Стивен Кинг - Desperation

She walked with her hip brushing his, but when the next howl came, she didn’t squeeze his hand quite so hard—that one clearly was at some distance, and it wasn’t immediately repeated. They reached the truck. Cynthia got in on the passenger side, giving him one quick, ner vous smile over her shoulder as she hauled herself up Steve walked around the truck’s hood, realizing as he went that the sensation of being watched had slipped away.

He was still scared, but now it was primarily for the boss again—if John Edward Marinville was dead, the headlines would be worldwide, and Steven Ames would undoubtedly be part of the story. Not a good part. Steven Ames would be the fail-safe that failed, the safety net that hadn’t been there when Big Daddy finally fell off the trapeze.

“That feeling of being watched… probably it was the coyotes,” she said. “You think.”

“Maybe.”

“What now.” Cynthia asked.

He took a deep breath and reached for the cellular phone. “Time for the cops,” he said, and dialled 911.

What he heard in his ear was what he had pretty much expected: one of those cell-net recorded voices telling him it was sorry, but his call could not be completed at this time.

The boss had gotten through—briefly, anyway—but that had been a fluke. Steve snapped the mouthpiece closed with a savage flick of his wrist, threw the phone back onto the dash, and started the Ryder’s engine. He was dismayed to see that the desert floor had taken on a distinctly purplish cast. Shit.

They’d spent more time in the deserted RV and kneeling in front of the boss’s half-buried scoot than he had thought.

“No, huh.” She was looking at him sympathetically.

“No. Let’s find this town you mentioned. What was it.”

“Desperation. It’s east of here.”

He dropped the gearshift lever into Drive. “Navigate for me, will you.”

“Sure,” she said, and then touched his arm. “We’ll get help. Even in a town that small, there’s got to be at least one cop.

He drove up to the abandoned RV before turning east again, and saw the door was still flapping. Neither of them had thought to hatch it. He stopped the truck, ran the transmission up into Park, and opened his own door.

Cynthia grabbed his shoulder before he could swing more than one leg out. “Hey, where you going.” Not pan-icked, but not exactly serene, either.

“Easy, girl. Just give me a see.”

He got out and latched the door of the RV, which was something called a Wayfarer, according to the chrome on its flank. Then he came back to the idling Ryder truck.

“What are you, one of those type-A guys.” she asked.

“Not usually. I just didn’t like that thing bangin in the breeze.” He paused, one foot on the running board, looking up at her, thinking. Then he shrugged. “It was like looking at a shutter on a haunted house.

“Okay,” she said, and then more howls rose in the dis-tance—maybe south of them, maybe east, with the wind it was hard to tell, but this time it sounded like at least half a dozen voices. This time it sounded like a pack. Steve got up in the cab and slammed the door.

“Come on,” he said, pulling the transmission lever down into Drive again. “Let’s turn this rig around and find us some law.”

David Carver saw it while the woman in the blue shirt and faded jeans was finally giving up, huddling back against the bars of the drunk-tank and holding her fore arms protectively against her breasts as the cop pulled the desk away so he could get at her.

Don ‘t touch it, the white-haired man had said when the woman threw the shotgun down and it came clattering across the hardwood floor to bang off the bars of David s cell.

Don’t touch it, it’s empty, just leave it alone!

He had done what the man said, but he had seen some—thing else on the floor when he looked down at the shotgun: one of the shells that had fallen off the desk. It was lying on its side against the far lefthand vertical bar of his cell. Fat green shotgun shell, maybe one of a dozen that had gone rolling every whichway when the crazy cop had started battering the woman, Mary, with the desk and the chair in order to make her drop the gun.

The old guy was right, it would make no sense to go grabbing for the shotgun. Even if he could also get the shell, it would make no sense to do that. The cop was big—tall as a pro basketball player, broad as a pro foot ball player—and the cop was also fast. He’d be on David who had never held a real gun in his life, before David could even figure out what hole the shell went in. But if he should get a chance to pick up the shell… maybe… well, who knew.

“Can you walk.” the cop was asking the woman named Mary. His tone was grotesquely solicitous. “Is anything broken.”

“What difference does it make.” Her voice was trem-bling, but David thought it was rage making that tremble, not fear. “Kill me if you’re going to, get it over with.”

David glanced at the old guy who was in the cell with him, wanting to see if the old guy had also noticed the shell. So far as David could tell, he hadn’t, although he had finally gotten off the bunk and come to the cell bars.

Instead of yelling at the woman who had tried her very best to blow his head off, or maybe hurting her for it, the cop gave her a brief one-armed hug. A pal’s hug. In a way, David found this seemingly sincere little gesture of affection more unsettling than all the violence which had gone before it. “I’m not going to kill you, Mare!”

The cop looked around, as if to ask the remaining three Carvers and the white-haired guy if they could believe this crazy lady. His bright gray eyes met David’s blue ones, and the boy took an unplanned step back from the bars. He felt suddenly weak with horror. And vulnerable. How he could feel more vulnerable than he already was he didn’t know, but he did.

The cop’s eyes were empty—so empty that it was almost as if he were unconscious with them open. This made David think of his friend Brian, and his one memo-rable visit to Brian’s hospital room last November. But it wasn’t the same, because at the same time the cop’s eyes were empty, they weren’t. There was something there, yes, something, and David didn’t know what it was, or how it could be both something and nothing. He only knew he had never seen anything like it.

The cop looked back at the woman called Mary with an expression of exaggerated astonishment. “Gosh, no!” he said. “Not when things are just getting interesting.” He reached into his right front pocket, brought out a ring of keys, and selected one that hardly looked like a key at all—it was square, with a black strip embedded in the center of the metal. To David it looked a little like a hotel key-card. He poked this into the lock of the big cell and opened it. “Hop in, Mare,” he said. “Snug as a bug in a rug, that’s what you’ll be.”

She ignored him, looking instead at David’s parents. They were standing together at the bars of the little cell directly across from the one David was sharing with white-haired Mr. Silent. “This man—this maniac—killed my husband. Put…” She swallowed, grimacing, and the big cop looked at her benignly, seeming almost to smile encouragement: Get this out, Mary, sick it up, you’ll feel better when you do. “Put his arm around him like he did me just now, and shot him four times.

“He killed our little girl,” Ellen Carver told her, and something in her tone struck David with a moment of utter dreamlike unreality. It was as if the two of them were playing Can You Top This. Next the woman named Mary would say, Well, he killed our dog and then his mother would say—“We don’t know that,” David’s father said. He looked horrible, face swollen and bloody, like a heavyweight boxer who has taken twelve full rounds of punishment. “Not for sure.” He looked at the cop, a terrible expression of hope on his swollen face, but the cop ignored him. It was Mary he was interested in.