Desperation (37 page)

2

“I was kneeling there by
the delivery guy, trying to think what I should do next—stay with him or run and call someone—when there were more screams and gunshots up on Cotton Street. Glass broke. There was a splintering sound—wood—and then a big clanging, banging sound—metal. The cruiser started to rev again. It seems like that's all I've heard for two days, that cruiser revving. He peeled out, and then I could hear him coming my way. I only had a second to think, but I don't guess I would have done anything different even if I'd had longer. I ran.

“I wanted to get back to my car and drive away, but I didn't think there was time. I didn't think there was even time to get back around the corner and out of sight. So I went into the grocery store. Worrell's. Wendy Worrell was lying dead by the cash register. Her dad—he's the butcher as well as the owner—was sitting in the little office area, shot in the head. His shirt was off. He must have been just changing into his whites when it happened.”

“Hugh starts work early,” Billingsley said. “Lots earlier than the rest of his family.”

“Oh, but Entragian keeps coming back and
checking,
” Audrey said. Her voice was light, conversational, hysterical. “That's what makes him so dangerous.
He keeps coming back and checking.
He's crazy and he has no mercy, but he's also
methodical.
”

“He's one sick puppy, though,” Johnny said. “When he brought me into town, he was on the verge of bleeding out, and that was six hours ago. If whatever's happening to him hasn't slowed down . . .” He shrugged.

“Don't let him trick you,” she almost whispered.

Johnny understood what she was suggesting, knew from what he had seen with his own eyes that it was impossible, knew also that telling her so would be a waste of breath.

“Go on,” Steve said. “What then?”

“I tried to use the phone in Mr. Worrell's office. It was dead. I stayed in the back of the store for about a half an hour. The cruiser went by twice during that time, once on Main Street, then around the back, probably on Mesquite, or Cotton again. There were more gunshots. I went upstairs to where the Worrells live, thinking maybe the phone up there would still be live. It wasn't. Neither was Mrs. Worrell or the boy. Mert, I think his name was. She was in the kitchen with her head in the sink and her throat cut. He was still in bed. The blood was everywhere. I stood in his doorway, looking in at his posters of rock musicians and basketball players, and outside I could hear the cruiser going by again, fast, accelerating.

“I went down the back way, but I didn't dare open the back door once I got there. I kept imagining him crouched down below the porch, waiting for me. I mean, I'd just heard him go by, but I still kept imagining him waiting for me.

“I decided the best thing I could do was wait for dark. Then I could drive away. Maybe. You couldn't be sure. Because he was just so
unpredictable.
He wasn't
always
on Main Street and you couldn't
always
hear him and you'd start thinking well, maybe he's gone, headed for the hills, and then he'd be back, like a damn rabbit coming out of a magician's hat.

“But I couldn't stay in the store. The sound of the flies was driving me crazy, for one thing, and it was hot. I don't usually mind the heat, you can't mind it if you live in central Nevada, but I kept thinking I
smelled
them. So I waited until I heard him shooting somewhere over by the town garage—that's on Dumont Street, about as far east as you can go before you run out of town—and then I left. Stepping out of the market and back onto the sidewalk was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. Like being a soldier and stepping out into no-man's-land. At first I couldn't move at all; I just froze right where I was. I remember thinking that I
had
to walk, I couldn't run because I'd panic if I did, but I had to walk. Except I couldn't.
Couldn't.
It was like being paralyzed. Then I heard him coming back. It was weird. As if he sensed me. Sensed
someone,
anyway, moving around while his back was turned. Like he was playing a new kind of kid's game, one where you got to murder the losers instead of just sending them back to the Prisoner's Base, or something. The engine . . . it's so loud when it starts to rev. So powerful. So
loud.
Even when I'm not hearing it, I'm
imagining
I hear it. You know? It sounds kind of like a catamount getting f . . . like a wildcat in heat. That's what I heard coming toward me, and still I couldn't move. I could only stand there and listen to it getting closer. I thought about the Tastykake man, how he was shivering like the jay I shot when I was a kid, and that finally got me going. I went into the laundrymat and threw myself down on the floor just as he went by. I heard more screaming north of town, but I don't know what that was about, because I couldn't look up. I couldn't
get
up. I must have lain there on that floor for almost twenty minutes, that's how bad I was. I can say I was way beyond scared by then, but I can't make you understand how weird it gets in your head when you're that way. I lay there on the floor, looking at dust-balls and mashed-up cigarette butts and thinking how you could tell this was a laundrymat even down at the level I was, because of the smell and because all of the butts had lipstick on them. I lay there and I couldn't have moved even if I'd heard him coming up the sidewalk. I would have lain there until he put the barrel of his gun on the side of my head and—”

“Don't,” Mary said, wincing. “Don't talk about it.”

“But I can't stop thinking about it!”
she shouted, and something about that jagged on Johnny Marinville's ear as nothing else she'd said had. She made a visible effort to get herself under control, then went on. “What got me past that was the sound of people outside. I got up on my knees and crawled over to the door. I saw four people across the street, by the Owl's. Two were Mexican—the Escolla boy who works on the crusher up at the mine, and his girlfriend. I don't know her name, but she's got a blonde streak in her hair—natural, I'm almost sure—and she's awfully pretty.
Was
awfully pretty. There was another woman, quite heavy, I'd never seen her before. The man with her I've seen playing pool with you in Bud's, Tom. Flip somebody.”

“Flip Moran? You saw the Flipper?”

She nodded. “They were working their way up the other side of the street, trying cars, looking for keys. I thought about mine, and how we could all go together. I started to get up. They were passing that little alley over there, the one between the storefront where the Italian restaurant used to be and The Broken Drum, and Entragian came roaring right out of the alley in his cruiser. Like he'd been waiting for them. Probably he
was
waiting for them. He hit them all, but I think your friend Flip was the only one killed outright. The others just went skidding off to one side, like bowling-pins when you miss a good hit. They kind of grabbed each other to keep from falling down. Then they ran. The Escolla boy had his arm around his girlfriend. She was crying and holding her arm against her breasts. It was broken. You could see it was, it looked like it had an extra joint in it above the elbow. The other woman had blood pouring down her face. When she heard Entragian coming after them—that big, powerful engine—she spun around and held her hands up like she was a crossing guard or something. He was driving with his right hand and leaning out the window like a locomotive engineer. He shot her twice before he hit her with the car and ran her under. That was the first really good look I got at him, the first time I knew for sure who I was dealing with.”

She looked at them one by one, as if trying to measure the effect her words were having.

“He was grinning. Grinning and laughing like a kid on his first visit to Disney World. Happy, you know? Happy.”

3

Audrey had crouched there at
the laundrymat door, watching Entragian chase the Escolla boy and his girl north on Main Street with the cruiser. He caught them and ran them down as he had the older woman—it was easy to get them both at once, she said, because the boy was trying to help the girl, the two of them were running together. When they were down, Entragian had stopped, backed up, backed slowly
over
them (there had been no wind then, Audrey told them, and she had heard the sound of their bones snapping very clearly), got out, walked over to them, knelt between them, put a bullet in the back of the girl's head, then took off the Escolla boy's hat, which had stayed on through everything, and put a bullet in the back of
his
head.

“Then he put the hat back on him again,” Audrey said. “If I live through this, that's one thing I'll never forget, no matter how long I live—how he took the boy's hat off to shoot him, then put it back on again. It was as if he was saying he understood how hard this was on them, and he wanted to be as considerate as possible.”

Entragian stood up, turned in a circle (reloading as he did), seeming to look everywhere at once. Audrey said he was wearing a big, goony smile. Johnny knew the kind she meant. He had seen it. In a crazy way it seemed to him he had seen
all
of this—in a dream, or another life.

It's just dem old kozmic Vietnam blues again,
he told himself. The way she described the cop reminded him of certain stoned troopers he had run with, and certain stories he had been told late at night—whispered tales from grunts who had seen guys,
their own guys,
do terrible, unspeakable things with that same look of immaculate good cheer on their faces.
It's Vietnam, that's all, coming at you like an acid flashback. All you need now to complete the circle is a transistor radio sticking out of someone's pocket, playing “People Are Strange” or “
Pictures of Matchstick Men.”

But
was
that all? A deeper part of him seemed to doubt the idea. That part thought something else was going on here, something which had little or nothing to do with the paltry memories of a novelist who had fed on war like a buzzard on carrion . . . and had subsequently produced exactly the sort of bad book such behavior probably warranted.

All right, then—if it's not you, what is it?

“What did you do then?” Steve asked her.

“Went back to the laundrymat office. I crawled. And when I got there, I crawled into the kneehole under the desk and curled up in there and went to sleep. I was very tired. Seeing all those things . . . all that death . . . it made me very tired.

“It was thin sleep. I kept hearing things. Gunshots, explosions, breaking glass, screams. I have no idea how much of it was real and how much was just in my mind. When I woke up, it was late afternoon. I was sore all over, at first I thought it had all been a dream, that I might even still be camping. Then I opened my eyes and saw where I was, curled up under a desk, and I smelled bleach and laundry soap, and realized I had to pee worse than ever in my life. Also, both my legs were asleep.

“I started wiggling out from under the desk, telling myself not to panic if I got a little stuck, and that was when I heard somebody come into the front of the store, and I yanked myself back under the desk again. It was him. I knew it just by the way he walked. It was the sound of a man in boots.

“He goes, ‘Is anyone here?' and came up the aisle between the washers and dryers. Like he was following my tracks. In a way he was. It was my perfume. I hardly ever wear it, but putting on a dress made me think of it, made me think it might make things go a little smoother at my meeting with Mr. Symes.” She shrugged, maybe a little embarrassed. “You know what they say about using the tools.”

Cynthia looked blank at this, but Mary nodded.

“ ‘It smells like Opium,' he says. ‘
Is
it, miss? Is that what you're wearing?' I didn't say anything, just curled up there in the kneehole with my arms wrapped around my head. He goes, ‘Why don't you come out? If you come out, I'll make it quick. If I have to find you, I'll make it slow.' And I
wanted
to come out, that's how much he'd gotten to me. How much he'd scared me. I believed he knew for sure that I was still in there somewhere, and that he was going to follow the smell of my perfume to me like a bloodhound, and I wanted to get out from under the desk and go to him so he'd kill me quick. I wanted to go to him the way the people at Jonestown must have wanted to stand in line to get the Kool-Aid. Only I couldn't. I froze up again and all I could do was lie there and think that I was going to die needing to pee. I saw the office chair—I'd pulled it out so I could get into the knee-hole of the desk—and I thought, ‘When he sees where the
chair
is, he'll know where
I
am.' That was when he came into the office, while I was thinking that. ‘Is someone in here?' he goes. ‘Come on out. I won't hurt you. I just want to question you about what's going on. We've got a big problem.' ”

Audrey began to tremble, as Johnny supposed she had trembled while she had been hedgehogged in the kneehole of the desk, waiting for Entragian to come the rest of the way into the room, find her, and kill her. Except she was smiling, too, the kind of smile you could hardly bring yourself to look at.

“That's how crazy he was.” She clasped her shaking hands together in her lap. “In one breath he says that if you come out he'll reward you by killing you quick; in the next he says he just wants to ask you a few questions. Crazy. But I believed both things at once. So who's the craziest one? Huh? Who's the craziest one?

“He came a couple of steps into the room. I think it was a couple. Far enough for his shadow to fall over the desk and onto the other side, where I was. I remember thinking that if his shadow had eyes, they'd be able to see me. He stood there a long time. I could hear him breathing. Then he said ‘Fuck it' and left. A minute or so later, I heard the street door open and close. At first I was sure it was a trick. In my mind's eye I could see him just as clearly as I can see you guys now, opening the door and then closing it again, but still standing there on the inside, next to the machine with the little packets of soap in it. Standing there with his gun out, waiting for me to move. And you know what? I went on thinking that even after he started roaring around the streets in his car again, looking for other people to murder. I think I'd be under there still, except I knew that if I didn't go to the bathroom I was going to wet my pants, and I didn't want to do that. Huh-uh, no way. If he was able to smell my perfume, he'd smell fresh urine even quicker. So I crawled out and went to the bathroom—I hobbled like an old lady because my legs were still asleep, but I got there.”

And although she spoke for another ten minutes or so, Johnny thought that was where Audrey Wyler's story essentially ended, with her hobbling into the office bathroom to take a leak. Her car was close by and she had the keys in her dress pocket, but it might as well have been on the moon instead of Main Street for all the good it was to her. She'd gone back and forth several times between the office and the laundrymat proper (Johnny didn't doubt for a moment the courage it must have taken to move around even that much), but she had gone no farther. Her nerve wasn't just shot, it was shattered. When the gunshots and the maddening, ceaselessly revving engine stopped for awhile, she would think about making a break for it, she said, but then she would imagine Entragian catching up to her, running her off the road, pulling her out of her car, and shooting her in the head. Also, she told them, she had been convinced that help would arrive.
Had
to. Desperation was off the main road, yes, sure, but not
that
far off, and with the mine getting ready to reopen, people were always coming and going.

Some people
had
come into town, she said. She had seen a Federal Express panel truck around five that afternoon and a Wickoff County Light and Power pickup around noon of the next day, yesterday. Both went by on Main Street. She had heard music coming from the pickup. She didn't hear Entragian's cruiser that time, but five minutes or so after the pickup passed the laundrymat, there were more gunshots, and a man screaming “Oh, don't! Oh, don't!” in a voice so high it could have been a girl's.

After that, another endless night, not wanting to stay, not quite daring to try and make a break for it, eating snacks from the machine that stood at the end of the dryers, drinking water from the basin in the bathroom. Then a new day, with Entragian still circling like a vulture.

She hadn't been aware, she said, that he was bringing people into town and jugging them. By then all she'd been able to think about were plans for getting away, none of them seeming quite good enough. And, in a way, the laundrymat had begun to feel like home . . . to feel
safe.
Entragian had been in here once, had left, and hadn't returned. He might
never
return.

“I hung onto the idea that he couldn't have gotten
everyone,
that there had to be others like me, who saw what was going on in time to get their heads down. Some would get out. They'd call the State Police. I kept telling myself it was wiser, at least for the time being, to wait. Then the storm came, and I decided to try to use it for cover. I'd sneak back to the mining office. There's an ATV in the garage of the Hideaway—”

Steve nodded. “We saw it. Got a little cart filled with rock samples behind it.”

“My idea was to unhook the gondola and drive northwest back to Highway 50. I could grab a compass out of a supply cabinet, so even in the blow I'd be okay. Of course I knew I might go falling into a crevasse or something, but that didn't seem like much of a risk, not after what I'd seen. And I had to get out. Two nights in a laundrymat . . . hey,
you
try it. I was getting ready to do it when you two came along.”

“I damn near brained you,” Steve said. “Sorry about that.”

She smiled wanly, then looked around once more. “And the rest you know,” she said.

I don'
t agree,
Johnny Marinville thought. The throb in his nose was increasing again. He wanted a drink, and badly. Since that would be madness—for him, anyway—he pulled the bottle of aspirin out of his pocket and took two with a sip of spring-water.
I don't think we know anything. Not yet, anyway.