Stephen King - Dreamcatcher

Got to do the smart thing, he thought. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.

“Be a good boy and just go the way he’s pointing you,” Kurtz said. “In fact, I want you to give him a wave and a big thumb’s-up when you take the ramp. Then keep moving south and get back on the turnpike at your earliest opportunity.” He sighed. “Lord love a duck.” He leaned forward, close enough to Freddy to see the whitening fuzz of Ripley in his right ear. He whispered, ardent as a lover, “And if you ditch us, laddie-buck, I’ll put a round in the back of your neck.” Kurtz touched the place where the soft nape joined the hard skull. “Right here.”

Freddy’s wooden-Indian face didn’t change. “Yes, boss.” Next, Kurtz had gripped the now-nearl-comatose Perlmutter by the shoulder and had shaken him until Pearly’s eyes at last fluttered open.

“Lea” me “lone, boss. Need to sleep.”

Kurtz placed the muzzle of his nine-millimeter against the back of his former aide’s head. “Nope. Rise and shine, buck. Time for a little debriefing.”

Pearly had groaned, but he had also sat up. When he opened his mouth to say something, a tooth had tumbled out onto the front of his parka. The tooth had looked perfect to Kurtz. Look, Ma, no cavities.

Pearly said that Owen and his new buddy were still stopped, still in Derry. Very good. Yummy. Not so good fifteen minutes later, as Freddy sent the Humvee trudging down another snow-covered entrance ramp and back onto the turnpike. This was Exit 28, only one interchange away from their target, but a miss was as good as a mile.

“They’re on the move again,” Perlmutter said. He sounded weak and washed out.

“Goddammit!” He was full of rage-sick and useless rage at Owen Underhill, who now symbolized (at least to Abe Kurtz) the whole sorry, busted operation.

Pearly uttered a deep groan, a sound of utter, hollow despair. His stomach had begun to rise again. He was clutching it, his cheeks wet with perspiration. His normally unremarkable face had become almost handsome in his pain.

Now he let another long and ghastly fart, a passage of wind which seemed to go on and on. The sound of it made Kurtz think of gadgets they’d constructed at summer camp a thousand or so years ago, noisemakers that consisted of tin cans and lengths of waxed string. Bullroarers, they’d called them.

The stench that filled the Humvee was the smell of the red cancer growing in Pearly’s sewage-treatment plant, first feeding on his wastes, then getting to the good stuff. Pretty horrible. Still, there was an upside. Freddy was getting better and Kurtz had never caught the damned Ripley in the first place (perhaps he was immune; in any case, he had taken off the mask and tossed it indifferently in back fifteen minutes ago). And Pearly, although undoubtedly ill, was also valuable, a man with a really good radar jammed up his ass. So Kurtz patted Perlmutter on the shoulder, ignoring the stench. Sooner or later the thing inside him would get out, and that would likely mean an end to Pearly’s usefulness, but Kurtz wouldn’t worry about that until he had to.

“Hold on,” Kurtz said tenderly. “Just tell it to go back to sleep again.”

“You… fucking… idiot!” Perlmutter gasped.

“That’s right,” Kurtz agreed. “Whatever you say, buck.” After all, he was a fucking idiot. Owen had turned out to be a cowardly coyote, and who had put him in the damn henhouse?

They were passing Exit 27 now. Kurtz looked up the ramp and fancied he could almost see the tracks of the Hummer Owen was driving. Somewhere up there, on one side of the overpass or the other, was the house to which Owen and his new friend had made their inexplicable detour. Why?

“They stopped to get Duddits,” Perlmutter said. His belly was going down again and the worst of his pain seemed to have passed. For now, at least. “Duddits? What kind of name is that?” “I don’t know. I’m picking this up from his mother. Him I can’t see. He’s different, boss. It’s almost as if he’s a grayboy instead of human.” Kurtz felt his back prickle at that.

“The mother thinks of this guy Duddits as both a boy and a man,” Pearly said. This was the most unprompted communication from him Kurtz had gotten since they’d left Gosselin’s. Perlmutter sounded almost interested, by God.

“Maybe he’s retarded,” Freddy said. Perlmutter glanced over at Freddy. That could be. Whatever he is, he’s sick.” Pearly sighed. “I know how he feels.”

Kurtz patted Perlmutter’s shoulder again. “Chin up, laddie. What about the fellows they’re after? This Gary Jones and the supposed Mr Gray?” He didn’t much care, but there was the possibility that the course and progress of Jones-and Gray, if Gray existed outside of Owen Underhill’s fevered imagination-would impact upon the course and progress of Underhill, Devlin, and… Duddits?

Perlmutter shook his head, then closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat again. His little spate of energy and interest seemed to have passed. “Nothing,” he said. “Blocked off.”

“Maybe not there at all?”

“Oh, something’s there,” Perlmutter said. “It’s like a black hole.” Dreamily, he said: “I hear so many voices. They’re already sending in the reinforcements…”

As if Perlmutter had conjured it, the biggest convoy Kurtz had seen in twenty years appeared in the northbound lanes of 1-95. First came two enormous plows, as big as elephants, running side by side with their clifflike blades spurning up snow on either side, baring both lanes all the way down to the pavement. Behind them, a pair of sand-trucks, also running in tandem. And behind the sand-trucks, a double line of Army vehicles and heavy ordnance. Kurtz saw shrouded shapes on flatbed haulers and knew they could only be missiles. Other flatbeds held radar dishes, range-finders, God knew what else. Interspersed among them were big canvasback troop-carriers, their headlamps glaring in the brightening daylight. Not hundreds of men but thousands, prepared for God knew what World War Three, hand-to-hand combat with two-headed creatures or maybe the intelligent bugs from Starship Troopers, plague, madness, death, doomsday. If any of Katie Gallagher’s Imperial Valleys were still operating up there, Kurtz hoped they would soon cease what they were doing and head for Canada. Raising their hands in the air and calling out Il n'y a pas d'infection ici wouldn’t do them any good, certainly; that ploy had already been tried. And it was all so meaningless. In his heart of hearts, Kurtz knew Owen had been right about at least one thing: it was over up there. They could shut the barn door, praise God, but the horse had been stolen.

“They’re going to close it down for good,” Perlmutter said. “The Jefferson Tract just became the fifty-first state. And it’s a police state.”

“You can still key on Owen?”

“Yes,” Perlmutter said absently. “But not for long. He’s getting better, too. Losing the telepathy.”

“Where is he, buck?”

“They just passed Exit 25. They might have fifteen miles on us. Not much more.”

“Want me to punch it a little?” Freddy asked.

They had lost their chance to head Owen off because of the goddam semi. The last thing in the world Kurtz wanted was to lose another chance by skidding off the road.

“Negative,” Kurtz said. “For the time being, I think we’ll just lay back and let em run.” He crossed his arms and looked out at the linen-white world passing by. But now the snow had stopped, and as they continued south, road conditions would doubtless improve.

It had been an eventful twenty-four hours. He had blown up an alien spacecraft, been betrayed by the man he had regarded as his logical successor, had survived a mutiny and a civilian riot, and to top it all off, he had been relieved of his command by a sunshine soldier who had never heard a shot fired in anger. Kurtz’s eyes slipped shut. After a few moments, he dozed.