Stephen King - Dreamcatcher

“I’ll be back,” he said. He leaned over and massaged his knee. Stiff, but not too bad. Really not too bad. He’d just put the beer in a bag-maybe a box of Hi Ho crackers for the bitch while he was at it-and be right back. “You sure you’re okay?”

Nothing. Just the eye.

“Silence gives consent,” he repeated, and began walking back up the Deep Cut Road, following the wide drag-mark of the tarpaulin and their almost-filled-in tracks. He walked in little hitches, pausing to rest every ten or twelve steps… and to massage his knee. He stopped once to look back at the fire. It already looked small and insubstantial in the gray early afternoon light. “This is fuckin crazy,” he said once, but he kept on going.

He got to the end of the straight stretch all right, and halfway up the hill all right. He was just starting to walk a little faster, to trust the knee a little when-ha-ha, asshole, fooled ya-it locked again, turning to something that felt like pig-iron, and he went down, yelling squeezed curses through his clenched teeth.

It was as he sat there cursing in the snow that he realized something very odd was going on out here. A large buck went walking past him on the left, with no more than a quick glance at the human from which it would have fled in great, springy bounds on any other day. Running along almost under its feet was a red squirrel.

Pete sat there in the lessening snow-huge flakes falling in a shifting wave that looked like lace-with his leg stuck out in front of him and his mouth open. There were more deer coming along the road, other animals, too, walking and hopping like refugees fleeing some disaster. There were even more of them in the woods, a wave moving east.

“Where you guys going?” he asked a snowshoe rabbit that went lolloping past him with its ears laid along its back. “Big coverall game at the rez? Casting call for a new Disney cartoon? Got a-”

He broke off, the spit in his mouth drying up to something that felt like an electric mist. A black bear, fat with its pre-hibernation stuffing, was ambling through the screen of thin second-growth trees to his left. It went with its head down and its rump switching from side to side, and although it never spared Pete so much as a look, Pete’s illusions about his place here in the big north woods were for the first time entirely stripped away. He was nothing but a heap of tasty white meat that happened to still be breathing. Without his rifle, he was more defenseless than the squirrel he’d seen scurrying around the buck’s feet-if noticed by a bear, the squirrel could at least run up the nearest tree, all the way to the thin top branches where no bear could possibly follow. The fact that this bear never so much as looked at him didn’t make Pete feel much better. Where there was one, there would be more, and the next one might not be so preoccupied.

Once he was sure the bear was gone, Pete struggled to his feet again, his heart hammering. He had left that foolish farting woman back there alone, but really, how much protection would he have been able to provide if a bear decided to attack? The thing was, he had to get his rifle. Henry’s too, if he could carry it. For the next five minutes-until he got to the top of the hill-Pete thought about firepower first and beer second. By the time he began his cautious descent on the other side, however, he was back to beer. Put it in a bag and hang the bag over his shoulder. And no stopping to drink one on the way back. He’d have one when he was sitting in front of the campfire again. It would be a reward beer, and there was nothing better than a reward beer.

You’re an alcoholic. You know that, don’t you? Fucking alcoholic.

Yes, and what did that mean? That you couldn’t fuck up.

Couldn’t get caught leaving a semi-comatose woman alone in the woods, let’s say, while you went off in search of the suds. And once he got back to the shelter, he had to remember to toss his empties deep into the woods. Although Henry might know anyway. The way they always seemed to know stuff about each other when they were together. And mental link or no mental link, you had to get up pretty goddam early in the morning to put one over on Henry Devlin.

Yet Pete thought Henry would probably let him alone about the beer. Unless, that was, Pete decided the time had come to talk about it. To maybe ask Henry for help. Which Pete might do, in time. Certainly he didn’t like the way he felt about himself right now; leaving that woman alone back there said something about Peter Moore that wasn’t so nice. But Henry… there was something wrong with Henry, too, this November. Pete didn’t know if Beaver felt it, but he was pretty sure Jonesy did. Henry was kind of tucked up. He was maybe even-

From behind him there came a wet grunt. Pete screamed and whirled around. His knee locked up again, locked up savagely, but in his fright he barely noticed. It was the bear, the bear had circled back behind him, that bear or another one-

It wasn’t a bear. It was a moose, and it walked past Pete with no more than a glance as he fell into the road again, cursing low in his throat and holding his leg, looking up into the lightly falling snow and cursing himself for a fool. An alcoholic fool.

He had a frightening few moments when it seemed that this time the knee wasn’t going to let go-he’d torn something in it and here he would lie in the exodus of animals until Henry finally returned on the snowmobile, and Henry would say What the fuck are you doing here? Why did you leave her alone? As if I didn’t know.

But at last he was able to get up again. The best he could do was a gimpy sidesaddle hobble, but it was better than lying in the snow a couple of yards from a fresh pile of steaming moose shit. He could now see the overturned Scout, its wheels and undercarriage covered with fresh snow. He told himself that if his latest fall had happened on the other side of the hill, he would have gone back to the woman and the fire, but that now, with the Scout actually in sight, it was better to go on. That the guns were his main objective, the bottles of Bud just an extra added attraction. And almost believed it. As far as getting back… well, he would make it somehow. He’d gotten this far, hadn’t he?

Fifty yards or so from the Scout, he heard a rapidly approaching whup-whup-whup- the unmistakable sound of a helicopter. He looked skyward eagerly, preparing himself to stand upright long enough to wave-God, if anyone needed a little help from the sky, it was him-but the helicopter never quite broke through the low ceiling. For a moment he saw a dark shape running through the dreck almost directly above him, the bleary flash of its lights, as well-and then the sound of the copter was moving off to the east, in the direction the animals were running. He was dismayed to feel a nasty sense of relief lurking just below his disappointment: if the helicopter had landed, he never would’ve gotten to the beer, and he had come all this way, all this damn way.

Five minutes later he was down on his knees and climbing carefully into the overturned Scout. He quickly learned that his bad knee wouldn’t support him for long (it was swelled against his jeans now like a big painful loaf of bread), and more or less swam into the snow-coated interior. He didn’t like it; all the smells seemed too strong, all the dimensions too close. It was almost like crawling into a grave, one that smelled of Henry’s cologne.

The groceries were sprayed all over the back, but Pete barely gave the bread and cans and mustard and the package of red hot dogs (red dogs were about all Old Man Gosselin carried for meat) a glance. It was the beer he was interested in, and it looked like only one bottle had broken when the Scout turned turtle. Drunk’s luck. The smell was strong-of course the one he’d been drinking from had spilled as well-but beer was a smell he liked. Henry’s cologne, on the other hand… phew, Jesus. In a way it was as bad as the smell of the crazy lady’s gas. And he didn’t know why the smell of cologne should make him think of coffins and graves and funeral flowers, but it did.