«But suppose they’re attracted to some other scent?» Ollie asked. «Exhaust, for instance?»
«Then we’d be cooked,» I agreed.
«Motion,» he said. «The motion of a car through fog might also draw them, David.»
«I don’t think so. Not without the scent of prey. I really believe that’s the key to getting away.»
«But you don’t know.»
«No, not for sure.»
«Where would you want to go?»
«First? Home. To get my wife.»
«David-»
«All right. To check. To be sure.»
«The things out there could be everyplace, David. They could get you the minute you stepped out of your Scout into your dooryard.»
«If that happened, the Scout would be yours. All I’d ask would be that you take care of Billy as well as you could for as long as you could.»
Ollie finished his Busch and dropped the can back into the cooler, where it clattered among the empties. The butt of the gun Amanda’s husband had given her protruded from his pocket.
«South?» He asked, meeting my eyes.
«Yeah, I would,» I said. «Go south and try to get out of the mist. Try like hell.»
«How much gas you got?»
«Almost full.»
«Have you thought that it might be impossible to get out?»
I had. Suppose what they had been fooling with at the Arrowhead Project had pulled this entire region into another dimension as easily as you or I would turn a sock inside out? «It had crossed my mind,» I said, «but the alternative seems to be waiting around to see who Mrs. Carmody taps for the place of honor.»
«Were you thinking about today?»
«No, it’s afternoon already and those things get active at night. I was thinking about tomorrow, very early.»
«Who would you want to take?»
«Me and you and Billy. Hattie Turman. Amanda Dumfries. That old guy Cornell and Mrs. Reppler. Maybe Bud Brown too. That’s eight, but Billy can sit on someone’s lap and we can all squash together.»
He thought it over. «All right,» he said finally. «We’ll try. Have you mentioned this to anyone else?»
«No, not yet.»
«My advice would be not to, not until about four tomorrow morning. I’ll put a couple of bags of groceries under the checkout nearest the door. If we’re lucky we can squeak out before anyone knows what’s happening.» His eyes drifted to Mrs. Carmody again. «If she knew, she might try to stop us.»
«You think so?»
Ollie got another beer. «I think so,» he said.
That afternoon-yesterday afternoon-passed in a kind of slow motion. Darkness crept in, turning the fog to that dull chrome color again. What world was left outside slowly dissolved to black by eight-thirty.
The pink bugs returned, then the bird-things, swooping into the windows and scooping them up. Something roared occasionally from the dark, and once, shortly before midnight, there was a long, drawn-out Aaaaarooooooo! that caused people to turn toward the blackness with frightened, searching faces. It was the sort of sound you’d imagine a bull alligator might make in a swamp.
It went pretty much as Miller had predicted. By the small hours, Mrs. Carmody had gained another half dozen souls. Mr. McVey the butcher was among them, standing with his arms folded, watching her.
She was totally wound Lip. She seemed to need no sleep. Her sermon, a steady stream of horrors out of Dore, Bosch, and Jonathan Edwards, went on and on, building toward some climax. Her group began to murmur with her, to rock back and forth unconsciously, like true believers at a tent revival. Their eyes were shiny and blank. They were under her spell.
Around 3:00 A.M. (the sermon went on relentlessly, and the people who were not interested had retreated to the back to try to get some sleep) I saw Ollie put a bag of groceries on a shelf under the checkout nearest the OUT door. Half an hour later he put another bag beside it. No one appeared to notice him but me. Billy, Amanda, and Mrs. Turman slept together by the denuded cold-cuts section. I joined them and fell into an uneasy doze.
At four-fifteen by my wristwatch, Ollie shook me awake. Cornell was with him, his eyes gleaming brightly from behind his spectacles.