Best to keep a low profile.
9
Pete got on behind Mr. Gray and put his arms around Jonesy's waist. Ten minutes later they motored past the overturned Scout, and Jonesy understood what had made Pete and Henry so late back from the store. It was a wonder either of them had lived through it. He would have liked a longer look, but Mr. Gray didn't slow, just went on with the Cat's skis bouncing up and down, riding the crown of the road between the two snow-filled ruts.
Three miles or so beyond the Scout, they topped a rise and Jonesy saw a brilliant ball of yellow-white light hanging less than a foot above the road, waiting for them. It looked as hot as the flame of a welder's torch, but obviously wasn't; the snow just inches below it hadn't melted. It was almost certainly one of the lights he and Beaver had seen playing in the clouds, above the fleeing animals coming out of The Gulch.
That's right, Mr. Gray said. What your people call a flashlight. This is one of the last. Perhaps the very last.
Jonesy said nothing, only stared out the window of his office cell. He could feel Pete's arms around his waist, holding on mostly by instinct now, the way a nearly beaten fighter clinches with his opponent to keep from hitting the canvas. The head lying against his back was as heavy as a stone. Pete was a culture-medium for the byrus now, and the byrus liked him fine; the world was cold and Pete was warm. Mr. Gray apparently wanted him for something--what, Jonesy had no idea.
The flashlight led them another half a mile or so up the road, then veered into the woods. It slipped in between two big pines and then waited for them, spinning just above the snow. Jonesy heard Mr. Gray instruct Pete to hold on as tight as he could.
The Arctic Cat bounced and growled its way up a slight incline, its skis digging into the snow, then splashing it aside. Once they were actually under the forest canopy there was less of it, in some places none at all. In those spots the snowmobile's tread clattered angrily on the frozen ground, which was mostly rock beneath a thin cover of soil and fallen needles. They were headed north now.
Ten minutes later they bounced hard over a jut of granite and Pete went tumbling off the back with a low cry. Mr. Gray let go of the snowmobile's throttle. The flashlight also stopped, spinning above the snow. Jonesy thought it looked dimmer now.
"Get up," Mr. Gray said. He was turned around on the saddle, looking back at Pete.
"I can't," Pete said. "I'm done, fella. I--"
Then Pete began to howl and thrash on the ground again, feet kicking, his hands--one burned, the other mangled--jerking.
Stop it! Jonesy yelled. You're killing him!
Mr. Gray paid him no attention whatever, just remained as he was, swung around at the waist and watching Pete with deadly, emotionless patience as the byrus tightened and pulled at Pete's flesh. At last Jonesy felt Mr. Gray let up. Pete got groggily to his feet. There was a fresh cut on one cheek, and already it was swarming with byrus. His eyes were dazed and exhausted and swimming with tears. He got back on the snowmobile and his hands crept around Jonesy's waist once more.
Hold onto my coat, Jonesy whispered, and as Mr. Gray turned forward and clapped the snowmobile back into gear, he felt Pete take hold. No bounce, no play, right?
No play, Pete agreed, but faintly.
Mr. Gray paid no attention this time. The flashlight, less bright but still speedy, started north again . . . or at least in a direction Jonesy assumed was north. As the snowmobile wove its way around trees, thick clumps of bushes, and knobs of rock, his sense of direction pretty much gave up. From behind them came a steady crackle of gunfire. It sounded as though someone was having a turkey-shoot.
10
About an hour later, Jonesy finally discovered why Mr. Gray had bothered with Pete. That was when the flashlight, which had dimmed to an anemic shadow of its original self, finally went out. It disappeared with a soft plosive sound--as if someone had popped a paper sack. Some leftover bit of detritus fell to the ground.
They were on a tree-lined ridge spang in the middle of the God-only-knows. Ahead of them was a snowy, forested valley; on its far side were eroded hills and brush-tangled brakes where not a single light shone. And to finish things off, the day was fading toward dusk.
Another fine mess you've gotten us into, Jonesy thought, but he sensed no dismay on Mr. Gray's part. Mr. Gray stopped the snowmobile by releasing the throttle, and then simply sat there.
North, Mr. Gray said. Not to Jonesy.
Pete answered out loud, his voice weary and slow. "How am I supposed to know? I can't even see where the sun's going down, for Christ's sake. One of my eyes is all fucked up, too."
Mr. Gray turned Jonesy's head and Jonesy saw that Pete's left eye was gone. The lid had been shoved up high, giving him a half-assed look of surprise. Growing out of the socket was a small jungle of byrus. The longest strands hung down, tickling against Pete's stubbly cheek. More strands twined through his thinning hair in lush redgold streaks.
You know.
"Maybe I do," Pete said. "And maybe I don't want to point you there."
Why not?
"Because I doubt if what you want is healthy for the rest of us, fuckface," Pete said, and Jonesy felt an absurd sense of pride.
Jonesy saw the growth in Pete's eyesocket twitch. Pete screamed and clutched at his face. For a moment--brief but far too long--Jonesy fully imagined the reddish-gold tendrils reaching from that defunct eye into Pete's brain, where they spread like strong fingers clutching a gray sponge.
Go on, Pete, tell him! Jonesy cried. For Christ's sake, tell him!
The byrus grew still again. Pete's hand dropped from his face, which was now deathly pale where it wasn't reddish-gold. "Where are you, Jonesy?" he asked. "Is there room for two?"
The short answer, of course, was no. Jonesy didn't understand what had happened to him, but knew that his continued survival--that last kernel of autonomy--somehow depended on his staying right where he was. If he so much as opened the door, he would be gone for good.
Pete nodded. "Didn't think so," he said, and then spoke to the other. "Just don't hurt me anymore, fella."
Mr. Gray only sat, looking at Pete with Jonesy's eyes and making no promises.
Pete sighed, then raised his scorched left hand and extended one finger. He closed his eyes and began to tick his finger back and forth, back and forth. And as he did it, Jonesy came close to understanding everything. What had that little girl's name been? Rinkenhauer, wasn't it? Yes. He couldn't remember the first name, but a clumsy handle like Rinkenhauer was hard to forget. She had also gone to Mary M. Snowe, aka The Retard Academy, although by then Duddits had gone on to Vocational. And Pete? Pete had always had a funny trick of remembering things, but after Duddits--
The words came back to Jonesy as he crouched in his dirty little cell, looking out at the world which had been stolen from him . . . only they weren't really words at all, only those open vowel sounds, so strangely beautiful:
Ooo eee a yine, Ete? Do you see the line, Pete?
Pete, his face full of dreamy, surprised wonder, had said yes, he saw it. And he had been doing the thing with his finger then, that tick-tock thing, just as he was now.
The finger stopped, the tip still trembling minutely, like a dowsing rod at the edge of an aquifer. Then Pete pointed at the ridge on a line slightly to starboard of the snowmobile's current heading.
"There," he said, and dropped his hand. "Due north. Sight on that rock-face. The one with the pine growing out of the middle. Do you see it?"
Yes, I see it. Mr. Gray turned forward and put the snowmobile back into gear. Jonesy wondered fleetingly how much gas was left in the tank.
"Can I get off now?" Meaning, of course, could he die now.
No.
And they were off again, with Pete clinging weakly to Jonesy's coat.
11
They skirted the rock-face, climbed to the top of the highest hill beyond it, and here Mr. Gray paused again so his substitute flashlight could rehead them. Pete did so and they
continued on, now moving on a path that was a little bit west of true north. Daylight continued to fade. Once they heard helicopters--at least two, maybe as many as four--coming toward them. Mr. Gray bulled the snowmobile into a thick stand of underbrush, heedless of the branches that slapped at Jonesy's face, drawing blood from his cheeks and brow. Pete tumbled off the back again. Mr. Gray killed the Cat's engine, then dragged Pete, who was moaning and semi-conscious, under the thickest growth of bushes. There they waited until the helicopters passed over. Jonesy felt Mr. Gray reach up to one of the crew and quickly scan him, perhaps cross-checking what the man knew with what Pete had been telling him. When the choppers had passed off to the southeast, apparently heading back to their base, Mr. Gray re-started the snowmobile and they went on. It had begun to snow again.
An hour later they stopped on another rise and Pete fell off the Cat again, this time tumbling to the side. He raised his face, but most of his face was gone, buried under a beard of vegetation. He tried to speak aloud and couldn't; his mouth was stuffed, his tongue buried under a lush mat of byrus.
I can't, man. I can't, no more, please, let me be.
"Yes," Mr. Gray said. "I think you've served your purpose."
Pete! Jonesy cried. Then, to Mr. Gray: No, No, don't!
Mr. Gray paid no attention, of course. For a moment Jonesy saw silent understanding in Pete's remaining eye. And relief. For that moment he was still able to touch Pete's mind--his boyhood friend, the one who always stood outside the gate at DJHS, one hand cupped over his mouth, hiding a cigarette that wasn't really there, the one who was going to be an astronaut and see the world entire from earth orbit, one of the four who had helped save Duddits from the big boys.
For one moment. Then he felt something leap from Mr. Gray's mind and the stuff growing on Pete did not just twitch but clenched. There was a tenebrous creaking sound as Pete's skull cracked in a dozen places. His face--what remained of it--pulled inward in a kind of yank, making him old at a stroke. Then he fell forward and snow began to fleck the back of his parka.
You bastard.
Mr. Gray, indifferent to Jonesy's curse and Jonesy's anger, made no reply. He faced forward again. The building wind dropped momentarily when he did, and a hole opened in the curtain of snow. About five miles northwest of their current position, Jonesy saw moving lights--not flashlights but headlights. Lots of them. Trucks moving in convoy along the turnpike. Trucks and nothing else, he supposed. This part of Maine belonged to the military now.
And they're all looking for you, asshole, he spat as the snowmobile began to roll again. The snow closed back around them, cutting off their momentary view of the trucks, but Jonesy knew that Mr. Gray would have no trouble finding the turnpike. Pete had gotten him this far, to a part of the quarantine zone where Jonesy supposed little trouble was expected. He was counting on Jonesy to take him the rest of the way, because Jonesy was different. For one thing, he was clear of the byrus. The byrus didn't like him for some reason.
You'll never get out of here, Jonesy said.
I will, Mr. Gray said. We always die and we always live. We always lose and we always win. Like it or not, Jonesy, we're the future.
If that's true, it's the best reason I ever heard for living in the past, Jonesy replied, but from Mr. Gray there was no answer. Mr. Gray as an entity, a consciousness, was gone, merged back into the cloud. There was only enough of him left to run Jonesy's motor skills and keep the snowmobile pointed toward the turnpike. And Jonesy, carried helplessly forward on whatever mission this thing had, took slender comfort from two things. One was that Mr. Gray didn't know how to get at the last piece of him, the tiny part that existed in his memory of the Tracker Brothers office. The other was that Mr. Gray didn't know about Duddits--about no bounce, no play.
Jonesy intended to make sure Mr. Gray didn't find out.
At least not yet.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AT GOSSELIN'S
1
To Archie Perlmutter, high-school valedictorian (speech topic: "The Joys and the Responsibilities of Democracy"), onetime Eagle Scout, faithful Presbyterian, and West Point grad, Gosselin's Country Market no longer looked real. Now spotlighted by enough candlepower to illuminate a small city, it looked like a set in a movie. Not just any movie, either, but the sort of James Cameron extravaganza where the catering costs alone would amount to enough to feed the people of Haiti for two years. Even the steadily increasing snow did not cut into the glare of the lights very much, or change the illusion that the whole works, from the crappy siding to the pair of tin woodstove stacks sticking acrooked out of the roof to the single rusty gas-pump out front, was simply set-dressing.
This would be Act One, Pearly thought as he strode briskly along with his clipboard tucked under his arm (Archie Perlmutter had always felt he was a man of considerable artistic nature . . . commercial, too). We fade in on an isolated country store. The oldtimers are sitting around the woodstove--not the little one in Gosselin's office but the big one in the store itself--while the snow pelts down outside. They're talking about lights in the sky . . . missing hunters . . . sightings of little gray men skulking around in the woods. The store owner--call him Old Man Rossiter--scoffs. "Oh gosh 'n fishes, you're all a buncha old wimmin!" he says, and just then the whole place is bathed in these brilliant lights (think Close Encounters of the Third Kind ) as a UFO settles down to the ground! Bloodthirsty aliens come piling out, firing their deathrays! It's like Independence Day, only, here's the hook, in the woods!
Beside him, Melrose, the cook's third (which was about as close as anyone got to an official rating on this little adventure), struggled to keep up. He was wearing sneakers on his feet instead of shoes or boots--Perlmutter had dragged him out of Spago's, which was what the men called the cook-tent--and he kept slipping. Men (and a few women) passed everywhere around them, mostly at the double. Many were talking into lavalier mikes or walkie-talkies. The sense that this was a movie-set instead of a real place was enhanced by the trailers, the semis, the idling helicopters (the worsening weather had brought them all back in), and the endless conflicting roar of motors and generators.
"Why does he want to see me?" Melrose asked again. Out of breath and whinier than ever. They were passing the paddock and corral to one side of Gosselin's barn, now. The old and dilapidated fence (it had been ten years or more since there'd been an actual horse in the corral or exercised in the paddock) had been reinforced by alternating strands of barbwire and smoothwire. There was an electrical charge running through the smoothwire, probably not lethal but high enough to lay you out on the ground, convulsing . . . and the charge could be jacked up to lethal levels if the natives became restless. Behind this wire, watching them, were twenty or thirty men, Old Man Gosselin among them (in the James Cameron version, Gosselin would be played by some craggy oldtimer like Bruce Dern). Earlier, the men behind the wire would have called out, issuing threats and angry demands, but since they'd seen what happened to that banker from Massachusetts who tried to run, their peckers had wilted considerably, poor fellows. Seeing someone shot in the head took a lot of the fuck-you out of a man. And then there was the fact that all the ops guys were now wearing nose-and-mouth masks. That had to take whatever fuck-you was left.
"Boss?" Almost whining had given way to actual whining. The sight of American citizens standing behind barbed wire had apparently added to Melrose's unease. "Boss, come on--why does the big boy want to see me? Big boy shouldn't know a cook's third even exists."
"I don't know," Pearly replied. It was the truth.
Up ahead, standing at the head of what had been dubbed Eggbeater Alley, was Owen Underhill and some guy from the motor-pool. The motor-pool guy was almost shouting into Underhill's ear in order to make himself heard over the racket of the idling helicopters. Surely, Perlmutter thought, they'd shut the choppers down soon; nothing was going to fly in this shit, an early-season blizzard that Kurtz called "our gift from God." When he said stuff like that, you couldn't tell
if Kurtz really meant it or was just being ironic. He always sounded like he meant it . . . but then sometimes he would laugh. The kind of laugh that made Archie Perlmutter nervous. In the movie, Kurtz would be played by James Woods. Or maybe Christopher Walken. Neither one of them looked like Kurtz, but had George C. Scott looked like Patton? Case closed.
Perlmutter abruptly detoured toward Underhill. Melrose tried to follow and went on his ass, cursing. Perlmutter tapped Underhill on his shoulder, then hoped his mask would at least partially conceal his expression of surprise when the other man turned. Owen Underhill looked as if he had aged ten years since stepping off the Millinocket School Department bus.
Leaning forward, Pearly shouted over the wind: "Kurtz in fifteen! Don't forget!"
Underhill gave him an impatient wave to say he wouldn't, and turned back to the motor-pool guy. Perlmutter had him placed now; Brodsky, his name was. The men called him Dawg.
Kurtz's command post, a humongous Winnebago (if this were a movie-set, it would be the star's home away from home, or perhaps Jimmy Cameron's), was just ahead. Pearly picked up the pace, facing boldly forward into the flick-flick-flick of the snow. Melrose scurried to catch up, brushing snow off his coverall.
"C'mon, Skipper," he pleaded. "Don'tcha have any idea?"
"No," Perlmutter said. He had no clue as to why Kurtz would want to see a cook's third with everything up and running in high gear. But he thought both of them knew it couldn't be anything good.
2
Owen turned Emil Brodsky's head, placed the bulb of his mask against the man's ear, and said: "Tell me again. Not all of it, just about the part you called the mind-fuck."
Brodsky didn't argue but took ten seconds or so to arrange his thoughts. Owen gave it to him. There was his appointment with Kurtz, and debriefing after that--plenty of crew, reams of paperwork--and God alone knew what gruesome tasks to follow, but he sensed this was important.