Chapter Twenty-One

SHAFT 12

Mr Gray drove the Subaru nearly three miles up East Street-muddy, rutted, and now covered with three inches of fresh snow-before crashing into a fault caused by a plugged culvert. The Subaru had fought its way gamely through several mires north of the Goodnough Dike, and had bottomed out in one place hard enough to tear off the muffler and most of the exhaust pipe, but this latest break in the road was too much. The car went forward nose-first into the crack and lodged on the pipe, unmuffled engine blatting stridently. Jonesy’s body was thrown forward and the seatbelt locked. His diaphragm clenched and he vomited helplessly onto the dashboard: nothing solid now, only bilious strings of saliva. For a moment the color ran out of the world and the rackety roar of the engine faded. He fought viciously for consciousness, afraid that if he passed out for even a moment, Jonesy might somehow be able to take control again.

The dog whined. Its eyes were still closed but its rear legs twitched spasmodically and its ears flicked. Its belly was distended, the skin rippling. Its moment was near.

A little at a time, color and reality began to return. Mr Gray took several deep breaths, coaxing this sick and unhappy body back to something resembling calm. How far was there still to go? He didn’t think it could be far now, but if the little car was really stuck, he would have to walk and the dog couldn’t. The dog must remain asleep, and it was already perilously close to waking again.

He caressed the sleep-centers of its rudimentary brain. He wiped at his slimy mouth as he did it. Part of his mind was aware of Jonesy, still in there, blind to the outside world but awaiting any chance to leap forward and sabotage his mission; and, incredibly, another part of his mind craved more food-craved bacon, the very stuff which had poisoned it.

Sleep, little friend. Speaking to the dog; speaking also to the byrum. And both listened. Lad ceased whining. His paws stopped twitching. The ripples running across the dog’s belly slowed… slowed… stopped. This calm wouldn’t last long, but for now all was well. As well as it could be.

Surrender, Dorothy.

“Shut up!” Mr Gray said. “Kiss my bender!” He put the Subaru in reverse and floored the accelerator. The motor howled, scaring birds up from the trees, but it was no good. The front wheels were caught firmly, and the back wheels were up, spinning in the air.

“Fuck!” Mr Gray cried, and slanu-ned Jonesy’s fist down on the steering wheel. “Jesus-Christ-bananas! Fuck me Freddy!”

He felt behind him for his pursuers and got nothing clear, only a sense of approach. Two groups of them, and the one that was closer had Duddits. Mr Gray feared Duddits, sensed that he was the one most responsible for how absurdly, infuriatingly difficult this job had become. If he could stay ahead of Duddits, all would end well. It would help to know how close Duddits was, but they were blocking him-Duddits, Jonesy, and the one called Henry. The three of them together made a force Mr Gray had never encountered before, and he was afraid.

“But I’m still enough ahead,” he told Jonesy, getting out. He slipped, uttered a Beaver-curse, then slammed the door shut. It was snowing again, great white flakes that filled the air like confetti and splashed against Jonesy’s cheeks. Mr Gray slogged around the back of the car, boots sliding and smooching in the mud. He paused for a moment to examine the corrugated silver back of the pipe rising from the bottom of the ditch which had trapped his car (he had also fallen victim in some degree to his host’s mostly useless but infernally sticky curiosity), then went on around to the passenger door. “I’m going to beat your asshole friends quite handily.”

No answer to this goad, but he sensed Jonesy just as he sensed the others, Jonesy silent but still the bone in his throat.

Never mind him. Fuck him. The dog was the problem. The byrum was poised to come out. How to transport the dog?

Back into Jonesy’s storage vault. For a moment there was nothing… and then an image from “Sunday School”, where Jonesy had gone as a child to learn about “God” and “God’s only begotten son”, who appeared to be a byrum, creator of a byrus culture which Jonesy’s mind identified simultaneously as “Christianity” and “bullshit”. The image was very clear, from a book called “the Holy Bible”. It showed “God’s only begotten son” carrying a lamb-wearing it, almost. The lamb’s front legs hung over one side of “begotten son’s” chest, its rear legs over the other.

It would do.

Mr Gray pulled out the sleeping dog and draped it around his neck. It was heavy already-Jonesy’s muscles were stupidly, infuriatingly weak-and it would be much worse by the time he got where he was going… but he would get there.

He set off up East Street through the thickening snow, wearing the sleeping border collie like a fur stole.

The new snow was extremely slippery, and once they were on Route 32, Freddy was forced to drop his speed back to forty. Kurtz felt like howling with frustration. Worse, Perlmutter was slipping away from him, into something like a semi-coma. And this at a time, goddam him, when he had suddenly been able to read the one Owen and his new friends were after, the one they called Mr Gray.

“He’s too busy to hide,” Pearly said. He spoke dreamily, like someone on the edge of sleep. “He’s afraid. I don’t know about Underhill, boss, but Jonesy… Henry… Duddits… he’s afraid of them. And he’s right to be afraid. They killed Richie.”

“Who’s Richie, buck?” Kurtz didn’t give much of a squirt, but he wanted Perlmutter to stay awake. He sensed they were coming to a place where he wouldn’t need Perlmutter anymore, but for now he still did.

“Don’t… know…” The last word became a snore. The Humvee skidded almost sideways. Freddy cursed, fought the wheel, and managed to regain control just before the Hummer hit the ditch. Kurtz took no notice. He leaned over the seat and slapped Perlmutter on the side of the face, hard. As he did so, they passed the store with the sign reading BEST BAIT, WHY WAIT? in the window.

“Owwww! Pearly” s eyes fluttered open. The whites were now yellowish. Kurtz cared about this no more than he cared about Richie. “Dooon’t, boss…

“Where are they now?”

“The water,” Pearly said. His voice was weak, that of a petulant invalid. The belly under his coat was a distended, occasionally twitching mountain. Ma Joad in her ninth month, God bless and keep us, Kurtz thought. “The waaaa…”

His eyes closed again. Kurtz drew his hand back to slap.

“Let him sleep,” Freddy said.

Kurtz looked at him, eyebrows raised.

“It’s got to be the Reservoir he means. And if it is, we don’t need him anymore.” He pointed through the windshield at the tracks of the few cars that had been out this afternoon ahead of them on Route 32. They were black and stark against the fall of fresh white snow. “There won’t be anyone up there today but us, boss. Just us.”

“Praise God.” Kurtz sat back, picked his nine-millimeter up off the seat, looked at it, and put it back in its holster. “Tell me something, Freddy.”

“I will if I can.”

“When this is over, how does Mexico sound to you?”

“Good. As long as we don’t drink the water.”

Kurtz burst out laughing and patted Freddy on the shoulder. Beside Freddy, Archie Perlmutter slipped deeper into coma. Inside his lower intestine, in that rich dump of discarded food and worn-out dead cells, something for the first time opened its black eyes.