Bowser favors Jonesy with what seems a particularly ill-natured look, then slithers off the pillow, its flexing tail making a dry rasp like a snake crawling over a rock. On the table is a TV remote, also overgrown with fungus. Bowser seizes it, turns, and slithers back to the gray creature with the remote held in its teeth. The gray thing releases Jonesy's hand (its touch is not repulsive, but the release is still something of a relief), takes the controller, points it at the TV, and pushes the ON button. The picture that appears--blurred slightly but not hidden by the light fuzz growing on the glass--is of the shed behind the cabin. In the center of the screen is a shape hidden by a green tarp. And even before the door opens and he sees himself come in, Jonesy understands that this has already happened. The star of Sympathy for the Grayboys is Gary Jones.
Well, the dying creature in the bed says from its comfortable spot in the center of his brain, we missed the credits, but really, the movie's just starting.
That's what Jonesy's afraid of.
5
The shed door opens and Jonesy comes in. Quite the motley fellow he is, dressed in his own coat, Beaver's gloves, and one of Lamar's old orange hats. For a moment the Jonesy watching in the hospital room (he has pulled up the visitor's chair and is sitting by Mr. Gray's bed) thinks that the Jonesy in the snowmobile shed at Hole in the Wall has been infected after all, and that red moss is growing all over him. Then he remembers that Mr. Gray exploded right in front of him--his head did, anyway--and Jonesy is wearing the remains.
Only you didn't explode, he says. You . . . you what? Went to seed?
Shhh! says Mr. Gray, and Bowser bares its formidable headful of teeth, as if to tell Jonesy to stop being so impolite. I love this song, don't you?
The soundtrack is the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," fitting enough since this is almost the name of the movie (my screen debut, Jonesy thinks, wait'll Carla and the kids see it), but in fact Jonesy doesn't love it, it makes him sad for some reason.
How can you love it? he asks, ignoring Bowser's bared teeth--Bowser is no danger to him, and both of them know it. How can you? It's what they were playing when they slaughtered you.
They always slaughter us, Mr. Gray says. Now be quiet, watch the movie, this part is slow but it gets a lot better.
Jonesy folds his hands in his red lap--the bleeding seems to have stopped, at least--and watches Sympathy for the Grayboys, starring the one and only Gary Jones.
6
The one and only Gary Jones pulls the tarp off the snowmobile, spots the battery sitting on the worktable in a cardboard box, and puts it in, being careful to clamp the cables to the correct terminals. This pretty well exhausts his store of mechanical knowledge--he's a history teacher, not a mechanic, and his idea of home improvement is making the kids watch the History Channel once in a while instead of Xena. The key is in the ignition, and the dashboard lights come on when he turns the key--got the battery right, anyway--but the engine doesn't start. Doesn't even crank. The starter makes a tut-tutting sound and that's all.
"Oh dear oh gosh dadrattit number two," he says, running them all together in a monotone. He isn't sure he could manifest much in the way of emotion now even if he really wanted to. He's a horror-movie fan, has seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers two dozen times (he has even seen the wretched remake, the one with Donald Sutherland in it), and he knows what's going on here. His body has been snatched, most righteously and completely snatched. Although there will be no army of zombies, not even a townful. He is unique. He senses that Pete, Henry, and the Beav are also unique (was unique, in the Beav's case), but he is the most unique of all. You're not supposed to be able to say that--like the cheese belonging to the Farmer in the Dell, unique supposedly stands alone--but this is a rare case where that rule doesn't apply. Pete and Beaver were unique, Henry is uniquer, and he, Jonesy, is uniquest. Look, he's even starring in his own movie! How unique is that, as his oldest son would say.
The gray fellow in the hospital bed looks from the TV where Jonesy I is sitting astride the Arctic Cat to the chair where Jonesy II sits in his blood-sodden johnny.
What are you hiding? Mr. Gray asks.
Nothing.
Why do you keep seeing a brick wall? What is 19, besides a prime number? Who said "Fuck the Tigers"? What does that mean? What is the brick wall? When is the brick wall? What does it mean, why do you keep seeing it?
He can feel Mr. Gray prying at him, but for the time being that one kernel is safe. He can be carried, but not changed. Not entirely opened, either, it seems. Not yet, at least.
Jonesy puts his finger to his lips and gives the gray fellow's own words back to him: Be quiet, watch the movie.
It studies him with the black bulbs of its eyes (they are insectile, Jonesy thinks, the eyes of a praying mantis), and Jonesy can feel it prying for a moment or two longer. Then the sensation fades. There is no hurry; sooner or later it will dissolve the shell over that last kernel of pure uninvaded Jonesy, and then it will know everything it wants to know.
In the meantime, they watch the movie. And when Bowser crawls into Jonesy's lap--Bowser with his sharp teeth and his ethery antifreeze smell--Jonesy barely notices.
Jonesy I, Shed Jonesy (only that one's now actually Mr. Gray), reaches out. There are many minds to reach out to, they are hopping all over each other like late-night radio transmissions, and he finds one with the information he needs easily enough. It's like opening a file on your personal computer and finding a wonderfully detailed 3-D movie instead of words.
Mr. Gray's source is Emil "Dawg" Brodsky, from Menlo Park, New Jersey. Brodsky is an Army Tech Sergeant, a motor-pool munchkin. Only here, as part of Kurtz's Tactical Response Team, Tech Sergeant Brodsky has no rank. No one else does, either. He calls his superiors boss and those who rank below him (there are not many of those at this particular barbecue) hey you. If he doesn't know which is which, pal or buddy will do.
There are jets overflying the area, but not many (they'll be able to get all the pix they need from low earth orbit if the clouds ever clear), and they are not Brodsky's job, anyway. The jets fly out of the Air National Guard base in Bangor, and he is here in Jefferson Tract. Brodsky's job is the choppers and the trucks in the rapidly growing motor-pool (since noon, all the roads in this part of the state have been closed and the only traffic is olive-green trucks with their insignia masked). He's also in charge of setting up at least four generators to provide the electricity needed to serve the compound growing around Gosselin's Market. These needs include motion sensors, pole lights, perimeter lights, and the makeshift operating theater which is being hastily equipped in a Windstar motor home.
Kurtz has made it clear that the lights are a big deal--he wants this place as bright as day all night long. The greatest number of pole lights is going up around the barn and what used to be a horse corral and paddock behind the barn. In the field where old Reggie Gosselin's forty milkers once grazed away their days, two tents have been erected. The larger has a sign on its green roof: COMMISSARY. The other tent is white and unmarked. There are no kerosene heaters in it, as there are in the larger tent, and no need of them. This is the temporary morgue, Jonesy understands. There are only three bodies in there now (one is a banker who tried to run away, foolish man), but soon there may be lots more. Unless there's an accident that makes collecting bodies difficult or impossible. For Kurtz, the boss, such an accident would solve all sorts of problems.
And all that is by the way. Jonesy I's job is Emil Brodsky of Menlo Park.
Brodsky is striding rapidly across the snowy, muddy, churned-up ground between the helicopter landing zone and the paddock where the Ripley-positives are to be kept (there are already a good number of them in there, walking around with the bewildered expressions of freshly interned prisoners the world over, calling out to the guards, asking for cigarettes and information and making vain threats). Emil Brodsky is squat and crewcut, with a bulldog face that looks made for cheap cigars (in fact, Jonesy knows, Brodsky is a
devout Catholic who has never smoked). He's as busy as a one-armed paperhanger just now. He's got earphones on and a receptionist's mike hung in front of his lips. He is in radio contact with the fuel-supply convoy coming up I-95--those guys are critical, because the helicopters out on mission are going to come back low--but he's also talking to Cambry, who is walking next to him, about the control-and-surveillance center Kurtz wants set up by nine P.M., midnight at the latest. This mission is going to be over in forty-eight hours at the outside, that's the scuttlebutt, but who the fuck knows for sure? According to the scuttlebutt, their prime target, Blue Boy, has already been taken out, but Brodsky doesn't know how anyone can be sure of that, since the big assault choppers haven't come back yet. And anyhow, their job here is simple: turn the whole works up to eleven and then yank the knobs off.
And ye gods, all at once there are three Jonesys: the one watching TV in the fungus-crawling hospital room, the one in the snowmobile shed . . . and Jonesy III, who suddenly appears in Emil Brodsky's crewcut Catholic head. Brodsky stops walking and simply looks up into the white sky.
Cambry walks on three or four steps by himself before realizing that Dawg has stopped cold, is just standing there in the middle of the muddy cow pasture. In the midst of all this frantic bustle--running men, hovering helicopters, revving engines--he's standing there like a robot with a dead battery.
"Boss?" Cambry asks. "Everything all right?"
Brodsky makes no reply . . . at least not to Cambry, he doesn't. To Jonesy I--Shed Jonesy--he says: Open the engine cowling and show me the plugs.
Jonesy has some trouble finding the catch that opens the cowling, but Brodsky directs him. Then Jonesy leans over the small engine, not looking for himself but turning his eyes into a pair of high-res cameras and sending the picture back to Brodsky.
"Boss?" Cambry asks with increasing concern. "Boss, what is it? What's wrong?"
"Nothing wrong," Brodsky says, slowly and distinctly. He pulls the headphones down around his neck; the chatter in them is a distraction. "Just let me think a minute."
And to Jonesy: Someone yanked the plugs. Look around. . . yeah, there they are. End of the table.
On the end of the worktable is a mayonnaise jar half filled with gasoline. The jartop has been vented--two punches with the tip of a screwdriver--to keep the fumes from building up. Sunk in it like exhibits preserved in formaldehyde are two Champion sparkplugs.
Aloud, Brodsky says "Dry them off good," and when Cambry asks, "Dry what off good?" Brodsky tells him absently to put a sock in it.
Jonesy fishes the plugs out, dries them off, then seats and connects them as Brodsky directs. Try it now, Brodsky says, this time without moving his lips, and the snowmobile starts up with a roar. Check the gas, too.
Jonesy does, and says thank you.
"No problem, boss," Brodsky says, and starts walking briskly again. Cambry has to trot a little to catch up. He sees the faintly bewildered look on Dawg's face when Dawg discovers his headphones are now around his neck.
"What the hell was that all about?" Cambry asks.
"Nothing," Brodsky says, but it was something, all right; it sure as shit was something. Talking. A conversation. A . . . consultation? Yeah, that. He just can't remember exactly what the subject was. What he can remember is the briefing they got this morning, before daylight, when the team went hot. One of the directives, straight from Kurtz, had been to report anything unusual. Was this unusual? What, exactly, had it been?
"Had a brain-cramp, I guess," Brodsky says. "Too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. Come on, son, keep up with me."
Cambry keeps up. Brodsky resumes his divided conversation--convoy there, Cambry here--but remembers something else, some third conversation, one that is now over. Unusual or not? Probably not, Brodsky decides. Certainly nothing he could talk about to that incompetent bastard Perlmutter--as far as Pearly's concerned, if it isn't on his ever-present clipboard, it doesn't exist. Kurtz? Never. He respects the old buzzard, but fears him even more. They all do. Kurtz is smart, Kurtz is brave, but Kurtz is also the craziest ape in the jungle. Brodsky doesn't even like to walk where Kurtz's shadow has run across the ground.
Underhill? Could he talk to Owen Underhill?
Maybe . . . but maybe not. A deal like this, you could get into hack without even knowing why. He'd heard voices there for a minute or two--a voice, anyway--but he feels okay now. Still . . .
At Hole in the Wall, Jonesy roars out of the shed and heads up the Deep Cut Road. He senses Henry when he passes him--Henry hiding behind a tree, actually biting into the moss to keep from screaming--but successfully hides what he knows from the cloud which surrounds that last kernel of his awareness. It is almost certainly the last time he will be near his old friend, who will never make it out of these woods alive.
Jonesy wishes he could have said goodbye.
7
I don't know who made this movie, Jonesy says, but I don't think they have to bother pressing their tuxes for the Academy Awards. In fact--
He looks around and sees only snow-covered trees. Eyes front again and nothing but the Deep Cut Road unrolling in front of him and the snowmobile vibrating between his thighs. There was never any hospital, never any Mr. Gray. That was all a dream.
But it wasn't. And there is a room. Not a hospital room, though. No bed, no TV, no IV pole. Not much of anything, actually; just a bulletin board. Two things are tacked to it: a map of northern New England with certain routes mapped--the Tracker Brothers routes--and a Polaroid photo of a teenage girl with her skirt raised to reveal a golden tuft of hair. He is looking out at the Deep Cut Road from the window. It is, Jonesy feels quite sure, the window that used to be in the hospital room. But the hospital room was no good. He had to get out of that room, because--
The hospital room wasn't safe, Jonesy thinks . . . as if this one is, as if anyplace is. And yet . . . this one's safe-er, maybe. This is his final refuge, and he has decorated it with the picture he supposed they all hoped to see when they went up that driveway back in 1978. Tina Jean Sloppinger, or whatever her name had been.
Some of what I saw was real . . . valid recovered memories, Henry might say. I really did think I saw Duddits that day. That's why I went into the street without looking. As for Mr. Gray . . . that's who I am now. Isn't it? Except for the part of me in this dusty, empty, uninteresting room with the used rubbers on the floor and the picture of the girl on the bulletin board, I'm all Mr. Gray. Isn't that the truth?
No answer. Which is all the answer he needs, really.
But how did it happen? How did I get here? And why? What's it for?
Still no answers, and to these questions he can supply none of his own. He's only glad he has a place where he can still be himself, and dismayed at how easily the rest of his life has been hijacked. He wishes again, with complete and bitter sincerity, that he had shot McCarthy.
8
A huge explosion ripped through the day, and although the source had to be miles away, it was still strong enough to send snow sliding off the trees. The figure on the snowmobile didn't even look around. It was the ship. The soldiers had blown it up. The byrum were gone.
A few minutes later, the collapsed lean-to hove into view on his right. Lying in front of it in the snow, one boot still caught beneath the tin roof, was Pete. He looked dead but wasn't. Playing dead wasn't an option, not in this game; he could hear Pete thinking. And as he pulled up on the snowmobile and shifted into neutral, Pete raised his head and bared his remaining teeth in a humorless grin. The left arm of his parka was blackened and melted. There seemed to be only one working finger remaining on his right hand. All of his visible skin was stippled with the byrus.
"You're not Jonesy," Pete said. "What have you done with Jonesy?"
"Get on, Pete," Mr. Gray said.
"I don't want to go anywhere with you." Pete raised his right hand--the swooning fingers, the redgold clumps of byrus--and used it to wipe his forehead. "The fuck out of here.
Get on your pony and ride."
Mr. Gray lowered the head that had once belonged to Jonesy (Jonesy watching it all from the window of his bolt-hole in the abandoned Tracker Brothers depot, unable to help or to change anything) and stared at Pete. Pete began to scream as the byrus growing all over his body tightened, the roots of the stuff digging into his muscles and nerves. The boot caught under the collapsed tin roof jerked free and Pete, still screaming, pulled himself up into a fetal position. Fresh blood burst from his mouth and nose. When he screamed again, two more teeth popped out of his mouth.
"Get on, Pete."
Weeping, holding his savaged right hand to his chest, Pete tried to get to his feet. The first effort was a failure; he sprawled in the snow again. Mr. Gray made no comment, simply sat astride the idling Arctic Cat and watched.
Jonesy felt Pete's pain and despair and wretched fear. The fear was by far the worst, and he decided to take a risk.
Pete.
Only a whisper, but Pete heard. He looked up, his face haggard and speckled with fungus--what Mr. Gray called byrus. When Pete licked his lips, Jonesy saw it was growing on his tongue, too. Outer-space thrush. Once Pete Moore had wanted to be an astronaut. Once he had stood up to some bigger boys on behalf of someone who was smaller and weaker. He deserved better than this.
No bounce, no play.
Pete almost smiled. It was both beautiful and heartbreaking. This time he made it to his feet and plodded slowly toward the snowmobile.
In the deserted office to which he had been exiled, Jonesy saw the doorknob begin to twist back and forth. What does that mean? Mr. Gray asked. What is no bounce, no play? What are you doing in there? Come back to to the hospital and watch TV with me, why don't you? How did you get in there to begin with?
It was Jonesy's turn not to answer, and he did so with great pleasure.
I'll get in, Mr. Gray said. When I'm ready, I'll come in. You may think you can lock the door against me, but you're wrong.
Jonesy kept silent--there was no need to provoke the creature currently in charge of his body--but he didn't think he was wrong. On the other hand, he didn't dare leave; he would be swallowed up if he tried. He was just a kernel in a cloud, a bit of undigested food in an alien gut.