Desperation

  "All right," it told the cougar. "Go on, now. Wait until it's time. I'll listen with you."

  The cougar made its whining, mewing sound again, licked with its rough tongue at the hand of the thing wearing Ellen Carver's body, then turned and padded out of the room.

  It resumed the chair and leaned back in it. It closed Ellen's eyes and listened to the ceaseless rattle of sand against the windows, and let part of itself go with the animal.

  CHAPTER 2

  1

  "You had some downtime coming, you saddled up, and you went camping," Steve said. "What then?"

  "I spent four days in the Coppers. Fishing, taking pictures--photography's what I do for fun. Great days. Then, three nights ago, I came back. Went right to my house, which is north of town."

  "What brought you back?" Steve asked. "It wasn't bad weather on the way, was it?"

  "No. I had my little radio with me, and all I heard was fair and hot."

  "All I heard, too," Steve said. "This shit's a total mystery."

  "I had a meeting scheduled with Allen Symes, the company comptroller, to summarize the switchover from rainbirds to heads and emitters. He was flying in from Arizona. I was supposed to meet him at Hernando's Hideaway at nine o'clock, the morning before last. That's what we'd taken to calling the lab and the offices out there on the edge of town. Anyway, that's why I'm wearing this damned dress, because of the meeting and because Frank Geller told me that Symes doesn't--didn't--like women in jeans. I know everything was okay when I got back from my camping trip, because that's when Frank called me and told me to wear a dress to the meeting. That night, around seven."

  "Who's Frank Geller?" Steve asked.

  "Chief mining engineer," Billingsley said. "In charge of reopening the China Pit. At least he was." He gave Audrey a questioning look.

  She nodded. "Yes. He's dead."

  "Three nights ago," Marinville mused. "Everything in Desperation was peachy three nights ago, at least as far as you know."

  "'That's right. But the next time I saw Frank, he was hung up on a hook. And one of his hands was gone."

  "We saw him," Cynthia said, and shivered. "We saw his hand, too. At the bottom of an aquarium."

  "Before all that, during the night, I woke up at least twice. The first time I thought it was thunder, but the second time it sounded like gunshots. I decided I'd been dreaming and went back to sleep, but that must be around the time he ... got started. Then, when I got to the mining office ..."

  At first, she said, she hadn't sensed anything wrong--certainly not from the fact that Brad Josephson wasn't at his desk. Brad never was, if he could help it. So she had gone out back to Hernando's Hideaway, and there she had seen what Steve and Cynthia would come along and see themselves not long after--bodies on hooks. Apparently everyone who had come in that morning. One of them, dressed in a string tie and dress boots that would have tickled a country-and-western singer, had been Allen Symes. He had come all the way from Phoenix to die in Desperation.

  "If what you say is right," she said to Steve, "Entragian must've gotten more of the mining people later on. I didn't count--I was too scared to even think of counting them--but there couldn't have been more than seven when I was there. I froze. I might even have blacked out for a little while, I can't say for sure. Then I heard gunshots. No question what they were that time. And someone screaming. Then there were more gunshots and the screaming stopped."

  She went back to her car, not running--she said she was afraid that panic would take her over if she started running--and then drove into town. She intended to report what she'd found to Jim Reed. Or, if Jim was out on county business, as he often was, to one of his deputies, Entragian or Pearson.

  "I didn't run to the car and I didn't go speeding into town, but I was in shock, just the same. I remember feeling around in the glove compartment for my cigarettes, even though I haven't smoked in five years. Then I saw two people go running through the intersection. You know, under the blinker-light?"

  They nodded.

  "The town's new police-car came roaring through right after them. Entragian was driving it, but I didn't know that then. There were three or four gunshots, and the people he was chasing were thrown onto the sidewalk, one right by the grocery store, the other just past it. There was blood. A lot. He never slowed, just went on through the intersection, heading west; and pretty soon I heard more shots. I'm pretty sure I heard him yelling 'Yeehaw,' too.

  "I wanted to help the people he'd shot if I could. I drove up a little way, parked, and got out of my car. That's probably what saved my life, getting out of my car. Because everything that moved, Entragian killed it. Anyone. Anything. Everything. There were cars and trucks sitting dead in the street like toys, all zigzagged here and there, at least a dozen of them. There was an El Camino truck turned on its side up by the hardware store. Tommy Ortega's, I think. That truck was almost his girlfriend."

  "I didn't see anything like that," Johnny said. "The street was clear when he brought me in."

  "Yeah--the son of a bitch keeps his room picked up, you have to give him that. He didn't want anyone wandering into town and wondering what had happened, that's what I think. He hasn't done much more than sweep the mess under the rug, but it'll hold for awhile. Especially with this goddam storm."

  "Which wasn't forecast," Steve said thoughtfully.

  "Right, which wasn't forecast."

  "What happened then?" David asked.

  "I ran up to the people he shot. One of them was Evelyn Shoenstack, the lady who runs the Cut n Curl and works part-time in the library. She was dead with her brains all over the sidewalk."

  Mary winced. Audrey saw it and turned toward her.

  "That's something else you need to remember. If he can see you and he decides to shoot you, you're gone." She passed her eyes over the rest of them, apparently wanting to be sure they didn't think she was joking. Or exaggerating. "He's a dead shot. Accent on the dead."

  "We'll keep it in mind," Steve said.

  "The other one was a delivery guy. He was wearing a Tastykake uniform. Entragian got him in the head, too, but he was still alive." She spoke with a calm Johnny recognized. He had seen it in Vietnam, in the aftermath of half a dozen firefights. He'd seen it as a noncombatant, of course, notebook in one hand, pen in the other, Uher tape-recorder slung over his shoulder on a strap with a peace sign pinned to it. Watching and listening and taking notes and feeling like an outsider. Feeling jealous. The bitter thoughts which had crossed his mind then--eunuch in the harem, piano-player in the whorehouse--now struck him as insane.

  "The year I was twelve, my old man gave me a .22," Audrey Wyler said. "The first thing I did was to go outside our house in Sedalia and shoot a jay. When I went over to it, it was still alive, too. It was trembling all over, staring straight ahead, and its beak was opening and closing, very slowly. I've never in my whole life wanted so badly to take something back. I got down on my knees beside it and waited for it to be finished. It seemed that I owed it that much. It just went on trembling all over until it died. The Tastykake man was trembling like that. He was looking down the street past me, although there wasn't anybody there, and his forehead was covered with tiny beads of sweat. His head was all pushed out of shape, and there was white stuff on his shoulder. I had this crazy idea at first that it was Styrofoam poppers--you know, the packing stuff people put in the box when they mail something fragile?--and then I saw it was bone chips. From his, you know, his skull."

  "I don't want to hear any more of this," Ralph said abruptly.

  "I don't blame you," Johnny said, "but I think we need to know. Why don't you and your boy take a little walk around backstage? See what you can find."

  Ralph nodded, stood up, and took a step toward David.

  "No," David said. "We have to stay."

  Ralph looked at him uncertainly.

  David nodded. "I'm sorry, but we do," he said.

  Ralph stood where he was a moment longer, then sat down again.
>
  During this exchange, Johnny happened to look over at Audrey. She was staring at the boy with an expression that could have been fear or awe or both. As if she had never seen a creature quite like him. Then he thought of the crackers coming out of that bag like clowns out of the little car at the circus, and he wondered if any of them had ever seen a creature quite like David Carver. He thought of the transmission-bars, and Billingsley saying not even Houdini could have done it. Because of the head. They were concentrating on the buzzards and the spiders and the coyotes, on rats that jumped out of stacks of tires and houses that might be full of rattlesnakes; most of all they were concentrating on Entragian, who spoke in tongues and shot like Buffalo Bill. But what about David? Just what, exactly, was he?

  "Go on, Audrey," Cynthia said. "Only maybe you could, you know, drop back from R to PG-13." She lifted her chin in David's direction.

  Audrey looked at her vaguely for a moment, not seeming to understand. Then she gathered herself and continued.

  2

  "I Was kneeling there by the delivery guy, trying to think what I should do next--stay with him or run and call someone--when there were more screams and gunshots up on Cotton Street. Glass broke. There was a splintering sound--wood--and then a big clanging, banging sound--metal. The cruiser started to rev again. It seems like that's all I've heard for two days, that cruiser revving. He peeled out, and then I could hear him coming my way. I only had a second to think, but I don't guess I would have done anything different even if I'd had longer. I ran.

  "I wanted to get back to my car and drive away, but I didn't think there was time. I didn't think there was even time to get back around the comer and out of sight. So I went into the grocery store. Worrell's. Wendy Worrell was lying dead by the cash register. Her dad--he's the butcher as well as the owner--was sitting in the little office area, shot in the head. His shirt was off. He must have been just changing into his whites when it happened."

  "Hugh starts work early," Billingsley said. "Lots earlier than the rest of his family."

  "Oh, but Entragian keeps coming back and checking," Audrey said. Her voice was light, conversational, hysterical. "That's what makes him so dangerous. He keeps coming back and checking. He's crazy and he has no mercy, but he's also methodical."

  "He's one sick puppy, though," Johnny said. "When he brought me into town, he was on the verge of bleeding out, and that was six hours ago. If whatever's happening to him hasn't slowed down ..." He shrugged.

  "Don't let him trick you," she almost whispered.

  Johnny understood what she was suggesting, knew from what he had seen with his own eyes that it was impossible, knew also that telling her so would be a waste of breath.

  "Go on," Steve said. "What then?"

  "I tried to use the phone in Mr. Worrell's office. It was dead. I stayed in the back of the store for about a half an hour. The cruiser went by twice during that time, once on Main Street, then around the back, probably on Mesquite, or Cotton again. There were more gunshots. I went upstairs to where the Woffells live, thinking maybe the phone up there would still be live. It wasn't. Neither was Mrs. Worrell or the boy. Mert, I think his name was. She was in the kitchen with her head in the sink and her throat cut. He was still in bed. The blood was everywhere. I stood in his doorway, looking in at his posters of rock musicians and basketball players, and outside I could hear the cruiser going by again, fast, accelerating.

  "I went down the back way, but I didn't dare open the back door once I got there. I kept imagining him crouched down below the porch, waiting for me. I mean, I'd just heard him go by, but I still kept imagining him waiting for me.

  "I decided the best thing I could do was wait for dark. Then I could drive away. Maybe. You couldn't be sure. Because he was just so unpredictable. He wasn't always on Main Street and you couldn't always hear him and you'd start thinking well, maybe he's gone, headed for the hills, and then he'd be back, like a damn rabbit coming out of a magician's hat.

  "But I couldn't stay in the store. The sound of the flies was driving me crazy, for one thing, and it was hot. I don't usually mind the heat, you can't mind it if you live in central Nevada, but I kept thinking I smelled them. So I waited until I heard him shooting somewhere over by the town garage--that's on Dumont Street, about as far east as you can go before you run out of town--and then I left. Stepping out of the market and back onto the sidewalk was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. Like being a soldier and stepping out into no-man's-land. At first I couldn't move at all; I just froze right where I was. I remember thinking that I had to walk, I couldn't run because I'd panic if I did, but I had to walk. Except I couldn't. Couldn't. It was like being paralyzed. Then I heard him coming back. It was weird. As if he sensed me. Sensed someone, anyway, moving around while his back was turned. Like he was playing a new kind of kid's game, one where you got to murder the losers instead of just sending them back to the Prisoner's Base, or something. The engine ... it's so loud when it starts to rev. So powerful. So loud. Even when I'm not hearing it, I'm imagining I hear it. You know? It sounds kind of like a catamount getting f ... like a wildcat in heat. That's what I heard coming toward me, and still I couldn't move. I could only stand there and listen to it getting closer. I thought about the Tastykake man, how he was shivering like the jay I shot when I was a kid, and that finally got me going. I went into the laundrymat and threw myself down on the floor just as he went by. I heard more screaming north of town, but I don't know what that was about, because I couldn't look up. I couldn't get up. I must have lain there on that floor for almost twenty minutes, that's how bad I was. I can say I was way beyond scared by then, but I can't make you understand how weird it gets in your head when you're that way. I lay there on the floor, looking at dust-balls and mashed-up cigarette butts and thinking how you could tell this was a laundrymat even down at the level I was, because of the smell and because all of the butts had lipstick on them. I lay there and I couldn't have moved even if I'd heard him coming up the sidewalk. I would have lain there until he put the barrel of his gun on the side of my head and--"

  "Don't," Mary said, wincing. "Don't talk about it."

  "But I can't stop thinking about it!" she shouted, and something about that jagged on Johnny Marinville's ear as nothing else she'd said had. She made a visible effort to get herself under control, then went on. "What got me past that was the sound of people outside. I got up on my knees and crawled over to the door. I saw four people across the street, by the Owl's. Two were Mexican--the Escolla boy who works on the crusher up at the mine, and his girlfriend. I don't know her name, but she's got a blonde streak in her hair--natural, I'm almost sure--and she's awfully pretty. Was awfully pretty. There was another woman, quite heavy, I'd never seen her before. The man with her I've seen playing pool with you in Bud's, Tom. Flip somebody."

  "Flip Moran? You saw the Flipper?"

  She nodded. "They were working their way up the other side of the street, trying cars, looking for keys. I thought about mine, and how we could all go together. I started to get up. They were passing that little alley over there, the one between the storefront where the Italian restaurant used to be and The Broken Drum, and Entragian came roaring right out of the alley in his cruiser. Like he'd been waiting for them. Probably he was waiting for them. He hit them all, but I think your friend Flip was the only one killed outright. The others just went skidding off to one side, like bowling-pins when you miss a good hit. They kind of grabbed each other to keep from falling down. Then they ran. The Escolla boy had his arm around his girlfriend. She was crying and holding her arm against her breasts. It was broken. You could see it was, it looked like it had an extra joint in it above the elbow. The other woman had blood pouring down her face. When she heard Entragian coming after them--that big, powerful engine--she spun around and held her hands up like she was a crossing guard or something. He was driving with his right hand and leaning out the window like a locomotive engineer. He shot her twice before he hit her
with the car and ran her under. That was the first really good look I got at him, the first time I knew for sure who I was dealing with."

  She looked at them one by one, as if trying to measure the effect her words were having.

  "He was grinning. Grinning and laughing like a kid on his first visit to Disney World. Happy, you know? Happy."

  3

  Audrey had crouched there at the laundrymat door, watching Entragian chase the Escolla boy and his girl north on Main Street with the cruiser. He caught them and ran them down as he had the older woman--it was easy to get them both at once, she said, because the boy was trying to help the girl, the two of them were running together. When they were down, Entragian had stopped, backed up, backed slowly over them (there had been no wind then, Audrey told them, and she had heard the sound of their bones snapping very clearly), got out, walked over to them, knelt between them, put a bullet in the back of the girl's head, then took off the Escolla boy's hat, which had stayed on through everything, and put a bullet in the back of his head.

  "Then he put the hat back on him again," Audrey said. "If I live through this, that's one thing I'll never forget, no matter how long I live--how he took the boy's hat off to shoot him, then put it back on again. It was as if he was saying he understood how hard this was on them, and he wanted to be as considerate as possible."

  Entragian stood up, turned in a circle (reloading as he did), seeming to look everywhere at once. Audrey said he was wearing a big, goony smile. Johnny knew the kind she meant. He had seen it. In a crazy way it seemed to him he had seen all of this--in a dream, or another life.

  It's just dem old kozmic Vietnam blues again, he told himself. The way she described the cop reminded him of certain stoned troopers he had run with, and certain stories he had been told late at night--whispered tales from grunts who had seen guys, their own guys, do terrible, unspeakable things with that same look of immaculate good cheer on their faces. It's Vietnam, that's all, coming at you like an acid flashback. All you need now to complete the circle is a transistor radio sticking out of someone's pocket, playing "People Are Strange" or "Pictures of Matchstick Men. "