And mostly you'd be right. There are thousands of RV People, but by 2011 there was only one Knot left in America: the True Knot. They liked moving around, and that was good, because they had to. If they stayed in one place, they'd eventually attract attention, because they don't age like other people. Apron Annie or Dirty Phil (rube names Anne Lamont and Phil Caputo) might appear to grow twenty years older overnight. The Little twins (Pea and Pod) might snap back from twenty-two to twelve (or almost), the age at which they Turned, but their Turning was long ago. The only member of the True who's actually young is Andrea Steiner, now known as Snakebite Andi . . . and even she's not as young as she looks.
A tottery, grumpy old lady of eighty suddenly becomes sixty again. A leathery old gent of seventy is able to put away his cane; the skin-tumors on his arms and face disappear.
Black-Eyed Susie loses her hitching limp.
Diesel Doug goes from half blind with cataracts to sharp-eyed, his bald spot magically gone. All at once, hey presto, he's forty-five again.
Steamhead Steve's crooked back straightens. His wife, Baba the Red, ditches those uncomfortable continence pants, puts on her rhinestone-studded Ariat boots, and says she wants to go out line dancing.
Given time to observe such changes, people would wonder and people would talk. Eventually some reporter would turn up, and the True Knot shied away from publicity the way vampires supposedly shy away from sunlight.
But since they don't live in one place (and when they stop for an extended period in one of their company towns, they keep to themselves), they fit right in. Why not? They wear the same clothes as the other RV People, they wear the same el cheapo sunglasses, they buy the same souvenir t-shirts and consult the same AAA roadmaps. They put the same decals on their Bounders and 'Bagos, touting all the peculiar places they've visited (I HELPED TRIM THE WORLD'S BIGGEST TREE IN CHRISTMASLAND!), and you find yourself looking at the same bumper stickers while you're stuck behind them (OLD BUT NOT DEAD, SAVE MEDICARE, I'M A CONSERVATIVE AND I VOTE!!), waiting for a chance to pass. They eat fried chicken from the Colonel and buy the occasional scratch ticket in those EZ-on, EZ-off convenience stores where they sell beer, bait, ammo, Motor Trend magazine, and ten thousand kinds of candybars. If there's a bingo hall in the town where they stop, a bunch of them are apt to go on over, take a table, and play until the last cover-all game is finished. At one of those games, Greedy G (rube name Greta Moore) won five hundred dollars. She gloated over that for months, and although the members of the True have all the money they need, it pissed off some of the other ladies to no end. Token Charlie wasn't too pleased, either. He said he'd been waiting on B7 for five pulls from the hopper when the G finally bingoed.
"Greedy, you're one lucky bitch," he said.
"And you're one unlucky bastard," she replied. "One unlucky black bastard." And went off chortling.
If one of them happens to get speed-trapped or stopped for some minor traffic offense--it's rare, but it does happen--the cop finds nothing but valid licenses, up-to-date insurance cards, and paperwork in apple-pie order. No voices are raised while the cop's standing there with his citation book, even if it's an obvious scam. The charges are never disputed, and all fines are paid promptly. America is a living body, the highways are its arteries, and the True Knot slips along them like a silent virus.
But there are no dogs.
Ordinary RV People travel with lots of canine company, usually those little shit-machines with white fur, gaudy collars, and nasty tempers. You know the kind; they have irritating barks that hurt your ears and ratty little eyes full of disturbing intelligence. You see them sniffing their way through the grass in the designated pet-walking areas of the turnpike rest stops, their owners trailing behind, pooper-scoopers at the ready. In addition to the usual decals and bumper stickers on the motorhomes of these ordinary RV People, you're apt to see yellow diamond-shaped signs reading POMERANIAN ON BOARD or I MY POODLE.
Not the True Knot. They don't like dogs, and dogs don't like them. You might say dogs see through them. To the sharp and watchful eyes behind the cut-rate sunglasses. To the strong and long-muscled hunters' legs beneath the polyester slacks from Walmart. To the sharp teeth beneath the dentures, waiting to come out.
They don't like dogs, but they like certain children.
Oh yes, they like certain children very much.
2
In May of 2011, not long after Abra Stone celebrated her tenth birthday and Dan Torrance his tenth year of AA sobriety, Crow Daddy knocked on the door of Rosie the Hat's EarthCruiser. The True was currently staying at the Kozy Kampground outside Lexington, Kentucky. They were on their way to Colorado, where they would spend most of the summer in one of their bespoke towns, this one a place Dan sometimes revisited in his dreams. Usually they were in no hurry to get anywhere, but there was some urgency this summer. All of them knew it but none of them talked about it.
Rose would take care of it. She always had.
"Come," she said, and Crow Daddy stepped in.
When on a business errand, he always stepped out in good suits and expensive shoes polished to a mirror gloss. If he was feeling particularly old-school, he might even carry a walking stick. This morning he was wearing baggy pants held up by suspenders, a strappy t-shirt with a fish on it (KISS MY BASS printed beneath), and a flat workman's cap, which he swept off as he closed the door behind him. He was her sometime lover as well as her second-in-command, but he never failed to show respect. It was one of many things Rose liked about him. She had no doubt that the True could carry on under his leadership if she died. For awhile, at least. But for another hundred years? Perhaps not. Probably not. He had a silver tongue and cleaned up well when he had to deal with the rubes, but Crow had only rudimentary planning skills, and no real vision.
This morning he looked troubled.
Rose was sitting on the sofa in capri pants and a plain white bra, smoking a cigarette and watching the third hour of Today on her big wall-mounted TV. That was the "soft" hour, when they featured celebrity chefs and actors doing PR for their new movies. Her tophat was cocked back on her head. Crow Daddy had known her for more years than the rubes lived, and he still didn't know what magic held it at that gravity-defying angle.
She picked up the remote and muted the sound. "Why, it's Henry Rothman, as I live and breathe. Looking remarkably tasty, too, although I doubt you came to be tasted. Not at quarter of ten in the morning, and not with that look on your face. Who died?"
She meant it as a joke, but the wincing frown that tightened his forehead told her it wasn't one. She turned the TV off and made a business of butting her cigarette, not wanting him to see the dismay she felt. Once the True had been over two hundred strong. As of yesterday, they numbered forty-one. If she was right about the meaning of that wince, they were one less today.
"Tommy the Truck," he said. "Went in his sleep. Cycled once, and then boom. Didn't suffer at all. Which is fucking rare, as you know."
"Did Nut see him?" While he was still there to be seen, she thought but did not add. Walnut, whose rube driver's license and various rube credit cards identified him as Peter Wallis of Little Rock, Arkansas, was the True's sawbones.
"No, it was too quick. Heavy Mary was with him. Tommy woke her up, thrashing. She thought it was a bad dream and gave him an elbow . . . only by then there was nothing left to poke but his pajamas. It was probably a heart attack. Tommy had a bad cold. Nut thinks that might have been a contributing factor. And you know the sonofabitch always smoked like a chimney."
"We don't get heart attacks." Then, reluctantly: "Of course, we usually don't get colds, either. He was really wheezing the last few days, wasn't he? Poor old TT."
"Yeah, poor old TT. Nut says it'd be impossible to tell anything for sure without an autopsy."
Which couldn't happen. By now there would be no body left to cut up.
"How's Mary taking it?"
"How do you think? She's broken-fucking-hearted. They go back to when Tommy t
he Truck was Tommy the Wagon. Almost ninety years. She was the one who took care of him after he Turned. Gave him his first steam when he woke up the next day. Now she says she wants to kill herself."
Rose was rarely shocked, but this did the job. No one in the True had ever killed themselves. Life was--to coin a phrase--their only reason for living.
"Probably just talk," Crow Daddy said. "Only . . ."
"Only what?"
"You're right about us not usually getting colds, but there have been quite a few just lately. Mostly just sniffles that come and go. Nut says it may be malnutrition. Of course he's just guessing."
Rose sat in thought, tapping her fingers against her bare midriff and staring at the blank rectangle of the TV. At last she said, "Okay, I agree that nourishment's been a bit thin lately, but we took steam in Delaware just a month ago, and Tommy was fine then. Plumped right up."
"Yeah, but Rosie--the kid from Delaware wasn't much. More hunchhead than steamhead."
She'd never thought of it just that way, but it was true. Also, he'd been nineteen, according to his driver's license. Well past whatever stunted prime he might have had around puberty. In another ten years he'd have been just another rube. Maybe even five. He hadn't been much of a meal, point taken. But you couldn't always have steak. Sometimes you had to settle for bean sprouts and tofu. At least they kept body and soul together until you could butcher the next cow.
Except psychic tofu and bean sprouts hadn't kept Tommy the Truck's body and soul together, had they?
"There used to be more steam," Crow said.
"Don't be daft. That's like the rubes saying that fifty years ago people were more neighborly. It's a myth, and I don't want you spreading it around. People are nervous enough already."
"You know me better than that. And I don't think it is a myth, darlin. If you think about it, it stands to reason. Fifty years ago there was more of everything--oil, wildlife, arable land, clean air. There were even a few honest politicians."
"Yes!" Rose cried. "Richard Nixon, remember him? Prince of the Rubes?"
But he wouldn't go chasing up this false trail. Crow might be a bit lacking in the vision department, but he was rarely distracted. That was why he was her second. He might even have a point. Who was to say that humans capable of providing the nourishment the True needed weren't dwindling, just like schools of tuna in the Pacific?
"You better bust open one of the canisters, Rosie." He saw her eyes widen and raised a hand to stop her from speaking. "Nobody's saying that out loud, but the whole family's thinking about it."
Rose had no doubt they were, and the idea that Tommy had died of complications resulting from malnutrition had a certain horrid plausibility. When steam was in short supply, life grew hard and lost its savor. They weren't vampires from one of those old Hammer horror pictures, but they still needed to eat.
"And how long since we've had a seventh wave?" Crow asked.
He knew the answer to that, and so did she. The True Knot had limited precognitive skills, but when a truly big rube disaster was approaching--a seventh wave--they all felt it. Although the details of the attack on the World Trade Center had only begun to clarify for them in the late summer of 2001, they had known something was going to happen in New York City for months in advance. She could still remember the joy and anticipation. She supposed hungry rubes felt the same way when they smelled a particularly savory meal cooking in the kitchen.
There had been plenty for everybody that day, and in the days following. There might only have been a couple of true steamheads among those who died when the Towers fell, but when the disaster was big enough, agony and violent death had an enriching quality. Which was why the True was drawn to such sites, like insects to a bright light. Locating single rube steamheads was far more difficult, and there were only three of them now with that specialized sonar in their heads: Grampa Flick, Barry the Chink, and Rose herself.
She got up, grabbed a neatly folded boatneck top from the counter, and pulled it over her head. As always, she looked gorgeous in a way that was a bit unearthly (those high cheekbones and slightly tipped eyes) but extremely sexy. She put her hat back on and gave it a tap for good luck. "How many full canisters do you think are left, Crow?"
He shrugged. "A dozen? Fifteen?"
"In that neighborhood," she agreed. Better that none of them knew the truth, not even her second. The last thing she needed was for the current unease to become outright panic. When people panicked, they ran in all directions. If that happened, the True might disintegrate.
Meanwhile, Crow was looking at her, and closely. Before he could see too much, she said, "Can you four-wall this place tonight?"
"You kidding? With the price of gas and diesel what it is, the guy who owns it can't fill half his spots, even on weekends. He'll jump at the chance."
"Then do it. We're going to take canister steam. Spread the word."
"You've got it." He kissed her, caressing one of her breasts as he did so. "This is my favorite top."
She laughed and pushed him away. "Any top with tits in it is your favorite top. Go on."
But he lingered, a grin tipping one corner of his mouth. "Is Rattlesnake Girl still sniffin around your door, beautiful?"
She reached down and briefly squeezed him below the belt. "Oh my gosh. Is that your jealous bone I'm feeling?"
"Say it is."
She doubted it, but was flattered, anyway. "She's with Sarey now, and the two of them are perfectly happy. But since we're on the subject of Andi, she can help us. You know how. Spread the word but speak to her first."
After he left, she locked the EarthCruiser, went to the cockpit, and dropped to her knees. She worked her fingers into the carpet between the driver's seat and the control pedals. A strip of it came up. Beneath was a square of metal with an embedded keypad. Rose ran the numbers, and the safe popped open an inch or two. She lifted the door the rest of the way and looked inside.
Fifteen or a dozen full canisters left. That had been Crow's guess, and although she couldn't read members of the True the way she could read the rubes, Rose was sure he had been purposely lowballing to cheer her up.
If he only knew, she thought.
The safe was lined with Styrofoam to protect the canisters in case of a road accident, and there were forty built-in cradles. On this fine May morning in Kentucky, thirty-seven of the canisters in those cradles were empty.
Rose took one of the remaining full ones and held it up. It was light; if you hefted it, you would have guessed it too was empty. She took the cap off, inspected the valve beneath to make sure the seal was still intact, then reclosed the safe and put the canister carefully--almost reverently--on the counter where her top had been folded.
After tonight there would only be two.
They had to find some big steam and refill at least a few of those empty canisters, and they had to do it soon. The True's back wasn't to the wall, not quite yet, but it was only inches away.
3
The Kozy Kampground owner and his wife had their own trailer, a permanent job set up on painted concrete blocks. April showers had brought lots of May flowers, and Mr. and Mrs. Kozy's front yard was full of them. Andrea Steiner paused a moment to admire the tulips and pansies before mounting the three steps to the door of the big Redman trailer, where she knocked.
Mr. Kozy opened up eventually. He was a small man with a big belly currently encased in a bright red strappy undershirt. In one hand he held a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. In the other was a mustard-smeared brat wrapped in a slice of spongy white bread. Because his wife was currently in the other room, he paused for a moment to do a visual inventory of the young woman before him, ponytail to sneakers. "Yeah?"
Several in the True had a bit of sleeper talent, but Andi was by far the best, and her Turning had proved of enormous benefit to the True. She still used the ability on occasion to lift cash from the wallets of certain older rube gentlemen who were attracted to her. Rose found this risky and childish, b
ut knew from experience that in time, what Andi called her issues would fade away. For the True Knot, the only issue was survival.
"I just had a quick question," Andi said.
"If it's about the toilets, darlin, the caca sucker don't come until Thursday."
"It's not about that."
"What, then?"
"Aren't you tired? Don't you want to go to sleep?"
Mr. Kozy immediately closed his eyes. The beer and the brat tumbled out of his hands, leaving a mess on the rug. Oh well, Andi thought, Crow fronted the guy twelve hundred. Mr. Kozy can afford a bottle of carpet cleaner. Maybe even two.
Andi took him by the arm and led him into the living room. Here was a pair of chintz-covered Kozy armchairs with TV trays set up in front of them.
"Sit," she said.
Mr. Kozy sat, eyes shut.
"You like to mess with young girls?" Andi asked him. "You would if you could, wouldn't you? If you could run fast enough to catch them, anyway." She surveyed him, hands on hips. "You're disgusting. Can you say that?"
"I'm disgusting," Mr. Kozy agreed. Then he began to snore.
Mrs. Kozy came in from the kitchen. She was gnawing on an ice cream sandwich. "Here, now, who are you? What are you telling him? What do you want?"
"For you to sleep," Andi told her.
Mrs. Kozy dropped her ice cream. Then her knees unhinged and she sat on it.
"Ah, fuck," Andi said. "I didn't mean there. Get up."
Mrs. Kozy got up with the squashed ice cream sandwich sticking to the back of her dress. Snakebite Andi put her arm around the woman's mostly nonexistent waist and led her to the other Kozy chair, pausing long enough to pull the melting ice cream sandwich off her butt. Soon the two of them sat side by side, eyes shut.
"You'll sleep all night," Andi instructed them. "Mister can dream about chasing young girls. Missus, you can dream he died of a heart attack and left you a million-dollar insurance policy. How's that sound? Sound good?"