“Lacy, it’s crazy to go down there.”
“Ed may be in trouble.”
“But is he worth risking your life for? I thought you said he was a louse.”
“He was my partner, Barry. Louse or not, I need to try to get him out. It’s not that I love him or even like him. But I can’t just stand by and watch this place get torn apart with him in it and not try to help him.”
“Like Jill,” Jaspin said. “Jill’s in there already, looking for her sister.”
“I’m going in there too. You going to wait here?”
“No,” Jaspin said. “I’ll come with you. What the hell.”
2
Buffalo had been saying all morning, We got to get out of here, Charley, that mob is coming, that mob is going to stampede right through this place. But Charley had said no, let’s hold on a little longer, Tom’s got to be around here somewhere and I want to take him.
Stidge couldn’t understand either of them. That Buffalo, he was just a shit-ass. He looked real tough, sure, but inside him there was just brown shit from head to knees. You hit a little trouble, first thing he wants to do is clear out. Charley, now, he wasn’t really afraid of anything—say that for him—but sometimes it was real hard to figure him. Like this thing he had for the looney, Tom. Take him along, all the way from the far side of the Valley, clear to San Francisco, now up here to Mendo, for what? For goddamned what? Gives me the creeps, Stidge thought, just looking at that guy’s eyes. And now Charley waiting around in the forest in the rain trying to find him, take him along again. Made no sense at all.
Charley said, “They had energy walls up. Then they took them down. I wonder why they did a thing like that. They’re wide open, now.
“Maybe Tom did it,” Buffalo said. “Found the generator and shut it down, let them all come running right through.”
“Why’d he want to do that?” Charley asked. “I don’t think he would. Must have been someone else, or maybe the power just conked out on its own. Tom likes this place. He wouldn’t want a mob running over it.”
Stidge said, “Man’s crazy. Crazy man would do anything.”
Charley grinned. “You think Tom’s crazy, Stidge? Shows how little you know.”
“Says he’s crazy himself, out of his own mouth. And the visions he has—”
“Crazy like a fox,” said Buffalo.
“Yeah,” Charley said. “Listen, Stidge, those visions of his, they’re not crazy, they’re true visions. He sees right into the stars. That make any sense to you? Nah, I bet it don’t. But I tell you, he’s not crazy. Only way he can keep from scaring people with that power of his, he has to say he’s crazy. But you can’t understand stuff like that, can you? All you understand is hurting people. Times I wish I never met you, Stidge.”
“All I understand,” Stidge said, “is that one of these days that Tom’s going to bug me too much, I going to put a spike in him. All summer long you been riding me, Stidge don’t do this, Stidge don’t do that, Stidge let Tom alone. I’m pretty sick of your Tom, you hear me, Charley?”
“And I’m pretty sick of you,” Charley said. “I tell you one more time, anything happen to Tom, you’re done, Stidge. You’re done.” He turned toward Buffalo. “You know what we ought to do? We ought to take one more look around those buildings, find Tom, pick up anything light enough to carry that might be worth something and get the hell away from here.”
“Yeah,” Buffalo said. “Before they come rampaging into the woods and tip over our van or something.”
Stidge said, “Instead of Tom, the one we ought to find is that woman, the tall one we saw before. Or that hot-looking one who was out on the road with the limping guy. Find one of them, bring her along, that’s what makes sense to me.”
“Count on you, saying something like that,” said Charley. “Just what we need, kidnap a woman now. Tom’s what we want. Find Tom, get away from here. You clear on that, Stidge?”
“I don’t know why the hell—”
“You clear on that, Stidge?”
“Yeah,” Stidge said. “I hear you, man.”
“I hope you do. Come on, now.”
“You two go look for Tom,” Stidge said. “I got another idea. You see that bus out there, the one with the cockeyed statues on top, all the flags? I think I’ll take a sniff in there. I bet it’s the treasure bus.”
“What treasure you talking about?” Charley asked.
“The marchers’ treasure. I bet it’s their holy bus, all kinds of rubies and emeralds and diamonds in there. I’ll just take a little look. That okay with you, Charley? While you’re hunting around for Tom?”
Charley was silent a moment. Finally he nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Grab yourself a sack of rubies.”
3
Just as Jill stepped up on the porch of the long wooden building that she thought might be the dormitory, a lanky dark-haired man came running out of it and slammed straight into her. They collided with a solid thunk and went bouncing back from each other, and they stood there for a moment looking at each other, both of them a little stunned.
He was wearing a white coat and had the look of someone who might be on the staff. “Sorry,” Jill said. “Hey, can you tell me, is this where they keep the patients?”
“Get out of my way,” he said. He had a sort of crazed look in his eye.
“I just want to know, is this where—”
“What do you want here? What are all you people doing here? Get out. ” He waved his arms at her. It was the craziest thing she had ever seen.
“I’m looking for my sister. April Cranshaw. She’s a patient here and I want to—”
But he was gone, sprinting past her like a maniac, disappearing into the storm. All right, Jill thought. Be like that. See if I care. She wondered how crazy the patients here must be, if that was what the staff was like. Man looked like a doctor, maybe a psychiatrist. They were all crazy anyway. Of course, the fact that thousands of cars had just driven onto the grounds and the whole Mongol horde was charging around on the lawn out there might have upset him a little.
She went into the building. Yes, it did look like a dorm. Bulletin board up, notices posted, a lot of little rooms opening off the hallway.
“April?” she called. “April, honey, it’s Jill. I came to get you, April. Come on out, if you’re in here. April? April?”
She looked in one room after another. Empty. Empty. Empty. Then in a room down at the end of the corridor she saw a man sitting on the floor, but he was either drunk or dead, she couldn’t tell which. She shook him, but he didn’t wake up. “Hey, you. You! I’m trying to find my sister.” But it was like talking to a chair. She started to go out, but then she heard sounds coming from the bathroom, someone singing or humming. “Hello?” Jill said. “Whoever’s in there.”
“You want to use the bathroom? I can’t let you. I have to be in it. I’m supposed to stay in here until Dr. Waldstein comes back, or Dr. Lewis.”
“April? That you, April?”
“Dr. Lewis?”
“This is Jill. For Christ’s sake, your sister Jill. Open the door, April.”
“I have to stay in here until Dr. Waldstein or Dr.—”
“So stay in there. But open the door. I need to pee, April. Do you want me to pee in my pants? Open it.”
A moment of silence. Then the door opened.
“Jill?”
It was like the voice of a little girl. But the woman who was behind it was like a mountain. Jill had forgotten how huge her older sister was; either that or April had really been piling it on since she’d come up here. Some of both, Jill thought. April looked weird, too—weirder than Jill remembered, totally spaced-out, her eyes gleaming and strange, her face very white, the fat cheeks sagging.