Dreamcatcher(197)

The other one -

There was a crunching bang. Duddits was thrown against the back of Henry's seat and Henry was thrown into the dashboard. Their hands parted. Owen had skidded off the road and into the  ditch. Ahead of them, the Subaru's tracks, fading now under fresh cover, ran off into the thickening snow.

'Henry! You all right?'

'Yeah. Duds? Okay?'

Duddits nodded, but the cheek he had struck was turning black with amazing speed. Your Leukemia at Work for You.

Owen dropped the Humvee's transmission into low range and began to creep up the ditch. The Humvee was canted at a severe angle  -  maybe thirty degrees  -  but it rolled pretty well once Owen got it moving.

'Fasten your seatbelt. First fasten his, though.'

'He was trying to tell me s - '

'I don't give a damn what he was trying to tell you. This time we were all right, next time we could roll three-sixty. Fasten his belt, then your own.'

Henry did as he was told, thinking about the other sign over the pay phone. What had it said? Something about Jonesy. Only Jonesy could stop Mr Gray now, that was the Gospel According to Duddits.

What had that other sign said?

4

Owen was forced to drop his speed to twenty. It made him crazy to creep like this, but the wet snow was falling furiously now and visibility was back to nearly zero.

Just before the Subaru's tracks disappeared entirely they came to the car itself, nose-down in a water-carved ditch running across the road, passenger door open, rear wheels in the air.

Owen stepped on the emergency brake, drew his Glock, opened his door. 'Stay here, Henry,' he said, and got out. He ran to the Subaru, bent low.

Henry unlatched his seatbelt and turned to Duddits, who was now sprawled against the back seat, gasping for breath, held in a sitting position only by the seatbelt. One cheek was a waxy yellow; the other had been engulfed by spreading blood under the skin. His nose was bleeding again, the wads of cotton sticking out of the nostrils soaked and dripping.

'Duds, I'm so sorry,' Henry said. 'This is a f**karow.' 

Duddits nodded, then raised his arms. He could only hold them up for a few seconds, but to Henry his meaning seemed obvious enough. Henry opened his door and got out just as Owen came running back, his Glock now stuffed in his belt. The air was so thick with snow, the individual flakes so huge, that breathing had become difficult.

'I thought I told you to stay where you were,' Owen said.

'I only want to get in the back with him.'

'Why?'

Henry spoke clearly enough, although his voice trembled slightly. 'Because he's dying,' he said. 'He's dying, but I think he has one more thing to tell me first.'

5

Owen looked in the rearview mirror, saw Henry with his arms around Duddits, saw they were both wearing their seatbelts, and fastened his own.

'Hold him good,' he said. 'There's going to be a hell of a jounce.

He reversed a hundred feet, put the Hummer in low, and drove forward, aiming for the spot between the abandoned Subaru and the righthand ditch. The crack in the road looked a little narrower on that side.

There was indeed a hell of a jounce. Owen's seatbelt locked and he saw Duddits's body leap in Henry's arms. Duddits's bald head bounced against Henry's chest. Then they were over the crack and once more rolling up East Street. Owen could just make out the last phantom shapes of shoeprints on the now-white ribbon of the road. Mr Gray was on foot and they were still rolling. If they could catch up before the bastard cut into the woods -

But they didn't.

6

With a final tremendous effort, Duddits raised his head. Now, Henry saw with dismay and horror, Duddits's eyes were also filling with blood.

Clack. Clack-clack. The dry chuckles of old men as someone accomplishes the fabled triple jump. The phone began to swim into his field of vision again. And the signs over it.

'No, Duddits,' Henry whispered. 'Don't try. Save your strength.'

But for what? For what if not for this?  

The sign on the right: PLEASE LIMIT ALL CALLS TO 5 MINS, Smells of tobacco, smells of woodsmoke, the old brine of pickles. His friend's arms around him.

And the sign on the left: CALL JONESY NOW.

'Duddits . . .' His voice floating in the darkness. Darkness, his old friend. 'Duddits, I don't know how.'

Duddits's voice came to him a final time, very tired but calm: Quick, Henry  -  I can only hold on a little longer  -  you need to talk to him.

Henry picks the telephone's receiver out of its cradle. Thinks absurdly (but isn't the whole situation absurd?) that he doesn't have any change not so much as a crying dime. Holds the phone to his ear.

Roberta Cavell's voice comes, impersonal and businesslike: 'Massachusetts General Hospital, how may I direct your call?'

7

Mr Gray flailed Jonesy's body along the path which ran up the east side of the Reservoir from the point where East Street ended, slipping, falling, grabbing branches, getting up again. Jonesy's knees were lacerated, the pants tom open and soaked with blood. His lungs were burning, his heart beating like a steam-hammer. Yet the only thing that concerned him was Jonesy's hip, the one he'd broken in the accident. It was a hot and throbbing ball, shooting pain all the way down the thigh to the knee, and up to the middle of his back along the road of his spine. The weight of the dog made things worse. It was still asleep, but the thing inside was wide awake, held in place only by Mr Gray's will. Once, as he was rising to his feet, the hip locked up entirely and Mr Gray had to beat it repeatedly with Jonesy's gloved fist to make it let go again. How much farther? How much farther through the cursed, stifling, blinding, neverending snow? And what was Jonesy up to? Anything? Mr Gray didn't dare let go of the byrum's restless hunger  -  it had nothing even approaching a mind  -  ?long enough to go to the door of the locked room and listen.