Dreamcatcher(196)

His eyes closed again. Kurtz drew his hand back to slap.

'Let him sleep,' Freddy said.

Kurtz looked at him, eyebrows raised.

'It's got to be the Reservoir he means. And if it is, we don't need him anymore.' He pointed through the windshield at the tracks of the few cars that had been out this afternoon ahead of them on Route 32. They were black and stark against the fall of fresh white snow. 'There won't be anyone up there today but us, boss. Just us.'

'Praise God.' Kurtz sat back, picked his nine-millimeter up off the seat, looked at it, and put it back in its holster. 'Tell me something, Freddy.'

'I will if I can.'

'When this is over, how does Mexico sound to you?'

'Good. As long as we don't drink the water.'

Kurtz burst out laughing and patted Freddy on the shoulder. Beside Freddy, Archie Perlmutter slipped deeper into coma. Inside his lower intestine, in that rich dump of discarded food and worn-out dead cells, something for the first time opened its black eyes.

3

Two stone posts marked the entrance to the vast acreage surround?ing the Quabbin Reservoir. Beyond them, the road closed down to what was essentially a single lane, and Henry had a sense of having come full circle. It wasn't Massachusetts, but Maine, and although the sign said Quabbin Access, it was really the Deep Cut Road all over again, He actually found himself looking up at the leaden sky, half-expecting to see the dancing lights. What he saw instead was a bald eagle, soaring almost close enough to touch. It landed on the lower branch of a pine tree and watched them go by.

Duddits raised his head from where it had lain against the cool glass and said, 'Isser Ay walkin now.'

Henry's heart leaped. 'Owen, did you hear?'

'I heard,' Owen said, and pressed the Humvee a little harder. The wet snow beneath them was as treacherous as ice, and with the state roads behind them, there was now only a single set of tracks leading north toward the Reservoir.

We'll be leaving our own set, Henry thought. If Kurtz gets this far, he won't need telepathy.

Duddits groaned, clutched his middle, and shivered all over. 'Ennie, I sick. Duddits sick.'

Henry brushed Duddits's hairless brow, not liking the heat of the skin. What came next? Seizures, probably. A big one might take Duds off in a hurry, given his weakened condition, and God knew that might be a mercy. The best thing. Still, it hurt to think of it. Henry Devlin, the potential suicide. And instead of him, the darkness had swallowed his friends, one by one.

'You hang in there, Duds. Almost done now.' But he had an idea the toughest part might still be ahead.

Duddits's eyes opened again. 'Isser Ay  -  ot tuck.'

'What?' Owen asked. 'I didn't get that one.'

'He says Mr Gray got stuck,' Henry said, still brushing Duddit's brow. Wishing there was hair to brush, and remembering when there had been. Duddits's fine blond hair. His crying had hurt them, had chopped into their heads like a dull blade, but how happy his laughter had made them  -  you heard Duddits Cavell laugh and for a little while you believed the old lies again: that life was good, that the lives of boys and men, girls and women, had some purpose. That there was light as well as darkness.

'Why doesn't he just throw the goddam dog into the Reservoir?' Owen asked. His voice cracked with weariness. 'Why does he feel he has to go all the way to this Shaft 12? Is it just because the Russian woman did?'

'I don't think the Reservoir is sure enough for him,' Henry said. 'The Standpipe would have been good, but the aqueduct is even better. It's an intestine sixty-five miles long. And Shaft 12 is the throat. Duddits, can we catch him?'

Duddits looked at him from his exhausted eyes, then shook his head. Owen pounded his own thigh in frustration. Duddits wet his lips. Spoke two words in a hoarse near-whisper. Owen heard them but couldn't make them out.

'What? What did he say?'

"'Only Jonesy."'

'What does that mean? Only Jonesy what?'

'Only Jonesy can stop him, I guess.'

The Hummer skidded again and Henry grabbed hold of the seat. A cold hand closed over his, Duddits was looking at him with desperate intensity. He tried to speak and began coughing instead, gruesome wet hacking sounds. Some of the blood that came out of his mouth was markedly lighter, frothy and almost pink. Henry thought it was lung-blood. And even while the coughs shook him, Duddits's grip on Henry's hand didn't loosen.

'Think it to me,' Henry said. 'Can you think it to me, Duds?' For a moment there was nothing but Duddits's cold hand closed over his, Duddits's eyes locked on his. Then Duddits and the khaki interior of the Humvee, with its faded scent of surreptitiously smoked cigarettes, was gone. In its place Henry sees a pay telephone  -  the old-fashioned kind with different-sized holes on top, one for quarters, one for dimes, one for nickels. The rumble of men's voices and a clack-clacking sound, hauntingly familiar. After a moment he realizes it's the sound of checkers on a checkerboard. He's looking at the pay phone in Gosselin's, the one from which they called Duddits after the death of Richie Grenadeau. Jonesy made the actual call, because he was the only one with a phone he could bill it to. The others gathered around, all of them still with their jackets on because it was so cold in the store, even living in the big woods with trees all around him, Old Man Gosselin wouldn't throw an extra log in the stove, what a f**kin pisser. There are two signs over the phone. One reads PLEASE LIMIT ALL CALLS TO 5 MINS.