by Stephen King
With the aid of manuals from the library, and overseen by the unlikely personage of Magda Dubcek, the widow of a contractor (not to mention the mother of Lila’s pool boy), they were able to finish some of the work Kayleigh had begun before being murdered by her crazy ex-girlfriend. Magda’s late husband had taught her quite a bit about electrical work. “My husband, he was telling me what he was doing every day: ‘And look, here is the live wire, Magda, and look here is the ground wire, and so on.’ I listen. He never knew it, he thought he was just talking to some stupid wall, but I listen.” At this, Magda paused to make a sly face that reminded Lila, heartbreakingly, of Anton. “Well, for the first five hundred times I listen, anyway.”
With power scavenged from a handful of solar panels that had survived the years of neglect, they were able to create a limited electrical grid for at least a few of the high-ground houses.
Regular cars were useless; it was impossible to determine how long this version of their world had spun unattended, but the state of the parked cars was a clue that it had been enough time for water and moisture to have its way with engines. A car stored in a still-standing garage might have been salvageable, except there wasn’t a drop of gasoline anywhere that hadn’t destabilized or evaporated. What the women did find was a small fleet of well-preserved solar-powered golf carts in the equipment shed at the country club. Once they were recharged, they started right up. Women drove them up and down streets that had been cleared of trees and foliage.
Like the Shopwell, the Olympia Diner had stood up to the passage of time remarkably well, and Rita Coombs, once the wife of Terry, reopened it on a barter basis, cooking with an old portable woodstove that a gang of women had helped haul up from the Coombses’ basement.
“I always wanted to try my hand at running a restaurant,” she explained to Lila, “but Terry never wanted me to work. He said it would make him worry. Terry could never understand how damn boring it was, to be a piece of china in a hutch.”
She said this in a light way, but kept her gaze averted in an expression of what Lila read as shame—a shame that came from being happy to have something of her own. Lila hoped Rita would get over it, and thought she would—eventually. There were a lot of them that felt changed, but in a way that might also contain that tincture of shame, as if they were playing hooky. Women like Magda and Rita, who suddenly found themselves in demand and flourishing in the light of a new world. As those unmarked weeks peeled away, they discussed not just what they missed, but also some of what they did not miss.
The leaves changed as they did in the old world, but to Lila their colors seemed more vibrant and longer-lasting.
She was in Mrs. Ransom’s garden one day in what felt like late October, picking pumpkins for the schoolgirls to carve. Old Essie, seated on a bench in the shade, watched her. Next to the bench was a rusty shopping cart full of things Essie had picked up, as if trying to restock her new life from memories of the old one: a radio, a cell phone, a heap of clothes, a dog collar, a calendar from 2007, a bottle of something that had no label but might have been maple syrup once upon a time, and a trio of dolls. She liked to follow Lila when she saw Lila in her big straw hat rolling the wheelbarrow piled high with gardening implements.
The old lady was silent at first, and shied away if anyone came near her, but as the weeks passed, she began to relax, at least around Lila. Sometimes she would even talk, although Lila guessed she’d never been a great conversationalist, even in her prime.
“Things are better now,” Essie said once. “I have my very own house.” She looked fondly down at the dolls in her lap. “My girls like it. Their names are Jingle, Pingle, and Ringle.”
Lila had asked her on that occasion what her last name was.
“Once it was Wilcox,” Essie said, “but now it’s Estabrook. I have taken back my maidenhood name just like that Elaine woman. This place is better than the old place, and not just because I have my maidenhood name and my very own house. It smells sweeter.”
Today, Essie seemed to have slipped back inside herself a bit. When Lila tried to engage her in conversation, Essie shook her head, made violent shooing motions in Lila’s direction, and rummaged in her rusty shopping cart. From it she removed an ancient Philco table radio and started tossing it from hand to hand. Which was perfectly okay with Lila; let her play hot potato to her heart’s content if that was what eased her mind.
As she was getting ready to break for lunch, Janice Coates rode up on a bicycle. “Sheriff,” she said to Lila. “A word.”
“I’m not the sheriff anymore, Janice. Don’t you read the Dooling Doings? I’m just another local.”
Coates was undeterred. “Fine, but you need to know there’s people disappearing. Three of them now. Too many to be a coincidence. We need someone to look into this situation.”
Lila examined the pumpkin she had just torn from a vine. The top was bright orange, but the underside was black and rotten. She dropped it with a thud in the tilled earth. “Talk to the Redevelopment Committee, or bring it up at the next Meeting. I’m retired.”
“Come on, Lila.” Coates, perched on the seat of the bike, crossed her bony arms. “Don’t give me that bullshit. You’re not retired, you’re depressed.”
Feelings, Lila thought. Men almost never wanted to talk about them, women almost always did. It could get boring. That came as a surprise. It came to her that she might have to re-evaluate some of her resentments about Clint’s stoicism.
“I can’t, Janice.” Lila walked down the row of pumpkins. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m depressed, too,” said Janice. “I may never see my daughter again. I think of her first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Every damn day. And I miss calling my brothers. But I’m not about to let that—”
There was a dull thump and a soft cry from behind them. Lila glanced around. The radio lay on the grass next to Jingle, Pingle, and Ringle. The dolls stared up at the cloudless sky with their flat, beatific expressions. Essie was gone. There was a single brown moth where she had been. It fluttered aimlessly for a moment, then flew up and away, trailed, faintly, by the smell of fire.
CHAPTER 3
1
“Holy fucking shit!” Eric Blass cried. He was sitting on the ground, and staring up. “Did you see that?”
“I’m still seeing it,” Don replied, looking at the flock of moths winging above the tennis courts and toward the high school. “And smelling it.”
He had given Eric his lighter, since it was Eric’s idea (also so he could semi-plausibly put it all on the kid, if anyone found out). Eric had squatted, flicked the Zippo alight, and applied it to the edge of the cocoon in the littered den filled with junk. The cocoon had gone up in a crackling flash, as if it had contained gunpowder instead of a crazy homeless lady. The stench was immediate and sulphuric. It was like God himself had cut the cheese. Old Essie had sat upright—not that you could see anything more than the outline of her—and seemed to twist toward them. For an instant, her features had clarified, black and silver like a photo negative, and Don had seen her lips rolling back into a snarl. In another beat there was nothing left of her.
The fireball rose to a height of four feet, seeming to revolve as it did so. Then the fireball had turned into moths—hundreds of them. Of the cocoon or a skeleton there was no sign, and the grass where Old Essie had been lying wasn’t so much as charred.
It wasn’t that kind of fire, Don thought. If it had’ve been, we would be baked.
Eric got to his feet. His face was very white, and his eyes were frantic. “What was that? What just happened?”
“I don’t have a fucking clue,” Don said.
“Those Blowtorch Brigades, or whatever they call themselves . . . have there been any reports from them of burning cocoons that turned into flying bugs?”
“Not that I know of. But maybe they’re not reporting it.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Eric licked his lips. “Yeah, there’s no reason why she’d be different.�
��
No, there wasn’t any reason why Old Essie would be different from every other sleeping woman in the world. But Don could think of one reason why things in Dooling might be different. Things might be different here because there was a special woman here, one who slept without growing a cocoon around her. And who woke up again.
“Come on,” Don said. “We’ve got work to do on Ellendale Street. Bitch-bags to count. Names to write down. This here . . . this never happened. Right, partner?”
“Right. Absolutely.”
“You’re not going to talk about it, are you?”
“Jesus, no!”
“Good.”
But I might talk about it, Don thought. Not to Terry Coombs, though. It had only taken Don a couple of days to come to the conclusion that the man was next door to useless. A what-did-you-call-it, a figurehead. And he seemed to have a drinking problem, which was truly pathetic. People who couldn’t control their urges repulsed Don. That guy Frank Geary, though, the one Terry had appointed his chief deputy . . . that one was a thinking cat, and he was keenly interested in the Evie Black woman. He’d have her sprung soon, if not already. He was the one to talk to about this, if talking had to be done.
But he needed to think about it first.
Very carefully.
“Don?”
They were back in the truck. “Yeah, kid?”
“Did she see us? It seemed like she saw us.”
“No,” said Don. “She didn’t see nothing, just exploded. Don’t be a pussy, Junior.”
2
Terry said he wanted to go home and think about their next move. Frank, who was pretty sure the acting sheriff’s next move would be lying down to sleep it off, said that was a good idea. He saw Terry to his front door, then drove directly to the sheriff’s station. There he found Linny Mars pacing circles with a laptop in her hands. There was a crust of white powder around her nostrils. Her cheeks were colored a hectic red. Her eyes were bleary and sunken. From the laptop came the all-too-familiar sounds of chaos.
“Hi, Pete.”
She had been calling him Pete since yesterday. Frank didn’t bother correcting her. If he did, she’d remember he was Frank for a few minutes, then revert to Pete. Short-term memory loss was common among the women who were still awake. Their frontal lobes were melting like butter in a hot pan. “What are you watching?”
“YouTube vids,” she said, not slowing her circuit of the office. “I could watch at my desk, I know, Gertrude’s screen is much bigger, but every time I sit down I start to float away. Walking is better.”
“Gotcha. What’s on?” Not that he really needed an update. Frank knew what was going on: bad things.
“Clips from Al Jazeera. All the news networks are going crazy, but Al Jazeera’s absolutely shitting themselves. The whole Mideast is on fire. Oil, you know. Oil wells. At least no nukes yet, but somebody over there will pop one eventually, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. Linny, I wonder if you could look something up for me. I tried on my phone and couldn’t get anywhere. I guess prison personnel’s pretty cagey about their personal info.”
Linny was walking faster now, still staring at her laptop, which she held out in front of her like a chalice. She stumbled over a chair, almost fell, righted herself, and forged onward. “The Shias are fighting the Sunnis, and ISIL is fighting them both. Al Jazeera had a panel of commentators on, and they seem to think it’s because the women are gone. They say that without females to protect, though their idea of protection sure isn’t mine, some central psychological underpinning of Judaism and Islam is gone. Like both of those things are the same. Basically still blaming the women, even after they’ve gone to sleep. Bonkers, huh? In England—”
Enough news of the world, Frank thought. He clapped his hands repeatedly in front of Linny’s face. “I need you to do your job for a minute, hon. Could you do that for me?”
She snapped to attention. “Absolutely! What do you need, Pete?”
“Terry asked me to get an address for Lawrence Hicks. He’s the assistant warden up at Correctional. Can you find that for me?”
“Walk in the park, piece of cake, can of corn. Got all their phone numbers and addresses. In case there’s trouble up there, you know.”
But it didn’t turn out to be a walk in the park, after all. Not in Linny’s current state. Frank waited patiently as she sat at her desk, first trying one file and backing out, then another, then a third, shaking her head and cursing the computer as people did even when it was their own fault. Once she started to nod off and he saw a fine white thread spinning out of her ear. He clapped his hands again in front of her nose. “Concentrate, Linny, okay? This could be important.”
Her head jerked up. The thread snapped off, floated, disappeared. She gave him a loopy smile. “Roger that. Hey, remember that night we went line-dancing at Halls of Ivy over in Coughlin, and they kept playing that ‘Boot-Scootin’ Boogie?’ ”
Frank had no idea what she was talking about. “I sure do. Lawrence Hicks. Address.”
She finally got it. Sixty-four Clarence Court, on the south side of town. Just about as far from the prison as you could get, and still be a Dooling resident.
“Thanks, Linny. Better get some coffee.”
“I think I’ll settle for Colombian marching powder instead of Colombian roast. Works better. God bless the Griner brothers.”
The phone rang. Linny grabbed the receiver. “Police!” For about three seconds she listened, then hung up.
“They keep calling to ask. ‘Is it true that there’s a woman up at the prison—’ Blah, blah, blah. Do I look like the newspaper?” She gave him a desperately unhappy smile. “I don’t know why I bother staying awake. I’m just postponing the inevitable.”
He bent down and rubbed her shoulder with his fingertips, didn’t know he was going to do it until it was done. “Hang in. There might be a miracle waiting around the next bend in the road. You won’t know until you get there.”
Linny started to cry. “Thanks, Dave. That’s a nice thing to say.”
“I’m a nice man,” Frank said, who did try to be nice, but found that it wasn’t always possible. In the long run, he suspected niceness didn’t pull the plow. Frank didn’t like that. It didn’t give him any pleasure. He wasn’t sure Elaine had ever grasped that he didn’t actually enjoy losing his temper. But he saw how it was. Someone had to pull the plow, and in Dooling, that was him.
He left, feeling sure that the next time he saw Linny Mars, she would be in a cocoon. What some of the deputies had started calling bitch-bags. He didn’t approve of the term, but he didn’t stop them. That was Terry’s job.
He was the sheriff, after all.
3
Behind the wheel of Unit Four once more, Frank got on the horn to Reed Barrows and Vern Rangle in Unit Three. When Vern answered, Frank asked if they were still in the Tremaine Street area.
“Yup,” said Vern, “and making fast work of it. Not many sleepers in this neighborhood once you get past the sheriff’s place. You should see all the For Sale signs. Guess the so-called economic recovery never made it this far.”
“Uh-huh. Listen, you two, Terry says he wants to locate Sheriff Norcross and her son.”
“Their house is empty,” Vern said. “We already checked it. I told Terry that. I think maybe he’s been . . .” Vern must have suddenly realized that what he was saying was going out over the air. “He’s been, you know, a little overworked.”
“No, he knows that,” Frank said. “He wants you to start checking the empty houses, too. I seem to remember there’s a whole cul-de-sac that’s unfinished a little further up. If you find them, just say howdy and move on. But then get in touch with me right away, all right?”
Reed took the mic. “I think if Lila’s not awake, Frank, then she must have wandered off into the woods or something. Otherwise she’d be in a cocoon at home or at the sheriff’s station.”
“Look, I’m just passing on what Terr
y told me.” Frank certainly wasn’t going to tell those two what seemed obvious to him: Norcross was a step ahead. If his wife was still awake, she’d still be in charge. Therefore, the doc had phoned his son and told the kid to move Lila to a safer place. It was another indication that the man was up to mischief. Frank was sure they wouldn’t be far from home.
“Where is Terry, anyway?” Reed asked.
“I dropped him off at his house,” Frank said.
“Jesus.” Reed sounded disgusted. “I hope he’s up to this job, Frank. I really do.”
“Can that talk,” Frank said. “Remember you’re on the air.”
“Roger that,” Reed said. “We’ll start checking the empty houses further up Tremaine. That section’s on our list, anyway.”
“Great. Unit Four is clear.”
Frank racked the mic and headed for Clarence Court. He badly wanted to know where Lila Norcross and her son were—they could be the levers he needed to end the situation bloodlessly—but that was second on his list. It was time to get some answers about Ms. Eve Black.
4
Jared answered on the second ring. “This is the CDC, Dooling branch, epidemiologist Jared Norcross speaking.”
“No need for that, Jere,” Clint said. “I’m alone in my office. Is Mary okay?”
“Yeah, for now. She’s walking around in the backyard. She says the sun perks her up.”
Clint felt vague alarm, and told himself not to be such an old biddy. Privacy fences, lots of trees; she’d be okay back there. It wasn’t as if Terry and his new second-in-command could send out a drone or a helicopter.
“I don’t think she can stay awake much longer, Dad. I don’t know how she’s managed it this long.”
“Me, either.”
“And I’m not sure why Mom wanted us up here, anyway. There’s some furniture, but the bed is hard.” He paused. “Guess that sounds pretty whiny, huh? With all that’s going on?”