Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(55)

“God,” she said in a very low voice, “if you’re there, would you do something for me? Would you break the radio in my little girl’s head?”


2

When the True headed west again along I-80, rolling toward the town in the Colorado high country where they would spend the summer (always assuming the opportunity to collect some nearby big steam did not come up), Crow Daddy was riding in the shotgun seat of Rose’s EarthCruiser. Jimmy Numbers, the True’s whizbang accountant, was piloting Crow’s Affinity Country Coach for the time being. Rose’s satellite radio was tuned to Outlaw Country and currently playing Hank Jr.’s “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound.” It was a good tune, and Crow let it run its course before pushing the OFF button.

“You said we’d talk later. This is later. What happened back there?”

“We had a looker,” Rose said.

“Really?” Crow raised his eyebrows. He had taken as much of the Trevor kid’s steam as any of them, but he looked no younger. He rarely did after eating. On the other hand, he rarely looked older between meals, unless the gap was very long. Rose thought it was a good trade-off. Probably something in his genes. Assuming they still had genes. Nut said they almost certainly did. “A steamhead, you mean.”

She nodded. Ahead of them, I-80 unrolled under a faded blue denim sky dotted with drifting cumulus clouds.

“Big steam?”

“Oh yeah. Huge.”

“How far away?”

“East Coast. I think.”

“You’re saying someone looked in from what, almost fifteen hundred miles away?”

“Could have been even further. Could have been way the hell and gone up in Canada.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Probably a girl, but it was only a flash. Three seconds at most. Does it matter?”

It didn’t. “How many canisters could you fill from a kid with that much steam in the boiler?”

“Hard to say. Three, at least.” This time it was Rose who was lowballing. She guessed the unknown looker might fill ten canisters, maybe even a dozen. The presence had been brief but muscular. The looker had seen what they were doing, and her horror (if it was a her) had been strong enough to freeze Rose’s hands and make her feel a momentary loathing. It wasn’t her own feeling, of course—gutting a rube was no more loathsome than gutting a deer—but a kind of psychic ricochet.

“Maybe we ought to turn around,” Crow said. “Get her while the getting’s good.”

“No. I think this one’s still getting stronger. We’ll let her ripen a bit.”

“Is that something you know or just intuition?”

Rose waggled her hand in the air.

“An intuition strong enough to risk her getting killed by a hit-and-run driver or grabbed by some child-molesting perv?” Crow said this without irony. “Or what about leukemia, or some other cancer? You know they’re susceptible to stuff like that.”

“If you asked Jimmy Numbers, he’d say the actuarial tables are on our side.” Rose smiled and gave his thigh an affectionate pat. “You worry too much, Daddy. We’ll go on to Sidewinder, as planned, then head down to Florida in a couple of months. Both Barry and Grampa Flick think this might be a big year for hurricanes.”

Crow made a face. “That’s like scavenging out of Dumpsters.”

“Maybe, but the scraps in some of those Dumpsters are pretty tasty. And nourishing. I’m still kicking myself that we missed that tornado in Joplin. But of course we get less warning on sudden storms like that.”

“This kid. She saw us.”

“Yes.”

“And what we were doing.”

“Your point, Crow?”

“Could she nail us?”

“Honey, if she’s more than eleven, I’ll eat my hat.” Rose tapped it for emphasis. “Her parents probably don’t know what she is or what she can do. Even if they do, they’re probably minimizing it like hell in their own minds so they don’t have to think about it too much.”

“Or they’ll send her to a psychiatrist who’ll give her pills,” Crow said. “Which will muffle her and make her harder to find.”

Rose smiled. “If I got it right, and I’m pretty sure I did, giving Paxil to this kid would be like throwing a piece of Saran Wrap over a searchlight. We’ll find her when it’s time. Don’t worry.”

“If you say so. You’re the boss.”

“That’s right, honeybunch.” This time instead of patting his thigh, she squeezed his basket. “Omaha tonight?”

“It’s a La Quinta Inn. I reserved the entire back end of the first floor.”

“Good. My intent is to ride you like a roller coaster.”

“We’ll see who rides who,” Crow said. He was feeling frisky from the Trevor kid. So was Rose. So were they all. He turned the radio on again. Got Cross Canadian Ragweed singing about the boys from Oklahoma who rolled their joints all wrong.

The True rolled west.


3

There were easy AA sponsors, and hard AA sponsors, and then there were ones like Casey Kingsley, who took absolutely zero shit from their pigeons. At the beginning of their relationship, Casey ordered Dan to do ninety-in-ninety, and instructed him to telephone every morning at seven o’clock. When Dan completed his ninety consecutive meetings, he was allowed to drop the morning calls. Then they met three times a week for coffee at the Sunspot Café.