He walked straight down to the BPW garage and punched his clock and went down to Wally's Spa and started drinking. It killed him two years later. Frankie said he tried to talk to him about it and George said something one time, and that was when he was pretty well blotto. Turned around on his stool, George did, an' asked Frankie Haldeman if he'd ever seen a spider as big as a goodsized dog setting in a web full of kitties an' such all wrapped up in silk thread. Well, what could he say to that? I'm not saying there's truth in it, but I am saying that there's things in the corners of the world that would drive a man insane to look 'em right in the face. So we just stood on the corner a minute, in spite of the wind that was whooping up the street. 'What'd he see?' Bertie asked. 'He said he could still see his dad,' Henry answered, 'but he said it was like he was buried in grey jelly and it was all kinda mashed together. He said his clothes were all stickin' in and out of his skin, like they was melted to his body.' 'Holy Jesus,' Bertie said. 'Then he covered right up again and started screaming at the kid to turn off the light.' 'Like he was a fungus,' I said. 'Yes,' Henry said. 'Sorta like that.' 'You keep that pistol handy,' Bertie said. 'Yes, I think I will.' And with that, we started to trundle up Curve Street. The apartment house where Richie Grenadine had his flat was almost at the top of the hill, one of those big Victorian monsters that were built by the pulp an' paper barons at the turn of the century. They've just about all been turned into apartment houses now. When Bertie got his breath he told us Richie lived on the third floor under that top gable that jutted out like an eyebrow. I took the chance to ask Henry what happened to the kid after that. Along about the third week in November the kid came back one afternoon to find Richie had gone one further than just pulling the shades down. He'd taken and nailed blankets across every window in the place. It was starting to stink worse, too  kind of a mushy stink, the way fruit gets when it goes to ferment with yeast. A week or so after that, Richie got the kid to start heating his beer on the stove. Can you feature that? The kid all by himself in that apartment with his dad turning into, well, into something an' heating his beer and then having to listen to him  it  drinking it with awful thick slurping sounds, the way an old man eats his chowder Can you imagine it? And that's the way things went on until today, when the kid's school let out early because of the storm. 'The boy says he went right home,' Henry told us. 'There's no light in the upstairs hall at all  the boy claims his dad musta snuck out some night and broke it  so he had to sort of creep down to his door. 'Well, he heard somethin' moving around in there, and it suddenly pops into his mind that he don't know what Richie does all day through the week. He ain't seen his dad stir out of that chair for almost a month, and a man's got to sleep and go to the bathroom some time. 'There's a Judas hole in the middle of the door, and it's supposed to have a latch on the inside to fasten it shut, but it's been busted ever since they lived there. So the kid slides up to the door real easy and pushed it open a bit with his thumb and pokes his eye up to it.' By now we were at the foot of the steps and the house was looming over us like ahigh, ugly face, with those windows on the third floor for eyes. I looked up there and sure enough those two windows were just as black as pitch. Like somebody's put blankets over 'em or painted 'em up. 'It took him a minute to get his eye adjusted to the gloom. An' then he seen a great big grey lump, not like a man at all, slitherin' over the floor, leavin' a grey, slimy trail behind it. An' then it sort of snaked out an arm  or something like an arm  and pried a board off'n the wall. And took out a cat.' Henry stopped for a second. Bertie was beating his hands together and it was godawful cold out there on the street, but none of us was ready to go up just yet. 'A dead cat,' Henry recommenced, 'that had putrefacted. The boy said it looked all swole up stiff and there was little white things crawlin' all over it. 'Stop,' Bertie said. 'For Christ's sake.' 'And then his dad ate it., I tried to swallow and something tasted greasy in my throat. 'That's when Timmy closed the peephole.' Henry finished softly. 'And ran.' 'I don't think I can go up there,' Bertie said. Henry didn't say anything, just looked from Bertie to me and back again. 'I guess we better,' I said. 'We got Richie's beer.' Bertie didn't say anything to that, so we went up the steps and in through the front hall door. I smelled it right off. Do you know how a cider house smells in summer? You never get the smell of apples out, but in the fall it's all right because it smells tangy and sharp enough to ream your nose right out. But in the summer, it just smells mean, this smell was like that, but a little bit worse. There was one light on in the lower hall, a mean yellow thing in a frosted glass that threw a glow as thin as buttermilk. And those stairs that went up into the shadows. Henry bumped the cart to a stop, and while he was lifting out the case of beer, I thumbed the button at the foot of the stairs that controlled the secondfloorlanding bulb. But it was busted, just as the boy said. Bertie quavered 'I'll lug the beer. You just take care of that pistol.' Henry didn't argue. He handed it over and we started up, Henry first, then me, then Bertie with the case in his arms. By the time we had fetched the secondfloor landing, the stink was just that much worse. Rotted apples, all fermented, and under that an even uglier stink. When I lived out in Levant I had a dog one time  Rex, his name was  and he was a good mutt but not very wise about cars. He got hit a lick one afternoon while I was at work and he crawled under the house and died there. My Christ, what a stink. I finally had to go under and haul him out with a pole. That other stench was like that; flyblown and putrid and just as dirty as a borin' cob. Up till then I 'had kept thinking that maybe it was some sort of joke, but I saw it wasn't. 'Lord, why don't the neighbours kick up, Harry?' I asked. 'What neighbours?' Henry asked, and he was smiling that queer smile again. I looked around and saw that the hall had a sort of dusty, unused look and the door of all three secondfloor apartments was closed and locked up. 'Who's the landlord, I wonder?' Bertie asked, resting the case on the newel post and getting his breath. 'Gaiteau? Surprised he don't kick 'im out.' 'Who'd go up there and evict him?' Henry asked. 'You?' Bertie didn't say nothing. Presently we started up the next flight, which was even narrower and steeper than the last. It was getting hotter, too. It sounded like every radiator in the place was clanking and hissing. The smell was awful, and I started to feel like someone was stirring my guts with a stick. At the top was a short hall, and one door with a little Judas hole in the middle of it. Bertie made a soft little cry an' whispered out 'Look what we're walkin' in!' I looked down and saw all this slimy stuff on the hall floor, in little puddles. It looked like there'd been a carpet once, but the grey stuff had eaten it all away. Henry walked down to the door, and we went after him. I don't know about Bertie, but I was shaking in my shoes. Henry never hesitated, though; he raised up that gun and beat on the door with the butt of it. 'Richie?' he called, and his voice didn't sound a bit scared, although his face was deadly pale. 'This is Henry Parmalee from down at the NiteOwl. I brought your beer.' There wasn't any answer for p'raps a full minute, and then a voice said, 'Where's Timmy? Where's my boy?' I almost ran right then. That voice wasn't human at all. It was queer an' low an' bubbly, like someone talking through a mouthful of suet. 'He's at my store,' Henry said, 'havin' a decent meal. He's just as skinny as a slat cat, Richie.' There wasn't nothing for a while, and then some horrible squishing noises, like a man in rubber boots walking through mud. Then that decayed voice spoke right through the other side of the door. 'Open the door an' shove that beer through,' it said. 'Only you got to pull all the ring tabs first. I can't.' 'In a minute,' Henry said. 'What kind of shape you in, Richie?' 'Never mind that,' the voice said, and it was horribly eager. 'Just push in the beer and go!' 'It ain't just dead cats anymore, is it?' Henry said, and he sounded sad. He wasn't holdin' the gun buttup any more; now it was business end first. And suddenly, in a flash of light, I made the mental connection Henry had already made, perhaps even as Timmy was telling his story. The smell of decay and rot seemed to double in my nostrils when I remembered. Two young girls and some old Salvation Army wino had disappeared in town during the last three weeks or so  all after dark. 'Send it in or I'll come out an' get it,' the voice said. Henry gestured us back, and we went. 'I guess you better, Richie.' He cocked his piece. There was nothing then, not for a long time. To tell the truth, I began to feel as if it was all over. Then that door burst open, so sudden and so hard that it actually bulged before slamming out against the wall. And out came Richie. It was just a second, just a second before Bertie and me was down those stairs like schoolkids, four an' five at a time, and out the door into the snow, slippin an' sliding. Going down we heard Henry fire three times, the reports loud as grenades in the closed hallways of that empty, cursed house. What we saw in that one or two seconds will last me a lifetime  or whatever's left of it. It was like a huge grey wave of jelly, jelly that looked like a man, and leaving a trail of slime behind it. But that wasn't the worst. Its eyes were flat and yellow and wild, with no human soul in 'em. Only there wasn't two. There were four, an' right down the centre of the thing, betwixt the two pairs of eyes, was a white, fibrous line with a kind of pulsing pink flesh showing through like a slit in a hog's belly. It was dividing, you see. Dividing in two. Bertie and I didn't say nothing to each other going back to the store. I don't know what was going through his mind, but I know well enough what was in mine the multiplication table. Two times two is four, four times two is eight, eight times two is sixteen, sixteentimes two is We got back. Carl and Bill Pelham jumped up and started asking questions right off. We wouldn't answer, neither of us. We just turned around and waited to see if Henry was gonna walk in outta the snow. I was up to 32,768 times two is the end of the human race and so we sat there cozied up to all that beer and waited to see which one was going to finally come back; and here we still sit. I hope it's Henry. I surely do. BATTLEGROUND 'Mr Renshaw?' The desk clerk's voice caught him halfway to the elevator, and Renshaw turned back impatiently, shifting his flight bag from one hand to the other. The envelope in his coat pocket, stuffed with twenties and fifties, crackled heavily. The job had gone well and the pay had been excellent  even  after the Organization's 15 per cent finder's fee had been skimmed off the top. Now all he wanted was a hot shower and a gin and tonic and sleep. 'What is it?' 'Package, sir. Would you sign the slip?' Renshaw signed and looked thoughtfully at the rectangular package. His name and the building's address were written on the gummed label in a spiky backhand script that seemed familiar. He rocked the package on the imitationmarble surface of the desk, and something clanked faintly inside. 'Should I have that sent up, Mr Renshaw?' 'No, I've got it.' It was about eighteen inches on a side and fitted clumsily under his arm. He put it on the plush carpet that covered the elevator floor and twisted his key in the penthouse slot above the regular rack of buttons. The car rose smoothly and silently. He closed his eyes and let the job replay itself on the dark screen of his mind. First, as always, a call from Cal Bates 'You available, Johnny?' He was available twice a year, minimum fee 10,000. He was very good, very reliable, but what his customers really paid for was the infallible predator's talent. John Renshaw was a human hawk, constructed by both genetics and environment to do two things superbly kill and survive. After Bates's call, a buffcoloured envelope appeared in Renshaw's box. A name, an address, a photograph. All committed to memory; then down the garbage disposal with the ashes of envelope and contents. This time the face had been that of a sallow Miami businessman named Hans Morris, founder and owner of the Morris Toy Company. Someone had wanted Morris out of the way and had gone to the Organization. The Organization, in the person of Calvin Bates, had talked to John Renshaw. Pow. Mourners please omit flowers. The doors slid open, he picked up his package and stepped out. He unlocked the suite and stepped in. At this time of day, just after 3p.m., the spacious living room was splashed with April sunshine. He paused for a moment, enjoying it, then put the package on the end table by the door and loosened his tie. He dropped the envelope on top of it and walked over to the terrace. He pushed open the sliding glass door and stepped out. It was cold, and the wind knifed through his thin topcoat. Yet he paused a moment, looking over the city the way a general might survey a captured country. Traffic crawled beetlelike in the streets. Far away, almost buried in the golden afternoon haze, the Bay Bridge glittered like a madman's mirage. To the east, all but lost behind the downtown high rises, the crammed and dirty tenements with their stainlesssteel forests of TV aerials. It was better up here. Better than in the gutters. He went back inside, slid the door closed, and went into the bathroom for a long, hot shower. When he sat down forty minutes later to regard his package, drink in hand, the shadows had marched halfway across the winecoloured carpet and the best of the afternoon was past. It was a bomb. Of course it wasn't, but one proceeded as if it were. That was why one had remained upright and taking nourishment while so many others had gone to that great unemployment office in the sky. If it was a bomb, it was clockless. It sat utterly silent; bland and enigmatic. Plastique was more likely these days, anyway. Less temperamental than the clocksprings manufactured by Westclox and Big Ben. Renshaw looked at the postmark. Miami, 15 April. Five days ago. So the bomb was not timeset. It would have gone off in the hotel safe in that case. Miami. Yes. And that spiky backhand writing. There had been a framed photograph on the sallow businessman's desk. The photo had been of an even sallower old crone wearing a babushka. The script slanted across the bottom had read 'Best from your numberone idea girl  Mom.' What kind of a numberone idea is this, Mom? A doityourself extermination kit? He regarded the package with complete concentration, not moving, his hands folded. Extraneous questions, such as how Morris's numberone idea girl might  have discovered his address, did not occur to him. They were for later, for Cal Bates. Unimportant now. With a sudden, almost absent move, he took a small celluloid calendar out of his wallet and inserted it deftly under the twine that crisscrossed the brown paper. He slid it under the Scotch tape that held one end flap. The flap came loose, relaxing against the twine. He paused for a time, observing, then leaned close and sniffed. Cardboard, paper, string. Nothing more. He walked around the box, squatted easily on his haunches, and repeated the process. Twilight was invading his apartment with grey, shadowy fingers. One of the flaps popped free of the restraining twine, showing a dull green box beneath. Metal. Hinged. He produced a pocket knife and cut the twine. It fell away, and a few helping prods with the tip of the knife revealed the box. It was green with black markings, and stenciled on the front in white letters were the words G.I. JOE VIETNAM FOOTLOCKER. Below that 20 Infantrymen, 10 Helicopters, 2 BAR Men, 2 Bazooka Men, 2 Medics, 4 Jeeps. Below that a flag decal. Below that, in the corner Morris Toy Company, Miami, Fla. He reached out to touch it, then withdrew his hand. Something inside the footlocker had moved. Renshaw stood up, not hurrying, and backed across the room towards the kitchen and the hall. He snapped on the lights. The Vietnam Footlocker was rocking, making the brown paper beneath it rattle. It suddenly overbalanced and fell to the carpet with a soft thud, landing on one end. The hinged top opened a crack of perhaps two inches. Tiny foot soldiers, about an inch and a half tall, began to crawl out. Renshaw watched them, unblinking. His mind made no effort to cope with the real or unreal aspect of what he was seeing  only with the possible consequences for his survival. The soldiers were wearing minuscule army fatigues, helmets, and field packs. Tiny carbines were slung across their shoulders. Two of them looked briefly across the room at Renshaw. Their eyes, no bigger than pencil points, glittered. Five, ten, twelve, then all twenty. One of them was gesturing, ordering the others. They lined themselves up along the crack that the fall had produced and began to push. The crack began to widen. Renshaw picked one of the large pillows off the couch and began to walk towards them. The commanding officer turned and gestured. The others whirled and unslung their carbines. There were tiny, almost delicate popping sounds, and Renshaw felt suddenly as if he had been stung by bees. He threw the pillow. It struck them, knocking them sprawling, then hit the box and knocked it wide open. Insectlike, with a faint, high whirring noise like chiggers, a cloud of miniature helicopters, painted jungle green, rose out of the box. Tiny phut! phut! sounds reached Renshaw's ears and he saw pinpricksized muzzle flashes coming from the open copter doors. Needles pricked his belly, his right arm, the side of his neck. He clawed out and got one  sudden pain in his fingers; blood welling. The whirling blades had chopped them to the bone in diagonal scarlet hash marks. The others whirled out of range, circling him like horseflies. The stricken copter thumped to the rug and lay still. Sudden excruciating pain in his foot made him cry out. One of the foot soldiers was standing on his shoe and bayoneting his ankle. The tiny face looked up, panting and grinning. Renshaw kicked at it and the tiny body flew across the room to splatter on the wall. It did not leave blood but a viscid purple smear. There was a tiny, coughing explosion and blinding agony ripped his thigh. One of the bazooka men had come out of the footlocker. A small curl of smoke rose lazily from his weapon. Renshaw looked down at his leg and saw a blackened, smoking hole in his pants the size of a quarter. The flesh beneath was charred. The little bastard shot me! He turned and ran into the hall, then into his bedroom. One of the helicopters buzzed past his cheek, blades whirring busily. The small stutter of a BAR. Then it darted away. The gun beneath his pillow was a.44 Magnum, big enough to put a hole the size of two fists through anything it hit. Renshaw turned, holding the pistol in both hands. He realized coolly that he would be shooting at a moving target not much bigger than a flying light bulb. Two of the copters whirred in. Sitting on the bed, Renshaw fired once. One of the helicopters exploded into nothingness. That's two, he thought. He drew a bead on the second squeezed the trigger. It jigged! Goddamnit, it jigged! The helicopter swooped at him in a sudden deadly arc, fore and aft overhead props whirring with blinding speed. Renshaw caught a glimpse of one of the BAR men crouched at the open bay door, firing his weapon in short, deadly bursts, and then he threw himself to the floor and rolled. My eyes, the bastard was going for my eyes! He came up on his back at the far wall, the gun held at chest level. But the copter was retreating. It seemed to pause for a moment, and dip in recognition of Renshaw's superior firepower. Then it was gone, back towards the living room. Renshaw got up, wincing as his weight came down on the wounded leg. It was bleeding freely. And why not? he thought grimly. It's not everybody who gets hit pointblank with a bazooka shell and lives to tell about it. So Mom was his numberone idea girl, was she? She was all that and a bit more. He shook a pillowcase free of the tick and ripped it into a bandage for his leg, then took his shaving mirror from the bureau and went to the hallway door. Kneeling, he shoved it out on to the carpet at an angle and peered in. They were bivouacking by the footlocker, damned if they weren't. Miniature soldiers ran hither and thither, setting up tents. Jeeps two inches high raced about importantly. A medic was working over the soldier Renshaw had kicked. The remaining eight copters flew in a protective swarm overhead, at coffeetable level. Suddenly they became aware of the mirror, and three of the foot soldiers dropped to one knee and began firing. Seconds later the mirror was shattered in four places. Okay, okay, then. Renshaw went back to the bureau and got the heavy mahogany oddsandends box Linda had given him for Christmas. He hefted it once, nodded, and went to the doorway and lunged through. He wound up and fired like a pitcher throwing a fast ball. The box described a swift, true vector and smashed little men like ninepins. One of the jeeps rolled over twice. Renshaw advanced to the doorway of the living room, sighted on one of the sprawling soldiers, and gave it to him. Several of the others had recovered. Some were kneeling and firing formally. Others had taken cover. Still others had retreated back into the footlocker. The bee stings began to pepper his legs and torso, but none reached higher than his rib cage. Perhaps the range was too great. It didn't matter; he had no intention of being turned away. This was it. He missed with his next shot  they were so goddamn small  but the following one sent another soldier into a broken sprawl. The copters were buzzing towards him ferociously. Now the tiny bullets began to splat into his face, above and below his eyes. He potted the lead copter, then the second. Jagged streaks of pain silvered his vision. The remaining six split into two retreating wings. His face was wet with blood and he swiped at it with his forearm. He was ready to start firing again when he paused. The soldiers who had retreated inside the footlocker were trundling something out. Something that looked like. There was a blinding sizzle of yellow fire, and a sudden gout of wood and plaster exploded from the wall to his left. a rocket launcher! He squeezed off one shot at it, missed, wheeled and ran for the bathroom at the far end of the corridor. He slammed the door and locked it. In the bathroom mirror an Indian was staring back at him with dazed and haunted eyes, a battlecrazed Indian with thin streamers of red paint drawn from holes no bigger than grains of pepper. A ragged flap of skin dangled from one cheek. There was a gouged furrow in his neck. I'm losing! He ran a shaking hand through his hair. The front door was cut off. So was the phone and the kitchen extension. They had a goddamn rocket launcher and a direct hit would tear his head off. Damn it, that wasn't even listed on the box! He started to draw in a long breath and let it out in a sudden grunt as a fistsized section of the door blew in with a charred burst of wood. Tiny flames glowed briefly around the ragged edges of the hole, and he saw the brilliant flash as they launched another round. More wood blew inward, scattering burning slivers on the bathroom rug. He stamped them out and two of the copters buzzed angrily through the hole. Minuscule BAR slugs stitched his chest. With a whining groan of rage he smashed one out of the air barehanded, sustaining a picket fence of deep slashes across his palm. In sudden invention, he slung a heavy bath towel over the other. It fell, writhing to the floor, and he stamped the life out of it. He breath was coming in hoarse whoops. Blood ran into one eye, hot and stinging, and he wiped it away. There, goddamnit. There. That'll make them think. Indeed, it did seem to be making them think. There was no movement for fifteen minutes. Renshaw sat on the edge of the tub, thinking feverishly. There had to be a way out of this blind alley. There had to be. If there was only a way to flank them He suddenly turned and looked at the small window over the tub. There was a way. Of course there was. His eyes dropped to the can of lighter fluid on top of the medicine cabinet. He was reaching for it when the rustling noise came. He whirled, bringing the Magnum up but it was only a tiny scrap of paper shoved under the crack of the door. The crack, Renshaw noted grimly, was too narrow for even one of them to get through. There was one tiny word written on the paper Surrender Renshaw smiled grimly and put the lighter fluid in his breast pocket. There was a chewed stub of pencil beside it. He scrawled one word on the paper and shoved it back under the door. The word was NUTS There was a sudden blinding barrage of rocket shells, and Renshaw backed away. They arched through the hole in the door and detonated against the pale blue tiles above the towel rack, turning the elegant wall into a pocket lunar landscape. Renshaw threw a hand over his eyes as plaster flew in a hot rain of shrapnel. Burning holes ripped through his shirt and his back was peppered. When the barrage stopped, Renshaw moved. He climbed on top of the tub and slid the window open. Cold stars looked in at him. It was a narrow window, and a narrow ledge beyond it. But there was no time to think of that. He boosted himself through, and the cold air slapped his lacerated face and neck like an open hand. He was leaning over the balance points of his hands, staring straight down. Forty storeys down. From this height the street looked no wider than a child's train track. The bright, winking lights of the city glittered madly below him like thrown jewels. With the deceptive ease of a trained gymnast, Renshaw brought his knees up to rest on the lower edge of the window. If one of those waspsized copters flew through that hole in the door now, one shot in the ass would send him straight down, screaming all the way. None did. He twisted, thrust one leg out, and one reaching hand grabbed the overhead cornice and held. A moment later he was standing on the ledge outside the window. Deliberately not thinking of the horrifying drop below his heels, not thinking of what would happen if one of the helicopters buzzed out after him, Renshaw edged towards the corner of the building. Fifteen feet ten. There. He paused, he chest pressed against the wall, hands splayed out on the rough surface. He could feel the lighter fluid in his breast pocket and the reassuring weight of the Magnum jammed in his waistband. Now to get around the goddamn corner. Gently, he eased one foot around and slid his weight on to it. Now the right angle was pressed razorlike into his chest and gut. There was a smear of bird guano in front of his eyes on the rough stone. Christ, he thought crazily. I didn't know they could fly this high. His left foot slipped. For a weird, timeless moment he tottered over the brink, right arm back watering madly for balance, and then he was clutching the two sides of the building in a lover's embrace, face pressed against the hard corner, breath shuddering in and out of his lungs. A bit at a time, he slid the other foot around. Thirty feet away, his own livingroom terrace jutted out. He made his way down to it, breath sliding in and out of his lungs with shallow force. Twice he was forced to stop as sharp gusts of wind tried to pick him off the ledge. Then he was there, gripping the ornamented iron railings. He hoisted himself over noiselessly. He had left the curtains half drawn across the sliding partition, and now he peered in cautiously. They were just the way he wanted them  ass to. Four soldiers and one copter had been left to guard the footlocker. The rest would be outside the bathroom door with the rocket launcher. Okay. In through the opening like gangbusters. Wipe out the ones by the footlocker, then out the door. Then a quick taxi to the airport. Off to Miami to find Morris's numberone idea girl. He thought he might just burn her face off with a flame thrower. That would be poetic justice. He took off his shirt and ripped a long strip from one sleeve. He dropped the rest to flutter limply by his feet, and bit off the plastic spout on the can of lighter fluid. He stuffed one end of the rag inside, withdrew it, and stuffed the other end in so only a sixinch strip of saturated cotton hung free. He got out his lighter, took a deep breath, and thumbed the wheel. He tipped it to the cloth and as it sprang alight he. rammed open the glass partition and plunged through. The copter reacted instantly, kamikazediving him as he charged across the rug, dripping tiny splatters of liquid fire. Renshaw straightarmed it, hardly noticing the jolt of pain that ran up his arm as the turning blades chopped his flesh open. The tiny foot soldiers scattered into the footlocker. After that, it all happened very rapidly. Renshaw threw the lighter fluid. The can caught, mushrooming into a licking fireball. The next instant he was reversing, running for the door. He never knew what hit him. It was like the thud that a steel safe would make when dropped from a respectable height. Only this thud ran through the entire highrise apartment building, thrumming in its steel frame like a tuning fork. The penthouse door blew off its hinges and shattered against the far wall. A couple who had been walking hand in hand below looked up in time to see a very large white flash, as though a hundred flashguns had gone off at once. 'Somebody blew a fuse,' the man said. 'I guess 'What's that?' his girl asked. Something was fluttering lazily down towards them; he caught it in one outstretched hand. 'Jesus, some guy's shirt. All full of little holes. Bloody, too.' 'I don't like it,' she said nervously. 'Call a cab, huh, Ralph? We'll have to talk to the cops if something happened up there, and I ain't supposed to be out with you.' 'Sure, yeah.' He looked around, saw a taxi, and whistled. It's brake lights flared and they ran across to get it. Behind them, unseen, a tiny scrap of paper floated down and landed near the remains of John Renshaw's shirt. Spiky backhand script read Hey, kids! Special in this Vietnam Footlocker! (For a Limited Time Only) 1 Rocket Launcher 20 SurfacetoAir 'Twister' Missiles 1 ScaleModel Thermonuclear Weapon TRUCKS The guy's name was Snodgrass and I could see him getting ready to do something crazy. His eyes had got bigger, showing a lot of the whites, like a dog getting ready to fight. The two kids who had come skidding into the parking lot in the old Fury were trying to talk to him, but his head was cocked as though he was hearing other voices. He had a tight little potbelly encased in a good suit that was getting a little shiny in the seat. lie was a salesman and he kept his display bag close to him, like a pet dog that had gone to sleep. 'Try the radio again,' the truck driver at the counter said. The shortorder cook shrugged and turned it on. He flipped it across the band and got nothing but static. 'You went too fast,' the trucker protested. 'You might have missed something.' 'Hell,' the shortorder cook said. He was an elderly black man with a smile of gold and he wasn't looking at the trucker.


He was looking through the dinerlength picture window at the parking lot. Seven or eight heavy trucks were out there, engines rumbling in low, idling roars that sounded like big cats purring. There were a couple of Macks, a Hemingway, and four or five Reos. Trailer trucks, interstate haulers with a lot of licence plates and CB whip antennas on the back. The kids' Fury was lying n its roof at the end of long, looping skid marks in the loose crushed rock of the parking lot. It had been battered into senseless junk. At the entrance to the truck stop's turnaround, there was a blasted Cadillac. Its owner stared out of the starshattered windshield like a gutter fish. Hornrimmed glasses hung from one ear. Halfway across the lot from it lay the body of a girl in a pink dress. She had jumped from the Caddy when she saw it wasn't going to make it. She had hit running but never had a chance. She was the worst, even though she was face down. There were flies around her in clouds. Across the road an old Ford station wagon had been slammed through the handrails. That had happened an hour ago. No one had been by since then. You couldn't see the turnpike from the window and the phone was out. 'You went too fast,' the trucker was protesting. 'You oughta ' That was when Snodgrass bolted. He turned the table over getting up, smashing coffee cups and sending sugar in a wild spray. His eyes were wilder than ever, and his mouth hung loosely and he was blabbering 'We gotta get outta here we gotta getoutta here we gotta get outta here ' The kid shouted and his girl friend screamed. I was on the stool closest to the door and I got a handful of his shirt, but he tore loose. He was cranked up all the way. He would have gone through a bankvault door. He slammed out the door and then he was sprinting across the gravel towards the drainage ditch on the left. Two of the trucks lunged after him, smokestacks blowing diesel exhaust dark brown against the sky, huge rear wheels machinegunning gravel up in sprays. He couldn't have been any more than five or six running steps from the edge of the flat parking lot when he turned back to look, fear scrawled on his face. His feet tangled each other and he faltered and almost fell down. He got his balance again, but it was too late. One of the trucks gave way and the other charged down, huge front grill glittering savagely in the sun. Snodgrass screamed, the sound high and thin, nearly lost under the Reo's heavy diesel roar. It didn't drag him under. As things turned out, it would have been better if it had. Instead it drove him up and out, the way a punter kicks a football. For a moment he was silhouetted against the hot afternoon sky like a crippled scarecrow, and then he was gone into the drainage ditch. The big truck's brakes hissed like dragon's breath, its front wheels locked, digging grooves into the gravel skin of the lot, and it stopped inches from jackknifing in. The bastard. The girl in the booth screamed. Both hands were clamped into her cheeks, dragging the flesh down, turning it into a witch's mask. Glass broke. I turned my head and saw that the trucker had squeezed his glass hard enough to break it. I don't think he knew it yet. Milk and a few drops of blood fell on to the counter. The black counterman was frozen by the radio, a dishcloth in hand, looking amazed. His teeth glittered. For a moment there was no sound but the buzzing Westclox and the rumbling of the Reo's engine as it returned to its fellows. Then the girl began to cry and it was all right  or at least better. My own car was around the side, also battered to junk. It was a 1971 Camaro and I had still been paying on it, but I didn't suppose that mattered now. There was no one in the trucks. The sun glittered and flashed on empty cabs. The wheels turned themselves. You couldn't think about it too much. You'd go insane if you thought about it too much. Like Snodgrass. Two hours passed. The sun began to go down. Outside, the trucks patrolled in slow circles and figure eights. Their parking lights and running lights had come on. I walked the length of the counter twice to get the kinks out of my legs and then sat in a booth by the long front window. It was a standard truck stop, close to the major throughway, a complete service facility out back, gas and diesel fuel both. The truckers came here for coffee and pie. 'Mister?' The voice was hesitant. I looked around. It was the two kids from the Fury. The boy looked about nineteen. He had long hair and a beard that was just starting to take hold. His girl looked younger. 'Yeah?' 'What happened to you?' I shrugged. 'I was coming up the interstate to Pelson,' I said. 'A truck came up behind me  I could see it in the mirror a long way off really highballing. You could hear it a mile down the road. It whipped out around a VW Beetle and just snapped it off the road with the whiplash of the trailer, the way you'd snap a ball of paper off a table with your finger. I thought the truck would go, too. No driver could have held it with the trailer whipping that way. But it didn't go. The VW flopped over six or seven times and exploded. And the truck got the next one coming up the same way. It was coming up on me and I took the exit ramp in a hurry.' I laughed but my heart wasn't in it. 'Right into a truck stop, of all places. From the frying pan into the fire.' The girl swallowed. 'We saw a Greyhound going north in the southbound lane. It was ploughing through cars. It exploded and burned but before it did slaughter.' A Greyhound bus. That was something new. And bad. Outside, all the headlights suddenly popped on in unison, bathing the lot in an eerie, depthless glare. Growling, they cruised back and forth. The headlights seemed to give them eyes, and in the growing gloom, the dark trailer boxes looked like the hunched, squaredoff shoulders of prehistoric giants. The counterman said, 'Is it safe to turn on the lights?' 'Do it,' I said, 'and find out.' He flipped the switches and a series of flyspecked globes overhead came on. At the same time a neon sign out front stuttered into life 'Conant's Truck Stop  Diner  Good Eats'. Nothing happened. The trucks continued their patrol. 'I can't understand it,' the trucker said. He had gotten down from his stool and was walking around, his hand wrapped in a red engineer's bandanna. 'I ain't had no problems with my rig. She's a good old girl. I pulled in here a little past one for a spaghetti dinner and this happens.' He waved his arms and the bandanna flapped. 'My own rig's out there right now, the one with the weak left taillight. Been driving her for six years. But if I stepped out that door ' 'It's just starting,' the counterman said. His eyes were hooded and obsidian. 'It must be bad if that radio's gone. It's just starting.' The girl had drained as pale as milk. 'Never mind that,' I said to the counterman. 'Not yet.' 'What would do it?' The trucker was worrying. 'Electrical storms in the atmosphere? Nuclear testing? What?' 'Maybe they're mad,' I said. Around seven o'clock I walked over to the counterman. 'How are we fixed here? I mean, if we have to stay a while?' His brow wrinkled. 'Not so bad. Yest'y was delivery day. We got twothree hunnert hamburg patties, canned fruit and vegetables, dry cereal, aigs no more milk than what's in the cooler, but the water's from the well. If we had to, the five of us cud get on for a month or more.' The trucker came over and blinked at us. 'I'm dead out of cigarettes. Now that cigarette machine. 'It ain't my machine,' the counterman said. 'No sir.' The trucker had a steel pinch bar he'd got in the supply room out back. He went to work on the machine. The kid went down to where the jukebox glittered and flashed and plugged in a quarter. John Fogarty began to sing about being born on the bayou. I sat down and looked out the window. I saw something I didn't like right away. A Chevy light pickup had joined the patrol, like a Shetland pony amid Percherons. I watched it until it rolled impartially over the body of the girl from the Caddy and then I looked away. 'We made them!' the girl cried out with sudden w'retchedness. 'They can't!' Her boy friend told her to hush. The trucker got the cigarette machine open and helped himself to six or eight packs of Viceroys. He put them in different pockets and then ripped one pack open. From the intent expression on his face, I wasn't sure if he was going to smoke them or eat them up. Another record came on the juke. It was eight o'clock. At eightthirty the power went off. When the lights went, the girl screamed, a cry that stopped suddenly, as if her boy friend had put his hand over her mouth. The jukebox dies with a deepening, unwinding sound. 'What the Christ!' the trucker said. 'Counterman!' I called. 'You got any candles?' 'I think so. Wait.. yeah. Here's a few.' I got up and took them. We lit them and started placing them around. 'Be careful,' I said. 'If we burn the place down there's the devil to pay.' He chuckled morosely. 'You know it.' When we were done placing the candles, the kid and his girl were huddled together and the trucker was by the back door, watching six more heavy trucks weaving in and out between the concrete fuel islands. 'This changes things, doesn't it?' I said. 'Damn right, if the power's gone for good.' 'How bad?' 'Hamburg'll go over in three days. Rest of the meat and aigs'll go by about as quick. The cans will be okay, an' the dry stuff. But that ain't the worst. We ain't gonna have no water without the pump.' 'How long?' 'Without no water? A week.' 'Fill every empty jug you've got. Fill them till you can't draw anything but air. Where are the toilets? There's good water in the tanks.' 'Employees' res'room is in the back. But you have to go outside to get to the lady's and gent's.' 'Across to the service building?' I wasn't ready for that. Not yet. 'No. Out the side door an' up a ways.' 'Give me a couple of buckets.' He found two galvanized pails. The kid strolled up. 'What are you doing?' 'We have to have water. All we can get.' 'Give me a bucket then.' I handed him one. 'Jerry!' the girl cried. 'You ' He looked at her and she didn't say anything else, but she picked up a napkin and began to tear at the corners. The trucker was smoking another cigarette and grinning at the floor. He didn't speak up. We walked over to the side door where I'd come in that afternoon and stood there for a second, watching the shadows wax and wane as the trucks went back and forth. 'Now?' the kid said. His arm brushed mine and the muscles were jumping and humming like wires. If anyone bumped him he'd go straight up to heaven. 'Relax,' I said. He smiled a little. It was a sick smile, but better than none. 'Okay.' We slipped out. The night air had cooled. Crickets chirred in the grass, and frogs thumped and croaked in the drainage ditch. Out here the rumble of the trucks was louder, more menacing, the sound of beasts. From inside it was a movie. Out here it was real, you could get killed. We slid along the tiled outer wall. A slight overhang gave us some shadow. My Camaro was huddled against the cyclone fence across from us, and faint light from the roadside sign glinted on broken metal and puddles of gas and oil. 'You take the lady's,' I whispered. 'Fill your bucket from the toilet tank and wait.' Steady diesel rumblings. It was tricky; you thought they were coming, but it was only echoes bouncing off the building's odd corners. It was only twenty feet, but it seemed much further. He opened the lady'sroom door and went in. I went past and then I was inside the gent's. I could feel my muscles loosen and a breath whistled out of me. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, strained white face with dark eyes. I got the porcelain tank cover off and dunked the bucket full. I poured a little back to keep from sloshing and went to the door. 'Hey?' 'Yeah,' he breathed. 'You ready?' 'Yeah.' We went out again. We got maybe six steps before lights blared in our faces. It had crept up, big wheels barely turning on the gravel. It had been lying in wait and now it leaped at us, electric headlamps glowing in savage circles, the huge chrome grill seeming to snarl. The kid froze, his face stamped with horror, his eyes blank, the pupils dilated down to pinpricks. I gave him a hard shove, spilling half his water. 'Go!' The thunder of that diesel engine rose to a shriek. I reached over the kid's shoulder to yank the door open, but before I could it was shoved from inside. The kid lunged in and I dodged after him. I looked back to see the truck  a big cabover Peterbilt  kiss off the tiled outside wall, peeling away jagged hunks of tile. There was an eargrinding squealing noise, like gigantic fingers scraping a blackboard. Then the right mudguard and the corners of the grill smashed into the stillopen door, sending glass in a crystal spray and snapping the door's steelgauge hinges like tissue paper. The door flew into the night like something out of a Dali painting and the truck accelerated towards the front parking lot, its exhaust racketing like machinegun fire. It had a disappointed, angry sound. The kid put his bucket down and collapsed into the girl's arms, shuddering. My heart was thudding heavily in my chest and my calves felt like water. And speaking of water, we had brought back about a bucket and a quarter between us. It hardly seemed worth it. 'I want to block up that doorway,' I said to the counterman. 'What will do the trick?' 'Well ' The trucker broke in 'Why? One of those big trucks couldn't get a wheel in through there.' 'It's not the big trucks I'm worried about.' The trucker began hunting for a smoke. 'We got some sheet sidin' out in the supply room,' the counterman said. 'Boss was gonna put up a shed to store butane gas.' 'We'll put them across and prop them with a couple of booths.' 'It'll help,' the trucker said. It took about an hour and by the end we'd all got into the act, even the girl. It was fairly solid. Of course, fairly solid wasn't going to be good enough, not if something hit it at full speed. I think they all knew that. There were still three booths ranged along the big glass picture window and I sat down in one of them. The clock behind the counter had stopped at 8.32, but it felt like ten. Outside the truck prowled and growled. Some left, hurrying off to unknown missions, and others came. There were three pickup trucks now, circling importantly amid their bigger brothers. I was starting to doze, and instead of counting sheep I counted trucks. How many in the state, how many in America? Trailer trucks, pickup trucks, flatbeds, dayhaulers, threequartertons, army convoy trucks by the tens of thousands, and buses. Nightmare vision of a citybus, two wheels in the gutter and two wheels on the pavement, roaring along and ploughing through screaming pedestrians like ninepins. I shook it off and fell into a light, troubled sleep. It must have been early morning when Snodgrass began to scream. A thin new moon had risen and was shining icily through a high scud of cloud. A new clattering note had been added, counterpointing the throaty, idling roar of the big rigs. I looked for it and saw a hay baler circling out by the darkened sign. The moonlight glanced off the sharp, turning spoke of its packer. The scream came again, unmistakably from the drainage ditch 'Help meeeee. 'What was that?' It was the girl. In the shadows her eyes were wide and she looked horribly frightened. 'Nothing,' I said. 'Help meeeee. 'He's alive,' she whispered. 'Oh, God. Alive.' I didn't have to see him. I could imagine it all too well. Snodgrass lying half in and half out of the drainage ditch, back and legs broken, carefullypressed suit caked with mud, white, gasping face turned up to the indifferent moon 'I don't hear anything,' I said. 'Do you?' She looked at me. 'How can you? How?' 'Now if you woke him up,' I said, jerking a thumb at the kid, 'he might hear something. He might go out there. Would you like that?' Her face began to twitch and pull as if stitched by invisible needles. 'Nothing,' she whispered. 'Nothing out there.' She went back to her boy friend and pressed her head against his chest. His arms came up around her in his sleep. No one else woke up. Snodgrass cried and wept and screamed for a long time, and then he stopped. Dawn. Another truck had arrived, this one a flatbed with a giant rack for hauling cars. It was joined by a bulldozer. That scared me. The trucker came over and twitched my arm. 'Come on back,' he whispered excitedly. The others were still sleeping. 'Come look at this.' I followed him back to the supply room. About ten trucks were patrolling out there. At first I didn't see anything new. 'See?' he said, and pointed. 'Right there.' Then I saw. One of the pickups was stopped dead. It was sitting there like a lump, all the menace gone out of it. 'Out of gas?' 'That's right, buddy. And they can't pump their own. We got it knocked. All we have to do is wait.' He smiled and fumbled for a cigarette. It was about nine o'clock and I was eating a piece of yesterday's pie for breakfast when the air horn began long, rolling blasts that rattled your skull. We went over to the windows and looked out. The trucks were sitting still, idling. One trailer truck, a huge Reo with a red cab, had pulled up almost to the narrow verge of grass between the restaurant and parking lot. At this distance the square grill was huge and murderous. The tyres would stand to a man's chest cavity. The horn began to blare again; hard, hungry blasts that travelled off in straight, flat lines and echoed back. There was a pattern. Shorts and longs in some kind of rhythm. 'That's Morse!' the kid, Jerry, suddenly exclaimed. The trucker looked at him. 'How would you know?' The kid went a little red. 'I learned it in the Boy Scouts.' 'You?' the trucker said. 'You? Wow.' He shook his head. 'Never mind,' I said. 'Do you remember enough to ' 'Sure, Let me listen. Got a pencil?' The counterman gave him one, and the kid began to write letters on a napkin. After a while he stopped. 'It's saying "Attention" over and over again. Wait.' We waited. The air horn beat its longs and short into the still morning air. Then the pattern changed and the kid started to write again. We hung over his shoulders and watched the message form. 'Someone must pump fuel. Someone will not be harmed. All fuel must be pumped. This shall be done now. Now someone will pump fuel.' The air blasts kept up, but the kid stopped writing. 'It's just repeating "Attention" again,' he said. The truck repeated its message again and again. I didn't like the look of the words, printed on the napkin in block style. They looked machinelike, ruthless. There would be no compromise with those words. You did or you didn't. 'Well,' the kid said, 'what do we do?' 'Nothing,' the trucker said. His face was excited and working. 'All we have to do is wait. They must all be low on fuel. One of the little ones out back has already stopped. All we have to do ' The air horn stopped. The truck backed up and joined its fellows. They waited in a semicircle, headlights pointed in towards us. 'There's a bulldozer out there,' I said. Jerry looked at me. 'You think they'll rip the place down?' 'Yes.' He looked at the counterman. 'They couldn't do that, could they?' The counterman shrugged. 'We oughta vote,' the trucker said. 'No blackmail, damn it. All we gotta do is wait.' He had repeated it three times now, like a charm. 'Okay,' I said. 'Vote.' 'Wait,' the trucker said immediately. 'I think we ought to fuel them,' I said. 'We can wait for a better chance to get away. Counterman?' 'Stay in here,' he said. 'You want to be their slaves? That's what it'll come to. You want to spend the rest of your life changin' oil filters every time one of those things blats its horn? Not me.' He looked darkly out the window. 'Let them starve.' I looked at the kid and the girl. 'I think he's right,' he said. 'That's the only way to stop them. If someone was going to rescue us, they would have. God knows what's going on in other places.' And the girl, with Snodgrass in her eyes, nodded and stepped closer to him. 'That's it then,' I said. I went over to the cigarette machine and got a pack without looking at the brand. I'd stopped smoking a year ago, but this seemed like a good time to start again. The smoke rasped harsh in my lungs. Twenty minutes crawled by. The trucks out front waited. In back, they were lining up at the pumps. 'I think it was all a bluff,' the trucker said. 'Just , Then there was a louder, harsher, choppier note, the sound of an engine revving up and falling off, then revving up again. The bulldozer. It glittered like a yellowjacket in the sun, a Caterpillar with clattering steel treads. Black smoke belched from its short stack as it wheeled around to face us. 'It's going to charge,' the trucker said. There was a look of utter surprise on his face. 'It's going to charge!' 'Get back,' I said. 'Behind the counter.' The bulldozer was still revving. Gearshift levers moved themselves. Heat shimmer hung over its smoking stack. Suddenly the dozer blade lifted, a heavy steel curve clotted with dried dirt. Then, with a screaming howl of power, it roared straight at us. 'The counter!' I gave the trucker a shove, and that started them. There was a small concrete verge between the parking lot and the grass. The dozer charged over it, blade lifting for a moment, and then it rammed the front wall headon. Glass exploded inwards with a heavy, coughing roar and the wood frame crashed into splinters. One of the overhead light globes fell, splashing more glass. Crockery fell from the shelves. The girl was screaming but the sound was almost lost beneath the steady, pounding roar of the Cat's engine. It reversed, clanked across the chewed strip of lawn, and lunged forward again, sending the remaining booths crashing and spinning. The pie case fell off the counter, sending pie wedges skidding across the floor. The counterman was crouching with his eyes shut, and the kid was holding his girl. The trucker was walleyed with fear. 'We gotta stop it,' he gibbered. 'Tell 'em we'll do it, we'll do anything , 'A little late, isn't it?' The Cat reversed and got ready for another charge. New nicks in its blade glittered and heliographed in the sun. It lurched forward with a bellowing roar and this time it took down the main support to the left of what had been the window. That section of the roof fell in with a grinding crash. Plaster dust billowed up. The dozer pulled free. Beyond it I could see the group of trucks, waiting. I grabbed the counterman. 'Where are the oil drums?' The cookstoves ran on butane gas, but I had seen vents for a warmair furnace. 'Back of the storage room,' he said. I grabbed the kid. 'Come on.' We got up and ran into the storage room. The bulldozer hit again and the building trembled. Two or three more hits and it would be able to come right up to the counter for a cup of coffee. There were two large fiftygallon drums with feeds to the furnace and turn spigots. There was a carton of empty ketchup bottles near the back door. 'Get those, Jerry.' While he did, I pulled off my shirt and yanked it to rags. The dozer hit again and again, and each hit was accompanied by the sound of more breakage. I filled four of the ketchup bottles from the spigots, and he stuffed rags into them. 'You play football?' I asked him. 'In high school.' 'Okay. Pretend you're going in from the five.' We went out into the restaurant. The whole front wall was open to the sky. Sprays of glass glittered like diamonds. One heavy beam had fallen diagonally across the opening. The dozer was backing up to take it out and I thought that this time it would keep coming, ripping through the stools and then demolishing the counter itself. We knelt down and thrust the bottles out. 'Light them up,' I said to the trucker. He got his matches out, but his hands were shaking too badly and he dropped them. The counterman picked them up, struck one, and the hunks of shirt blazed greasily alight. 'Quick,' I said. We ran, the kid a little in the lead. Glass crunched and gritted underfoot. There was a hot, oily smell in the air. Everything was very loud, very bright. The dozer charged. The kid dodged out under the beam and stood silhouetted in front of that heavy tempered steel blade. I went out to the right. The kid's first throw fell short. His second hit the blade and the flame splashed harmlessly. He tried to turn and then it was on him, a rolling juggernaut, four tons of steel. His hands flew up and then he was gone, chewed under. I buttonhooked around and lobbed one bottle into the open cab and the second right into the works. They exploded together in a leaping shout of flame. For a moment the dozer's engine rose in an almost human squeal of rage and pain. It wheeled in a maddened halfcircle, ripping out the left corner of the diner, and rolled drunkenly towards the drainage ditch. The steel treads were streaked and dotted with gore and where the kid had been there was something that looked like a crumpled towel. The dozer got almost to the ditch, flames boiling from under its cowling and from the cockpit, and then it exploded in a geyser. I stumbled backward and almost fell over a pile of rubble. There was a hot smell that wasn't just oil. It was burning hair. I was on fire. I grabbed a tablecloth, jammed it on my head, ran behind the counter, and plunged my head into the sink hard enough to crack it on the bottom. The girl was screaming Jerry's name over and over in a shrieking insane litany. I turned around and saw the huge carcarrier slowly rolling towards the defenceless front of the diner. The trucker screamed and broke for the side door. 'Don't!' the counterman cried. 'Don't do that ' But he was out and sprinting for the drainage ditch and the open field beyond. The truck must have been standing sentry just out of sight of that side door  a small panel job with 'Wong's CashandCarry Laundry' written on the side. It ran him down almost before you could see it happen. Then it was gone and only the trucker was left, twisted into the gravel. He had been knocked out of his shoes. The carcarrier rolled slowly over the concrete verge, on to the grass, over the kid's remains, and stopped with its huge snout poking into the diner. Its air horn let out a sudden, shattering honk, followed by another, and another. 'Stop!' the girl whimpered. 'Stop; oh stop, please But the honks went on a long time. It took only a minute to pick up the pattern. It was the same as before. It wanted someone to feed it and the others. 'I'll go,' I said. 'Are the pumps unlocked?' The counterman nodded. He had aged fifty years. 'No!' the girl screamed. She threw herself at me. 'You've got to stop them! Beat them, burn them, break them ' Her voice wavered and broke into a harsh bray of grief and loss. The counterman held her. I went around the corner of the counter, picking my way through the rubble, and out through the supply room. My heart was thudding heavily when I stepped out into the warm sun. I wanted another cigarette, but you don't smoke around fuel islands. The trucks were still lined up. The laundry truck was crouched across the gravel from me like a hound dog, growling and rasping. A funny move and it would cream me. The sun glittered on its blank windshield and I shuddered. It was like looking into the face of an idiot. I switched the pump to 'on' and pulled out the nozzle; unscrewed the first gas cap and began to pump fuel. It took me half an hour to pump the first tank dry and then I moved on to the second island. I was alternating between gas and diesel. Trucks marched by endlessly. I was beginning to understand now. I was beginning to see. People were doing this all over the country or they were lying dead like the trucker, knocked out of their boots with heavy treadmarks mashed across their guts. The second tank was dry then and I went to the third. The sun was like a hammer and my head was starting to ache with the fumes. There were blisters in the soft webbing between thumb and index finger. But they wouldn't know about that. They would know about leaky manifolds and bad gaskets and frozen universal joints, but not about blisters or sunstroke or the need to scream. They needed to know only one thing about their late masters, and they knew it. We bleed. The last tank was sucked dry and I threw the nozzle on the ground. Still there were more trucks, lined up around the corner. I twisted my head to relieve a crick in my neck and stared. The line went out of the front parking lot and up the road and out of sight, two and three lanes deep. It was like a nightmare of the Los Angeles Freeway at rush hour. The horizon shimmered and danced with their exhaust; the air stank of carburization. 'No,' I said. 'Out of gas. All gone, fellas.' And there was a heavier rumble, a bass note that shook the teeth. A huge silvery truck was pulling up, a tanker. Written on the side was 'Fill Up with Phillips 66  The Jetport Fuel'! A heavy hose dropped out of the rear. I went over, took it, flipped up the feeder plate on the first tank, and attached the hose. The truck began to pump. The stench of petroleum sank into me  the same stink that the dinosaurs must have died smelling as they went down into the tar pits. I filled the other two tanks and then went back to work. Consciousness twinkled away to a point where I lost track of time and trucks. I unscrewed, rammed the nozzle into the hole, pumped until the hot, heavy liquid splurted out, then replaced the cap. My blisters broke, trickling pus down to my wrists. My head was pounding like a rotted tooth and my stomach rolled helplessly with the stench of hydrocarbons. I was going to faint. I was going to faint and that would be the end of it. I would pump until I dropped. Then there were hands on my shoulders, the dark hands of the counterman. 'Go in,' he said. 'Rest yourself. I'll take over till dark. Try to sleep.' I handed him the pump. But I can't sleep. The girl is sleeping. She's sprawled over in the corner with her head on a tablecloth and her face won't unknot itself even in sleep. It's the timeless, ageless face of the warhag. I'm going to get her up pretty quick. It's twilight, and the counterman has been out there for five hours. Still they keep coming. I look out through the wrecked window and their headlights stretch for a mile or better, twinkling like yellow sapphires in the growing darkness. They must be backed up all the way to the turnpike, maybe further. The girl will have to take her turn. I can show her how. She'll say she can't, but she will. She wants to live. You want to be their slaves? the counterman had said. That's what it'll come to. You want to spend the rest of your life changin' oil filters every time one of those things blasts its horn? We could run, maybe. It would be easy to make the drainage ditch now, the way they're stacked up. Run through the fields, through the marshy places where trucks would bog down like mastodons and go  back to the caves. Drawing pictures in charcoal. This is the moon god. This is a tree. This is a Mack semi overwhelming a hunter. Not even that. So much of the world is paved now. Even the playgrounds are paved. And for the fields and marshes and deep woods there are tanks, halftracks, flatbeds equipped with lasers, masers, heatseeking radar. And little by little, they can make it into the world they want. I can see great convoys of trucks filling the Okefenokee Swamp with sand, the bulldozers ripping through the national parks and wildlands, grading the earth flat, stamping it into one great flat plain. And then the hottop trucks arriving. But they're machines. No matter what's happened to them, what mass consciousness we've given them, they can't reproduce.


In fifty or sixty years they'll be rusting hulks with all menace gone out of them, moveless carcasses for free men to stone and spit at. And if I close my eyes I can see the production lines in Detroit and Dearborn and Youngstown and Mackinac, new trucks being put together by bluecollars who no longer even punch a clock but only drop and are replaced. The counterman is staggering a little now. He's an old bastard, too. I've got to wake the girl. Two planes are leaving silver contrails etched across the darkening eastern horizon. I wish I could believe there are people in them. SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK Jim Norman's wife had been waiting for him since two, and when she saw the car pull up in front of their apartment building, she came out to meet him. She had gone to the store and bought a celebration meal  a couple of steaks, a bottle of Lancer's, a head of lettuce, and Thousand Island dressing. Now, watching him get out of the car, she found herself hoping with some desperation (and not for the first time that day) that there was going to be something to celebrate. He came up the walk, holding his new briefcase in one hand and four texts in the other. She could see the title of the top one  Introduction to Grammar. She put her hands on his shoulder and asked, 'How did it go?' And he smiled. But that night, he had the old dream for the first time in a very long time and woke up sweating, with a scream behind his lips. His interview had been conducted by the principal of Harold Davis High School and the head of the English Department. The subject of his breakdown had come up. He had expected it would. The principal, a bald and cadaverous man named Fenton, had leaned back and looked at the ceiling. Simmons, the English head, lit his pipe. 'I was under a great deal of pressure at the time,' Jim Norman said. His fingers wanted to twist about in his lap, but he wouldn't let them. 'I think we understand that,' Fenton said, smiling. 'And while we have no desire to pry, I'm sure we'd all agree that teaching is a pressure occupation, especially at the highschool level. You're onstage five periods out of seven, and you're playing to the toughest audience in the world. That's why,' he finished with some pride, 'teachers have more ulcers than any other professional group, with the exception of airtraffic controllers.' Jim said, 'The pressures involved in my breakdown were extreme.' Fenton and Simmons nodded noncommittal encouragement, and Simmons clicked his lighter open to rekindle his pipe. Suddenly the office seemed very tight, very close. Jim had the queer sensation that someone had just turned on a heat lamp over the back of his neck. His fingers were twisting in his lap, and he made them stop. 'I was in my senior year and practice teaching. My mother had died the summer before  cancer  and in my last conversation with her, she asked me to go right on and finish. My brother, my older brother, died when we were both quite young. He had been planning to teach and she thought.. He could see from their eyes that he was wandering and thought God, I'm making a botch of this. I did as she asked,' he said, leaving the tangled relationship of his mother and his brother Wayne  poor, murdered Wayne  and himself behind. 'During the second week of my intern teaching, my fiancee was involved in a hitandrun accident. She was the hit part of it. Some kid in a hot rod they never caught him.' Simmons made a soft noise of encouragement. 'I went on. There didn't seem to be any other course. She was in a great deal of pain  a badly broken leg and four fractured ribs  but no danger. I don't think I really knew the pressure I was under.' Careful now. This is where the ground slopes away. 'I interned at Center Street Vocational Trades High,' Jim said. 'Garden spot of the city,' Fenton said. 'Switchblades, motorcycle boots, zip guns in the lockers, lunchmoney protection rackets, and every third kid selling dope to the other two. I know about Trades.' 'There was a kid named Mack Zimmerman,' Jim said. 'Sensitive boy. Played the guitar. I had him in a composition class and he had talent. I came in one morning and two boys were holding him while a third smashed his Yamaha guitar against the radiator. Zimmerman was screaming. I yelled for them to stop and give me the guitar. I started for them and someone slugged me.' Jim shrugged. 'That was it. I had a breakdown. No screaming meemies or crouching in the corner. I just couldn't go back. When I got near Trades, my chest would tighten up. I couldn't breathe right, I got cold sweat ' 'That happens to me, too,' Fenton said amiably. 'I went into analysis. A community therapy deal. I couldn't afford a psychiatrist. It did me good. Sally and I are married. She has a slight limp and a scar, but otherwise, good as new.' He looked at them squarely. 'I guess you could say the same for me.' Fenton said, 'You actually finished your practice teaching requirement at Cortez High School, I believe.' 'That's no bed of roses, either,' Simmons said. 'I wanted a hard school,' Jim said. 'I swapped with another guy to get Cortez.' 'A's from your supervisor and critic teacher,' Fenton commented. 'Yes.' 'And a fouryear average of 3.88. Damn close to straight A's.' 'I enjoyed my college work.' Fenton and Simmons glanced at each other, then stood up. Jim got up. 'We'll be in touch, Mr Norman,' Fenton said. 'We do have a few more applicants to interview 'Yes, of course.' ' but speaking for myself, I'm impressed by your academic records and personal candour.' 'It's nice of you to say so.' 'Sim, perhaps Mr Norman would like a coffee before he goes.' They shook hands. In the hall, Simmons said, 'I think you've got the job if you want it. That's off the record, of course.' Jim nodded. He had left a lot off the record himself. Davis High was a forbidding rockpile that housed a remarkably modern plant  the science wing alone had been funded at 1.5 million in last year's budget. The classrooms, which still held the ghosts of the WPA workers who had built them and the postwar kids who had first used them, were furnished with modern desks and softglare blackboards. The students were clean, well dressed, vivacious, affluent. Six out of ten seniors owned their own cars. All in all a good school. A fine school to teach in during the Sickie Seventies. It made Center Street Vocational Trades look like darkest Africa. But after the kids were gone, something old and brooding seemed to settle over the halls and whisper in the empty rooms. Some black, noxious beast, never quite in view. Sometimes, as he walked down the Wing 4 corridor towards the parking lot with his new briefcase in one hand, Jim Norman thought he could almost hear it breathing. He had the dream again near the end of October, and that time he did scream. He clawed his way into waking reality to find Sally sitting up in bed beside him, holding his shoulder. His heart was thudding heavily. 'God,' he said, and scrubbed a hand across his face. 'Are you all right?' 'Sure. I yelled, didn't I?' 'Boy, did you. Nightmare?' 'Yes.' 'Something from when those boys broke that fellow's guitar?' 'No,' he said. 'Much older than that. Sometimes it comes back, that's all. No sweat.' 'Are you sure?' 'Yes.' 'Do you want a glass of milk?' Her eyes were dark with concern. He kissed her shoulder. 'No. Go to sleep.' She turned off the light and he lay there, looking into the darkness. He had a good schedule for the new teacher on the staff. Period one was free. Two and three were freshman comp, one group dull, one kind of fun. Period four was his best class American Lit with collegebound seniors who got a kick out of bashing the ole masters around for a period each day. Period five was a 'consultation period,' when he was supposed to see students with personal or academic problems. There were very few who seemed to have either (or who wanted to discuss them with him), and he spent most of those periods with a good novel. Period six was a grammar course, dry as chalkdust. Period seven was his only cross. The class was called Living with Literature, and it was held in a small box of a classroom on the third floor. The room was hot in the early fall and cold as the winter approached. The class itself was an elective for what school catalogues coyly call 'the slow learner'. There were twentyseven 'slow learners' in Jim's class, most of them school jocks. The kindest thing you could accuse them of would be disinterest, and some of them had a streak of outright malevolence. He walked in one day to find an obscene and cruelly accurate caricature of himself on the board, with 'Mr Norman' unnecessarily chalked under it. He wiped it off without comment and proceeded with the lesson in spite of the snickers. He worked up interesting lesson plans, included av materials, and ordered several highinterest, highcomprehension texts  all to no avail. The classroom mood veered between unruly hilarity and sullen silence. Early in November, a fight broke out between two boys during a discussion of Of Mice and Men. Jim broke it up and sent both boys to the office. When he opened his book to where he had left off, the words 'Bite It' glared up at him. He took the problem to Simmons, who shrugged and lit his pipe. 'I don't have any real solution, Jim. Last period is always a bitch. And for some of them, a D grade in your class means no more football or basketball. And they've had the other gut English courses, so they're stuck with it.' 'And me, too,' Jim said glumly. Simmons nodded. 'Show them you mean business, and they'll buckle down, if only to keep their sports eligibility.' But period, seven remained a constant thorn in his side. One of the biggest problems in Living with Lit was a huge, slowmoving moose named Chip Osway. In early December, during the brief hiatus between football and basketball (Osway played both), Jim caught him with a crib sheet and ran him out of the classroom. 'If you flunk me, we'll get you, you son of a bitch!' Osway yelled down the dim thirdfloor corridor. 'You hear me?' 'Go on,' Jim said. 'Don't waste your breath.' 'We'll get you, creepo!' Jim went back into the classroom. They looked up at him blandly, faces betraying nothing. He felt a surge of unreality, like the feeling that had washed over him before before. We'll get you creepo. He took his grade book out of his desk, opened it to the page titled 'Living with Literature', and carefully lettered an F in the exam slot next to Chip Osway's name. That night he had the dream again. The dream was always cruelly slow. There was time to see and feel everything. And there was the added horror of reliving events that were moving towards a known conclusion, as helpless as a man strapped into a car going over a cliff. In the dream he was nine and his brother Wayne was twelve. They were going down Broad Street in Stratford, Connecticut, bound for the Stratford Library. Jim's books were two days overdue, and he had hooked four cents from the cupboard bowl to pay the fine. It was summer vacation. You could smell the freshly cut grass. You could hear a ballgame floating out of some secondfloor apartment window, Yankees leading the Red Sox six to nothing in the top of the eighth, Ted Williams batting, and you could see the shadows from the Burrets Building Company slowly lengthening across the street as the evening turned slowly towards dark. Beyond Teddy's Market and Burrets, there was a railroad overpass, and on the other side, a number of the local losers hung around a closed gas station  five or six boys in leather jackets and pegged jeans. Jim hated to go by them. They yelled out hey foureyes and hey shitheels and hey you got an extra quarter and once they chased them half a block. But Wayne would not take the long way around. That would be chicken. In the dream, the overpass loomed closer and closer, and you began to feel dread struggling in your throat like a big black bird. You saw everything the Burrets neon sign, just starting to stutter on and off; the flakes of rust on the green overpass; the glitter of broken glass in the cinders of the railroad bed; a broken bike rim in the gutter. You try to tell Wayne you've been through this before, a hundred times. The local losers aren't hanging around the gas station this time; they're hidden in the shadows under the trestle. But it won't come out. You're helpless. Then you're underneath, and some of the shadows detach themselves from the walls and a tall kid with a blond crew cut and a broken nose pushes Wayne up against the sooty cinderblocks and says Give us some money. Let me alone. You try to run, but a fat guy with greasy black Hair grabs you and throws you against the wall next to your brother. His left eyelid is uttering up and down nervously and he says Come on, kid, how much you got? Ffour cents. You fuckin' liar. Wayne tries to twist free and a guy with odd, orangecoloured hair helps the blond one to hold him. The guy with the jittery eyelid suddenly bashes you one in the mouth. You feel a sudden heaviness in your groin, and a dark patch appears on your jeans. Look, Vinnie, he wet himself! Wayne's struggles become frenzied, and he almost  not  quite  gets free. Another guy, wearing black chinos and a white Tshirt, throws him back. There is a small strawberry birthmark on his chin. The stone throat of the overpass is beginning to tremble. The metal girders pick up a thrumming vibration. Train coming. Someone strikes the books out of your hands and the kid with the birthmark on his chin kicks them into the gutter. Wayne suddenly kicks out with his right foot, and it connects with the crotch of the kid with the jittery face. He screams. Vinnie, he's gettin' away! The kid with the jittery face is screaming about his nuts, but even his howls are lost in the gathering, shaking roar of the approaching train. Then it is over them, and its noise fills the world. Light flashes on switchblades. The kid with the blond crew cut is holding one and Birthmark has the other. You can't hear Wayne, but his words are in the shape of his lips Run Jimmy Run. You slip to your knees and the hands holding you are gone and you skitter between a pair of legs like a frog. A hand slaps down on your back, groping for purchase, and gets none. Then you are running back the way you came, with all of the horrible sludgy slowness of dreams. You look back over your shoulder and see He woke in the dark, Sally sleeping peacefully beside him. He bit back the scream, and when it was throttled, he fell back. When he had looked back, back into the yawning darkness of the overpass, he had seen the blond kid and the birthmarked kid drive their knives into his brother  Blondie's below the breastbone, and Birthmark's directly into his brother's groin. He lay in the darkness, breathing harshly, waiting for that nineyearold ghost to depart, waiting for honest sleep to blot it all away. An unknown time later, it did. The Christmas vacation and semester break were combined in the city's school district, and the holiday was almost a month long. The dream came twice, early on, and did not come again. He and Sally went to visit her sister in Vermont, and skied a great deal. They were happy. Jim's Living with Lit problem seemed inconsequential and a little foolish in the open, crystal air. He went back to school with a winter tan, feeling cool and collected. Simmons caught him on the way to his periodtwo class and handed him a folder. 'New student, period seven. Name is Robert Lawson. Transfer.' 'Hey, I've got twentyseven in there right now, Sim. I'm overloaded.' 'You've still got twentyseven. Bill Stearns got killed the Tuesday after Christmas. Car accident. Hitandrun.' 'Billy?' The picture formed in his mind in black and white, like a senior photograph. William Stearns, Key Club 1, Football 1,2, Pen  Lance, 2. He had been one of the few good ones in Living with Lit. Quiet, consistent A's and B's on his exams. Didn't volunteer often, but usually summoned the correct answers (laced with a pleasing dry wit) when called on. Dead? Fifteen years old. His own mortality suddenly whispered through his bones like a cold draught under a door. 'Christ, that's awful. Do they know what happened?' 'Cops are checking into it. He was downtown exchanging a Christmas present. Started across Rampart Street and an old Ford sedan hit him. No one got the licence number, but the words "Snake Eyes" were written on the side door. the way a kid would do it.' 'Christ,' Jim said again. 'There's the bell,' Simmons said. He hurried away, pausing to break up a crowd of kids around a drinking fountain. Jim went towards his class, feeling empty. During his free period he flipped open Robert Lawson's folder. The first page was a green sheet from Milford High, which Jim had never heard of. The second was a student personality profile. Adjusted IQ of 78. Some manual skills, not many. Antisocial answers to the BarnettHudson personality test. Poor aptitude scores. Jim thought sourly that he was a Living with Lit kid all the way. The next page was a disciplinary history, the yellow sheet. The Milford sheet was white with a black border, and it was depressingly well filled. Lawson had been in a hundred kinds of trouble. He turned the next page, glanced down at a school photo of Robert Lawson, then looked again. Terror suddenly crept into the pit of his belly and coiled there, warm and hissing. Lawson was staring antagonistically into the camera, as if posing for a police mug shot rather than a school photographer. There was a small strawberry birthmark on his chin. By period seven, he had brought all the civilized rationalizations into play. He told himself there must be thousands of kids with red birthmarks on their chins. He told himself that the hood who had stabbed his brother that day sixteen long dead years ago would now be at least thirtytwo. But, climbing to the third floor, the apprehension remained. And another fear to go with it This is how you felt when you were cracking up. He tasted the bright steel of panic in his mouth. The usual group of kids was horsing around the door of Room 33, and some of them went in when they saw Jim coming. A few hung around, talking in undertones and grinning. He saw the new boy standing beside Chip Osway. Robert Lawson was wearing blue jeans and heavy yellow tractor boots  all the rage this year. 'Chip, go on in. 'That an order?' He smiled vacuously over Jim's head. 'Sure.' 'You flunk me on that test?' 'Sure.' 'Yeah, that's ' The rest was an underthebreath mumble. Jim turned to Robert Lawson. 'You're new,' he said. 'I just wanted to tell you how we run things around here.' 'Sure, Mr Norman.' His right eyebrow was split with a small scar, a scar Jim knew. There could be no mistake. It was crazy, it was lunacy, but it was also a fact. Sixteen years ago, this kid had driven a knife into his brother. Numbly, as if from a great distance, he heard himself beginning to outline the class rules and regulations. Robert Lawson hooked his thumbs into his garrison belt, listened, smiled, and began to nod, as if they were old friends. 'Jim?' 'Hmmm?' 'Is something wrong?' 'No.' 'Those Living with Lit boys still giving you a hard time?' No answer. 'Jim?' 'No.' 'Why don't you go to bed early tonight?' But he didn't. The dream was very bad that night. When the kid with the strawberry birthmark stabbed his brother with his knife, he called after Jim 'You next, kid. Right through the bag.' He woke up screaming. He was teaching Lord of the Flies that week, and talking about symbolism when Lawson raised his hand. 'Robert?' he said evenly. 'Why do you keep starin' at me?' Jim blinked and felt his mouth go dry. 'You see somethin' green? Or is my fly unzipped?' A nervous titter from the class. Jim replied evenly 'I wasn't staring at you, Mr Lawson. Can you tell us why Ralph and Jack disagreed over 'You were starin' at me.' 'Do you want to talk about it with Mr Fenton?' Lawson appeared to think it over. 'Naw.' 'Good. Now can you tell us why Ralph and Jack ' 'I didn't read it. I think it's a dumb book.' Jim smiled tightly. 'Do you, now? You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you. Now can anyone else tell me why they disagreed over the existence of the beast?' Kathy Slavin raised her hand timidly, and Lawson gave her a cynical onceover and said something to Chip Osway. The words leaving his lips looked like 'nice tits'. Chip nodded. 'Kathy?' 'Isn't it because Jack wanted to hunt the beast?' 'Good.' He turned and began to write on the board. At the instant his back was turned, a grapefruit smashed against the board beside his head. He jerked backward and wheeled around. Some class members laughed, but Osway and Lawson only looked at Jim innocently. Jim stooped and picked up the grapefruit. 'Someone,' he said, looking towards the back of the room, 'ought to have this jammed 'down his goddamn throat.' Kathy Slavin gasped. He tossed the grapefruit in the wastebasket and turned back to the blackboard. He opened the morning paper, sipping his coffee, and saw the headline about halfway down. 'God!' he said, splitting his wife's easy flow of morning chatter. His belly felt suddenly filled with splinters 'TeenAge Girl Falls to Her Death Katherine Slavin, a seventeenyearold junior at Harold Davis High School, either fell or was pushed from the roof of her downtown apartment house early yesterday evening. The girl, who kept a pigeon coop on the roof, had gone up with a sack of feed, according to her mother. 'Police said an unidentified woman in a neighbouring development had seen three boys running across the roof at 6.45 p.m., just minutes after the girl's body (continued page 3)' 'Jim, was she one of yours?' But he could only look at her mutely. Two weeks later, Simmons met him in the hall after the lunch bell with a folder in his hand, and Jim felt a terrible sinking in his belly. 'New student,' he said flatly to Simmons. 'Living with Lit.' Sim's eyebrows went up. 'How did you know that?' Jim shrugged and held his hand out for the folder. 'Got to run,' Simmons said. 'Department heads are meeting on course evaluations. You look a little rundown. Feeling okay?' That's right, a little rundown. Like Billy Stearns. 'Sure,' he said. 'That's the stuff,' Simmons said, and clapped him on the back. When he was gone, Jim opened the folder to the picture, wincing in advance, like man about to be hit. But the face wasn't instantly familiar. Just a kid's face. Maybe he'd seen it before, maybe not. The kid, David Garcia, was a hulking, darkhaired boy with rather negroid lips and dark, slumbering eyes. The yellow sheet said he was also from Milford High and that he had spent two years in Granville Reformatory. Car theft. Jim closed the folder with hands that trembled slightly. 'Sally?' She looked up from her ironing. He had been staring at a TV basketball game without really seeing it. 'Nothing,' he said. 'Forgot what I was going to say.' 'Must have been a lie.' He smiled mechanically and looked at the TV again. It had been on the tip of his tongue to spill everything. But how could he? It was worse than crazy. Where would you start? The dream? The breakdown? The appearance of Robert Lawson? No. With Wayne  your brother. But he had never told anyone about that, not even in analysis. His thoughts turned to David Garcia, and the dreamy terror that had washed over him when they had looked at each other in the hall. Of course, he had only looked vaguely familiar in the picture. Pictures don't move or twitch. Garcia had been standing with Lawson and Chip Osway, and when he looked up and saw Jim Norman, he smiled and his eyelid began to jitter up and down and voices spoke in Jim's mind with unearthly clarity Come on, kid, how much you got? Ffour cents. You fuckin' liar  look, Vinnie, he wet himself' 'Jim? Did you say something?' 'No.' But he wasn't sure if he had or not. He was getting very scared. One day after school in early February there was a knock on the teachers'room door, and when Jim opened it, Chip Osway stood there. He looked frightened. Jim was alone; it was ten after four and the last of the teachers had gone home an hour before. He was correcting a batch of American Lit themes. 'Chip?' he said evenly. Chip shuffled his feet. 'Can I talk to you for a minute, Mr Norman?' 'Sure. But if it's about that test, you're wasting your ' 'It's not about that. Uh, can I smoke in here?' 'Go ahead.' He lit his cigarette with a hand that trembled slightly. He didn't speak for perhaps as long as a minute. It seemed that he couldn't. His lips twitched, his hands came together, and his eyes slitted, as if some inner self was struggling to find expression. He suddenly burst out 'If they do it, I want you to know I wasn't in on it! I don't like those guys! They're creeps!' 'What guys, Chip?' 'Lawson and that Garcia creep.' 'Are they planning to get me?' The old dreamy terror was on him, and he knew the answer. 'I liked them at first,' Chip said. 'We went out and had a few beers. I started bitchin' about you and that test. About how I was gonna get you. But that was just talk! I swear it!' 'What happened?' 'They took me right up on it. Asked what time you left school, what kind of car you drove, all that stuff. I said what have you got against him and Garcia said they knew you a long time ago hey, are you all right?' 'The cigarette,' he said thickly. 'Haven't ever got used to the smoke.' Chip ground it out. 'I asked them when they knew you and Bob Lawson said I was still pissin' my didies then. But they're seventeen, the same as me.' 'Then what?' 'Well, Garcia leans over the table and says you can't want to get him very bad if you don't even know when he leaves the fuckin' school. What was you gonna do? So I says I was gonna matchstick your tyres and leave you with four flats.' He looked at Jim with pleading eyes. 'I wasn't even gonna do that. I said it because 'You were scared?' Jim asked quietly. 'Yeah, and I'm still scared.' 'What did they think of your idea?' Chip shuddered. 'Bob Lawson says, is that what you was gonna do, you cheap prick? And I said, tryin' to be tough, what was you gonna do, off him? And Garcia  his eyelids starts to go up and down  he takes something out of his pocket and clicked it open and it's a switchknife. That's when I took off.' 'When was this, Chip?' 'Yesterday. I'm scared to sit with those guys now, Mr Norman.' 'Okay,' Jim said. 'Okay.' He looked down at the papers he had been correcting without seeing them. 'What are you going to do?' 'I don't know,' Jim said. 'I really don't.' On Monday morning he still didn't know. His first thought had been to tell Sally everything, starting with his brother's murder sixteen years ago. But it was impossible. She would be sympathetic but frightened and unbelieving. Simmons? Also impossible. Simmons would think he was mad. And maybe he was. A man in a group encounter session he had attended had said having a breakdown was like breaking a vase and then gluing it back together. You could never trust yourself to handle that vase again with any surety. You couldn't put a flower in it because flowers need water and water might dissolve the glue. Am I crazy, then? If he was, Chip Osway was, too. That thought came to him as he was getting into his car, and a bolt of excitement went through him. Of course! Lawson and Garcia had threatened him in Chip Osway's presence. That might not stand up in court, but it would get the two of them suspended if he could get Chip to repeat his story in Fenton's office. And he was almost sure he could get Chip to do that. Chip had his own reasons for wanting them far away. He was driving into the parking lot when he thought about what had happened to Billy Stearns and Katy Slavin. During his free period, he went up to the office and leaned over the registration secretary's desk. She was doing the absence list. 'Chip Osway here today?' he asked casually. 'Chip ?' She looked at him doubtfully. 'Charles Osway,' Jim amended. 'Chip's a nickname.' She leafed through a pile of slips, glanced at one, and pulled it out., 'He's absent, Mr Norman.' 'Can you get me his phone number?' She pushed her pencil into her hair and said. 'Certainly.' She dug it out of the 0 file and handed it to him. Jim dialled the number on an office phone. The phone rang a dozen times and he was about to' hang up when a rough, sleepblurred voice said, 'Yeah?' 'Mr Osway?' 'Barry Osway's been dead six years. I'm Gary Denkinger.' 'Are you Chip Osway's stepfather?' 'What'd he do?' 'Pardon?' 'He's run off. I want to know what he did.' 'So far as I know, nothing. I just wanted to talk with him. Do you have any idea where he might be?' 'Naw, I work nights. I don't know none of his friends.' 'Any idea at a' 'Nope. He took the old suitcase and fifty bucks he saved up from stealin' car parts or sellin' dope or whatever these kids do for money. Gone to San Francisco to be a hippie for all I know.' 'If you hear from him, will you call me at school? Jim Norman, English wing.' 'Sure will.' Jim put the phone down. The registration secretary looked up and offered a quick meaningless smile. Jim didn't smile back. Two days later, the words 'left school' appeared after Chip Osway's name on the morning attendance slip. Jim began to yvait for Simmons to show up with a new folder. A week later he did. He looked dully down at the picture. No question about this one. The crew cut had been replaced by long hair, but it was still blond. And the face was the same, Vincent Corey. Vinnie, to his friends and intimates. He stared up at Jim from the picture, an insolent grin on his lips. When he approached his periodseven class, his heart was thudding gravely in his chest. Lawson and Garcia and Vinnie Corey were standing by the bulletin board outside the door  they all straightened when he came towards them. Vinnie smiled his insolent smile, but his eyes were as cold and dead as ice floes. 'You must be Mr Norman. Hi, Norm.' Lawson and Garcia tittered. 'I'm Mr Norman,' Jim said, ignoring the hand that Vinnie had put out. 'You'll remember that?' 'Sure, I'll remember it. How's your brother?' Jim froze. He felt his bladder loosen, and as if from far away, from down a long corridor somewhere in his cranium, he heard a ghostly voice Look, Vinnie, he wet himself' 'What do you know about my brother?' he asked thickly. 'Nothin',' Vinnie said. 'Nothin' much.' They smiled at him with their empty dangerous smiles. The bell rang and they sauntered inside. Drugstore phone booth, ten o'clock that night. 'Operator, I want to call the police station in Stratford, Connecticut. No I don't know the number.' Clickings on the line. Conferences. The policeman had been Mr Nell. In those days he had been whitehaired, perhaps in his midfifties. Hard to tell when you were just a kid. Their father was dead, and somehow Mr Nell had known that. Call me Mr Nell, boys. Jim and his brother met at lunchtime every day and they went into the Stratford Diner to eat their bag lunches. Mom gave them each a nickel to buy milk  that was before school milk programmes started. And sometimes Mr Nell would come in, his leather belt creaking with the weight of his belly and his.38 revolver, and buy them each a pie  Ia mode. Where were you when they stabbed my brother, Mr Nell? A connection was made. The phone rang once. 'Stratford Police.' 'Hello, My name is James Norman, Officer. I'm calling longdistance.' He named the city. 'I want to know if you can give me a line on a man who would have been on the force around 1957.' 'Hold the line a moment, Mr Norman.' A pause, then a new voice. 'I'm Sergeant Morton Livingston, Mr Norman. Who are you trying to locate?' 'Well,' Jim said, 'us kids just called him Mr Nell. Does that ' 'Hell, yes! Don Nell's retired now. He's seventythree or four.