King Stephen - Mile 81

She had listened carefully when McGruff the Crime Dog came to talk to them at school (although she knew perfectly well it was only a guy in a McGruff suit), and she did not hesitate now. She punched in 911 and put the phone to her ear. It rang once, then was picked up.

“Hello? My name is Rachel Ann Lussier, and—”

“This call is being recorded,” a man’s voice overrode her. “If you wish to report an emergency, push one. If you wish to report adverse road conditions, push two. If you wish to report a stranded motorist—”

“Rache? Rachie? Where Mommy? Where Da—”

“ Shhh !” Rachel said sternly, and pushed 1. It was hard to do. Her hand was trembling and her eyes were all blurry. She realized she was crying. When had she started crying? She couldn’t remember.

“Hello, this is nine-one-one,” a woman said.

“Are you real or another recording?” Rachel asked.

“I’m real,” the woman said, sounding a little amused. “Do you have an emergency?”

“Yes. A bad car ate up our mother and our daddy. It’s at the—”

“Quit while you’re ahead,” the 911 woman advised. She sounded more amused than ever. “How old are you, kiddo?”

“I’m six and a half. My name is Rachel Ann Lussier, and a car, a bad car—”

“Listen, Rachel Ann or whoever you are, I can trace this call. Did you know that? I bet you didn’t. Now just hang up and I won’t have to send a policeman to your house to paddle your—”

“ They’re dead, you stupid phone person !” Rachel shouted into the phone, and at the d-word, Blakie began to cry again.

The 911 woman didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, in a voice no longer amused: “Where are you, Rachel Ann?”

“At the empty restaurant! The one with the orange barrels!”

Blakie sat down and put his arms over his face. That hurt Rachel in a way she had never been hurt before. It hurt her deep in her heart.

“That’s not enough information,” the 911 lady said. “Can you be a little more specific, Rachel Ann?”

Rachel didn’t know what specific meant, but she knew what she was seeing: the back tire of the station wagon, the one closest to them, was melting a little. A tentacle of what looked like liquid rubber was moving slowly across the pavement toward Blakie.

“I have to go,” Rachel said. “We have to get away from the bad car.”

She dragged Blake to his feet, staring at the melting tire. The tentacle of rubber started to go back where it had come from ( because it knows we’re out of reach , she thought), and the tire started to look like a tire again, but that wasn’t good enough for Rachel. She kept dragging Blake down the ramp and toward the turnpike.

“Where we goin, Rachie?”

I don’t know .

“Away from that car.”

“I want my Transformers!”

“Not now, later.” She kept a tight hold on Blake and kept backing, down toward the turnpike where the occasional traffic was whizzing by at seventy and eighty miles an hour.

Nothing is as piercing as a child’s scream; it’s one of nature’s more efficient survival mechanisms. Pete Simmons’s sleep had already thinned to little more than a doze, and when Rachel screamed at the 911 lady, he heard it and finally woke up all the way.

He sat up, winced, and put a hand to his head. It ached, and he knew what that sort of ache was: the dreaded HANGOVER. His tongue tasted furry, and his stomach was blick. Not I’m-gonna-hurl blick, but blick, just the same.

Thank God I didn’t drink any more , he thought, and got to his feet. He went to one of the mesh-covered windows to see who was yelling. He didn’t like what he saw. Some of the orange barrels blocking the entrance ramp to the rest area had been knocked over, and there were cars down there. Quite a few of them.

Then he saw a couple of kids—a little girl in pink pants and a little boy wearing shorts and a tee-shirt. He caught just a glimpse of them, enough to tell that they were backing away—as if something had scared them—and then they disappeared behind what looked to Pete like a horse-trailer.

Something was wrong. There had been an accident or something, although nothing down there looked like an accident. His first impulse was to get away from here in a hurry, before he got caught up in whatever had happened. He grabbed his saddlebag and started toward the kitchen and the loading dock beyond. Then he stopped. There were kids out there. Little kids. Way too little to be close to a fast road like I-95 on their own, and he hadn’t seen any adults.

Gotta be grownups, didn’t you see all those cars?

Yes, he’d seen the cars, and a truck hooked up to a horse-trailer, but no grownups.

I have to go out there. Even if I get in trouble, I have to make sure those stupid kids don’t get smeared all over the turnpike .

Pete hurried to the Burger King’s front door, found it locked, and asked himself what would have been Normie Therriault’s question: Hey afterbirth, did your mother have any kids that lived ?

Pete turned and pelted for the loading dock. Running made his headache worse, but he ignored it. He placed his saddlebag at the edge of the concrete platform, lowered himself, and dropped. He landed stupid, banged his tailbone, and ignored that, too. He got up, and flashed a longing look toward the woods. He could just disappear. Doing so might save him oh so much grief down the line. The idea was miserably tempting. This wasn’t like the movies, where the good guy always made the right decision without thinking. If somebody smelled vodka on his breath—

“Jesus,” he said. “Oh, Jesus-jumped-up-Rice-Krispies- Christ .”

Why had he ever come here?

Holding Blakie firmly by the hand, Rachel walked him all the way to the end of the ramp. Just as they got there, a double-box semi blasted by at seventy-five miles an hour. The wind blew their hair back, rippled their clothes, and almost knocked Blakie over.

“ Rachie, I’m scared! We’re not supposed to go in the road !”

Tell me something I don’t know , Rachel thought.

At home they weren’t supposed to go any farther than the end of the driveway, and there was hardly any traffic on Beeman Lane in Falmouth. The traffic on the turnpike was far from constant, but the cars that did come along were going superfast. Besides, where was there to go? They might be able to walk in the breakdown lane, but it would be horribly risky. And there were no exits here, only woods. They could go back to the restaurant, but they would have to walk past the bad car if they did.

A red sports car swept past, the guy behind the wheel blaring his horn in a constant WAAAAAAAA that made her want to cover her ears.

Blake was tugging her, and Rachel let herself be tugged. At one side of the ramp were guardrail posts. Blakie sat down on one of the thick cables running between them and covered his eyes with his chubby hands. Rachel sat next to him. She didn’t know what else to do.

A child’s scream may be one of Mother Nature’s more efficient survival mechanisms, but one of mankind’s—at least when it comes to automotive traffic on roads with high speed limits—is the parked State Police cruiser, especially if the black bulb of the radar detector is facing the oncoming traffic. Drivers doing seventy ease back to sixty-five; drivers doing eighty step on the brake and begin mentally figuring out how many points they’ll lose off their licenses if the blue lights go on behind them. (It’s a salutary effect that wears off quickly; ten or fifteen miles farther up or down the line, the stampeders are once again stampeding.)