But no. No joy. Henry heard a low grunt as the person who'd fallen got up and came on again. There was only one option, and Henry took it. He lay back down on the seat, put Duddits's arms around him again (as best he could), and played dead. He didn't think there was much chance this hugger-mugger would work. The bad guys had passed by on their way in--obviously, as he was still alive--but on their way in they must have been in a pants-ripping hurry. Now they would be a lot less likely to be fooled by a few bullet holes, some broken glass, and the blood of poor old Duddits's final hemorrhages.
Henry heard soft, crunching footsteps in the snow. Only one set, by the sound. Probably the infamous Kurtz. Last man standing. Darkness approaching. Death in the afternoon. No longer his old friend--now he was only playing dead--but approaching, just the same.
Henry closed his eyes . . . waited . . .
The footsteps passed the Humvee without slowing.
31
Freddy Johnson's strategic goal was, for the time being, both extremely practical and extremely short-term: he wanted to get the goddam Hummer turned around without getting stuck. If he managed that, he wanted to get past the break in East Street (where the Subaru Owen had been chasing had come to grief) without getting ditched himself. If he made it back to the access road, he might widen his horizons a trifle. The idea of the Mass Pike surfaced briefly in his mind as he swung open the door of the boss's Hummer and slid behind the wheel. There was a lot of western America down I-90. A lot of places to hide.
The stench of stale farts and chilly ethyl alcohol struck him like a slap as he swung the door closed. Pearly! Goddam Pearly! In the excitement, he had forgotten all about that little motherfucker.
Freddy turned, raising the carbine . . . but Pearly was still out cold. No need to use another bullet. He could just tip Perlmutter out into the snow. If he was lucky, Pearly would freeze to death without ever waking up. Him, and his little sideki--
Pearly wasn't sleeping, though. Nor out cold. Nor in a coma, not even that. Pearly was dead. And he was . . . shrunken, somehow. Almost mummified. His cheeks were drawn in, hollow, wrinkled. The sockets of his eyes were deep divots, as if behind the thin veils of his closed lids the eyeballs had fallen into what was now a hollow bucket. And he was tilted strangely against the passenger door, one leg raised, almost crossed over the other. It was as if he had died trying to perform the ever-popular one-cheek-sneak. His fatigue pants were now dark, the muted colors turned to mud, and the seat under him was wet. The fingers of the stain spreading toward Freddy were red.
"What the f--"
From the back seat there arose an ear-splitting yammering; it was like listening to a powerful stereo turned rapidly up to full volume. Freddy caught movement from the corner of his right eye. A creature beyond belief appeared in the rearview mirror. It tore off Freddy's ear and then struck at his cheek, punched through into his mouth, and latched onto his jaw at the inner gumline. And then Archie Perlmutter's shit-weasel tore off the side of Freddy's face as a hungry man might tear a drumstick off a chicken.
Freddy shrieked and discharged his weapon into the passenger door of the Hummer. He got an arm up and tried to shove the thing off; his fingers slipped on its slick, newborn skin. The weasel withdrew, tossed its head back, and swallowed what it had torn off like a parrot with a piece of raw steak. Freddy flailed for the driver's-side doorhandle and found it, but before he could yank it up the thing struck again, this time burying its mouth in the muscular flesh where Freddy's neck and shoulder merged. There was a vast jet of blood as his jugular opened; it spurted up to the Humvee's roof, then began to drip back like red rain.
Freddy's feet jittered, bopping the Humvee's wide brake in a rapid tapdance. The creature in the back seat drew back again, seemed to consider, then slithered snakelike over Freddy's shoulder. It dropped into his lap.
Freddy screamed once as the weasel tore off his plumbing . . . and then he screamed no more.
32
Henry sat twisted around in the back seat of the other Humvee, watching as the figure in the vehicle parked behind him jerked back and forth behind the wheel. Henry was glad of the thickly falling snow, equally glad of the blood that sprayed up, striking the windshield of the other Humvee, partially obscuring the view.
He could see all too well as it was.
At last the figure behind the wheel stopped moving and fell sideways. A bulky shadow rose over it, seeming to hulk in triumph. Henry knew what it was; he'd seen one on Jonesy's bed, back at Hole in the Wall. One thing he could see was that there was a broken window in the Humvee which had been chasing them. He doubted if the thing had much in the way of intelligence, but how much would it need to register fresh air?
They don't like the cold. It kills them.
Yes, indeed it did. But Henry had no intention of leaving it at that, and not just because the Reservoir was so close he could hear the water lapping on the rocks. Something had run up an extremely high debt, and only he was left to present the bill. Payback's a bitch, as Jonesy had so often observed, and payback time had arrived.
He leaned over the seat. No weapons there. He leaned over farther and thumbed open the glove compartment. Nothing in there but a litter of invoices, gasoline receipts, and a tattered paperback titled How to Be Your Own Best Friend.
Henry opened the door, got out into the snow . . . and his feet immediately flew out from under him. He went on his butt with a thump and scraped his back on the Hummer's high splashboard. Fuck me Freddy. He got up, slipped again, grabbed the top of the open door, and managed to stay afoot this time. He shuffled his feet around to the back of the vehicle he'd come in, never taking his eyes from its twin, parked behind. He could still see the thing inside, thrashing and shuffling, dining on the driver.
"Stay where you are, beautiful," Henry said, and began to laugh. The laughter sounded crazy as hell, but that didn't stop him. "Lay a few eggs. I am the eggman, after all. Your friendly neighborhood eggman. Or how about a copy of How to Be Your Own Best Friend? I got one."
Laughing so hard now he could barely speak. Sliding in the wet and treacherous snow like a kid let out of school and on his way to the nearest sledding hill. Holding onto the flank of the Hummer as best he could, except there was really nothing to hold onto once you were south of the doors. Watching the thing shift and move . . . and then he couldn't see it anymore. Oh-oh. Where the hell had it gotten to? In one of Jonesy's dopey movies, this is where the scary music would start, Henry thought. Attack of the Killer Shit-Weasels. That got him laughing again.
He was around to the back of the vehicle now. There was a button you could push to unlatch the rear window . . . unless, of course, it was locked. Probably wasn't, though. Hadn't Owen gotten into the back this way? Henry couldn't remember. Couldn't for the life of him. He was clearly not being his own best friend.
Still cackling, fresh tears gushing out of his eyes, he thumbed the button and the back window popped open. Henry yanked it wider and looked in. Guns, thank God. Army carbines like the kind that Owen had taken on his last patrol. Henry grabbed one and examined it. Safety, check. Fire-selection switch, check. Clip marked U.S. ARMY 5.56 CAL 120 RNDS, check.
"So simple even a byrum can do it," Henry said, and laughed some more. He bent over, holding his stomach and slipping around in the slop, trying not to fall again. His legs ached, his back ached, his heart ached most of all . . . and still he laughed. He was the eggman, he was the eggman, he was the laughing hyena.
He walked around to the driver's side of Kurtz's Humvee, gun raised (safety in what he devoutly hoped was the OFF position), spooky music playing in his head, but still laughing. There was the gasoline hatch; no mistaking that. But where was Gamera, The Terror from Beyond Space?
As if it had heard his thought--and, Henry realized, that was perfectly likely--the weasel smashed headfirst against the rear window. The one that was, thankfully, unbroken. Its head was smeared with blood, hair, and bits of flesh. Its dreadful sea-grape eyes stared into Hen
ry's. Did it know it had a way out, an escape hatch? Perhaps. And perhaps it understood that using it would likely mean a quick death.
It bared its teeth.
Henry Devlin, who had once won the American Psychiatric Association's Compassionate Caring Award for a New York Times op-ed piece called "The End of Hate," bared his own in return. It felt good. Then he gave it the finger. For Beaver. And for Pete. That felt good, too.
When he raised the carbine, the weasel--stupid, perhaps, but not utterly stupid--dove out of sight. That was cool; Henry had never had the slightest intention of trying to shoot it through the window. He did like the idea of it down there on the floor, though. Close to the gas as you want to get, darling, he thought. He thumbed the carbine's selector-switch to full auto and fired a long burst into the gas tank.
The sound of the gun was deafening. A huge ragged hole appeared where the gasoline port had been, but for a moment there was nothing else. So much for the Hollywood version of how shit like this works, Henry thought, and then heard a hoarse whisper of sound, rising to a throaty hiss. He took two steps backward and his feet shot out from under him again. This time falling quite likely saved his eyesight and perhaps his life. The back of Kurtz's Humvee exploded only a second later, fire lashing out from underneath in big yellow petals. The rear tires jumped out of the snow. Glass sprayed through the snowy air, all of it going over Henry's head. Then the heat began to bake him and he crawled away rapidly, dragging the carbine by its strap and laughing wildly. There was a second explosion and the air was filled with whirling hooks of shrapnel.
Henry got to his feet like a man climbing a ladder, using the lower branches of a handy tree as rungs. He stood, panting and laughing, legs aching, back aching, neck with an odd sprung feeling. The entire back half of Kurtz's Humvee was engulfed in flames. He could hear the thing inside, chittering furiously as it burned.
He made a wide circle to the passenger side of the blazing Humvee and aimed the carbine at the broken window. He stood there for a moment, frowning, then realized why this seemed so stupid. All the windows in the Humvee were broken now; all the glass but the windshield. He began to laugh again. What a dork he was! What a total dork!
Through the hell of flames in the Humvee's cabin, he could still see the weasel lurching back and forth like a drunk. How many rounds did he have left in the clip if the fucking thing did come out? Fifty? Twenty? Five? However many rounds there were, it would have to be enough. He wouldn't risk retreating to Owen's Humvee for another clip.
But the thing never came out.
Henry stood guard for five minutes, then stretched it to ten. The snow fell and the Humvee burned, pouring black smoke into the white sky. Henry stood there thinking of the Derry Days Parade, Gary U.S. Bonds singing "New Orleans," and here comes a tall man on stilts, here comes the legendary cowboy, and how excited Duddits had been, jumping right up and down. Thinking of Pete, standing outside DJHS, hands cupped, pretending to smoke, waiting for the rest of them. Pete, whose plan had been to captain NASA's first manned Mars expedition. Thinking of Beaver and his Fonzie jacket, Beav and his toothpicks, Beav singing to Duddits, Baby's boat's a silver dream. Beav hugging Jonesy at Jonesy's wedding and saying Jonesy had to be happy, he had to be happy for all of them.
Jonesy.
When Henry was absolutely sure the weasel was dead--incinerated--he started up the path to see if Jonesy was still alive. He didn't hold out much hope of that . . . but he discovered he hadn't given up hope, either.
33
Only pain pinned Jonesy to the world, and at first he thought the haggard, sooty-cheeked man kneeling beside him had to be a dream, or a final figment of his imagination. Because the man appeared to be Henry.
"Jonesy? Hey, Jonesy, are you there?" Henry snapped his fingers in front of Jonesy's eyes. "Earth to Jonesy."
"Henry, is it you? Is it really?"
"It's me," Henry said. He glanced at the dog still partly stuck into the crack at the top of Shaft 12, then back at Jonesy. He brushed Jonesy's sweat-soaked hair off his forehead with infinite tenderness.
"Man, it took you . . ." Jonesy began, and then the world wavered. He closed his eyes, concentrated hard, then opened them again. ". . . took you long enough to get back from the store. Did you remember the bread?"
"Yeah, but I lost the hot dogs."
"What a fuckin pisser." Jonesy took a long and wavering breath. "I'll go myself, next time."
"Kiss my bender, pal," Henry said, and Jonesy slipped into darkness smiling.
EPILOGUE
LABOR DAY
The universe, she is a bitch.
NORMAN MACLEAN
Another summer down the tubes, Henry thought.
There was nothing sad about the thought, though; summer had been good, and fall would be good, too. No hunting this year, and there would undoubtedly be the occasional visit from his new military friends (his new military friends wanted to be sure above all things that he wasn't growing any red foliage on his skin), but fall would be good just the same. Cool air, bright days, long nights.
Sometimes, in the post-midnight hours of his nights, Henry's old friend still came to visit, but when it did, he simply sat up in his study with a book in his lap and waited for it to go again. Eventually it always did. Eventually the sun always came up. The sleep you didn't get one night sometimes came to you on the next, and then it came like a lover. This was something he'd learned since last November.
He was drinking a beer on the porch of Jonesy and Carla's cottage in Ware, the one on the shore of Pepper Pond. The south end of the Quabbin Reservoir was about four miles northwest of where he sat. And East Street, of course.
The hand holding the can of Coors only had three fingers. He'd lost the two on the end to frostbite, perhaps while skiing out the Deep Cut Road from Hole in the Wall, perhaps while dragging Jonesy back to the remaining Humvee on a lashed-together travois. Last fall had been his season to drag people through the snow, it seemed, and with mixed results.
Near the little scrape of beach, Carla Jones was tending a barbecue. Noel, the baby, was toddling around the picnic table to her left, diaper sagging. He was waving a charred hot dog cheerily in one hand. The other three Jones kids, ranging in ages from eleven to three, were in the water, splashing around and yelling at each other. Henry supposed there might be some value to that Biblical imperative about being fruitful and multiplying, but it seemed to him that Jonesy and Carla had taken it to absurd lengths.
Behind him, the screen door clapped. Jonesy came out, carrying a bucket filled with iced beers. His limp wasn't all that bad; this time the doc had just said fuck the original equipment and had replaced the whole thing with steel and Teflon. It would have come to that, anyway, the doc had told Jonesy, but if you'd been a little more careful, Chief, you could've gotten another five years out of the old one. He'd had the operation in February, shortly after Henry and Jonesy's six-week "vacation" with the military intelligence and PsyOps people had ended.
The military folks had offered to throw in the hip replacement courtesy of Uncle Sam--sort of a coda to their debriefing--but Jonesy had refused with thanks, saying he wouldn't want to deprive his own orthopedist of the work, or his insurance company of the bill.
By then, all the two of them had wanted was to get out of Wyoming. The apartments were nice (if you could get used to living underground, that was), the food was four-star (Jonesy put on ten pounds, Henry close to twenty), and the movies were always first-run. The atmosphere, however, was just a teensy bit on the Dr. Strangelove side. For Henry, those six weeks had been infinitely worse than they had been for Jonesy. Jonesy suffered, but mostly with his derailed hip; his memories of sharing a body with Mr. Gray had faded to the consistency of dreams in a remarkably short space of time.
Henry's memories, on the other hand, had only grown stronger. Those of the barn were the worst. The debriefers had been compassionate, not a Kurtz in the bunch, but Henry couldn't block his thoughts of Bill and Marsha and Darren
Chiles, Mr. Bomber-Joint-from-Newton. They often came to visit in his dreams.
So did Owen Underhill.
"Reinforcements," Jonesy said, setting the bucket of beer down. He then lowered himself into the sagging cane-bottomed rocker beside Henry with a grunt and a grimace.
"One more and I'm done," Henry said. "I'm driving back to Portland in an hour or so, and an OUI I don't need."
"Stay the night," Jonesy said, watching Noel. The baby had plumped down on the grass beneath the picnic table and now seemed intent upon inserting the remains of his hot dog into his navel.
"With your kids squabbling their way toward midnight and maybe beyond?" Henry asked. "Getting my pick of Mario Bava horror movies?"
"I've pretty well signed off the fright flicks," Jonesy said. "We're having a Kevin Costner festival tonight, starting with The Bodyguard."
"I thought you said no horror movies."
"Smartass." Then he shrugged, grinned. "Whatever you feel."
Henry raised his beer can. "Here's to absent friends."
Jonesy raised his own. "Absent friends."
They clinked cans and drank.
"How's Roberta?" Jonesy asked.
Henry smiled. "Doing very well. I had my doubts at the funeral . . ."
Jonesy nodded. At Duddits's funeral they had flanked her, and that had been a good thing, because Roberta had hardly been able to stand on her own.
". . . but now she's coming on strong. Talking about opening a craft shop. I think it's a good idea. Of course she misses him. After Alfie died, Duds was her life."
"He was ours, too," Jonesy said.
"Yes. I suppose he was."
"I feel so bad about the way we left him on his own all those years. I mean, he had leukemia and we didn't even fucking know."
"Sure we knew," Henry said.
Jonesy looked at him, eyebrows raised.
"Hey, Henry!" Carla called. "How do you want your burger?"