Bobbi's screams blanketed Haven like an air-raid siren. Everything and everyone came to a complete stop… and then the changed people of Haven drifted into the streets of the village. Their looks were all one look: dismay, pain, and horror at first… then anger.
They knew who had caused those shrieks of agony.
While they went on, no other mental voice could be heard, and the only thing anyone could do was listen to them.
Then came the buzzing death-rattle, and a silence so complete it could only be death.
A few moments later there was the low pulse of Dick Allison's mind. It was emotionally shaken but clear enough in its command.
Her farm. Everyone. Stop him before he can do anything else.
Hazel's voice picked the thought up, strengthening it-the effect was like a second voice joining a first to make a duet.
Bobbi's farm. Go there. Everybody.
The beat of Kyle's mental voice made it a trio. The radius of the voice began to spread as it gained strength.
Everyone. Stop him
Adley's voice. Newt Berringer's voice.
–before he can do anything else.
Those Gardener thought of as the Shed People had welded their voices into one voice of command, clear and beyond denial… not that anyone in Haven even thought of denying it.
Stop him before he can do anything to the ship. Stop him before he can do anything to the ship.
Rosalie Skehan left her kitchen sink without bothering to turn off the water running over the cod she had been freshening for supper. She joined her husband, who had been in the back yard chopping wood and who had barely missed amputating several of his toes when Bobbi's screams began. Without a word they went to their car, got in, and started for Bobbi's farm, four miles away. Turning out of their driveway, they nearly struck Elt Barker, who had taken off from his gas station on his old Harley. Freeman Moss was wheeling his pulp-truck. He felt a vague regret-he had sort of liked Gardener. He had what Freeman's pop had called “sand'-but that wouldn't stop him from tearing the bastard's gizzard out. Andy Bozeman was driving his Oldsmobile Delta 88, his wife sitting beside him with her hands folded neatly on her purse. In it was a molecule-exciter which could raise the spot heat of anything two inches in diameter roughly one thousand degrees in fifteen seconds. She was hoping to boil Gardener like a lobster. Just let me get within five feet she kept thinking. Just five feet, that's all I ask. Beyond that distance, the gadget became unreliable. She knew she could have improved its effectiveness up to half a mile, and now wished she had done so, but if Andy didn't have at least six fresh shirts in the closet, he was like a bear. Bozeman himself wore a frozen sneer of rage, lips skinned back from his few remaining teeth in a dry, spitless grin. I'll whitewash your fence when I get hold of you, fuckface, he thought and pushed the Olds up to ninety, passing a line of slower-moving cars, all headed for Bobbi's place. They all picked up the Command Voice, which was now a hammering litany: STOP HIM BEFORE HE CAN DO ANYTHING TO THE SHIP, STOP HIM BEFORE HE CAN DO ANYTHING TO THE SHIP, STOP HIM, STOP HIM, STOP HIM!
Gard stood over Bobbi's corpse, half-mad with pain and grief and shock… and abruptly his jaws snapped open in another wide, tendon-stretching yawn. He reeled to the sink, trying to hop but doing a bad job of it because of the load of dope he'd taken on. Each time he came down on the bad ankle, it felt as if there was a metal claw inside him, relentlessly digging. The dryness in his throat was much worse now. His limbs felt heavy. His thoughts were losing their former acuteness; they seemed to be… spreading, like broken egg yolks. As he reached the sink he yawned again and deliberately took a step on the shattered ankle. The pain slashed through the fog like a sharply honed meat cleaver.
He barely cracked the tap marked H and got a glass of warm-almost hot-water. Fumbled in the overhead cabinet, knocking a box of cereal and a bottle of maple syrup onto the floor. His hand closed around the carton of salt with the picture of the little girl in the front. When it rains it pours, he thought soupily. That is very true. He fumbled at the pour-spout for what seemed like at least a year and then spilled enough salt into the glass to turn the water cloudy. Stirred it with a finger. Chugged it. The taste was like drowning.
He retched, bringing up the salt water dyed blue. He saw undissolved chunks of blue pills in the vomitus, as well. Some looked more or less intact. How many did she get me to take?
Then he threw up again… again… again. It was an encore performance of the projectile vomiting in the woods-some overworked circuit in his brain persistently triggering the gag reflex, a deadly hiccuping that could kill.
At last it slowed, then stopped.
Pills in the sink. Bluish water in the sink.
Blood in the sink. A lot.
He staggered backward, came down on the bad ankle, screamed, fell on the floor. He found himself looking into one of Bobbi's glazed eyes across the lumpy terrain of the linoleum, and closed his own. Immediately his mind began to drift away… but in that blackness there were voices. No-many voices blended into one. He recognized it. It was the voice of the Shed People.
They were coming for him, as he supposed he had always known they would… in time.
Stop him… stop him… stop him!
Get moving or they won't have to stop you. They'll shoot you or disintegrate you or whatever they want to do to you while you're snoozing on the floor.
He got to his knees, then managed to get to his feet with the help of the counter. He thought there was a box of No-Doz pills in the bathroom cabinet, but doubted if his stomach would hold them down after the latest insult he had dealt it. Under other circumstances it might have been worth the experiment, but Gardiner was afraid that if the projectile vomiting started again, it might not stop.
Just keep moving. If it gets really bad, take a few steps on that ankle. That'll sharpen you up in a hurry.
Would it? He didn't know. All he knew was he had to move fast right now and wasn't sure he would be able to move for long at all.
He hop-staggered to the kitchen door and looked back one final time. Bobbi, who had rescued Gardener from his demons time after time, was little more than a hulk now. Her shirt was still smoking. In the end he hadn't been able to save her from hers. Just put her out of their reach.
Shot your best friend. Good fucking deal, uh?
He put the back of his hand against his mouth. His stomach grunted. He shut his eyes and forced the vomiting down before it could start.
He turned, opened them again, and started across the living room. The idea was to look for something solid, hop to it, and then hold onto it. His mind kept wanting to be that silver Puffer balloon it became just before he was carried away by the big black twister. He fought it as well as he could and marked things and hopped to them. If there was a God, and if He was
good, perhaps they all would bear his weight and he would make it across this seemingly endless room like Moses and his troops had the desert.
He knew that the Shed People would arrive soon. He knew that if he was still here when they did, his goose wasn't just cooked; it was nuked. They were afraid he might do something to the ship. Well, yes. Now that you mentioned it, that was part of what he had in mind, and he knew he would be safest there.
He also knew he couldn't go there. Not yet.
He had business in the shed first.
He made it out onto the porch where he and Bobbi had sat up late on so many summer evenings, Peter asleep on the boards between them. Just sitting here, drinking beers, the Red Sox playing their nightly nine at Fenway, or Comiskey Park, or some damn place, but playing mostly inside Bobbi's radio; tiny baseball men dodging between tubes and circuits. Sitting here with cans of beer in a bucket of cold well water. Talking about life, death, God, politics, love, literature. Maybe even once or twice about the possibility of life on other planets. Gardener seemed to remember such a conversation or two, but perhaps that was only his tired mind goofing with him. They had been happy here. It seemed a very long time ago.