Desperation Read online

  "I do!" Peter cried. "We both do, just watch the road, for Christ's sake watch where you're going!"

  The cop continued staring back at them through the mesh, face pale, blood dripping down from his lower lip. The Caprice, which had begun to veer to the left, almost all the way across the westbound lane, now slid back the other way.

  "Don't worry about me," the cop said. His voice was mild again. "Gosh, no. I've got eyes in the back of my head. In fact, I've got eyes just about everywhere. You'd do well to remember that."

  He turned back suddenly, facing front again, and dropped the cruiser's speed to an easygoing fifty-five. The seat settled back against Peter's knees with painful weight, pinning him.

  He took Mary's hands in both of his own. She pressed her face against his chest, and he could feel the sobs she was trying to suppress. They shook through her like wind. He looked over her shoulder, through the mesh. On the dashboard, the bear's head nodded and bobbed on its spring.

  "I see holes like eyes," the cop said. "My mind is full of them." He said nothing else until they got to town.

  5

  The next ten minutes were very slow ones for Peter Jackson. The cop's weight against his pinned knees seemed to increase with each circuit of his wristwatch's second hand, and his lower legs were soon numb. His feet were dead asleep, and he wasn't sure that he would be able to walk on them if this ride ever ended. His bladder throbbed. His head ached. He understood that he and Mary were in the worst trouble of their lives, but he was unable to comprehend this in any real and meaningful way. Every time he neared comprehension, there was a short circuit in his head. They were on their way back to New York. They were expected. Someone was watering their plants. This couldn't be happening, absolutely could not.

  Mary nudged him and pointed out her window. Here was a sign, reading simply DESPERATION. Under the word was an arrow pointing to the right.

  The cop slowed, but not much, before making the right. The car started to tip and Peter saw Mary drawing in breath. She was going to scream. He put a hand over her mouth to stop her and whispered in her ear, "He's got it, I'm pretty sure he does, we're not going to roll." But he wasn't sure until he felt the cruiser's rear end first slide, then catch hold. A moment later they were racing south along narrow patched blacktop with no centerline.

  A mile or so farther on, they passed a sign which read DESPERATION'S CHURCH & CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS WELCOME you! The words CHURCH & CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS were readable, although they had been coated with yellow spray-paint. Above them, in the same paint, the words DEAD DOGS had been added in ragged caps. The churches and civic organizations were listed beneath, but Peter didn't bother to read them. A German Shepherd had been hanged from the sign. Its rear paws tick-tocked back and forth an inch or two above a patch of ground that was dark and muddy with its blood.

  Mary's hands were clamped on his like a vise. He welcomed their pressure. He leaned toward her again, into the sweet smell of her perfume and the sour smell of her terrified sweat, leaned toward her until his lips were pressed against the cup of her ear. "Don't say a word, don't make a sound," he murmured. "Nod your head if you understand me."

  She nodded against his lips, and Peter straightened up again.

  They passed a trailer park behind a stake fence. Most of the trailers were small and looked as if they had seen better days--around the time Cheers first went on the air, perhaps. Dispirited-looking laundry flapped between a few of them in the hot desert wind. In front of one was a sign which read: I'M A GUN-TOTIN' SNAPPLE-DRINKIN'

  BIBLE-READIN' CLINTON-BASHIN' SON OF A BITCH!

  NEVER MIND THE DOG, BEWARE OF THE OWNER!

  Mounted on an old Airstream which stood near the road was a large black satellite dish. On the side of it was another sign, white-painted metal down which streaks of rust had run like ancient bloody tears: THIS TELACOMMUNICATIONS

  PROPERTY RATTLESNAKE TRAILER PARK

  NO TREESPASSING! POLICE PATROLED!

  Beyond the Rattlesnake Trailer Park was a long Quonset hut with rusty, corrugated sides and roof. The sign out front read DESPERATION MINING CORP. To one side was a cracked asphalt parking lot with a dozen cars and pickups in it. A moment later they passed the Desert Rose Cafe.

  Then they were in the town proper. Desperation, Nevada, consisted of two streets that crossed at right angles (a blinker-light, currently flashing yellow on all four sides, hung over the intersection) and two blocks of business buildings. Most seemed to have false fronts. There was an Owl's Club casino and cafe, a grocery, a laundrymat, a bar with a sign in the window reading ENJOY OUR SLOTSPITALITY, hardware and feed stores, a movie theater called The American West, a few others. None of the businesses looked as if they were booming, and the theater had the air of a place that has been closed a long time. A single crooked R hung from its dirty, bashed-in marquee.

  Going the other way, east and west, were some frame houses and more trailers. Nothing seemed to be in motion except for the cruiser and one tumbleweed, which moved down Main in large, lazy lopes.

  I'd get off the streets, too, if I saw this guy coming, Peter thought. You're goddamned tooting I would.

  Beyond the town was an enormous curving bulwark with an improved dirt road at least four lanes wide running up to the top in a pair of wide switchbacks. The rest of this curved rampart, which had to be at least three hundred feet high, was crisscrossed by deep runoff trenches. To Peter they looked like wrinkles in old skin. At the foot of the crater (he assumed it was a crater, the result of some sort of mining operation), trucks that looked like toys compared to the soaring, wrinkled wall behind them were clustered together by a long, corrugated building with a conveyor belt running out of each end.

  Their host spoke up for the first time since telling them his mind was full of holes, or whatever it was he'd said.

  "Rattlesnake Number Two. Sometimes known as the China Pit." He sounded like a tourguide who still enjoys his job. "Old Number Two was opened in 1951, and from '62 or so right through the seventies, it was the biggest open-pit copper mine in the United States, maybe in the world. Then it played out. They opened it up again year before last. They got some new technology that makes even the tailings valuable. Science, huh? Gosh!"

  But there was nothing moving up there now, not that Peter could see, although it was a weekday. Just the huddle of trucks by what was probably some kind of sorting-mill, and another truck--this one a pickup--parked off to the side of the gravel highway leading to the summit. The conveyors at the ends of the long metal building were stopped.

  The cop drove through the center of town, and as they passed beneath the blinker, Mary squeezed Peter's hands twice in rapid succession. He followed her gaze and saw three bikes in the middle of the street which crossed Main. They were about a block and a half down and had been set on their seats in a row, with their wheels sticking up. The wheels were turning like windmill blades in the gusty air.

  She turned to look at him, her wet eyes wider than ever. Peter squeezed her hands again and made a "Shhh" sound.

  The cop signalled a left turn--pretty funny, under the circumstances--and swung into a small, recently paved parking lot bordered on three sides by brick walls. Bright white lines were spray-painted on the smooth and crack-less asphalt. On the wall at the rear of the lot was a sign which read: MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES AND MUNICIPAL BUSINESS ONLY PLEASE RESPECT THIS PARKING LOT.

  Only in Nevada would someone ask you to respect a parking lot, Peter thought. In New York the sign would probably read UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES WILL BE STOLEN AND THEIR OWNERS EATEN.

  There were four or five cars in the lot. One, a rusty old Ford Estate Wagon, was marked FIRE CHIEF. There was another police-car, in better shape than the Fire Chief's car but not as new as the one their captor was driving. There was a single handicapped space in the lot. Officer Friendly parked in it. He turned off the engine and then just sat there for a moment or two, head lowered, fingers tapping restlessly at the steering wheel, humming under his breath. To
Peter it sounded like "Last Train to Clarksville."

  "Don't kill us," Mary said suddenly in a trembling, teary voice. "We'll do whatever you want, just please don't kill us."

  "Shut your quacking Jew mouth," the cop replied. He didn't raise his head, and he went on tapping at the wheel with the tips of his sausage-sized fingers.

  "We're not Jews," Peter heard himself saying. His voice sounded not afraid but querulous, angry. "We're ... well, Presbyterians, I guess. What's this Jew thing?"

  Mary looked at her husband, horrified, then back through the mesh to see how the cop was taking it. At first he did nothing, only sat with his head down and his fingers tapping. Then he grabbed his hat and got out of the car. Peter bent down a little so he could watch the cop settle the hat on his head. The cop's shadow was still squat, but it was no longer puddled around his feet. Peter glanced at his watch and saw it was a few minutes shy of two-thirty. Less than an hour ago, the biggest question he and his wife had had was what their accommodations for the night would be like. His only worry had been his strong suspicion that he was out of Rolaids.

  The cop bent and opened the left rear door. "Please get out of the vehicle, folks," he said.

  They slid out, Peter first. They stood in the hot light, looking uncertainly up at the man in the khaki uniform and the Sam Browne belt and the peaked trooper-style hat.

  "We're going to walk around to the front of the Municipal Building," the cop said. "That'll be a left as you reach the sidewalk. And you look like Jews to me. The both of you. You have those big noses which connote the Jewish aspect."

  "Officer--" Mary began.

  "No," he said. "Walk. Make your left. Don't try my patience."

  They walked. Their footfalls on the fresh black tar seemed very loud. Peter kept thinking of the little plastic bear on the dashboard of the cruiser. Its jiggling head and painted eyes. Who had given it to the cop? A favorite niece? A daughter? Officer Friendly wasn't wearing a wedding ring, Peter had noticed that while watching the man's fingers tap against the steering wheel, but that didn't mean he had never been married. And the idea that a woman married to this man might at some point seek a divorce did not strike Peter as in the least bit odd.

  From somewhere above him came a monotonous reek-reek-reek sound. He looked down the street and saw a weathervane turning rapidly on the roof of the bar, Bud's Suds. It was a leprechaun with a pot of gold under one arm and a knowing grin on his spinning face. It was the weathervane making the sound.

  "To your left, Dumbo," the cop said, sounding not impatient but resigned. "Do you know which way is your left? Don't they teach hayfoot and strawfoot to you New York Homo Presbyterians?"

  Peter turned left. He and Mary were still walking hip to hip, still holding hands. They came to a set of three stone steps leading up to modem tinted-glass double doors. The building itself was much less modem. A white-painted sign hung on faded brick proclaimed it to be the DESPERATION MUNICIPAL BUILDING. Below, on the doors, were listed the offices and services to be found within: Mayor, School Committee, Fire, Police, Sanitation, Welfare Services, Department of Mines and Assay. At the bottom of the righthand door was printed: MSHA FRIDAYS AT 1 PM AND BY APPOINTMENT.

  The cop stopped at the foot of the steps and looked at the Jacksons curiously. Although it was brutally hot out here, probably somewhere in the upper nineties, he did not appear to be sweating at all. From behind them, monotonous in the silence, came the reek-reek-reek of the weathervane.

  "You're Peter," he said.

  "Yes, Peter Jackson." He wet his lips.

  The cop shifted his eyes. "And you're Mary."

  "That's right."

  "So where's Paul?" the cop asked, looking at them pleasantly while the rusty leprechaun squeaked and spun on the roof of the bar behind them.

  "What?" Peter asked. "I don't understand."

  "How can you sing 'Five Hundred Miles' or 'Leavin' on a Jet Plane' without Paul?" the cop asked, and opened the righthand door. Machine-cooled air puffed out. Peter felt it on his face and had time to register how nice it was, nice and cool; then Mary screamed. Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom inside the building faster than his own, but he saw it a moment later. There was a girl of about six sprawled at the foot of the stairs, half-propped against the last four risers. One hand was thrown back over her head. It lay palm-up on the stairs. Her straw-colored hair had been tied in a couple of tails. Her eyes were wide open and her head was unnaturally cocked to one side. There was no question in Peter's mind about whom the dolly lying at the foot of the RV's steps had belonged to. FOUR HAPPY WANDERERS, it had said on the front of the RV, but that was clearly out of date in these modern times. There was no question in his mind about that, either.

  "Gosh!" the cop said genially. "Forgot all about her! But you can never remember everything, can you? No matter how hard you try!"

  Mary screamed again, her fingers folded down against her palms and her hands against her mouth, and tried to bolt back down the steps.

  "No you don't, what a bad idea," the cop said. He caught her by the shoulder and shoved her through the door, which he was holding open. She reeled across the small lobby, revolving her arms in a frantic effort to keep her balance, not wanting to fall on top of the dead child in the jeans and the MotoKops 2200 shirt.

  Peter started in toward his wife and the cop caught him with both hands, now using his butt to keep the righthand door open. He slung an arm around Peter's shoulders. His face looked open and friendly. Most of all, best of all, it looked sane--as if his good angels had won out, at least for now. Peter felt an instant's hope, and at first did not associate the thing pressing into his stomach with the cop's monster handgun. He thought of his father, who would sometimes poke him with the tip of his finger while giving him advice--using the finger to sort of tamp his aphorisms home--things like No one ever gets pregnant if one of you keeps your pants on, Petie.

  He didn't realize it was the gun, not the cop's oversized sausage of a finger, until Mary shrieked: "No! Oh, no!"

  "Don't--" Peter began.

  "I don't care if you're a Jew or a Hindu," the cop said, hugging Peter against him. He squeezed Peter's shoulder chummily with his left hand as he cocked the .45 with his right. "In Desperation we don't care about those things much."

  He pulled the trigger at least three times. There might have been more, but three reports were all Peter Jackson heard. They were muffled by his stomach, but still very loud. An incredible heat shot up through his chest and down through his legs at the same time, and he heard something wet drop on his shoes. He heard Mary, still screaming, but the sound seemed to come from far, far away.

  Now I'll wake up in my bed, Peter thought as his knees buckled and the world began to draw away, as bright as afternoon sunlight on the chrome side of a receding railroad car. Now I'll--

  That was all. His last thought as the darkness swallowed him forever really wasn't a thought at all, but an image: the bear on the dashboard next to the cop's compass. Head jiggling. Painted eyes staring. The eyes turned into holes, the dark rushed out of them, and then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 2

  1

  Ralph Carver Was somewhere deep in the black and didn't want to come up. He sensed physical pain waiting--a hangover, perhaps, and a really spectacular one if he could feel his head aching even in his sleep--but not just that. Something else. Something to do with (Kirsten)

  this morning. Something to do with

  (Kirsten)

  their vacation. He had gotten drunk, he supposed, pulled a real horror show, Ellie was undoubtedly pissed at him, but even that didn't seem enough to account for how horrible he felt ...

  Screaming. Someone was screaming. But distant.

  Ralph tried to burrow even deeper into the black, but now hands seized his shoulder and began shaking him. Every shake sent a monstrous bolt of pain through his poor hungover head.

  "Ralph! Ralph, wake up! You have to wake up!"

  Ellie shaking him. Was he late f
or work? How could he be late for work? They were on vacation.

  Then, shockingly loud, penetrating the blackness like the beam of a powerful light, gunshots. Three of them, then a pause, then a fourth.

  His eyes flew open and he bolted into a sitting position, no idea for a moment where he was or what was happening, only knowing that his head hurt horribly and felt the size of a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Something sticky that felt like jam or maple syrup all down the side of his face. Ellen looking at him, one eye wide and frantic, the other nearly lost in a puffy complication of blue-black flesh.

  Screaming. Somewhere. A woman. From below them. Maybe--

  He tried to get on his feet but his knees wouldn't lock. He fell forward off the bed he was sitting on (except it wasn't a bed, it was a cot) and landed on his hands and knees. A fresh bolt of pain passed through his head, and for a moment he thought his skull would split open like an eggshell. Then he was looking down at his hands through clotted clumps of hair. Both hands were streaked with blood, the left considerably redder than the right. As he looked at them, sudden memory (Kirsten oh Jesus Ellie catch her)

  burst in his head like a poison firework and he screamed himself, screamed down at his bloodstained hands, screamed as what he had been trying to burrow away from dropped into his mind like a stone into a pond. Kirsten had fallen down the stairs--

  No. Pushed.

  The crazy bastard who had brought them here had pushed his seven-year-old daughter down the stairs. Ellie had reached for her and the crazy bastard had punched his wife in the eye and knocked her down. But Ellie had fallen on the stairs and Kirsten had plunged down them, her eyes wide open, full of shocked surprise, Ralph didn't think she'd known what was happening, and if he could hold onto anything he would hold onto that, that it had all happened too fast for her to have any real idea, and then she had hit, she had cartwheeled, feet flying first upward and then backward, and there had been this sound, this awful sound like a branch breaking under a weight of ice, and suddenly everything about her had changed, he had seen the change even before she came to a stop at the foot of the stairs, as if that were no little girl down there but a stuffed dummy, headpiece full of straw.