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?
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 fuckarow.”
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.”
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.
With a final tremendous effort, Duddits raised his head. Now, Henry saw with dismay and horror, Duddits’s eyes were also filling with blood.
“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
Duddits’s voice came to him a final time, very tired but calm:
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?”
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.
A phantom shape appeared ahead in the snow. Mr Gray paused, gasping and peering at it, and then fought his way forward again, holding the dog’s limp paws and dragging Jonesy’s right foot.
Here was a sign nailed to the trunk of a tree: ABSOLUTELY NO FISHING FROM SHAFT HOUSE. Fifty feet beyond it, stone steps rose up from the path. Six of them… no, eight. At the top was a stone building on a stone foundation that jutted out into the snowy gray nothing where the Reservoir lay-Jonesy’s ears could hear water lapping against stone even over the rushing, labored beat of his heart.
He had come to the place. Clutching the dog and using the last of Jonesy’s depleted strength, Mr Gray began to totter up the snow-covered steps.
As they passed between the stone posts marking the entrance to the Reservoir, Kurtz said: “Pull over, Freddy. Side of the road.”
Freddy did as he was asked without question.
“You got your auto, laddie?”
Freddy lifted it. The good old M-16, tried and true. Kurtz nodded.
“Sidearm?”
“.44 Magnum, boss.”
And Kurtz with the nine, which he liked for close work. He
“Freddy?”
“Yes, boss.”
“I just wanted you to know that this is my final mission, and I couldn’t have hoped for a finer companion.” He reached out and gave Freddy’s shoulder a squeeze. Beside Freddy, Perlmutter snored with his Ma Joad face tipped up toward the roof Five minutes or so before reaching the stone pillars he had passed several long, spectacularly odoriferous farts. After that, Pearly’s distended gut had gone down again. Probably for the last time, Kurtz thought.
Freddy’s eyes, meanwhile, had grown gratifyingly bright. Kurtz was delighted. He had not entirely lost his touch even now, it seemed.
“All right, buck,” Kurtz said. “Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. Right?”
“Right, sir.” Kurtz guessed
With an unmistakable little grimace of distaste, Freddy jerked a thumb at Perlmutter. “Want me to try waking him up, sir? He may be too far gone, but-”
“Why bother?” Kurtz asked. Still gripping Freddy’s shoulder, he pointed ahead, where the access road disappeared into a wall of white: the snow. The goddam snow that had chased them all his way, a grim fucking reaper dressed in white instead of black. The tracks of the Subaru were now entirely gone, but those of the Humvee Owen had stolen were still visible. If they moved along briskly, praise God, following these tracks would be a walk in the park. “I don’t think we need him anymore, which I personally find a great relief Go, Freddy. Go.”
The Humvee flirted her tail and then steadied. Kurtz drew his nine and held it against his leg.
