Стивен Кинг - Desperation

“You crazy shit,” he whispered. He snuffled back half—congealed blood, spat a jellied wad of it onto the cruiser’s paper-littered floor, and looked down at the telephone again.

On the row of buttons at the bottom, second from the right, was one which read NAME/MENU. Steve had pro-grammed this function for him just before they had set out. Johnny punched the button, and his agent’s first name appeared in the window: BILL. Pushed it again and TERRY appeared. Pushed it again and JACK appeared—Jack Appleton, his editor at FS&G. Dear God, why had he put all these people ahead of Steve Ames. Steve was his lifeline.

Down on the desert floor three hundred yards away, the insane cop had taken off the helmet and was kicking sand over Johnny’s ‘86 Harley drag. At this distance he looked 2 like a kid pulling a tantrum. That was fine. If he intended to cover the whole thing, Johnny would have plenty of time to make his call… if the phone cooperated, that was.

The ROAM light was flashing, and that was a good sign, but the second transmission-bar was still flickering “Come on, come on,” Johnny said to the cellular phone in his shaking, blood-grimy hands. “Please, sweetheart okay. Please.” He punched the NAME/MENU button again and STEVE appeared. He dropped his thumb onto the SEND button and squeezed it.

Then he held the phone to his ear bending over even farther to the right and peering out of the bottom of the window as he did so. The cop was still kicking sand over the Harley’s engine-block.

The phone began to ring in Johnny’s ear, but he knew he wasn’t home free yet. He had tapped into the Roamer network, that was all. He was still a step away from Steve Ames.

A long step.

“Come on, come on, come on A drop of sweat ran into his eye. He used a knuckle to wipe it away.

The phone stopped ringing. There was a click. “Wel-come to the Western Roaming Network!” a cheery robot voice said. “Your call is being routed! Thank you for your patience and have a nice day!”

“Never mind the seventies shit, just hurry the fuck up,” Johnny whispered.

Silence from the phone. In the desert, the cop stepped back from the bike, looking at it as if trying to decide if he had done enough in the way of camouflage. In the dirty paper—choked back seat of the cruiser, Johnny Marinville began to cry. He couldn’t help it. In a bizarre way it was like wetting his pants again, only upside down. “No,” he whispered.

“No, not yet, you’re not done yet, not with the wind blowing like it is, you better do a little more, please do a little more.”

The cop stood there looking down at the bike, his shadow now seeming to stretch out across half a mile of desert, and Johnny peered at him through the bottom of the window with his clotted hair in his eyes and the phone mashed against his right ear. He let out a long, shaky sigh of relief as the cop stepped forward and began to kick sand again, this time spraying it over the Harley’s handlebars.

In his ear the telephone began to ring, and this time the sound was scratchy and distant. If the signal was going through—and the quality of this ring seemed to indicate that it was—another Motorola telephone, this one on the dashboard of a Ryder truck somewhere between fifty and two hundred and fifty miles east of John Edward Mar-inville’s current position, was now ringing.

Down in the desert, the cop went on kicking and kicking, burying the handlebars of Johnny’s scoot.

Two rings… three rings… four.

He had one more, two at the most, before another robot voice came on the line and told him that the customer he was calling was either out of range or had left the vehicle.

Johnny, still crying, closed his eyes. In the throbbing, red—tinged darkness behind his lids he saw the Ryder truck parked in front of a roadside gas station/general store just west of the Utah—Nevada state line. Steve was inside, buying a pack of his damned cigars and goofing with the counter girl, while outside, on the Ryder’s dashboard, the cellular phone—Steve’s half of the corn-link Johnny’s agent had insisted upon—rang in the empty cab.

Five rings…

And then, distant, almost lost in static but sounding like the voice of an angel bent down from heaven all the same, he heard Steve’s flat West Texas drawl: “Hello… you boss.”

An eastbound semi blew by outside, rocking the cruiser in its backwash. Johnny barely noticed, and made no attempt to flag the driver. He probably wouldn’t have done even if his attention hadn’t been focused on the tele-phone and Steve’s tenuous voice. The rig was doing sev-enty at least. What the hell was the driver going to see in the two-tenths of a second it would take him to pass the parked cruiser, especially through the thick dust matted on the windows.

He drew in breath through his nose and hawked back blood, ignoring the pain, wanting to clear his voice as much as he could.

“Steve! Steve, I’m in trouble. I’m in bad trouble!”

There was a heavy crackle of static in his ear and — he was sure he’d lost Steve, but when it cleared he heard: up, boss. Say again!”

“Steve, it’s Johnny! Do you hear me.”

“Hear you… What’s…” Another crackle. It almost completely buried the next word, but Johnny thought it might have been “trouble.” I hear you, what’s the trouble2 God, let that not just he wishful thinking. Please God The cop had stopped kicking sand again. He stepped away for another critical look at his handiwork, then turned and began to plod back toward the road, head down, hatbrim shading his face, hands plunged deep into his pockets. And then, with a sense of mounting horror Johnny realized he had no idea what to tell Steve. All his attention had been focused on making the call, ramming it through by sheer willpower, if that was what it took.

Now what.

He had no clear idea of where he was, only that—“I’m west of Ely on Highway 50,” he said. More sweat ran into his eyes, stinging. “I’m not sure how far west forty miles at least, probably more. There’s an RV pulled off the road a little farther up from me.

There’s a cop not a state cop, a townie, I think, but I don’t know which town… I didn’t see it on the door… I don’t even know his name…” He was talking faster and faster as the cop got closer and closer; soon he would be babbling.

Take it easy, he’s still a hundred yards away, you ‘ye got plenty of time. For the love of God, just do what comes naturally—do what they pay you for, do what you’ve been doing all your life. Communicate, for Christ’s sake!

But he had never had to do it for his life. To make money, to be known in the right circles, to occasionally raise his voice in the roar of the brave old lion, yes, all those things, but never for his literal life. And if the cop looked up out of his head-down plod and saw him… he was crouched down but the phone’s antenna was sticking up, of course, it had to be sticking up…

“He took my bike, Steve. He took my bike and drove it out into the desert. He covered it up with sand, but the way the wind’s blowing… it’s out in the desert a mile or so east of the RV I told you about and north of the road. You might see it, if the sun’s still up.”

He swallowed.

“Call the cops—the state cops. Tell them I’ve been grabbed by a cop who’s blond and huge—I mean, this guy’s a fucking giant. Have you got that.”

Nothing from the phone but windy silence with an occasional burst of static knifing through it.

“Steve! Steve, are you there.”

No. He wasn’t.

There was only one transmission-bar showing in the phone’s display window now, and no one was there. He had lost the connection, and he’d been concentrating so hard on what he was saying that he had no idea when it had happened, or how much Steve might have heard.