Dreamcatcher(181)

'We stay together,' Henry said. 'Friends to the end, as the saying goes.'

And, from the back seat: 'Otsum urk ooo do now.'

'That's right, Duds,' Henry reached back and briefly squeezed

Duddits's cold hand. 'Got some work to do now.'

4

Ten minutes later, Duddits came fully to life, pointing them into the first turnpike rest area below Augusta. They were almost to Lewiston now, in fact. 'Ine! Ine!' he shouted, then began to cough again.

'Take it easy, Duddits,' Henry said.

'They probably stopped for coffee and a Danish,' Owen said. 'Or maybe a bacon sandwich.'

But Duddits directed them around back, to the employees' parking lot. Here they stopped, and Duddits got out. He stood quiet and muttering for a moment or so, looking frail under the cloudy sky and seemingly buffeted by every gust of wind.

'Henry,' Owen said, 'I don't know what bee he's got in his bonnet, but if Kurtz is really close - '

But then Duddits nodded, got back in the Hummer, and pointed toward the exit sign. He looked more tired than ever, but he also looked satisfied.

'What in God's name was that all about?' Owen asked, mysti?fied.

'I think he switched cars,' Henry said. 'Is that what he did, Duddits? Did he switch cars?'

Duddits nodded emphatically. 'Tole! Tole a car!'

'He'll be moving faster now,' Henry said. 'You've got to step it up, Owen. Never mind Kurtz  -  we've got to catch Mr Gray.'

Owen looked over at Henry . . . then looked again. 'What's wrong with you? You've come over all pale.'

'I've been very stupid  -  I should have known what the bastard was up to from the first. My only excuses are being tired and scared, and none of that will matter if . . . Owen, you have to catch him. He's headed for western Massachusetts, and you have to catch him before he can get there.'

Now they were running in slush, and the going was messy but far less dangerous. Owen walked the Hummer up to sixty-five, all he dared for now.

'I'll try,' he said. 'But unless he has an accident or a breakdown . . . Owen shook his head slowly back and forth. 'I don't think so, pal. I really don't.'

5

This was a dream he'd had often as a child (when his name had been Coonts), but only once or twice since the squirts and sweats of adolescence. In it, he was running through a field under a harvest moon and afraid to look behind him because it was after him, it. He ran as hard as he could but of course that wasn't good enough, in dreams your best never is. Then it was close enough for him to hear its dry breathing, and to smell its peculiar dry smell.

He came to the shore of a great still lake, although there had never been any lakes in the dry and miserable Kansas town of his childhood, and although it was very beautiful (the moon burned in its depths like a lamp), it terrified him because it blocked his way and he could not swim.

He fell on his knees at the shore of the lake  -  in that way this dream was exactly like those childhood dreams  -  but instead of seeing the reflection of it in the still water, the terrible scarecrow man with his stuffed burlap head and pudgy blue-gloved hands, this time he saw Owen Underhill, his face covered with splotches. In the moonlight, the byrus looked like great black moles, spongy and shapeless.

As a child he had always wakened at this point (often with his stiff wang wagging, although why such an awful dream would give a kid a stilly God alone knew), but this time the it  -  Owen  -  actually touched him, the reflected eyes in the water reproachful. Maybe questioning.

Because you disobeyed orders, buck! Because you crossed the line!

He raised his hand to ward Owen off, to remove that hand . . . and saw his own hand in the moonglow. It was gray.

No, he told himself, that's just the moonlight.

Only three fingers, though  -  was that the moonlight?

Owen's hand on him, touching him, passing on his filthy disease . . . and still daring to call him

6

boss. Wake up, boss!'

Kurtz opened his eyes and sat up with a grunt, simultaneously pushing Freddy's hand away. On his knee instead of his shoulder, Freddy reaching back from his place behind the wheel and shaking his knee, but still intolerable.

'I'm awake, I'm awake.' He held his own hands up in front of his face to prove it. Not baby-pink, they were a long way from that, but they weren't gray and each had the requisite five fingers.

'What time is it, Freddy?'

'Don't know, boss  -  still morning's all I can say for sure.'

Of course. Clocks all tucked up. Even his pocket watch had run down. As much a victim of modem times as anyone else, he had forgotten to wind it. To Kurtz, whose time sense had always been at least fairly sharp, it felt like about nine, which would mean he'd gotten about two hours of shuteye. Not much, but he didn't need much. He felt better. Well enough, certainly, to hear the concern in Freddy's voice.  

'What's up, bucko?'

'Pearly says he's lost contact with all of them now, He says Owen was the last, and now he's gone, too. He says Owen must have beat back the Ripley fungus, sir.'

Kurtz caught sight of Perlmutter's sunken, I-fooled-you grin in the wide rearview mirror.

'What's the deal, Archie?'