Стивен Кинг - Desperation

Something they look forward to all y… hey, what are you doing.”

Not that she needed to ask. He was turning west along the cross-street. A tumbleweed flew at the truck like something jumping out of the screen at you in a 3-D movie. Cynthia cried out and raised an arm over her face. The tumbleweed hit the windshield, bounced, scraped briefly on the roof of the cab, and was gone.

“This is stupid,” she said. “And dangerous.”

He glanced over at her briefly, smiled, and nodded. She should have been pissed at him, smiling at a time like this, but she wasn’t. It was hard to be pissed at a man who could light up that way, and she knew that was half her damned problem. As Gert Kinshaw back at D & S had been fond of saying, those who do not learn from the past are condemned to get beat up by it. She didn’t think Steve Ames was the sort of man who would use his fists on a woman, but that wasn’t the only way that men hurt women. They also hurt them by smiling pretty, so pretty, and getting them to follow along into the lion’s jaws. Usually with a covered-dish casserole in their hands.

“If you know it’s dangerous, why’re you doing it Lubbock.”

“Because we need to find a phone that works, and because I don’t trust the way I feel. It’s almost dark and I’ve got the worst case of the jimjams in history. I don’t want to let them control me. Look, just let me check a couple of places. You can stay in the truck.”

“The fuck I… hey, check it out. Over there.” She pointed at a length of picket fence that had been knocked over and was lying on the lawn of a small frame house. In the glare of the headlights it was all but impossible to tell what color the house was, but she had no trouble seeing the tire-tracks printed on the length of downed fence; they were too clear to miss.

• “A drunk driver could have done that,” he said. “I saw two bars already, and I haven’t even been looking.” A stupid idea, in her opinion, but she was getting to like his Texas accent more and more. Another bad sign.

“Come on, Steve, get real.” Coyote-howls rose in the night, counterpointing the wind.

She slid next to him again. “Jesus, I hate that. What’s with them.”

“I don’t know.”

He was creeping along at no more than ten miles an hour, wanting to be able to stop before he was on top of anything the headlights might reveal. Probably smart. What would have been even smarter, in her humble opinion, was a quick turnaround and an even quicker get—the-hell—out-of-Dodge.

“Steve, I can’t wait to get somewhere with billboards and bank signs and sleazy used-car lots that stay open all night.”

“I hear you,” he said, and she thought: You don ‘t, though. When people say “I hear you,” they almost never do.

“Just let me check here-this one house-and then this burg is history,” he said, and turned into the driveway of a small ranch-style home on the left side of the street. They had come perhaps a quarter of a mile west from the inter-section; Cynthia could still see the blinker through the flying sand.

There were lights on in the house Steve had picked, bright ones that fell through the sheers across the living—room window, dimmer, yellowy ones shining through the trio of oblongs set into the front door in a rising diago-nal line.

He pulled his bandanna up over his mouth and nose and then opened the truck door, holding on as the wind tried to rip it out of his hand. “Stay here.”

“Yeah, right, eat me.” She opened her own door and the wind did pull it away from her.

She slid out before he could say anything else.

Ahot gust pushed her backward, making her stagger and grab the edge of the door for balance. The sand stung her lips and cheeks, making her wince as she pulled her own bandanna up. And the worst thing of all was that this storm might just be warming up.

She looked around for coyotes-they sounded close—and saw none. Yet, anyway. Steve was already climbing the steps to the porch, so much for the protective male. She went after him, wincing as another strong gust rocked her back on her heels.

We’re behaving like characters in a cheap horror movie, she thought dismally, staying when we know we should go, poking where we have no business poking.

True enough, she supposed… except wasn’t that what people did. Wasn’t that why, when Richie Judkins had come home in a really badass ear-ripping mood, Little Miss Cynthia had still been there. Wasn’t that what most of the bad stuff in the world was about, staying when you knew damned well you should go, pushing on when you knew you should cut and run. Wasn’t that, in the last analysis, why so many people liked cheap horror movies. Because they recognized the scared kids who refused to leave the haunted house even after the murders started as themselves.

Steve was standing on the top step in the howling wind and dust, head hunched down, bandanna flapping… and ringing the doorbell. Actually ringing the bell, like he was going to ask the lady of the house if he could come in and explain the advantages of Sprint over AT&T. It was too much for Cynthia. She pushed rudely past, almost knocking him into the bushes beside the stoop, grabbed the doorknob, and turned it. The door opened. She couldn’t see the bottom half of Steve’s face because of the bandanna, but the look of amazement in his eyes as she followed the opening door into the house was very satisfactory.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Hey, anybody home. Fucking Avon calling, you guys!”

No answer-but there was a strange noise coming from an open doorway ahead to the right. A kind of hissing. She turned to Steve. “Nobody home, see. Now let’s go.”

Instead, he started up the hail toward the sound.

“No!” she whispered fiercely, and grabbed his arm. “No, en-oh, that spells no, enough is enough!”

He shook free without even looking at her-men, goddam men, such parfit knightly assholes they were—and went on up the hall. “Hello.” he asked as he went.

just so that anyone intent on killing him would know exactly where to look. Cynthia had every intention of going back outside and getting into the truck. She would wait three minutes by her watch, and if he wasn’t out by then she’d put the truck in gear and drive away, damned if she wouldn’t.

Instead, she followed him up the hail.

“Hello.” He stopped just short of the open doorway—maybe he had some sense left, a little, anyway-and then cautiously poked one eye around the jamb. “Hell-” He stopped. That funny hissing was louder than ever now, a shaky sort of sound, loose, almost like—She looked over his shoulder, not wanting to but not able to help herself. Steven had gone white above his ban-danna, and that wasn’t a good sign.

No, not a hissing, not really. A rattling.

It was the dining room. The family had been about to eat what looked like the evening meal-although not this evening’s meal, she saw that right away. There were flies buzzing over the pot roast, and some of the slices were already supporting colonies of maggots.

The creamed corn had congealed in its bowl. The gravy was a greasy clot in its boat.

Three people were seated at the table: a woman, a man, and a baby in a high chair. The woman was still wearing the full-length apron in which she had cooked the meal. The baby wore a bib which read I’M A BIG Boy NOW. He was slumped sideways behind his tray, on which were several stiff-looking orange slices. He regarded Cynthia with a frozen grin. His face was purple. His eyes bulged from puffy sockets like glass marbles.

His parents were equally puffed. She could see several pairs of holes on the man’s face, small ones, almost hypodermic-sized, one set in the side of his nose.

Several large rattlesnakes were on the table, crawling restlessly among the dishes, shaking their tails. As she looked, the bodice of the woman’s apron bulged. For one moment Cynthia thought the woman was still alive in spite of her purple face and glazed eyes, that she was breathing, and then a triangular snake’s head pushed up through the ruffles, and tiny black buckshot eyes looked across at her.