Dreamcatcher (79 page)

His problem could be best summed up with how he felt about Jonesy . . . and of course that he felt at all was bad enough. He could think
Now Jonesy is cut off and I have solved my problem; I have quarantined him just as their military tried to quarantine us. I am being followed—chased, in fact—but barring engine trouble or a flat tire, neither group of followers has much chance of catching me. I have too great a lead.

These things were facts—truth—but they had no savor. What had savor was the idea of going to the door behind which his reluctant host was imprisoned and yelling:
“I fixed you, didn't I? I fixed your little red wagon, didn't I?”
What a wagon, red or otherwise, had to do with any of this Mr. Gray didn't know, but it was an emotional bullet of fairly high caliber from Jonesy's
armory—it had a deep and satisfying childhood resonance. And then he would stick Jonesy's tongue (
my tongue now,
Mr. Gray thought with undeniable satisfaction) between Jonesy's lips and “give him the old raspberry.”

As for the followers, he wanted to drop Jonesy's pants and show them Jonesy's buttocks. This was as senseless as
What goes around comes around,
as senseless as
little red wagon,
but he wanted to do it. It was called “mooning the assholes” and he wanted to do it.

He was, Mr. Gray realized, infected with this world's byrus. It began with emotion, progressed to sensory awareness (the taste of food, the undeniable savage pleasure of making the State Trooper beat his head in against the tiled bathroom wall—the hollow
thud-thud
of it), and then progressed to what Jonesy called
higher thinking.
This was a joke, in Mr. Gray's view, not much different from calling shit reprocessed food or genocide ethnic cleansing. And yet
thinking
had its attractions for a being which had always existed as part of a vegetative mind, a sort of highly intelligent not-consciousness.

Before Mr. Gray had shut him up, Jonesy had suggested that he give over his mission and simply enjoy being human. Now he discovered that desire in himself as his previously harmonious mind, his
not-conscious
mind, began to fragment, to turn into a crowd of opposing voices, some wanting A, some wanting B, some wanting Q squared and divided by Z. He would have thought such babble would be horrible, the stuff of madness. Instead he found himself enjoying the wrangle.

There was bacon. There was “sex with Carla,” which Jonesy's mind identified as a superlatively enjoyable act, involving both sensory and emotional input. There was fast driving and bumper pool in O'Leary's Bar near Fenway Park and beer and live bands that played loud and Patty Loveless singing “Blame it on your lyin cheatin cold deadbeatin two-timin double-dealin mean mistreatin lovin heart” (whatever
that
meant). There was the look of the land rising from the fog on a summer morning. And murder, of course. There was that.

His problem was that if he didn't finish this business quickly, he might never finish it at all. He was no longer byrum but Mr. Gray. How long before he left Mr. Gray behind and became Jonesy?

It's not going to happen,
he thought. He pressed the accelerator down, and although it didn't have much, the Subaru gave him a little more. In the back seat the dog yipped . . . then howled in pain. Mr. Gray sent out his mind and touched the byrum growing inside the dog. It was growing fast. Almost too fast. And here was something else—there was no pleasure in meeting its mind, none of the warmth that comes when like encounters like. The mind of the byrum felt cold . . . rancid . . .

“Alien,”
he muttered.

Nevertheless, he quieted it. When the dog went into the water supply, the byrum should still be inside. It would need time to adapt. The dog would drown, but the byrum would live yet awhile, feeding on the dog's dead body, until it was time. But first he had to get there.

It wouldn't be long now.

As he drove west on I-90, past little towns (
shitsplats,
Jonesy thought them, but not without affection) like Westborough, Grafton, and Dorothy Pond (getting closer now, maybe forty miles to go), he looked for a place to put his new and uneasy consciousness where it wouldn't get him in trouble. He tried Jonesy's kids, then backed away—far too emotional. Tried Duddits again, but that was still a blank; Jonesy had stolen the memories. Finally he settled on Jonesy's work, which was teaching history, and his specialty, which was grue-somely fascinating. Between 1860 and 1865, it seemed, America had split in two, as byrus colonies did near the end of each growth cycle. There had been all sorts of causes, the chief of which had to do with “slavery,” but again, this was like calling shit or vomit reprocessed food. “Slavery” meant nothing. “Right of secession” meant nothing. “Preserving the Union” meant nothing. Basically, they had just done what these creatures did best: they “got mad,” which was really the same thing as “going mad” but more socially acceptable. Oh, but on such a scale!

Mr. Gray was investigating boxes and boxes of fascinating weaponry—grapeshot, chainshot, minié balls, cannonballs, bayonets, landmines—when a voice intruded.

bacon

He pushed the thought aside, although Jonesy's stomach gurgled. He'd
like
some bacon, yes, bacon was fleshy and greasy and slippery and satisfying in a primitive, physical way, but this was not the time.
Perhaps after he'd gotten rid of the dog. Then, if he had time before the others caught up, he could eat himself to death if he so chose. But this was not the time. As he passed Exit 10—only two to go, now—he turned his mind back to the Civil War, to blue men and gray men running through the smoke, screaming and stabbing each other in the guts, fixing little red wagons without number, pounding the stocks of their rifles into the skulls of their enemies, producing those intoxicating
thud-thud
sounds, and—

bacon

His stomach gurgled again. Saliva squirted into Jonesy's mouth and he remembered Dysart's, the brown and crispy strips on the blue plate, you picked it up with your fingers, the texture was hard, the texture of dead and tasty flesh—

Can't think of this.

A horn honked irritably, making Mr. Gray jump, making Lad whine. He had wandered into the wrong lane, what Jonesy's mind identified as “the passing lane,” and he pulled over to let one of the big trucks, going faster than the Subaru could go, sweep by. It splashed the small car's windshield with muddy water, momentarily blinding him, and Mr. Gray thought
Catch you kill you beat the brains out of your head you unsafe johnny reb of a driver you, thud-thud, fix your wagon your little red

bacon sandwich

That one was like a gunshot in his head. He fought it but the strength of it was something entirely new.
Could that be Jonesy? Surely not, Jonesy wasn't that strong. But suddenly he seemed all stomach, and the stomach was hollow, hurting, craving. Surely he could stop long enough to assuage it. If he didn't he was apt to drive right off the

bacon sandwich!
with mayo!

Mr. Gray let out an inarticulate cry, unaware that he'd begun to drool helplessly.

18

“I hear him,” Henry said suddenly. He put his fists to his temples, as if to contain a headache. “Christ, it hurts. He's so
hungry.
”

“Who?” Owen asked. They had just crossed the state line into Massachusetts. In front of the car, the rain fell in silver, wind-slanted lines. “The dog? Jonesy? Who?”

“Him,”
Henry said. “Mr. Gray.” He looked at Owen, a sudden wild hope in his eye. “I think he's pulling over.
I think he's stopping.
”

19

“Boss.”

Kurtz was on the verge of dozing again when Perlmutter turned—not without effort—and spoke to him.
They had just gone through the New Hampshire tolls, Freddy Johnson being careful to use the automated exact-change lane (he was afraid a human toll-taker might notice the stench in the Humvee's cabin, the broken window in back, the weaponry . . . or all three).

Kurtz looked into Archie Perlmutter's sweat-streaked, haggard face with interest. With fascination, even. The colorless bean-counting bureaucrat, he of the briefcase on station and clipboard in the field, hair always neatly combed and parted ruler-straight on the left? The man who could not for the life of him train himself out of using the word
sir
? That man was gone. Thin though it was, he thought Pearly's countenance had somehow richened.
He's turning into Ma Joad,
Kurtz thought, and almost giggled.

“Boss, I'm still thirsty.” Pearly cast longing eyes on Kurtz's Pepsi, then blew out another hideous fart.
Ma Joad on trumpet in hell
Kurtz thought and this time he
did
giggle. Freddy cursed, but not with his former shocked disgust; now he sounded resigned, almost bored.

“I'm afraid this is mine, buck,” Kurtz said. “And I'm a wee parched myself.”

Perlmutter began to speak, then winced as a fresh pain struck him. He farted again, the sound thinner this time, not a trumpet but an untalented child blowing over a piccolo. His eyes narrowed, became crafty. “Give me a drink and I'll tell you something you want to know.” A pause. “Something you
need
to know.”

Kurtz considered. Rain slapped the side of the car and came in through the busted window. The goddamned
window was a pain in the ass, praise Jesus, the arm of his jacket was soaked right through, but he would have to bear up. Who was responsible, after all?

“You
are,” Pearly said, and Kurtz jumped. The mind-reading thing was just so
spooky.
You thought you were getting used to it and then realized that no, negative, you were not. “
You're
responsible. So give me a fucking drink.
Boss.
”

“Watch your mouth, cheeseboy,” Freddy rumbled.

“Tell me what you know and you can have the rest of this.” Kurtz raised the Pepsi bottle, waggling it in front of Pearly's tortured gaze. Kurtz was not without humorous self-loathing as he did this. Once he had commanded whole units and had used them to alter entire geopolitical landscapes. Now his command was two men and a soft drink. He had fallen low.
Pride
had brought him low, praise God. He had the pride of Satan, and if it was a fault, it was a hard one to give up. Pride was the belt you could use to hold up your pants even after your pants were gone.

“Do you promise?” Pearly's red-fuzzed tongue came out and licked at his parched lips.

“If I'm lyin I'm dyin,” Kurtz said solemnly. “Hell, buck, read my fucking mind!”

Pearly studied him for a moment and Kurtz could almost feel the man's creepy little fingers (mats of red stuff now growing under each nail) in his head. An awful sensation, but he bore it.

At last Perlmutter seemed satisfied. He nodded.

“I'm getting more now,” he said, and then his voice lowered to a confidential, horrified whisper. “It's eating
me, you know. It's eating my guts. I can feel it.”

Kurtz patted him on the arm. Just now they were passing a sign which read
WELCOME TO MASSACHUSETTS
. “I'm going to take care of you, laddie-buck; I promised, didn't I? Meantime, tell me what you're getting.”

“Mr. Gray is stopping. He's hungry.”

Kurtz had left his hand on Perlmutter's arm. Now he tightened his grip, turning his fingernails into talons. “Where?”

“Close to where he's going. It's a store.” In a chanting, childish voice that made Kurtz's skin crawl, Archie Perlmutter said: “ ‘Best bait, why wait? Best bait, why wait?' ” Then, resuming a more normal tone: “Jonesy knows Henry and Owen and Duddits are coming. That's why he made Mr. Gray stop.”

The idea of Owen's catching Jonesy/Mr. Gray filled Kurtz with panic. “Archie, listen to me carefully.”

“I'm thirsty,” Perlmutter whined. “I'm
thirsty,
you son of a bitch.”

Kurtz held the Pepsi bottle up in front of Perlmutter's eyes, then slapped away Perlmutter's hand when Pearly reached for it.

“Do Henry, Owen, and Dud-Duts know Jonesy and Mr. Gray have stopped?”

“Dud-
dits,
you old fool!” Perlmutter snarled, then groaned with pain and clutched at his stomach, which was on the rise again. “
Dits, dits,
Dud-
dits
! Yes, they know! Duddits helped make Mr. Gray hungry! He and Jonesy did it together!”

“I don't like this,” Freddy said.

Join the club,
Kurtz thought.

“Please, boss,” Pearly said. “I'm so thirsty.”

Kurtz gave him the bottle, watched with a jaundiced eye as Perlmutter drained it.

“495, boss,” Freddy announced. “What do I do?”

“Take it,” Perlmutter said. “Then 90 west.” He burped. It was loud but blessedly odorless. “
It
wants another Pepsi. It likes the sugar. Also the caffeine.”

Kurtz pondered. Owen knew their quarry had stopped, at least temporarily. Now Owen and Henry would sprint, trying to make up as much of that ninety- to a hundred-minute lag as they could. Consequently, they must sprint, as well.

Any cops who got in their way would have to die, God bless them. One way or the other, this was coming to a head.

“Freddy.”

“Boss.”

“Pedal to the metal. Make this bitch strut, God love you. Make her strut.”

Freddy Johnson did as ordered.

20

There was no barn, no corral, no paddock, and instead of
OUT-OF-STATE LICS
the sign in the window showed a photograph of the Quabbin Reservoir over the legend
BEST BAIT, WHY WAIT
?, but otherwise the little store could have been Gosselin's all over again: same ratty siding, same mud-brown shingles, same crooked chimney
dribbling smoke into the rainy sky, same rusty gas-pump out front. Another sign leaned against the pump, this one reading
NO GAS BLAME THE RAGHEADS.