Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

"Judas jump to hellfire, boy, we're in dangerous territory here! Don't just stand there till you're growed over with clockface an' cow's-tongue! Let's go, let's go!"

Curtis stopped at the desk only because Gabby stopped there first, and he realizes that the caretaker is shouting at him merely to distract his attention from the incident with the romance novel.

As he follows Gabby across the room to another door, however, Curtis wonders what sort of plants clockface and cow's-tongue might be and whether in this territory they really grow so fast that you could be completely overtaken by them if you stand too still even for a few seconds. He wonders, too, whether these are carnivorous plants that not only cocoon you, but then also feed on you while you're still alive.

The sooner he gets out of Utah, the better.

Beyond the first office lies a second and larger office. The four doors leading from this space suggest additional rooms beyond.

Gimping like a dog with two short legs on the left side, Gabby leads Old Yeller and Curtis to the farthest door, snares a set of keys off a pegboard, and proceeds into a garage with bays for four vehicles. Three spaces are empty, and an SUV waits in the fourth, facing toward the roll-up door: a white Mercury Mountaineer.

As Curtis hurries around to the passenger's side, Gabby pulls open the driver's door and says, "That dog, she broke?"

"She fixed, sir."

"Say what?"

"Say fixed, sir," says Curtis as he frantically jerks open the front door on the passenger's side.

Levering himself in behind the steering wheel, Gabby shouts at him, "Tarnation, I ain't havin' no biscuit-eater pissin' in my new Mercury!"

"All we had was frankfurters, sir, and then some orange juice," Curtis replies reassuringly as, not without difficulty, he clambers into the passenger's seat with the dog in his arms.

"Spinnin' syphilitic sheep! What for you bringin' her in the front seat, boy?"

"What for shouldn't I, sir?"

As he pushes a button on a remote-control unit to put up the garage door, and starts the engine, the caretaker says, "Iffen God made little fishes, then passengers what has a tail ought to load up through the tailgate!"

Pulling shut the passenger's door, Curtis says, "God made little fishes, sure enough, sir, but I don't see what one has to do with the other."

"You got about as much common sense as a bucket. Better hold tight to your mongrel 'less you want she should wind up bug-spattered on the wrong side of the windshield."

Old Yeller perches in Curtis's lap, facing front, and he locks his arms around the dog to hold her in place.

"We gonna burn the wind haulin' ass outta here!" Gabby loudly declares as he shifts the Mountaineer out of park.

Curtis takes this to be a warning against the likelihood that they're going to experience flatulence, but he can't imagine why that will happen.

Gabby tramps on the accelerator, and the Mountaineer shoots out of the garage, under the still-rising door.

First pinned back in his seat, then jammed against the door when the caretaker turns west-southwest almost sharply enough to roll the SUV Curtis remembers the applicable law and raises his voice over the racing engine: "Law says we have to wear seat belts, sir!"

Even in the weak light from the instrument panel, the boy can see Gabby's face darken as though someone from the gov'ment were throttling him at this very moment, and the old man proves that he can rant and drive at the same time. "Whole passel of politicians between 'em ain't got a brain worth bug dust! No scaly-assed, wart-necked, fly-eatin', toad-brained politician an' no twelve-toed, fat-assed, pointy-headed bureaucrat ain't goin' to tell me iffen I got to wear a seat belt nor iffen I don't got to wear one, as far as that goes! Iffen I want to stand on these brakes an' bust through the windshield with my face, damn if I won't, an' no one can tell me I ain't got the right! Next thing them power-crazy bastards be tellin' us the law says wear a jockstrap when you drive!"

While the caretaker continues in this vein, Curtis turns in his seat as best he can, still holding on to Old Yeller, and looks back, to the east and north, toward the embattled ghost town. It's a light show back there, violent enough to make even Wyatt Earp hide in the church. When the shootout ends, whatever historical society oversees this site is going to be hard-pressed to restore the town from the splinters, bent nails, and ashes that will be left.

He remains amazed that the FBI is aware of him and of the forces pursuing him, that they have intervened in this matter, and that they actually think they have a chance of locating him and taking him into protective custody before his enemies can find and destroy him. They must know how outgunned they are, but they've plunged in nonetheless. He can't help but admire their kick-butt attitude and their courage, even though they would eventually subject him to experiments if they had custody of him long enough.

Gabby can drive even faster than he can talk. They are rocketing across the salt flats.

To avoid drawing unwanted attention, they're traveling without headlights.

Failure to employ headlights between dusk and dawn is against the law, of course, but he decides that to broach this subject with Gabby would qualify as poor socializing. Besides, Curtis has, after all, broken the law himself more than once during his flight for freedom, though he's not proud of his criminality.

The clouded sky casts down no light whatsoever, but the natural fluorescence of the land ensures that they aren't driving blind, and fortunately Gabby is familiar with this territory. He avoids whatever roads might cross this desolate valley and stays on the open land, so there's no risk of turning a bend and ramming head-on into innocent motorists, with all the unfortunate physical and moral consequences that would ensue.

The salt flats glow white, and the Mercury Mountaineer is white, so the vehicle shouldn't be easily visible from a distance. The tires spin up a white plume behind them, but this is a wispy telltale, not a thick billowing cloud, and it quickly settles.

If FBI agents or the worse scalawags are using motion- detection gear to sweep the flats either from a point atop the valley crest or from an aerial platform, then Gabby might as well not just turn on the headlights but fire off flares, as well, because this white-on-white strategy won't be clever enough to save them from being turned into buzzard grub like the man who had come tumbling in flaming ruin between the buildings.

"… hogtie 'em with one of their aggravatin' seat belts, douse 'em with some bacon grease, throw 'em in a root cellar with maybe ten thousand half-starved STINK BUGS, an' just see how all-fired safe the God-mockin' bastards feel then!" Gabby concludes.

Seizing this opportunity to change the subject, Curtis says, "Speakin' of stink, sir, I ain't farted, and I don't think I'm goin' to, neither."

Though he doesn't reduce their speed and might even accelerate a little, the old caretaker shifts his attention away from the salt flats hurtling towards them. He fixes Curtis with a look of such open-mouthed bewilderment that for a moment it prevents him from talking.

But only for a moment, whereafter he smacks his lips together and gets his tongue working again: "Judas humpin' hacksaws in Hell! Boy, what the blazes did you just say an' why'd you say it?"

Disconcerted that his well-meaning attempt at small talk has excited something like outrage from the caretaker, Curtis says, "Sir, no offense meant, but you're the one who first said about burnin' the wind and haulin' ass."

"Here's that spit-in-the-eye-malefactor side of you what ain't a pretty thing to see."

"No offense, sir, but you did say it, and I was just observin' that I ain't farted, like you expected, and you ain't neither, and neither ain't my dog."