Dreamcatcher (76 page)

“Pearly.”

“For one,” Henry agreed. “Others with the byrus in its active stage, too. Mostly behind us.”

“Jonesy? Your friend Jonesy? Or Gray?”

Henry shook his head. “But
Pearly
hears something.”

“Pearly—? How can
he
—”

“He's got more mental range than I do right now, because of the byrum—”

“The what?”

“The thing that's up his ass,” Henry said. “The shit-weasel.”

“Oh.” Owen felt momentarily sick to his stomach.

“What he hears doesn't seem to be human. I don't think it's Mr. Gray, but I suppose it might be. Whatever it is, he's homing on it.”

They drove in silence for awhile. The traffic was moderately heavy and some of the drivers were wild (they passed the Explorer just south of Augusta, ditched and apparently abandoned with its load of luggage spread around it), but Owen counted himself lucky. The storm had kept plenty of folks off the road, he guessed. They might decide to flee now that the storm had stopped, but he and Owen had gotten ahead of the worst of the wave. In many ways, the storm had been their friend.

“I want you to know something,” Owen said finally.

“You don't need to say it. You're sitting right next to me—short range—and I'm still getting some of your thoughts.”

What Owen was thinking was that he would pull
the Humvee over and get out, if he thought the pursuit would end once Kurtz had him. Owen did not, in fact, believe that. Owen Underhill was Kurtz's prime objective, but he understood that Owen wouldn't have committed such a monstrous act of treason had he not been coerced into it. No, he'd put a bullet in Owen's head, and then continue on. With Owen, Henry had at least some chance. Without him, he'd likely be a dead duck. And Duddits too.

“We stay together,” Henry said. “Friends to the end, as the saying goes.”

And, from the back seat: “Otsum urk ooo do now.”

“That's right, Duds.” Henry reached back and briefly squeezed Duddits's cold hand. “Got some work to do now.”

4

Ten minutes later, Duddits came fully to life, pointing them into the first turnpike rest area below Augusta. They were almost to Lewiston now, in fact. “Ine!
Ine!
” he shouted, then began to cough again.

“Take it easy, Duddits,” Henry said.

“They probably stopped for coffee and a Danish.” Owen said. “Or maybe a bacon sandwich.”

But Duddits directed them around back, to the employees' parking lot. Here they stopped, and Duddits got out. He stood quiet and muttering for a moment or so, looking frail under the cloudy sky and seemingly buffeted by every gust of wind.

“Henry,” Owen said, “I don't know what bee he's
got in his bonnet, but if Kurtz is really close—”

But then Duddits nodded, got back in the Hummer, and pointed toward the exit sign. He looked more tired than ever, but he also looked satisfied.

“What in God's name was
that
all about?” Owen asked, mystified.

“I think he switched cars,” Henry said. “Is that what he did, Duddits? Did he switch cars?”

Duddits nodded emphatically. “
Tole!
Tole! a car!”

“He'll be moving faster now,” Henry said. “You've got to step it up, Owen. Never mind Kurtz—we've got to catch Mr. Gray.”

Owen looked over at Henry . . . then looked again. “What's wrong with you? You've come over all pale.”

“I've been very stupid—I should have known what the bastard was up to from the first. My only excuses are being tired and scared, and none of that will matter if . . . Owen, you
have
to catch him. He's headed for western Massachusetts, and you have to catch him before he can get there.”

Now they were running in slush, and the going was messy but far less dangerous. Owen walked the Hummer up to sixty-five, all he dared for now.

“I'll try,” he said. “But unless he has an accident or a breakdown . . .” Owen shook his head slowly back and forth. “I don't think so, pal. I really don't.”

5

This was a dream he'd had often as a child (when his name had been Coonts), but only once or twice since
the squirts and sweats of adolescence. In it, he was running through a field under a harvest moon and afraid to look behind him because it was after him,
it.
He ran as hard as he could but of course that wasn't good enough, in dreams your best never is. Then it was close enough for him to hear its dry breathing, and to smell its peculiar dry smell.

He came to the shore of a great still lake, although there had never been any lakes in the dry and miserable Kansas town of his childhood, and although it was very beautiful (the moon burned in its depths like a lamp), it terrified him because it blocked his way and he could not swim.

He fell on his knees at the shore of the lake—in that way this dream was exactly like those childhood dreams—but instead of seeing the reflection of
it
in the still water, the terrible scarecrow man with his stuffed burlap head and pudgy blue-gloved hands, this time he saw Owen Underhill, his face covered with splotches. In the moonlight, the byrus looked like great black moles, spongy and shapeless.

As a child he had always wakened at this point (often with his stiff wang wagging, although why such an awful dream would give a kid a stiffy God alone knew), but this time the
it
—Owen—actually
touched
him, the reflected eyes in the water reproachful. Maybe questioning.

Because you disobeyed orders, buck! Because you crossed the line!

He raised his hand to ward Owen off, to remove
that hand . . . and saw his own hand in the moon-glow. It was
gray.

No,
he told himself,
that's just the moonlight
.

Only three fingers, though—was
that
the moonlight?

Owen's hand on him, touching him, passing on his filthy disease . . . and still daring to call him

6

boss. Wake up, boss!”

Kurtz opened his eyes and sat up with a grunt, simultaneously pushing Freddy's hand away. On his knee instead of his shoulder, Freddy reaching back from his place behind the wheel and shaking his knee, but still intolerable.

“I'm awake, I'm awake.” He held his own hands up in front of his face to prove it. Not baby-pink, they were a long way from that, but they weren't gray and each had the requisite five fingers.

“What time is it, Freddy?”

“Don't know, boss—still morning's all I can say for sure.”

Of course. Clocks all fucked up. Even his pocket-watch had run down. As much a victim of modern times as anyone else, he had forgotten to wind it. To Kurtz, whose time sense had always been at least fairly sharp, it felt like about nine, which would mean he'd gotten about two hours of shuteye. Not much, but he didn't need much. He felt better. Well enough, certainly, to hear the concern in Freddy's voice.

“What's up, bucko?”

“Pearly says he's lost contact with all of them now. He says Owen was the last, and now he's gone, too. He says Owen must have beat back the Ripley fungus, sir.”

Kurtz caught sight of Perlmutter's sunken, I-fooled-you grin in the wide rearview mirror.

“What's the deal, Archie?”

“No deal,” Pearly said, sounding considerably more lucid than before Kurtz's nap. “I . . . boss, I
could
use a drink of water. I'm not hungry, but—”

“We could stop for water, I guess,” Kurtz allowed. “If we had a contact, that is. But if we've lost
all
of them—this guy Jones as well as Owen and Devlin—well, you know how I am, buck. I'll bite when I die, and it'll take two surgeons and a shotgun to get me to let go even then. You're going to have a long and thirsty day sitting there while Freddy and I course the southbound roads, looking for a trace of them . . . unless you can help out. You do that, Archie, and I'll order Freddy to pull off at the next exit. I will personally trot into the Stop n Go or Seven-Eleven and buy you the biggest bottle of Poland Spring water in the cooler. How does that sound?”

It sounded good, Kurtz could tell that just by the way Perlmutter first smacked his lips and then ran his tongue out to wet them (on Perlmutter's lips and cheeks the Ripley was still full and rich, most patches the color of strawberries, some as dark as burgundy wine), but that sly look had come back. His eyes, rimmed with crusts of Ripley, darted from side to side.
And all at once Kurtz understood the picture he was looking at. Pearly had gone crazy, God love him. Perhaps it took one to know one.

“I told him the God's truth. I'm out of touch with all of them now.” But then Archie laid his finger alongside his nose and looked slyly up into the mirror again.

“We catch them, I think there's a good chance we can get you cured up, laddie.” Kurtz said this in his driest just-making-my-report voice. “Now which of them are you still in touch with? Jonesy? Or is it the new one? Duddits?” What Kurtz actually said was “Dud-Duts.”

“Not him. None of
them.
” But still the finger by the nose, still the sly look.

“Tell me and you get water,” Kurtz said. “Continue to yank my crank, soldier, and I will put a bullet in you and roll you out into the snow. Now you go on and read my mind and tell me that's not so.”

Pearly looked at him sulkily in the rearview a moment longer and then said, “Jonesy and Mr. Gray are still on the turnpike. They're down around Portland, now. Jonesy told Mr. Gray how to go around the city on 295. Only it isn't like telling. Mr. Gray is in his head, and when he wants something, I think he just takes it.”

Kurtz listened to this with mounting awe, all the time calculating.

“There's a dog,” Pearly said. “They have a dog with them. His name is Lad. He's the one I'm in contact with. He's . . . like me.” His eyes met Kurtz's
again in the mirror, only this time the slyness was gone. In its place was a miserable half-sanity. “Do you think there's really a chance I could be . . . you know . . . myself again?”

Knowing that Perlmutter could see into his mind made Kurtz proceed cautiously. “I think there's a chance you could be delivered of your burden, at least. With a doctor in attendance who understands the situation? Yes, I think that could be. A big whiff of chloro, and when you wake up . . . poof.” Kurtz kissed the ends of his fingers, then turned to Freddy. “If they're in Portland, what's their lead on us?”

“Maybe seventy miles, boss.”

“Then step it up a little, praise Jesus. Don't put us in the ditch, but step it up.” Seventy miles. And if Owen and Devlin and “Dud-Duts” knew what Archie Perlmutter knew, they were still on track.

“Let me get this straight, Archie. Mr. Gray is in Jonesy—”

“Yes—”

“And they have a dog with them that can read their minds?”

“The dog hears their thoughts, but he doesn't understand them. He's still only a dog. Boss, I'm thirsty.”

He's listening to the dog like it's a fucking radio,
Kurtz marvelled.

“Freddy, next exit. Drinks all around.” He resented having to make a pit-stop—resented losing even a couple of miles on Owen—but he needed Perlmutter. Happy, if possible.

Up ahead was the rest area where Mr. Gray had traded his plow for the cook's Subaru, where Owen and Henry had also briefly pulled in because the line went in there. The parking lot was crammed, but among the three of them they had enough change for the vending machines out front.

Praise God.

7

Whatever the triumphs and failures of the so-called “Florida Presidency” (that record is in large part still unwritten), there will always be this: he put an end to the Space Scare with his speech that November morning.

There were differing views on why the speech worked (“It wasn't leadership, it was timing,” one critic sniffed), but it
did
work. Hungry for hard information, people who were already on the run pulled off the highway to see the President speak. Appliance stores in malls filled up with crowds of silent, staring people. At the food-fuel stops along I-95, the counters shut down. TVs were placed beside the quiet cash-registers. Bars filled up. In many places, people threw their homes open to others who wanted to watch the speech. They could have listened on their car radios (as Jonesy and Mr. Gray did) and kept on trucking, but only a minority did. Most people wanted to see the leader's face. According to the President's detractors, the speech did nothing but break the momentum of the panic—“Porky Pig could have given a speech at
that particular time and gotten that particular result,” one of them opined. Another took a different view. “It was a pivotal moment in the crisis,” this fellow said. “There were maybe six thousand people on the road. If the President had said the wrong thing, there would have been sixty thousand by two in the afternoon and maybe six hundred thousand by the time the wave hit New York—the biggest wave of DPs since the Dust Bowl. The American people, especially those in New England, came to their narrowly elected leader for help . . . for comfort and reassurance. He responded with what may have been the greatest my fellow-Americans speech of all time. Simple as that.”

Simple or not, sociology or great leadership, the speech was about what Owen and Henry had expected . . . and Kurtz could have predicted every word and turn. At the center were two simple ideas, both presented as absolute facts and both calculated to soothe the terror which beat that morning in the ordinarily complacent American breast. The first idea was that, while they had not come waving olive branches and handing out free introductory gifts, the newcomers had evinced absolutely no signs of aggressive or hostile behavior. The second was that, while they had brought some sort of virus with them, it had been contained within the Jefferson Tract (the President pointed it out on a Chroma-Key green-screen as adeptly as any weatherman pointing out a low-pressure system). And even there it was dying, with absolutely no help from the scientists and military experts who were on the scene.