Tar gives way to' gravel. What is one of Derry's busiest downtown
streets eight miles east of here has become a driveway leading up a
shallow hill, and on moonlit summer nights it glimmers like
something out of an Alfred Noyes poem. At the top of the hill
stands an angular, handsome barn-board structure with
reflectorized windows, a stable that is actually a garage, and a
satellite dish tilted at the stars. A waggish reporter from the Derry
News once called it the House that Gore Built ... not meaning the
vice president of the United States. Richard Kinnell simply called
it home, and he parked in front of it that night with a sense of
weary satisfaction. He felt as if he had lived through a week's
worth of time since getting up in the Boston Harbor hotel that
morning at nine o'clock.
No more yard sales, he thought, looking up at the moon. No more
yard sales ever.
I 'Amen,' he said, and started toward the house. He probably
should stick the car in the garage, but the hell with it. What he
wanted right now was a drink, a light meal - something
microwaveable - and then sleep. Preferably the kind without
dreams. He couldn't wait to put this day behind him.
He stuck his key in the lock, turned it, and punched 3817 to silence
the warning bleep from the burglar alarm panel. He turned on the
front hall light, stepped through the door, pushed it shut behind
him, began to turn, saw what was on the wall where his collection
of framed book covers had been just two days ago, and screamed.
In his head he screamed. Nothing actually came out of his mouth
but a harsh exhalation of air. He heard a thump and a tuneless little
jingle as his keys fell out of his relaxing hand and dropped to the
carpet between his feet.
The Road Virus Heads North was no longer in the puckerbrush
behind the Gray turnpike service area.
It was mounted on his entry wall.
It had changed yet again. The car was now parked in the driveway
of the yard sale yard. The goods were still spread out
everywhereglassware and furniture and ceramic knickknacks
(Scottie dogs smoking pipes, bare-assed toddlers, winking fish),
but now they gleamed beneath the light of the same skullface
moon that rode in the sky above Kinnell's house. The TV was still
there, too, and it was still on, casting its own pallid radiance onto
the grass, and what lay in front of it, next to an overturned lawn
chair. Judy Diment was on her back, and she was no longer all
there. After a moment, Kinnell saw the rest. It was on the ironing
board, dead eyes glowing like fifty-cent pieces in the moonlight.
The Grand Am's taillights were a blur of red-pink watercolor paint.
It was Kinnell's first look at the car's back deck. Written across it
in Old English letters were three words: THE ROAD VIRUS.
Makes perfect sense, Kinnell thought numbly. Not him, his car.
Except for a guy like this, there's probably not much difference.
'This isn't happening,' he whispered, except it was. Maybe it
