, David switched to the veterinarian. “And I’ll tell you something, Mr. Billingsley. Just because I pray doesn’t mean I’m a comic-book wizard or something.
Praying’s not magic. The only magic I know is a couple of card tricks that I usually mess up on anyway.”
“David-” Steve began.
“If we go away and come back, it’ll be too late to save her! I know it will be! I know that!” His words rang from the stage like an actor’s speech, then died away. Outside, the indifferent wind gusted.
“David, it’s probably already too late,” Johnny said. His voice was steady enough, but he couldn’t quite look at the kid as he said it.
Ralph sighed harshly. His son went to him, sat beside him, took his hand. Ralph’s face was drawn with weariness and confusion. He looked older now.
Steve turned to Audrey. “You said you knew another way out.”
“Yes. The big earthwork you see as you come into town is the north face of the pit we’ve reopened.
There’s a road that goes up the side of it, over the top, and into the pit. There’s another one that goes back to Highway 50 west of here. It runs along Desperation Creek, which is just a dry- wash now. You know where I mean, Tom?”
He nodded.
“That road-Desperation Creek Road-starts at the motor-pool. There are more ATVs there.
The biggest only seats four safely, but we could hook up an empty gondola and the other three could ride in it.”
Steve, a ten-year veteran of load-ins, load-outs, snap decisions, and rapid getaways (often necessitated by the combination of four-star hotels and rock-band assholes), had been following her carefully. “Okay, what I suggest is this. We wait until morning. Get some rest, maybe even a little sleep. The storm might blow itself out by then-”
“I think the wind has let up a little,” Mary said. “Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but I really think it has.”
“Even if it’s still going, we can get up to the motor- pool, can’t we, Audrey?”
“I’m sure we can.”
“How far is it?”
“Two miles from the mining office, probably a mile and a half from here.”
He nodded. “And in daylight, we’ll be able to see Entragian. If we try to go at night, in the storm, we can’t count on that.”
“We can’t count on being able to see the … the wildlife, either,” Cynthia said.
“I’m talking about moving fast and armed,” Steve said. “If the storm plays out, we can head up to the embankment in my truck-three up front in the cab with me, four back in the box. If the weather is still bad-and I actually hope it will be-I think we should go on foot. We’ll attract less attention that way. He might never even know we’re gone.”
“I imagine the Escolla boy and his friends were thinking about the same way when Collie ran em down,”
Billingsley said.
“They were headed north onMain Street ,” Johnny said. “Exactly what Entragian would have been looking for. We’ll be going south, toward the mine, at least ini-ially, and leaving the area on a feeder road.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “And then bang, we’re gone.” He went over to David-the boy had left his father and was sitting on the edge of the stage, staring out over the tacky old theater seats-and squatted beside him.
“But we’ll come back. You hear me, David? We’ll come back for your mom, and for anyone else he’s left alive. That’s a rock-solid promise, from me to you.
David went on staring out over the seats. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I know I need to ask God to help me straighten out my head, but right now I’m so mad at him that I can’t. Every time I try to compose my mind, that gets in the way. He let the cop take my mother! Why? Jesus, why?”
Do you know you did a miracle just a little while ago? Steve thought. He didn’t say it; it might only make
David’s confusion and misery worse. After a moment Steve got up and stood looking down at the boy, hands shoved deep into his pockets, eyes troubled. –
The cougar walked slowly down the alley, head lowered, ears flattened. She avoided the garbage cans and the pile of scrap lumber much more easily than the humans had done; she saw far better in the dark.
Still, she paused at the end of the alley, a low, squalling growl rising from her throat. She didn’t like this.
One of them was strong-very strong.
She could sense that one’s force even through the brick flank of the building, pulsing like a glow. Still, there was no question of disobedience. The outsider, the one from the earth, was in the cougar’s head, its will caught in her mind like a fishhook. That one spoke in the language of the unformed, from the time before, when all animals except for men and the outsider were one.
But she didn’t like that sense of force. That glow.
She growled again, a rasp that rose and fell, coming more from her nostrils than her closed mouth. She slipped her head around the corner, wincing at a blast of wind that ruffled her fur and charged her nose with smells of brome grass and Indian paintbrush and old booze and older brick. Even from here she could smell the bitterness from the pit south of town, the smell that had been there since they had charged the last half-dozen blast-holes and reopened the bad place, the one the animals knew about and the men had tried to forget.