Steve did. The aquarium was now nothing but a rect-angle of wet sand surrounded by jags of glass. The hand lay on the soaked carpet beside the desk. It had landed on its back. There was a dead guppy stranded on its palm. The fingers seemed almost to beckon him-come on in, stranger, pull up a chair, take a load off, mi casa es su casa.
No thanks, Steve thought.
He had no more than started to open the door between the littery reception area and the outside when it was snatched prankishly out of his hands. Dust was blowing past in ribbons. The mountains to the west had been com-pletely obliterated by moving membranes of darkening gold-sand and alkali grit flying in the day’s last ten min-utes or so of light-but he could see the first stars glowing clearly overhead. The wind was at near gale force now. A rusty old barrel with the words ZOOM CHEMTRONICS DISPOSE OF PROPERLY stencilled on it rolled across the parking lot, past the Ryder truck, and across the road. Into the desert it went. The tink-tink-tink of the lanyard-clip against the flagpole was feverish now, and something to their left thumped twice, hard, a sound like silencer-muffled pistol shots. Cynthia jerked against him. Steve turned toward the sound and saw a big blue Dumpster. As he looked, the wind half-lifted its lid, then dropped it. There was another muffled thump.
“There’s your gunshots,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the wind.
“Well… it didn’t sound just like that.”
Aconcatenation of coyote-howls rose in the night, some from the west, flying to them on the wind and grit, some from the north. The sound reminded Steve of old newsclips he’d seen of Beatlemania, girls screaming their heads off for the moptops from Liverpool. He and Cynthia looked at each other. “Come on,” he said. “The truck. Right now.”
They hurried to it, arms around each other and the wind at their backs. When they were in the cab again, Cynthia locked her door, bopping the button down decisively with the heel of her hand, Steve did the same, then started the engine. Its steady rumble and the glow from the dash board when he pulled the headlight knob comforted him He turned to Cynthia.
“All right, where do we go to report this. Austin’s out It’s too far west and in the direction this shit is coming from. Wc’d end up by the side of the road, hoping we could start the damn engine again once the storm passed That leaves Ely, which is a two-hour drive-longer, if the storm overtakes us-or downtown Desperation, which is maybe less than a mile.”
“Ely,” she said at once. “The people who did this could be up there in town, and I doubt if a couple of local cops or even county mounties could match up to guys who could do what we saw in there.”
“The people who did it could also be back on Route 50,” he said. “Remember the RV, and the boss’s bike.”
“But we did see traffic,” she said, then jumped as some—thing else fell over nearby. It sounded big and metallic. “Christ, Steve, can’t we please just get the fuck out of here.”
He wanted to as badly as she did, but he shook his head. “Not until we figure this out. It’s important. Fourteen dead people, and that doesn’t count the boss or the people from the RV.”
“The Carver family.”
“This is gonna be big when it comes out-nationwide. If we go back to Ely and if it turns out there were two cops with phones and radios less than a mile up the road, 21 and if the people who did this get away because we took too long blowing the whistle… well, our decision is go—mg to be questioned. Harshly.”
The dashlights made her face look green and sick. “Are you saying they’d think we had something to do with it.”
“I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this: You’re not the Duchess of Windsor and I’m not the Duke of Earl. We’re a couple of roadbums, is what we are. How much ID do you have.
A driver’s license.”
“I never took the test. Moved around too much.”
“Social Security.”
“Well, I lost the card someplace, I think I left it behind when I split from the guy who fucked up my ear, but I remember the number.”
“What have you got for actual paperwork.”
“My discount card from Tower Records and Video,” she snapped. “Two punches left and I get a free CD. I’m shooting for Out Come the Wolves. Seems fitting, given the soundtrack in these parts. Satisfied.”
“Yeah,” he said, and began to laugh. She stared at him for a moment, cheeks green, shadows rippling across her brow, eyes dark, and he felt sure she was going to launch herself at him and see how much of his skin she could pull off. Then she began to laugh, too, a helpless screamy sound he didn’t care for much. “Come here a second,” he said, and held out his hand.
“Don’t you get funny with me, I’m warning you,” she said, but she scooted across the seat and into the circle of his arm with no hesitation. He could feel her shoulder trembling against his. She was going to be cold in that tank-top if they had to get out of the truck. The tempera-ture fell off the table in this part of the world once the sun went down.
“You really want to go into town, Lubbock.”
“What I want is to be in Disneyland eating a Sno-Kone, but I think we ought to go up there and take a look. If things are normal… if they feel normal… okay, we’ll try reporting it there. But if we see anything that looks the slightest bit wrong, we head for Ely on the double.”
She looked up at him solemnly. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
“You can.” He put the truck in gear and began to roll slowly toward the road. To the west, the gold glow which had been filtering through the sand was down to an ember.
Overhead, more stars were poking through, but they were beginning to shimmy as the flying sand thickened.
“Steve. You don’t happen to have a gun, do you.”
He shook his head, thought about going back into the Quonset to look for one, and then put the idea out of his head. He wasn’t going back in there, that was all; he just wasn’t.
“No gun, hut I’ve got a really big Swiss Army knife, one with all the bells and whistles.
It’s even got a magnifying glass.”
“That makes me feel a lot better.”
He thought of asking her about the statue, or if she’d had any funny ideas-experimental ideas-and then didn’t. Like the thought of going back into the Quonset building again, it was just too creepy. He turned onto the road, one arm still about her shoulders, and started toward town. The sand blew thickly across the wedge of light thrown by his high beams, twisting into lank shadows that persistently reminded him of hanged men dangling from hooks.
The body of his sister was gone from the foot of the stairs, and that was something. David stood looking out through the double doors for a moment. Daylight was fading, and although the sky overhead was still clear-a darkening indigo-the light was dying down here at ground-level in a choke of dust. Across the street, an overhead sign reading DESPERATION COFFEE SHOP AND VIDEO STOP swung back and forth in the wind.
Sitting beneath it, and looking attentively across at him, were two more coyotes. Sitting between them, tatty feathers flap ping in the wind like the feathers on some old woman s church-and-Bingo hat, was a large bald-looking bird David recognized as a buzzard.
Sitting right between the coyotes.
“That’s impossible,” he whispered. and maybe it was but he was seeing it, just the same.
He dressed quickly, looking at a door to his left as he did. Printed on the frosted-glass pane were the words DES-PERATION TOWN OFFICE, along with the hours-nine to four. He tied his sneakers and then opened the door, ready to turn and run if he sensed anything dangerous… if he sensed anything moving, really.
But where would I run. Where is there to run.
The room beyond the door was gloomy and silent. He groped to his left, expecting something or someone to reach out of the darkness and grab his hand, but nothing did. He found a switchplate, then the switch itself. He flipped it, blinked as his eyes adjusted to the old—fashioned hanging globes, then stepped forward. Straight ahead was a long counter with several barred windows like tellers’ stations in an old-fashioned bank. One was marked TAX CLERK, another HUNTING PERMITS, another MINES AND ASSAY. The last one, smaller, bore a sign read-ing MSHA and FEDERAL LAND-USE REGS. Spray-painted on the wall behind the clerks’ area in big red letters was this: IN THESE SILENCES SOMETHING MAY RISE.