Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(48)

But since they don’t live in one place (and when they stop for an extended period in one of their company towns, they keep to themselves), they fit right in. Why not? They wear the same clothes as the other RV People, they wear the same el cheapo sunglasses, they buy the same souvenir t-shirts and consult the same AAA roadmaps. They put the same decals on their Bounders and ’Bagos, touting all the peculiar places they’ve visited (I HELPED TRIM THE WORLD’S BIGGEST TREE IN CHRISTMASLAND!), and you find yourself looking at the same bumper stickers while you’re stuck behind them (OLD BUT NOT DEAD, SAVE MEDICARE, I’M A CONSERVATIVE AND I VOTE!!), waiting for a chance to pass. They eat fried chicken from the Colonel and buy the occasional scratch ticket in those EZ-on, EZ-off convenience stores where they sell beer, bait, ammo, Motor Trend magazine, and ten thousand kinds of candybars. If there’s a bingo hall in the town where they stop, a bunch of them are apt to go on over, take a table, and play until the last cover-all game is finished. At one of those games, Greedy G (rube name Greta Moore) won five hundred dollars. She gloated over that for months, and although the members of the True have all the money they need, it pissed off some of the other ladies to no end. Token Charlie wasn’t too pleased, either. He said he’d been waiting on B7 for five pulls from the hopper when the G finally bingoed.

“Greedy, you’re one lucky bitch,” he said.

“And you’re one unlucky bastard,” she replied. “One unlucky black bastard.” And went off chortling.

If one of them happens to get speed-trapped or stopped for some minor traffic offense—it’s rare, but it does happen—the cop finds nothing but valid licenses, up-to-date insurance cards, and paperwork in apple-pie order. No voices are raised while the cop’s standing there with his citation book, even if it’s an obvious scam. The charges are never disputed, and all fines are paid promptly. America is a living body, the highways are its arteries, and the True Knot slips along them like a silent virus.

But there are no dogs.

Ordinary RV People travel with lots of canine company, usually those little shit-machines with white fur, gaudy collars, and nasty tempers. You know the kind; they have irritating barks that hurt your ears and ratty little eyes full of disturbing intelligence. You see them sniffing their way through the grass in the designated pet-walking areas of the turnpike rest stops, their owners trailing behind, pooper-scoopers at the ready. In addition to the usual decals and bumper stickers on the motorhomes of these ordinary RV People, you’re apt to see yellow diamond-shaped signs reading POMERANIAN ON BOARD or I MY POODLE.

Not the True Knot. They don’t like dogs, and dogs don’t like them. You might say dogs see through them. To the sharp and watchful eyes behind the cut-rate sunglasses. To the strong and long-muscled hunters’ legs beneath the polyester slacks from Walmart. To the sharp teeth beneath the dentures, waiting to come out.

They don’t like dogs, but they like certain children.

Oh yes, they like certain children very much.


2

In May of 2011, not long after Abra Stone celebrated her tenth birthday and Dan Torrance his tenth year of AA sobriety, Crow Daddy knocked on the door of Rosie the Hat’s EarthCruiser. The True was currently staying at the Kozy Kampground outside Lexington, Kentucky. They were on their way to Colorado, where they would spend most of the summer in one of their bespoke towns, this one a place Dan sometimes revisited in his dreams. Usually they were in no hurry to get anywhere, but there was some urgency this summer. All of them knew it but none of them talked about it.

Rose would take care of it. She always had.

“Come,” she said, and Crow Daddy stepped in.

When on a business errand, he always stepped out in good suits and expensive shoes polished to a mirror gloss. If he was feeling particularly old-school, he might even carry a walking stick. This morning he was wearing baggy pants held up by suspenders, a strappy t-shirt with a fish on it (KISS MY BASS printed beneath), and a flat workman’s cap, which he swept off as he closed the door behind him. He was her sometime lover as well as her second-in-command, but he never failed to show respect. It was one of many things Rose liked about him. She had no doubt that the True could carry on under his leadership if she died. For awhile, at least. But for another hundred years? Perhaps not. Probably not. He had a silver tongue and cleaned up well when he had to deal with the rubes, but Crow had only rudimentary planning skills, and no real vision.

This morning he looked troubled.

Rose was sitting on the sofa in capri pants and a plain white bra, smoking a cigarette and watching the third hour of Today on her big wall-mounted TV. That was the “soft” hour, when they featured celebrity chefs and actors doing PR for their new movies. Her tophat was cocked back on her head. Crow Daddy had known her for more years than the rubes lived, and he still didn’t know what magic held it at that gravity-defying angle.

She picked up the remote and muted the sound. “Why, it’s Henry Rothman, as I live and breathe. Looking remarkably tasty, too, although I doubt you came to be tasted. Not at quarter of ten in the morning, and not with that look on your face. Who died?”

She meant it as a joke, but the wincing frown that tightened his forehead told her it wasn’t one. She turned the TV off and made a business of butting her cigarette, not wanting him to see the dismay she felt. Once the True had been over two hundred strong. As of yesterday, they numbered forty-one. If she was right about the meaning of that wince, they were one less today.