"You're sure it was a car? It wasn't a van?"
"Car," he said. "Truck driver says some damn yuppie plowed right into him, must've been goin' eighty."
"A yuppie?"
"Yeah. One of them yuppie cars. Come on, I think you can get past now." He waved her on through.
Didi negotiated the median. A wrecker was in the midst of the scorched metal, trying to pull part of a car free. The firemen were hosing down the pavement, and the air smelled of hot iron and clabbered milk.
She passed a tire lying in the brown grass. On its dented wheel cover was a circle cut into blue and white triangles, and the scarred letters BMW.
Didi looked away from it as if the sight had stung her. Then the Cutlass picked up speed and left the dead behind.
5: Doctor Didi
The Darkness came.
The wind blew cold across the plains, and flurries of snow spat from the clouds. At the Liberty Motor Lodge six miles east of Iowa City, Laura lay in bed in Room 10 and alternately shivered and sweated beneath the sheet and coarse blanket. The TV was on, tuned to a family sitcom. Laura couldn't focus on it, but she liked the sound of the voices. On the bedside table was the debris of her dinner – two plastic McDonald's burger containers, an empty french fries pack, and a half-finished Coke. A plastic bag full of crushed ice lay at her side, useful when the pain in her hand got to be excruciating and she needed to numb it. Laura stared fixedly at the TV set, waiting for Didi to come back. Didi had been gone thirty minutes, hunting for a drugstore. They had agreed on what needed to be done, and she knew what was ahead for her.
Every so often she chewed her lower lip. It had gotten raw, but she kept chewing it. She could hear the whine of the wind outside, and once in a while she imagined she heard the sound of a baby crying in it. She had gotten up once to look outside, but the effort had so drained her that she couldn't force herself to get up again. So she listened to the wind and the crying baby and she knew she was very, very close to the edge and it would not take much for her to open that door and go wandering in the hungry dark.
They had lost Mary Terror and David. That much was certain. Exactly how Van Diver had crashed into the milk tanker, Laura didn't know, but Mary and David were gone. But Mary had been badly hurt, too, losing a lot of blood. She'd been weary – maybe even more weary than Laura – and she couldn't have gotten very far. Where would she have stopped? Surely not a motel; not with blood all over her and her leg chewed up. Would she have just found a place to pull the van over and spend the night? No, because she'd have to run the engine all night or she and David would freeze to death. So that left one other possibility: that Mary had invited herself into somebody's house. It wouldn't be hard for her to do, not with the farmhouses spread hundreds of acres apart. How far west had Mary gotten before she'd decided to leave the interstate? Was she ahead of them, or behind them? It was impossible to know, but Laura did know one vital thing: Mary Terror's destination. Wherever Mary was, however long she rested and let her wounds heal, she would sooner or later be back on the highway with David, heading for Freestone, California, and the memory of a lost hero.
And that, too, was Laura's destination, even if she had to get there on her hands and knees. Minus one finger, with scar tissue toughening her heart. She was going to get David back, or die trying.
When Laura heard the key slide into the door's lock, she thought she might be sick. But her food stayed down, and Didi came in with snowflakes in her red hair and a sack in her arms.
"Got the stuff," Didi said as she closed the door against the cold and double-latched it. She had found not a drugstore but a K-Mart, and she'd bought them both gloves, woolen socks, fresh underwear, toothpaste, and toothbrushes as well as the other necessities. As Didi put the sack down, Laura realized Didi had gained about twenty pounds since she'd left the motel. Didi pulled off her sweater and revealed the weight gain: there were two more thick sweaters underneath the first one.
"My God," Laura rasped. "You shoplifted."
"I had to do it," Didi said as she peeled another layer off. "We've only got about thirty-five dollars left." She smiled, the lines deepening around her eyes. "Shoplifting isn't what it used to be. They watch you like a hawk."
"So how'd you do it without getting caught?"
"You give a kid in a Quiet Riot jacket a buck to knock over a display of skiwear, and then you come out of the dressing room, put your head down, and walk. It helps to be buying other items, too. That way you don't go out past the guard, and those cashiers don't give a crap." She threw one of the sweaters on the bed beside Laura, who picked it up with her right hand.
"Inferior quality," Laura decided. It was dark gray, banded with green stripes the color of puke. Didi's new sweater was yellow with cardinals on the front. "Did prisoners sew these?"
"Beggars can't be choosers. Neither can shoplifters." But the fact was that she had been careful to choose the bulkiest knits she could find. The cold of Nebraska and Wyoming would make Iowa's weather seem balmy. Didi continued to take items out of the sack. At last she came to the wooden tongue depressors, the gauze bandages, a small pair of scissors, a box of wide Band-Aids, and a bottle of iodine and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Didi swallowed hard, getting herself ready for what had to be done. This was going to be like trying to build a house with thumbtacks, but it was the best they could do. She looked at Laura and offered another smile, the woman's face bleached with pain. "Doctor Didi's come to call," Didi said, and then she looked away before her smile cracked and betrayed her.
"Do your ear first."
"What? That scratch? Just got skin, that's all." Her wounded ear, hidden beneath her hair, had crusted over. It hurt like hell, but Laura needed the attention. "Oh, I got this, too." She took a bottle of Extra-Strength Excedrin from her pocket and set it aside. "Courtesy of my fast hands." She wished it were industrial strength, because before this night was over they were both going to need some heavy drugs. "Sorry I couldn't get you any liquor."
"That's all right. I'll survive."
"Yeah, I believe you will." Didi went to the bathroom, wet a washrag, and brought it out for Laura. When the pain got really bad, Laura was going to need something to chew on. "You ready?"
"Ready."
Didi got the tongue depressors out. A little wider than Popsicle sticks, they were. "Okay," she said. "Let's take a look." She peeled the covers back from Laura's hand.
Laura watched Didi's face. She thought that Didi did a very good job of not flinching at the sight. Laura knew it was hideous. The mangled hand – hamburger hand, she thought – was burning hot, and every so often it throbbed with a pain so intense it sucked away Laura's breath. The stub of the little finger was still drooling some watery blood, which had soaked into a towel underneath her hand and onto the sheet. The three other fingers and thumb were curved into claws.
"What'll my manicurist say?" Laura asked.
"You should've soaked in Palmolive."
Laura laughed, but it had a nervous edge. Didi sighed, wishing to God there was someone else who could do this. It could've been worse, though. The dogs could've gotten to Laura's throat, or torn up her legs, or chewed into her other arm. Or killed the baby. Didi looked at the wedding band and engagement ring on the swollen finger. There was no way short of cutting them to get them off.