“Yes,” Bright said.

“Also, this whatever-it-is in the air improved the shit out of his radio reception.”

“Right.”

“And you think he might be in a lot of trouble.”

“Right again.”

“I think he might be in a lot of trouble, too, Dave-it sounds like he's gone section-eight.”

“I know how it sounds. I just don't think that's the way it is.”

“David,” Torgeson said in a tone of great patience, “it might be possible-at least in a movie-to take over a little town and poison it somehow. But there's a highway that runs through that little town. There's people in that little town. And phones. Do you think someone could poison a whole town, or shut it off from the outside world, with no one the wiser?”

“Old Derry Road isn't really a highway,” Bright pointed out. “Not since they finished the stretch of I-95 between Bangor and Newport thirty years ago. Since then, the Old Derry Road has been more like this big deserted landing strip with a yellow line running down the middle of it.”

“You're not trying to tell me nobody's tried to use it lately, are you?”

“No. I'm not trying to tell you much of anything… but Johnny did say he'd found some people who hadn't seen their relatives in Haven for a couple of months. And some people who tried to go in to check on them got sick and had to leave in a hurry. Most of them chalked it up to food poisoning or something. He also mentioned a store in Troy where this old crock is doing a booming business in T-shirts because people have been coming out of Haven with bloody noses… and that it's been going on for weeks.”

“Pipe dreams,” Torgeson said. Looking across the barracks ready-room, he saw the dispatcher sit up abruptly and switch the telephone he was holding to his left hand, so he could write. Something had happened somewhere, and from the goosed look on the dispatcher's face, it wasn't a fender-bender or purse-snatching. Of course, people being what they were, something always did happen. And, as little as he liked to admit it, something might be happening in Haven, as well. The whole thing sounded as mad as the tea party in Alice, but David had never impressed him as a member of the fruit-and-nuts brigade. At least not a card-carrying one, he amended.

“Maybe they are,” Bright was saying, “but their essential pipe-dreaminess can be proved or disproved by a quick trip out to Haven by one of your guys.” He paused. “I'm asking as a friend. I'm not one of Johnny's biggest fans, but I'm worried about him.”

Torgeson was still looking into the dispatcher's office, where Smokey Dawson was now ratchet-jawing away a mile a minute. Smokey looked up, saw Torgeson looking, and held up one hand, all the fingers splayed. Wait, the gesture said. Something big.

“I'll see that someone takes a ride out there before the end of the day,” Torgeson said. “I'll go myself if I can, but-”

“If I was to come over to Derry, could you pick me up?”

“I'll have to call you,” Torgeson said. “Something's happening here. Dawson looks like he's having a heart attack.”

“I'll be here,” Bright said. “I'm seriously worried, Andy.”

“I know,” Torgeson said-there had not even been a flicker of interest from Bright when Torgeson mentioned something big was apparently up, and that wasn't like him at all. “I'll call you.”

Dawson came out of the dispatcher's office. It was high summer, and, except for Torgeson, who was catching, the entire complement of troopers on duty was out on the roads. The two of them had the barracks to themselves.

“Jesus, Andy,” Dawson said. “I dunno what to make of this.”

“Of what?” He felt the old tight excitement building in the center of his chest -Torgeson had his own intuitions from time to time, and they were accurate within the narrow band of his chosen profession. Something big, all right. Dawson looked as if someone had hit him with a brick. That old, tight excitement-most of him hated it, but part of him was a junkie for it. And now that part of him made a sudden, exhilarating connection-it was irrational but it was also irrefutable. This had something to do with what Bright had just called about. Somebody get the Dormouse and the Mad Hatter, plop the Dormouse into the pot, he thought. I think the tea party's getting under way.

“There's a forest fire in Haven,” Dawson said. “Must be a forest fire. The report says it's probably in Big Injun Woods.”

“Probably? What's this probably shit?”

“The report came from a fire-watch station in China Lakes,” Dawson said. “They logged smoke over an hour ago. Around two o'clock. They called Derry Fire Alert and Ranger Station Three in Newport. Engines were sent from Newport, Unity, China, Woolwich-”

“Troy? Albion? What about them? Christ, they border the town!”

“Troy and Albion didn't report.”

“Haven itself?”

“The phones are dead.”

“Come on, Smokey, don't break my balls. Which phones?”

“All of them.” He looked at Torgeson and swallowed. “Of course, I haven't verified that for myself. But that isn't the nuttiest part. I mean, it's pretty crazy, but-”

“Go on and spill it.”

Dawson did. By the time he finished, Torgeson's mouth was dry.

Ranger Station Three was in charge of fire control in Penobscot County, at least as long as a fire in the woods didn't develop a really broad front. The first task was surveillance; the second was spotting; the third was locating. It sounded easy. It wasn't. In this case, the situation was even worse than usual, because the fire had been reported from twenty miles away. Station Three called for conventional fire engines because it was still technically possible that they might be of some use: they hadn't been able to reach anyone from Haven who could tell them one way or the other. As far as the fire wardens at Three knew, the fire could be in Frank Spruce's east pasture or a mile into the woods. They also sent out three two-man crews of their own in four-wheel-drive vehicles, armed with topographical maps, and a spotterplane. Dawson had called them Big Injun Woods, but Chief Wahwayvokah was long gone, and today the new, non-racist name on the topographical maps seemed more apt: Burning Woods.

The Unity fire engines arrived first… unfortunately for them. Three or four miles from the Haven town line, with the growing pall of smoke still at least eight miles distant, the men on the pumper began to feel ill. Not just one or two; the whole seven-man crew. The driver pressed on… until he suddenly lost consciousness behind the wheel. The pumper ran off Unity's Old Schoolhouse Road and crashed into the woods, still a mile and a half shy of Haven. Three men were killed in the crash; two bled to death. The two survivors had literally crawled out of the area on hands and knees, puking as they went.

“They said it was like being gassed,” Dawson said.

“That was them on the phone?”

Christ, no. The two still alive are on their way to Derry Home in an amb'lance. That was Station Three. They're trying to get things together, but right now it looks like there's a hell of a lot more going on in Haven than a forest fire. But that's spreading out of control, the Weather Service says there's going to be an easterly wind by nightfall, and it don't seem like no one can get in there to put it out!”

“What else do they know?”

Jack Shit!” Smokey Dawson exclaimed, as if personally offended. “People who get close to Haven get sick. Closer you get, the sicker you are. That's all anyone knows, besides something's burning.”

Not a single fire unit had gotten into Haven. Those from China and Woolwich had gotten closest. Torgeson went to the anemometer on the wall and thought he saw why. They'd been coming from upwind. If the air in and around Haven was poisoned, the wind was blowing it the other way.

Dear God, what if it's something radioactive?

If it was, it was like no kind of radiation Torgeson had ever heard of-the Woolwich units had reported one-hundred-per-cent engine-failure as they approached the Haven town line. China had sent a pumper and a tanker. The pumper quit on them, but the tanker kept running and the driver had somehow managed to reverse it out of the danger zone with vomiting men stuffed into the cab, clinging to the bumpers, and spreadeagled on top of the tank. Most had nosebleeds; a few earbleeds; one had a ruptured eye.