Sometimes Duane imagined that he was the single crewman on a receding starship, already light-years from Earth, unable to turn around, doomed never to return, unable even to reach his destination in a human lifetime, but still connected by this expanding arc of electromagnetic radiation, rising now through the onionlike layers of old radio shows, traveling back in time as he traveled forward in space, listening to voices whose owners had long since died, moving back toward Marconi and then silence.
Someone was whispering his name.
Duane sat up in the darkness and realized that his earphones were still in place. He had been testing the new Heath kit before falling asleep.
The voice came again. It was probably feminine but seemed oddly sexless. The tone was made tenuous by distance but was as clear as the stars he had seen on his way in from the barn at midnight.
She ... it ... was calling his name.
"Duane . . . Duane . . . we're coming for you, my dear."
Duane sat up on his bed, clamped the earphones tighter. The voice didn't seem to be coming through the earphones. It seemed to be coming from under his bed, from the darkness above the heating pipes, from the cinderblock walls.
"We will come, Duane, my dear. We will come soon."
No one called Duane "my dear." Not even in jest. He had no idea if his mother had when she was alive. Duane ran his hand down the earphone cord, found the cold jack on his blankets where he had pulled it free after turning off the receiver.
"We will come soon, Duane, my dear," the voice whispered urgently in his ear. "Wait for us, my dear."
Duane leaned out into darkness, felt for the hanging cord, and tugged on the light.
The earphones were not plugged in. The receiver was off. None of his radios were on.
"Wait for us, my dear."
FIVE
Dale smelled Death before he saw it.
It was Friday, the third of June, their second day of summer, and the bunch of them had been playing ball since just after breakfast-by midafternoon they were caked with dust made muddy by their sweat-when Dale smelled Death coming.
"Je-zuz!" cried Jim Harlen from his place between first and second base. "What is that?"
Dale was just stepping up to the plate to bat, but now he stepped back and pointed.
The smell had come from the east, blowing with the breeze down the dirt road that connected the city ballpark to First Avenue. The smell was Death-corruption, the stench of recent roadkill, the bloated-to-bursting gasses of bacteria working in dead stomachs-and it was coming closer.
"Oh, yechhh," said Donna Lou Perry from the pitcher's mound. She kept the ball in her right hand, raised her baseball mitt to her mouth and nose, and turned to look the direction Dale was pointing.
The Rendering Truck turned slowly from First Avenue and rolled down the hundred yards of dirt road toward them. The truck's cab was scabrous red and the bed behind was shielded by solid wooden slats. Dale could see four legs protruding straight up-a cow perhaps, or a horse, it was hard to tell at this distance-the corpse obviously tossed in among others, the hoofs pointing skyward like a cartoon of a dead animal.
This was no cartoon.
"Aww, give us a break," said Mike from his catcher's position behind the plate. He lifted his t-shirt over his mouth and nose as the stench came on stronger.
Dale took another step away from the plate, his eyes watering and stomach churning. The Rendering Truck reached the end of the dirt road and pulled into the grassy parking lot behind the bleachers to their right. The air seemed to grow thick around them as the stench of dead things closed over Dale's face like a hand.
Kevin jogged in from third base. "Is that Van Syke?"
Lawrence came off the bench and stood next to Dale as they both squinted toward the truck, the bills of their wool baseball caps pulled low.
"I don't know," said Dale. "Can't see in the cab because of the stupid glare. But Van Syke usually drives it in the summer, doesn't he?"
Gerry Daysinger had been waiting on-deck behind Dale. Now he held his bat like a rifle and made a face. "Yeah, Van Syke drives it ... most of the time."
Dale glanced at the shorter boy. All of them knew that Gerry's dad sometimes drove the Rendering Truck or mowed the cemetery . . . odd jobs around town that Van Syke usually took care of. No one had ever seen Mr. Van Syke with a friend, but Gerry's dad sometimes hung around with him.
As if reading their thoughts, Daysinger said, "It's Van Syke. My old man's up at Oak Hill today working on a construction job."
Donna Lou walked in from the mound, her mitt still over the lower part of her face. "What's he want?"
Mike O'Rourke shrugged. "I don't see any dead things around here, do you?"
"Just Harlen," said Gerry, flicking a clod of dirt at Jim as he loped in to join the group.
The Rendering Truck sat there, ten yards away, the windshield opaqued by glare and the thick layers of paint on the cab looking like caked blood. Through the slats on the side, Dale could catch a glimpse of hides gray and black, another hint of hoof near the tailgate, something large and brown and bloated just behind the cab. The four legs jutting skyward belonged to a cow. Dale pulled the bill of his cap lower and could see white bone showing through rotted hide. The air was thick with the buzzing of the flies that hung over the truck like a blue cloud.
"What's he want?" Donna Lou asked again. The sixth grader had hung around with the Bike Patrol boys for years-she was the best pitcher on their pickup teams-but this summer Dale had noticed how tall she'd grown . . . that and the curves under her t-shirt.
"Let's go ask him," said Mike. He tossed down his glove and started walking toward the opening in the backstop.
Dale felt his heart lurch. He didn't like Van Syke at the best of times. When he thought of him-even in the context of school with teachers and Dr. Roon within shouting distance-he had the image of long, spidery fingers with dirt under the nails, dirt-lined wrinkles on the back of a blister-reddened neck, and yellow teeth which were much too large. Like the teeth on the rats at the dump.
And the thought of walking closer to that truck-that smell -made Dale's insides quiver again.
Mike had reached the fence and was going through the narrow gap there.
"Hey, wait a minute!" called Harlen. "Look!"
A kid was riding down the dirt road and now the bike swerved into right field and crossed the, dirt infield in a spray of clods. Dale saw that it was a girl's bike, and that the girl riding it was Sandra Whittaker, Donna Lou's friend.
"Oh, peww," said Sandy as she brought the bike to a sliding halt near the group of them. "What died?"
"Mike's dead cousins just drove up," said Harlen. "He was just going over to give them a hug."
Sandy gave Harlen a look and dismissed him with a flounce of her braids. "I've got news. Something weird's going on!"
"What?" said Lawrence and adjusted his glasses. The third grader's voice was tense.