Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(69)

Rose had thought about this while walking to the truck. The intruder hadn’t seen her, of that much she was sure. The kid had been on the inside looking out. As to what she had seen? A supermarket aisle. How many of those were there in America? Probably a million.

“I don’t think so, but that’s not the important part.”

“Then what is?”

“Remember me telling you she was big steam? Huge steam? Well, she’s even bigger than that. When I tried to turn it around on her, she blew me out of her head like I was a piece of milkweed fluff. Nothing like that’s ever happened to me before. I would have said it was impossible.”

“Is she potential True or potential food?”

“I don’t know.” But she did. They needed steam—stored steam—a lot more than they needed fresh recruits. Besides, Rose wanted no one in the True with that much power.

“Okay, how do we find her? Any ideas?”

Rose thought of what she’d seen through the girl’s eyes before she had been so unceremoniously booted back to Sam’s Supermarket in Sidewinder. Not much, but there had been a store . . .

She said, “The kids call it the Lickety-Spliff.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, never mind. I need to think about it. But we’re going to have her, Crow. We’ve got to have her.”

There was a pause. When he spoke again, Crow sounded cautious. “The way you’re talking, there might be enough to fill a dozen canisters. If, that is, you really don’t want to try Turning her.”

Rose gave a distracted, yapping laugh. “If I’m right, we don’t have enough canisters to store the steam from this one. If she was a mountain, she’d be Everest.” He made no reply. Rose didn’t need to see him or poke into his mind to know he was flabbergasted. “Maybe we don’t have to do either one.”

“I don’t follow.”

Of course he didn’t. Long-think had never been Crow’s specialty. “Maybe we don’t have to Turn her or kill her. Think cows.”

“Cows.”

“You can butcher one and get a couple of months’ worth of steaks and hamburgers. But if you keep it alive and take care of it, it will give milk for six years. Maybe even eight.”

Silence. Long. She let it stretch. When he replied, he sounded more cautious than ever. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. We kill em once we’ve got the steam or if they’ve got something we need and they’re strong enough to survive the Turn, we Turn em. The way we Turned Andi back in the eighties. Grampa Flick might say different, if you believe him he remembers all the way back to when Henry the Eighth was killing his wives, but I don’t think the True has ever tried just holding onto a steamhead. If she’s as strong as you say, it could be dangerous.”

Tell me something I don’t know. If you’d felt what I did, you’d call me crazy to even think about it. And maybe I am. But . . .

But she was tired of spending so much of her time—the whole family’s time—scrambling for nourishment. Of living like tenth-century Gypsies when they should have been living like the kings and queens of creation. Which was what they were.

“Talk to Grampa, if he’s feeling better. And Heavy Mary, she’s been around almost as long as Flick. Snakebite Andi. She’s new, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders. Anyone else you think might have valuable input.”

“Jesus, Rosie. I don’t know—”

“Neither do I, not yet. I’m still reeling. All I’m asking right now is for you to do some spadework. You are the advance man, after all.”

“Okay . . .”

“Oh, and make sure you talk to Walnut. Ask him what drugs might keep a rube child nice and docile for a long period of time.”

“This girl doesn’t sound like much of a rube to me.”

“Oh, she is. A big old fat rube milk-cow.”

Not exactly true. A great big white whale, that’s what she is.

Rose ended the call without waiting to see if Crow Daddy had anything else to say. She was the boss, and as far as she was concerned, the discussion was over.

She’s a white whale, and I want her.

But Ahab hadn’t wanted his whale just because Moby would provide tons of blubber and almost endless barrels of oil, and Rose didn’t want the girl because she might—given the right drug cocktails and a lot of powerful psychic soothing—provide a nearly endless supply of steam. It was more personal than that. Turn her? Make her part of the True Knot? Never. The kid had kicked Rose the Hat out of her head as if she were some annoying religious goofball going door-to-door and handing out end-of-the-world tracts. No one had ever given her that kind of bum’s rush before. No matter how powerful she was, she had to be taught a lesson.

And I’m just the woman for the job.

Rose the Hat started her truck, pulled out of the supermarket parking lot, and headed for the family-owned Bluebell Campground. It was a really beautiful location, and why not? One of the world’s great resort hotels had once stood there.

But of course, the Overlook had burned to the ground long ago.


11

The Renfrews, Matt and Cassie, were the neighborhood’s party people, and they decided on the spur of the moment to have an Earthquake Barbecue. They invited everyone on Richland Court, and almost everyone came. Matt got a case of soda, a few bottles of cheap wine, and a beer-ball from the Lickety-Split up the street. It was a lot of fun, and David Stone enjoyed himself tremendously. As far as he could tell, Abra did, too. She hung with her friends Julie and Emma, and he made sure that she ate a hamburger and some salad. Lucy had told him they had to be vigilant about their daughter’s eating habits, because she’d reached the age when girls started to be very conscious about their weight and looks—the age at which anorexia or bulimia were apt to show their skinny, starveling faces.