7

   The crying of the bells.
   Bobbi Anderson got out of her blue Chevrolet truck, slamming the door, smoothing her dark blue dress over her hips and checking her makeup in the truck's outside mirror before walking slowly down the sidewalk to the church. She walked with her head down and her shoulders slumped. She was trying hard to get the rest she needed to go on, and Gard had helped to put a brake on her obsession
   (and that's what it is, an obsession, no use kidding yourself)
   but Gard was a brake that was slowly wearing out. He wasn't at the funeral because he was sleeping off a monumental drunk out at the farm, his grizzled, worn face pillowed on one arm, his breath a sour cloud around him. Anderson was tired, all right, but it was more than tiredness – a great unfocused grief seemed to fill her this morning. It was partly for Ruth, partly for David Brown, partly for the whole town. Yet mostly, she suspected, it was for herself. The 'becoming' continued – for everyone in Haven except Gard, that was – and it was good, but she mourned her own unique identity, which was now fading like a morning mist. She knew now that The Buffalo Soldiers was her last book … and the irony was that she now suspected the Tommyknockers had written most of that, as well.

8

   The bells, bells, bells.
   Haven answered them. It was Act I of a charade titled The Burial of Ruth McCausland, or, How We Loved That Woman. Nancy Voss had closed the post office to come. The government would not have approved, but what the government didn't know wouldn't hurt them. They would know plenty soon enough, she thought. They would get a big old express-mail delivery from Haven very soon. Them and every other government on this flying mudball.
   Frank Spruce, Haven's biggest dairy farmer, answered the bells. John Mumphry, whose father had run against Ruth for the position of town constable, answered them. Ashley Ruvall, who had passed her out by the town line two days before her death, answered them with his parents. Ashley was crying. Doc Warwick was there, and Jud Tarkington; Adley McKeen came with Hazel McCready on his arm; Newt Berringer and Dick Allison answered them, walking slowly and supporting Ruth's predecessor, John Harley, between them. John was feeble and nearly transparent. Maggie, his wife, was not well enough to attend.
   They came, answering the summons of the bells – Tremains and Thurlows, Applegates and Goldmans, Duplisseys and Archinbourgs. Good Maine people, you would have said, drawn from a healthy stockpot that was mostly French, Irish, Scots, and Canadian. But they were different now; as they drew together at the church, so did their minds draw together and become one mind, watching the outsiders, listening for the slightest wrong note in their thoughts … they came together, they listened, and the bells rang in their strange blood.

9

   Ev Hillman sat up behind the wheel of the Cherokee, eyes opening wide at the dim sound of the carillon. 'What in the hell – '
   'Churchbells, what else?' Butch Dugan said. 'It sounds very pretty. They're getting ready to start the funeral, I suppose.' They're burying Ruth over in the village … what in God's name am I doing out here by the town line with this crazy old man?
   He wasn't sure, but it was too late to change his course now.
   'The bells in the Methodist church never made a sound like that before in my time,' Ev said. 'Someone's changed them over.'
   'So what?'
   'So nothing. So everything. I dunno. Come on, Trooper Dugan.' He turned the key, and the Cherokee's engine roared.
   'I'll ask you again,' Dugan said with what he thought was extraordinary patience. 'What are we looking for?'
   'I don't rightly know.' The Cherokee passed the town-line marker. They had left Albion now and entered Haven. Ev had a sudden sickening premonition that in spite of all his precautions and care, he was never going to leave it again. 'We'll know it when we see it.'
   Dugan didn't reply, only held on for dear life and wondered again how he had gotten into this – he had to be as crazy as the old fart he was riding with, and then some. He raised one hand to his forehead and began rubbing, just above the eyebrows.
   A headache was forming there.

10

   There were sniffles, red eyes, and some sobbing as the Rev. Goohringer, his bald head gleaming mellowly and in a soft variety of colors courtesy of the summer sunshine falling through the stained-glass windows, launched into his funeral eulogy following a hymn, a prayer, another hymn, a reading of Ruth's favorite scripture (the Beatitudes), and yet another hymn. Below him, foaming around the lectern in a semi-circle, were great bunches of summer flowers.
   Even with the upper windows of the church thrown open and a good breeze blowing through, their smell was suffocatingly sweet.
   'We have come here to praise Ruth McCausland and to celebrate her passing,' Goohringer began.
   The townsfolk sat with hands either folded or gripping handkerchiefs; their eyes -most wet – regarded Goohringer with sober, studious attention. They looked healthy, these folk – their color was good, their skin for the most part unblemished. And even someone who had never been in Haven before could have seen that the congregation here fell naturally into two groups. The outsiders didn't look healthy. They were pale. Their eyes were dazed. Twice during the eulogy, people left hurriedly, dashed around the corner of the church, and were quietly sick. For others, the nausea was a lower complaint – an uneasy rolling in the bowels not quite serious enough to cause an exit but simply going on and on.
   Several outsiders would lose teeth before that day was over.
   Several developed headaches which would dissolve almost as soon as they left town – the aspirin finally working, they would surmise.
   And more than a few of them had the most amazing ideas as they sat on the hard pews and listened to Goohringer preach Ruth McCausland's eulogy. In some cases these ideas came so suddenly and seemed so huge, so fundamental, that the persons to whom they occurred would feel as if they had been shot in the head. Such persons had to fight down an urge to bolt out of their pews and run into the street screaming 'Eureka!' at full volume.
   The people of Haven saw this happening and were amused. All of a sudden the apathetic, puddinglike expression on someone's face would be shocked away. The eyes would widen, the mouth flop open, and the Havenites would recognize the expression of a person in the throes of a Grand Idea.
   Eddie Stampnell of the Derry barracks, for instance, conceived of a nationwide police band on which every cop in the land could communicate. And he saw how a cloak could easily be thrown over such a band; all those nosy civilians with their police-band radios would be shit out of luck. Ramifications and modifications poured into his mind faster than he could deal with them; if ideas had been water, he would have drowned. I'm gonna be famous for this, he thought feverishly. Rev. Goohringer was forgotten; Andy Rideout, his partner, was forgotten; his dislike of this goofy little town was forgotten; Ruth was forgotten. The idea had swallowed his mind. I'm gonna be famous, and I'm gonna revolutionize policework in America … maybe in the whole world. Holy shit! Hoo-oly SHIP
   The Havenites, who knew Eddie's great idea would be foggy by noon and gone by three, smiled and listened and waited. Waited for it to be over, so they could get back to their real business.
   So they could get back to 'becoming.'
   They rolled down the dirt track – Town Road No. 5 in Albion, which became Fire Road No. 16 here in Haven. Twice logging roads branched off into the woods, and each time one of these came up, Dugan braced himself for an even more bone-wrenching ride. But Hillman didn't take either. He reached Route 9 and swung right. He cranked the Cherokee up to fifty and headed deeper into Haven.
   Dugan was skittery. He didn't know exactly why. The old man was crazy, of course; the idea that Haven had turned into a nest of snakes was pure paranoia. All the same, Monster felt a steady, pulsing nervousness growing inside him. It was vague, a low grassfire in his nerves.
   'You keep rubbing your forehead,' Hillman said.
   'I've got a headache.'
   'It'd ache a lot worse if the wind wasn't blowin', I guess.'
   Another lapse into utter nonsense. What in God's name was he doing here? And why did he feel so goddam jumpy?
   'I feel like somebody slipped me a couple of bennies in my coffee.'
   'Ayuh.'
   Dugan looked at him. 'But you don't feel that way, do you? You're as cool as a goddam cucumber.'
   'I'm scared, but I don't have the jitters, and I don't have a headache, neither.'
   'Why would you have a headache?' Dugan asked crossly. The conversation had gotten decidedly Alice in Wonderland-ish. 'Headaches aren't catching.'
   'If you and six other guys are painting a closed room, you are all apt to end up with headaches. Ain't that a true fact?'
   'Yeah, I guess so. But this isn't – '
   'No. It ain't. And we got lucky with the weather. Just the same, I guess that thing is putting out a powerful stink, because you feel it. I can see you do.' Hillman paused and then said another Alice in Wonderland thing. 'Had any good ideas yet, Trooper?'
   'What do you mean?'
   Hillman nodded, satisfied. 'Good. If you do, tell me. I got something in that sack for you.'
   'This is crazy,' Dugan said. His voice wasn't quite steady. 'I mean, utterly nuts. Turn this thing around, Hillman. I want to go back.'
   Ev suddenly focused a single phrase in his mind, as sharply and as clearly as he could. He knew from his last three days in Haven that Bryant, Marie, Hilly, and David were routinely reading each other's minds. He could sense it even though he couldn't pick it up. By the same token, he had come to realize they couldn't get into his head unless he let them. He had begun to wonder if it had something to do with the steel in his skull, a souvenir of that German grenade. He had seen the potato-masher with dreadful, ineluctable clarity, a gray-black thing spinning in the snow. He'd thought, Well, I'm dead. That's it for me. After, he remembered nothing until he'd awakened in a French hospital. He remembered how his head had hurt; he remembered the nurse who had kissed him, and how her breath had smelled like anise, and how she kept saying, shaping her words as if speaking to a very small child, 'Je t'aime, mon amour. La guerre est finie. Je t'aime. Je t'aime les Etats Unis.'
   La guerre est finie, he thought now. La guerre est finie.
   'What is it?' he asked Dugan sharply.
   'What do you m -'
   Ev swerved the Cherokee over to the side of the road, kicking up a spume of dust. They were a mile and a half over the town line now; it was another three or four miles to the old Garrick farm.
   'Don't think, don't talk, just tell me what I was thinkin'.'
   'Tout fini, you're thinking la guerre est finie, but you're crazy, people can't read minds, they c – '
   Dugan stopped. He turned his head slowly and stared at Ev. Ev could hear the tendons in the man's neck creak. His eyes were huge.
   'La guerre est finie,' he whispered. 'That's what you were thinking, and that she smelled like licorice – '
   'Anise,' Ev said, and laughed, remembering. Her thighs had been so white, her cunt so tight.
   and I saw a grenade in the snow, oh Jesus what's going on?'
   Ev pictured a red old-fashioned tractor in his mind. 'What now?'
   'Tractor,' Dugan husked. 'Farmall. But you got the wrong tires on it. My dad had a Farmall Those are Dixie Field-Boss tires. They wouldn't fit a Far – '
   Dugan suddenly turned around, grappled for the Cherokee's door handle, leaned out, and threw up.

12

   'Ruth once asked me if I would read the Beatitudes at her funeral if it should fall to me to preside over it,' the Rev. Goohringer was saying in a mellow Methodist voice the Rev. Donald Harley would have completely approved of, 'and I have honored her wishes. Yet – '
   (la guerre you were thinking la guerre est)
   Goohringer paused, a little expression of surprise and concern touching his face. A close observer might have thought a little gas had bubbled up, and he had paused to stifle an unseemly burp.
   ' – I think there is another set of verses she merits. They ‘
   (tractor Farmall tractor)
   There was another small hitch in Goohringer's delivery, and that frown touched his face again.
   ‘ – are not the sort of verses, I suppose, that any Christian woman would dare ask for, knowing that a Christian woman must earn them. Listen as I read from the Book of Proverbs and see if you, who knew her, do not agree that this is the case with Ruth McCausland.'
   (those are Dixie Field-Boss tires)
   Dick Allison glanced to his left and caught Newt's eye across the aisle. Newt looked dismayed. John Harley's mouth had dropped open; his faded blue eyes shifted back and forth in bewilderment.
   Goohringer found his place, lost it, almost dropped his Bible. Suddenly he was flustered, no longer the master of ceremonies but a divinity student with stage-fright. As it happened, no one noticed; the outsiders were occupied either with physical distress or with mind-boggling ideas. The people of Haven drew together as an alarm went off, jumping from one mind to the next until their heads rang with it – this was a new carillon, one that jangled with discord.
   (someone's looking where they have)
   (have no business)
   Bobby Tremain took Stephanie Colson's hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back, looking at him with wide brown eyes – the alarmed eyes of a doe who hears the slide and click of the bolt in a hunter's gun.
   (out on Route 9)
   (too close to the ship)
   (one's a cop)
   (cop, yes, but a special cop – Ruth's cop, he loved)
   Ruth would have known these rising voices. And now even some of the outsiders began to feel them, although they were relatively new to Haven's infection. A few of them looked around like people coming out of thin dozes. One of these was the lady-friend of Representative Brennan's aide. She had been miles from here, it seemed – she was a minor bureaucrat in Washington, but she had just conceived of a filing system that might well get her a fat promotion. Then a random thought, a thought she would have sworn was not her own
   (somebody has got to stop them quick!)
   slashed across her mind and she looked around to see if someone had actually called out aloud in the church.
   But it was quiet except for the preacher, who had found his place again. She looked at Marty, but Marty was sitting in a glassy daze, looking at one of the stained-glass windows with the fixed gaze of one deeply hypnotized. She supposed this to be boredom and went back to her own thoughts.
   'Who can find a virtuous woman?' Goohringer read, his voice a trifle uneven. He hesitated in the wrong places and stumbled a few times. 'For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, and he shall have no lack of gain. She doeth him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeketh wool – '
   Now another burst of those alien thoughts came to the single sensitized ear in the church:
   (sorry about that I just couldn't)
   (what?)
   (holy Christ that's Wheeling! how -
   There are two voices speaking but we are only hearing one, the mind-net thought, and eyes began to focus on Bobbi. There was only one person in Haven who could make his mind opaque to them, and that person wasn't here now. Two voices – is the one we don't hear the voice of your drunken friend?
   Bobbi got up suddenly and worked her way along the pew, horribly aware that people were looking at her. Goohringer, the ass, had paused again.
   'Excuse me,' Bobbi muttered. 'Excuse me … excuse me.'
   At last she escaped into the vestibule and the street. Others – Bobby Tremain, Newt, Dick, and Bryant Brown among them – began to follow. None of the outsiders noticed. They had lapsed back into their strange dreams.

13

   'Sorry about that,' Butch Dugan said. He pulled the door closed, got a handkerchief out of his back pocket and began to rub his mouth. 'I couldn't seem to help it. I feel better now.'
   Ev nodded. 'I ain't going to explain. There isn't time. But I want you to listen to something.'
   'What?'
   Ev snapped on the Cherokee's radio and dialed across the band. Dugan stared. He had never heard so many stations, not even at night when they jumped all over each other, wavering in and out in a sea of voices. Nothing wavery about these; most were bell-clear.
   Ev stopped at a C&W station. A song by the Judds was just ending. When it did, there was a station ID. Butch Dugan could hardly believe what he was hearing: "Doubleya-Doubleya-Vee-AYYY!' a perky girl group sang, to an accompaniment of fiddles and banjos.
   Holy Christ, that's Wheeling!' Dugan cried. 'How -
   Ev snapped off the radio. 'Now I want you to listen to my head.'
   Dugan stared at him for a moment, utterly flummoxed. Not even Alice in Wonderland had been this mad.
   'What in the name of God are you talking about?'
   Don't argue with me, just do it.' Ev turned his face away from Dugan, presenting him with the back of his head. 'I got two pieces of steel plate in, my head. War souvenir. Bigger one's back there. See the place where the hair don't grow?'
   'Yes, but
   'Time is short! Put your ear up close to that scar and listen!'
   He did … and felt unreality wash over him. The back of the old man's head was playing music. It was tinny and distant but perfectly identifiable. It was Frank Sinatra singing 'New York, New York.'
   Butch Dugan began to giggle. Soon he was laughing. Then he was roaring, arms wrapped around his stomach. He was out here in the back of the beyond with an old man whose head had just turned into a music-box. By God, this was better than Ripley's Believe It or Not.
   Butch laughed and gasped and wept and roared and
   The old man's callused palm slammed across his face. The shock of being slapped like a small child surprised Butch out of his hysteria as much as the pain had done. He blinked at Ev, one hand going to his cheek.
   'It started a week and a half before I left town,' Ev said grimly. 'Blasts of music in my head. They were stronger when I got out this way, and I should have thought about that before now, but I didn't. They're stronger now. Everything is. So I got no time for you to get the screaming yaw-haws. Are you going to be all right?'
   The flush spreading over Dugan's face mostly hid the red mark Ev's hand had made. The screaming yaw-haws. That pretty well described it. First he had puked, and then he had had a fit of hysterics like a teenage girl. This old man wasn't just showing him up; he was pulling past him in second gear.
   'I'll be fine,' he said.
   'You believe now that something's going on here? That something in Haven has changed?'
   'Yes. I . . .'He swallowed. 'Yes,' he repeated.
   'Good.' Ev stepped on the gas and roared back onto the road. 'This … thing … it's changing everyone in town, Trooper Dugan. Everyone but me. I get music in my head, but that's all. I don't read minds … and I don't get ideas.'
   'What do you mean, “ideas”? What kind of ideas?'
   'All kinds.' The Cherokee's speedometer touched sixty, then began to edge past it. 'Thing is, I have no proof of what's going on. None at all. You thought I was right off 'n my head, didn't you?'
   Dugan nodded. He was holding on tight to the dashboard in front of him. He felt sick to his stomach again. The sun was too bright, dazzling on the windshield and the chrome.
   'The reporter and the nurses did, too. But there's something in the woods, and I'm going to find it, and I'm going to take some pitchers of it, and I'm going to take you out, and we're going to do some loud talking, and maybe we'll find a way to get my grandson David back and maybe we won't, but either way we ought to be able to shut down whatever's going on here before it's too late. Ought to? We got to.'
   Now the speedometer needle hung just below seventy.
   'How far?' Dugan managed through closed teeth. He was going to puke again, and soon; he just hoped he could hold on until they got to wherever they were going.
   'The old Garrick farm,' Ev said. 'Less than a mile.'
   Thank God, Dugan thought.

14

   'It's not Gard,' Bobbi said. 'Gard's passed out on the porch of the house.'
   'How do you know?' Adley McKeen asked. 'You can't read him.'
   'I can, though,' Bobbi said. 'A little more every day. He's still on the porch, I tell you. He's dreaming about skiing.'
   They looked at Bobbi silently for a moment – about a dozen men standing across the street from the Methodist church, in front of the Haven Lunch.
   'Who is it, then?' Joe Summerfield asked at last.
   'I don't know,' Bobbi said. 'Only that it's not Gard.' Bobbi was swaying mildly on her feet. Her face was that of a woman who was fifty, not thirtyseven. There were brown circles of exhaustion under her eyes. The men seemed not to notice.
   From the church, voices were raised in 'Holy, Holy, We Adore Thee.'
   'I know who it is,' Dick Allison said suddenly. His eyes had gone strange and dull with hate. 'Only one other person it could be. Only one other person I know of in town with metal in his head.'
   'Ev Hillman!' Newt cried. 'Christ!'
   'We've got to get moving,' Jud Tarkington said. 'The bastards are getting close. Adley, get some guns from the hardware store.'
   'Okay.'
   'Get 'em, but don't use 'em,' Bobbi said. Her eyes swept the men. 'Not on Hillman, if it's him, and not on the cop. Particularly not on the cop. We can't afford another mess in Haven. Not before
   (the 'becoming')
   it's all finished.'
   'I'll get my tube,' Beach said. His face was vacant with eagerness.
   Bobbi grabbed his shoulder. 'No, you won't,' she said. 'No more messes includes no more cops disappearing.'
   She looked at them all again, then at Dick Allison, who nodded.
   'Hillman's got to disappear,' he said. 'No way around it. But that's maybe all right. Ev's crazy. A crazy old man might decide to do just about anything. A crazy old man might just decide to haul stakes and drive off to Zion, Utah, or Grand Forks, Idaho, to wait for the end of the world. The cop's going to make a mess, but he's going to make it in Derry, and it's going to be a mess everyone understands. No one else is going to shit in our nest. Go on, Jud * Get the guns. Bobbi, you pull in back of the Lunch with your pickup truck. Newt, Adley, Joe, you ride with me. You go with Bobbi, Jud. Rest of you go in Kyle's Caddy. Come on, hoss y'freight!'
   They got moving.

15

   Shushhhhh …
   Same old dream, a few new wrinkles. Damned strange ones. The snow had gone pink. It was soaked with blood. Was it coming from him? Holy hell! Who would have believed how much blood the old tosspot had in him?
   They are skiing the intermediate slope. He knows that he should have stayed on the beginners' slopes for at least one more session, this is too fast for him, and furthermore, all this bloody snow is very distracting, particularly when it's all your blood.
   Now he looks up, sending a rip of pain through his head – and his eyes widen. There's a Jeep on the goddam slope!
   Annmarie screams: 'Stem Bobbi, Gard! STEM BOBBI!'
   But he doesn't need to stem Bobbi because this is just a dream, it's become an old friend in the last few weeks, like the erratic bursts of music in his head; this is a dream and that isn't a Jeep and this isn't the Straight Arrow slope, it's – turning into Bobbi's driveway.
   Is this a dream? Or is it real?
   No, he realized; that was the wrong question. A better question would have been How much of this is real?
   The chrome winked blinding arrows of light into Gardener's eyes. He winced and groped for
   (ski poles? no, not a dream, it's summer you're in Haven)
   the porch railing. He could remember almost everything. It was hazy, but he could remember. No blackouts since he had come back to Bobbi's. Music in his head but no blackouts. Bobbi had gone to a funeral. Later on, she'd come back and they would start digging again. He remembered it all, just as he remembered the town-hall clock tower lifting off into the afternoon sky like a big-ass bird. All present and accounted for, sir. Except this.
   He stood with his hands on the railing, bleary, bloodshot eyes watching the Jeep in spite of the glare. He was aware that he must look like a refugee from the Bowery. Thank God there's still some truth in advertising – that's what I feel like.
   Then the man in the passenger seat turned his head and saw Gard. The man was so huge that he looked like a creature from a fairy tale. He was wearing sunglasses, so Gardener couldn't tell for sure if their eyes actually met or not. He thought they did; it felt that way. Either way, it didn't matter. He knew the look. As a veteran of half a hundred picket lines, he knew it well. He also knew it as a drunk who had awakened in the tank on more than one occasion.
   The Dallas Police have arrived at last, he thought. The thought carried feelings of anger and regret … but what he felt mostly was relief. At least, for the moment.
   He's a cop . . . but what's he doing in a Jeep? God, the size of his face . . . he's as big as a fucking house! Must be a dream. Must be.
   The Jeep didn't stop; it rolled up the driveway and out of sight. Now Gardener could only hear its roaring motor.
   Headed out back. Going up there in the woods. They knew, all right. Oh Christ, if the government gets it
   All of his earlier dismay rose in him like bile; his dazed relief blew away like smoke. He saw Ted the Power Man throwing his jacket over the littered remains of the levitation machine and saying, What gadget?
   Dismay was replaced by the old, sick fury.
   HEY BOBBI GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE! he shrieked in his mind as loudly and clearly as he could.
   Fresh blood burst from his nose and he staggered weakly back, grimacing in disgust and groping for his handkerchief. What does it matter, anyway? Let them have it. It's the devil on either hand, and you know it. So what if the Dallas Police get it? It's turning Bobbi and everyone in town into the Dallas Police. Particularly her company. The ones she brings out late at night, when she thinks I'm asleep. The ones she takes into the shed.
   This had happened twice, both times around three in the morning. Bobbi thought Gardener was sleeping heavily – a combination of hard work, too much booze, and Valium. The level of pills in the Valium bottle was going steadily down, that was true, but not because Gardener was swallowing them. Each night's pill was actually going down the toilet.
   Why this stealth? He didn't know, any more than he knew why he had lied to Bobbi about what he had seen on Sunday afternoon. Flushing a Valium tablet every night wasn't really lying, because Bobbi hadn't asked him outright if he was taking them; she had simply looked at the decreasing level of the tablets and drawn an erroneous conclusion Gardener hadn't bothered to correct.
   Just as he had not bothered to correct her idea that he was sleeping heavily. In fact, he had been plagued by insomnia. No amount of drink seemed to put him under for long. The result was a kind of constant, muddled consciousness across which thin gray veils of sleep were sometimes drawn, like unwashed stockings.
   The first time he had seen lights splash across the wall of the guestroom in the early hours of the morning, he had looked out to see a large Cadillac pulling into the driveway. He had looked at his watch and thought: Must be the Mafia … who else would show up at a farm way out in the woods in a Caddy at three in the morning?
   But when the porch light went on, he had seen the vanity plate, KYLE-1, and doubted if even the Mafia went for vanity plates.
   Bobbi had joined the four men and one woman who had gotten out. Bobbi was dressed but barefoot. Gardener knew two of the men – Dick Allison, head of the local volunteer fire department, and Kyle Archinbourg, a local realtor who drove a fat-ass Cadillac. The two others were vaguely familiar. The woman was Hazel McCready.
   After a few moments, Bobbi had led them to her back shed. The one with the big Kreig lock on the door.
   Gardener thought: Maybe I ought to go out there. See what's going on. Instead, he'd lain down again. He didn't want to go near the shed. He was afraid of it. Of what might be in there.
   He had dozed off again.
   The next morning there had been no Caddy, no sign of Bobbi's company. Bobbi had in fact seemed more cheerful, more her old self on that morning than at any time since Gardener had returned. He had convinced himself it was a dream, or perhaps something – not the DTs, exactly, but close – that had crawled out of a bottle. Then, not four nights ago, KYLE-1 had arrived again. Those same people had gotten out, met with Bobbi, and gone around to the shed.
   Gard collapsed into Bobbi's rocking chair and felt for the bottle of Scotch he had brought out here this morning. The bottle was there. Gardener raised it slowly, drank, and felt liquid fire hit his belly and spread. The sound of the Jeep was fading now, like something in a dream. Perhaps that was all it had been. Everything seemed that way now. What was that line in the Paul Simon song? Michigan seems like a dream to me now. Yes, sir. Michigan, weird ships buried in the ground, Jeep Cherokees, and Cadillacs in the middle of the night. Drink enough and it all faded into a dream.
   Except it's no dream. They're the take-charge people, those people who come in the Cadillac with the KYLE-1 plates. Just like the Dallas Police. Just like good old Ted, with his reactors. What kind of shot are you giving them, Bobbi? How are you souping them up even more than the rest of the resident geniuses? The old Bobbi wouldn't have pulled that kind of shit, but the New Improved Bobbi does, and what's the answer to all of this? Is there one?’
   'Devils on every side!' Gardener cried out grandly. He slugged back the last of the Scotch and threw the bottle over the porch railing and into the bushes. 'Devils on every side!' he repeated, and passed out.

16

   'That guy saw us,' Butch said as the Jeep bulled across Anderson's garden on a diagonal, knocking over huge cornstalks and sunflowers that towered high over the Cherokee's roof.
   'I don't care,' Ev said, wrestling the wheel. They emerged from the garden on the far side. The Cherokee's wheels rolled over a number of pumpkins that were coming to full growth amazingly early. Their hides were strangely pale, and when they burst they disclosed unpleasant, fleshy-pink interiors. 'If they don't know we're in town by now, then I'm wrong about everything … look! Didn't I tell you?'
   A wide, rutted track wound into the woods. Ev bounced onto it.
   'There was blood on his face.' Dugan swallowed. It was hard. His head ached very badly now, and all the fillings in his teeth seemed to be vibrating very fast. His guts were churning again. 'And his shirt. Looked like somebody popped him one in the n
   'Pull over, I'm going to be sick again.'
   Ev jammed on the brakes. Dugan opened his door and leaned out, vomited a thin yellow stream onto the dirt and then closed his eyes for a moment. The world was swooping and turning.
   Voices rustled in his head. A great many voices.
   (Gard saw them he's yelling for help)
   (how many)
   (two two in a Cherokee they were headed)
   'Look,' Butch heard himself say, as if from a great distance, 'I don't want to spoil the party, Hillman, but I'm sick. Seriously sick.'
   'Thought you might be.' Hillman's voice came down a long, echoing hall. Somehow Butch managed to haul himself up again in the passenger seat, but he didn't even have strength enough to pull the door closed. He felt as weak as a new kitten. 'You ain't had time to build up any resistance, and we're right where it's strongest. Hold on a second. I got something that'll fix you up. Least, I think I do.'
   Ev pushed the switch that lowered the Cherokee's electric rear window, got out, lowered the tailgate, and pulled out the gunnysack. He dragged it back to the Jeep and then hoisted it onto the seat. He glanced at Dugan, and didn't like what he saw. The trooper's face was the color of candlewax. His eyes were shut, the lids purplish. His mouth was half open and he was breathing in quick, shallow gasps. Ev found a moment to wonder how whatever-it-was could be doing that to Dugan when he himself felt nothing, absolutely nothing.
   'Hang on, friend,' he said, and used his pocketknife to cut the rope holding the neck of the bag.
   '. . . sick . . .' Dugan wheezed, and retched brownish fluid. Ev saw that there were three teeth in the mess.
   He got out a light plastic oxygen-supply tank – what the clerk at Maine Med Supplies had called a flat-pack. He stripped the gold-foil circle from the end of the hose leading out of the flat-pack, revealing a stainless-steel female connector. Now he brought out a gold-colored plastic cup – the sort jet airliners come equipped with. A segmented white plastic tube was attached to this, and at the end there was a white plastic male connector – a valve.
   If this don't work the way that guy said it would, I do believe this big fella's going to die on me.
   He slammed the male connector of the mask into the female connector on the oxygen supply – violent intercourse which he hoped would result in – keeping Dugan going. He heard oxygen sighing gently inside the gold cup. All right. So far, so good.
   He leaned over and put the cup over Dugan's mouth and nose, using the plastic straps. Then he waited anxiously to see what would happen. If Dugan didn't come out of his tailspin in thirty or forty seconds, he would haul ass. David was missing and Hilly was sick, but neither thing gave him a right to murder Dugan, who hadn't known what sort of a mess he was getting into.
   Twenty seconds passed. Then thirty.
   Ev dropped the Cherokee into reverse, meaning to turn around on the edge of Anderson's garden, when Dugan suddenly gasped, jerked, and opened his eyes. They looked very wide and blue and bewildered above the rim of the gold cup. Some color had come back into his cheeks.
   'What the hell – ' His hands groped for the cup.
   'Leave it on,' Ev said, putting one of his big, arthritis-warped old hands over one of Butch's. 'It was the outside air poisoning you. You in a hurry for another dose?'
   Butch stopped reaching for the cup. It bobbed on his face as he said, 'How long will this stuff last?'
   'Twenty-five minutes or so, the guy told me. It's a demand valve, though. Every now and then you can pull it down. When you start feeling woozy again, put it back on. I want to go on in, if you think you can. It can't be far, and … and I feel like I got to know.'
   Butch Dugan nodded.
   The Cherokee lurched forward again. Dugan stared out at the woods around them. Silent. No birds. No animals. No nothing. This was very wrong. Very bad and very damned wrong.
   Faintly, far back in his mind, he could hear thoughts like a whisper of shortwave transmissions.
   He looked at Ev. 'What the blue fuck is going on here, anyway?'
   'That's to find out.' Without taking his eyes off the rough track, Ev rummaged in the gunnysack. Dugan winced as the Cherokee's undercarriage screamed over a stump sawed off a little higher than the others.
   Ev brought out a big .45. It looked old enough for its original owner to have carried it in World War I.
   'Yours?' Dugan asked. It was amazing how fast the oxygen was bringing him around.
   'Yeah. They teach you to use these things, don't they?'
   'Yes.' Although the one Hillman had looked like an antique.
   'You might have to use it today,' Ev said, and handed it over.
   'What -'
   'Have a care. It's loaded.'
   Up ahead, the land suddenly sloped downward. Through the trees came a giant reflection: sunshine bouncing off a huge metal object.
   Ev stamped on the brake, suddenly terrified to the depths of his heart.
   'What the hell?' he heard Dugan mutter beside him.
   Ev opened the door and got out. As his feet touched the ground, he became aware that the earth was crisscrossed with small dusty cracks and that it was vibrating very rapidly. At the next moment music so loud that it was deafening blew through his head at gale force. It went on for perhaps thirty seconds, but the pain was excruciating and it seemed forever. At last, it simply winked out.
   He saw Dugan standing in front of the Cherokee, the cup now hooked under his chin. He held the flat-pack by the strap in one hand, the .45 in the other. He was looking at Ev apprehensively.
   'I'm all right,' Ev said.
   'Yeah? Your nose is bleeding. Just like that guy back at the farm we passed.'
   Ev wiped his nose with his finger and looked at the smear of blood. He wiped his finger on his pants and nodded toward Dugan. 'Remember to put the mask back on when you start to feel woozy.'
   'Oh, don't worry.'
   Ev leaned back into the Cherokee and rummaged in his bag of tricks again. He brought out a Kodak disc camera and something that looked like a cross between a pistol and a blow-dryer.
   'Your flare-gun?' Dugan asked, smiling a little.
   'Ayuh. Get on the gas again, Trooper. You're losin y'color.'
   Dugan pulled it up, and the two men started toward that glittering thing in the woods. Fifty feet from the Cherokee, Ev stopped. It was more than huge; it was titanic, a thing that would perhaps be large enough to dwarf an ocean liner when completely uncovered.
   'Gimme your hand,' he said roughly to Dugan.
   Dugan did as Ev asked, but wanted to know why.
   'Because I'm scared shitless,' Ev said. Dugan squeezed his hand. Ev's arthritis flared, but he squeezed back anyway. After a moment, the two men started forward again

17

   Bobbi and Jud got the guns from the hardware store and put them in the back of the pickup. The side trip hadn't taken long but Dick and the others had gotten a good start and Bobbi pushed the pickup as fast as she dared to catch up. The truck's shadow, shortening as the day approached noon, ran beside them.
   Bobbi suddenly stiffened a little behind the wheel.
   'Did you hear it?'
   'Heard something,' Jud said. 'It was your friend, wasn't it?'
   Bobbi nodded. 'Gard saw them. He's yelling for help.'
   'How many?'
   'Two. In a Jeep. They were headed out to where the ship is.'
   Jud brought a fist down on one leg. 'The fuckers! The dirty snooping fuckers!'
   'We'll catch them,' Bobbi said. 'Don't worry.'
   They were at the farm fifteen minutes later. Bobbi pulled her truck in behind Allison's Nova and Archinbourg's Cadillac. She looked at the group of men and thought how much like the nights they had met out here this was … the ones who were to be made
   (to 'become' first)
   especially strong. But Hazel wasn't here and Beach was; Joe Summerfield and Adley McKeen had never been inside the shed either.
   'Get the guns,' she told Jud. 'Joe, you help. Remember – no shooting unless you have to, and don't shoot the cop, no matter what.'
   She looked toward the porch and saw Gard lying there on his back. Gard's mouth was open and he was breathing in slow, rusty snores. Bobbi's eyes softened. There were plenty of people in Haven – Dick Allison and Newt Berringer probably chief among them – who thought she should long since have gotten rid of Gard. Nothing had been said out loud, but in Haven you no longer had to say things out loud. Bobbi knew if she put a bullet through Gard's head, there would be a whole platoon of willing workers out here an hour later to help bury him. They didn't like Gard because the plate in his head made him immune to the 'becoming.' And it made him hard to read. But he was her brake. And even that was crap. The truth was simpler yet: she still loved him. She was still human enough for that.
   And they would all have to admit that, drunk or not, when they had needed a warning, Gard had given it.
   Jud and Joe Summerfield came back with the rifles. There were six of them, varied calibers. Bobbi saw that five went to people she could trust completely. She gave the sixth, a .22, to Beach, who would complain if he didn't get a shooting iron.
   Occupied with the ritual of guns, none of them saw that Gardener had half-opened his bloodshot eyes and was looking at them. No one heard his thoughts; he had learned how to seal them off.
   'Let's go,' Bobbi said. 'And remember: I want that cop.'
   They moved out in a group.