Suddenly she can breathe again as Todd and Billy yank Pete off her. Billy grabs her. Panting and staggering, the two of them hold each other up while Pete and Todd shove each other around enough to get tired out. They are too loaded to land effective blows. Finally Pete leans against the side of the Blazer. Sullenly, Todd finds a tree to lean against while he catches his breath and takes a leak.
“Somebody better go call for a tow,” he says as he clumsily buttons up. “Where’s the closest public phone? The Narrows?”
Instinctively, Pete covers his ass. “We should call Sweetser’s or it’ll be Bigger or his old man who turns up.”
The Mutant volunteers.
“I’ll go too,” Billy offers but he can barely stand up.
She squeezes his hand and assures him she can take care of it. He’ll only slow her down.
“Let’s go back to the camp,” Todd says. “Stay warm.”
“No way.” Pete’s agitated again. “It’s all cleaned up. It’s half a mile back and nobody’s wearing anything on their feet but sneakers. We can run the engine to stay warm.”
No one wants to argue about it with him.
The Mutant bolts down the road, suddenly aware she is soaked with sweat, shaking with adrenaline. Lexie was right. Some party.
17
A blue moon in the frozen black sky bleaches the furniture into ghostly ectoplasm. It scintillates on the Christmas tree like a blacklight dream but it’s real—what Sam sees when his eyelids snap up like cartoon windowshades at the blat of the telephone. Half asleep, he rolls over on the living room couch, right hand dropping over the instrument. Squinting at the radio-alarm clock, he sees it is three forty-eight. It’s still next year. He’s been home and in bed since he and his father finished jump-starting the dead batteries of half a dozen vehicles of late revelers in the parking lot at the Hair of the Dog when the roadhouse closed at two.
The liquid rumble of Maxie Sweetser clearing his throat follows Sam’s sleepy hello. Maxie expectorates noisily. “Hiya, Sammy,” Maxie wheezes. “Wake you up?”
Sam washes his face with the dry palm of his hand. “Just dozing, Mr. Sweetser.”
“Lookie, kiddo, I gotta call from some dumbunny got a four-wheel-drive dug in on your side a the line. Fire Road Twenny. Doan know why she didn’t call you to start.” Maxie blows his nose enthusiastically. “Doan see no good season for me to come all the hell and gone over there when you’re ri’ chair. I got all three a my rigs out now hauling idjits outta ditches over ta here. You want this ‘un?”
“Sure. Thanks, Maxie.”
“Think nothin’ of it. Regards to your dad and tell him that slant-six is chugging right along, so he got that one right. An’ Happy New Year too.”
“Yessir. Happy New Year to you.”
Clutching his jacket, Sam scrawls a note. He half expects Reuben to come downstairs, summoned by the phone, but the household still sleeps when he lets himself out. Fine as it would be to have his father’s company, they have worked together all evening, a tough night, and Reuben is still recuperating. Which is why Sam is on the couch covering the calls instead of his father.
Fire Road 20. South end of the lake, half a mile from the Narrows, where some locals still hold on to a narrow band of old camps in the face of the seductive rise in the value of their waterfront property. The land is low and swampy, the roads minimally maintained. This time of year, whether frozen or mucky, the dirt road is impassable to anything but four-wheel drive. Once you’ve gotten a four-wheel-drive stuck, though, you’re really in the shit.
The frozen night is clean and pure, shadows sharp-edged in the second witchy moonlight of the month, terrain creamy and luscious with snow. Sam’s very awake in a way that feels good. There’s a secret pleasure in having the world to himself.
At first sight he recognizes Fosse’s Blazer, up to its hubcaps in a snow-filled ditch. Great. Just the asshole he’d been hoping to spend some quality time with instead of sleeping. Pete’s folks have a camp down this road, he suddenly recalls. Somehow he doubts the Fosses were having a cookout there tonight.
The Blazer’s engine idles to warm the passengers, windows steamed, familiar music from its radio sounding smothered and fragmented. He pulls up behind it and hops out. When he raps on the driver’s window, Pete is tipping back a beer. Startled, Pete drops it. His lips form the word shit. Sam opens the door and Pete nearly falls out, tumbling down the driving climax of Zep’s “Stairway to Heaven” that spills from the radio.
“Oh fuck.” Pete’s can of Bud tumbles to the road. The air is immediately tangy with marijuana. “Sambo! Jesus!”
Sam grabs Pete by the back of the neck, yanks him from behind the wheel and throws him up against the side of the Blazer to the accompaniment of Sam’s absolutely least favorite Zep lyric.
“Shit!” Pete gasps. “What’s your fucking problem?”
“You are, asshole.”
The others scramble from the Blazer. Todd Gramolini, Bither, Billy Rank, the little Michaud girl. Last out is the Mutant, with a crooked smile on her painted and chained face. Sam covers the shock of her being among them by leaning past her to check out the interior. Shasta Grey slumps in the back seat. Passed out. The rest of them are all wasted to one degree or another. The inside of the vehicle is smoggy with smoke and littered with empties.
“Gauthier, you numb cunt,” Pete complains, “I told you to call Sweetser.”
A large hand takes Pete by the throat.
“Shut up.” Sam growls through gritted teeth. “Just shut the fuck up.”
When Sam lets go, Pete stumbles away from the vehicle into Todd Gramolini, who catches him by the armpits. They stagger in a grotesque dance, both of them trying to stay upright. Bither backs toward the safety of the woods. The Mutant puts her
