Part 25 (2/2)

Traffic reappeared as we pa.s.sed the next three exits, and by the time we reached Guthrie, the streams of vehicles were as thick and single-minded as ants. Without the usual soap operas and game shows to watch, everyone who was normally at home on Monday afternoons had decided to go for a drive. No one seemed to be pursuing us, though, so instead of trying to force our way through, we accepted the traffic as natural cover. The Kamikaze was banged up and winds.h.i.+eldless, but it didn't look much worse than some of the cars around us. And without Peggy Sue, we weren't as conspicuous as we had been.

I didn't want to think about Peggy Sue.

”I think we're rid of the Bald Avenger,” Gretchen said. ”I haven't seen that Jag since before Oklahoma City.”

Pete chuckled. ”Those w.i.l.l.yites probably tore it to bits. I doubt that they care much for machines made in England.”

I bit my lip.

Pete turned on the dash radio, and the first words out of it were that the stock market was cras.h.i.+ng. No one in the investment community was able to think about anything except what had happened to their TV sets, and Wall Street was going to h.e.l.l. By the end of the day, the Dow would be down by anywhere from six hundred to seventeen hundred points.

”Whatever that means,” I said.

Gretchen began to explain the Dow and the implications of such a drop, but I tuned her out. How it was happening and what it meant didn't matter; all that mattered was that it would be blamed on me. Buddy had named me as the person to contact ”for a.s.sistance,” and now the ma.s.s-communication-based American and world economies were in flames. The Authorities would hang me from a flagpole and play tetherball.

Well, they could go ahead and do it for all I cared. Buddy Holly, Ready Teddy, and Mother were all dead; Julie ”Eat s.h.i.+t and die, Oliver” Calloway had left me and wasn't coming back; any chance I might have had with Sharon Sharpston had been fantasy; my home was probably splinters on the ground; and my beloved Ariel had been burned by religious zealots. I'd had enough. I didn't even want to go back to Topeka. Pete had to be wrong about my SkyVue dish being a possible key-and even if he wasn't, the odds were good that the dish didn't even exist anymore.

So I wouldn't go home. I would give myself up.

But first, I would go to El Dorado. I had to know why the SkyVue Drive-in Theater had seemed so important to me when Peggy Sue and I had pa.s.sed by.

”Highway patrol,” Pete said, pointing at the southbound lanes. ”He's slowing down. Must've gotten word on us from the Oklahoma City jam.” Gretchen looked at the mirror. ”s.h.i.+t! There go his lights!” The Kamikaze accelerated.

I scanned the blurring road signs. ”Exit for State 33 East coming up,” I said. ”Take it.”

”Who died and made you G.o.d?” Gretchen snapped.

I had an answer, but I kept it to myself.

”It's a good idea,” Pete said, looking back. ”The hypo's having trouble getting across, so we might be able to exit without his seeing it.”

Gretchen scooted the car in front of a semi and took the exit. As we sped down the ramp, the semi blocked our view of the hypo, and thus his view of us. Three miles later, we were sure that we had lost him.

”We'll swing north again soon,” Pete said, opening the glove box and digging out a map. ”Maybe U.S.

177 or something near it.”

”I want to go through El Dorado, Kansas,” I said.

”How come?”

”That's where Mother bought our satellite dish. I have a feeling about the place.” I didn't tell him that I was planning to give myself up there.

He looked at the map. ”It's on the way. Want me to drive yet, Gretchen?”

She smiled at him. ”I'm okay. Except for my hands, which are freezing.”

I pulled off my gloves and handed them up. Now that my Ariel was gone, I wouldn't be needing them.

”Thanks,” she said grudgingly, letting Pete steer as she put them on. She glanced at me in the rearview mirror. ”Hey, are you crying?”

I looked out the window and murmured, ”Peggy Sue.” Like everything else that mattered, she was gone.

SHARON.

Notes, continued...

We entered Oklahoma City on I-40 early Monday afternoon. Bruce was driving, and he switched to I-35 to head north despite what we had encountered there the day before. I tried to convince him to go another way, but he argued that the ma.s.s revival that had slowed traffic to a crawl on Sunday could not still be in existence on Monday. In a way, he was right. The revival had metamorphosed into an ongoing mob riot and pileup. Bruce made some headway by driving on the shoulder for a half mile, but then even the shoulder was blocked.

”Why don't the police do something?” Bruce fumed. ”They wouldn't have any more luck penetrating this than we've had,” I said. ”Nor would the National Guard.”

Bruce steered the car off the road into the shallow ditch, honking for people to get out of the way.

”What are you trying to do?” I shouted. ”You're going to hit somebody and be sued!”

”I'd like to see 'em try! I'm a f.u.c.kin'lawyer!”

I stared at him. His eyes were wide, his nostrils were flared, and his mouth was set in a crooked smile.

This was not the same Bruce who had left Topeka with me, or even who had been held by the Texas Rangers with me. I was strangely attracted to him even as I was enraged by his recklessness.

Our Chevrolet churned along the slope at eight or nine miles per hour and was pelted with beer cans and curses from the televisionless hordes who scrambled out of its path. Up on the pavement, a number of other drivers were also steering their automobiles into the ditch. I began to fear that instead of escaping the traffic jam, we were expanding its boundaries. In addition, the a.s.sembled Willard wors.h.i.+pers were furious at us. I even saw one car overturned by the mob.

Then I spotted the motorcycle. It was lying on its side, and the crowd was piling sticks, paper, cardboard, and brush on a ring of bare earth surrounding it.

It was Oliver's Ariel.

I grabbed Bruce's arm. Startled, he hit the brakes. A car that had come into the ditch behind us began honking, and there was the sound of a backfire.

”Look!” I cried, pointing at the motorcycle. We were some distance past it already, but what was happening was still obvious. ”They're going to burn it!”

”So?”

”So it's Oliver's, and if it's here, so is he!They'll burn him too!”

I had no doubt that it was true. After all, that's what you do with witches, or with the Antichrist, or with extraterrestrials: You burn them. At least, that's what you do if you're a follower of the Reverend William Willard.

I reached for my door handle, intending to rush out and find Oliver, but stopped at the sound of another backfire-which I now realized was not a backfire at all, but a gunshot. Immediately following that sound, a bald-headed man appeared beside the motorcycle, waving a pistol at the crowd. They backed away a few steps, and he kicked some of the trash away from the cycle. Then, with surprising strength, he grasped a handlebar with his free hand and pulled the machine upright.

A burning sc.r.a.p arced from the mob, hit the trash, and set it ablaze. The bald man put his gun in his jacket, then jumped onto the motorcycle, started it, and plowed into the crowd, carrying sparks and flames with him. He disappeared in the swarming ma.s.s.

”Was that Vale?” Bruce asked. ”Did he shave his head?” ”How should I know? Follow him and let's find out!”

Bruce drove on. I didn't think that Oliver was the sort to shave his head or to brandish a gun... but I hadn't seen the bald man's face, so itcould have been him. He might have shaved his head to disguise himself, and almost anyone would start carrying a weapon if an entire nation called him a monster. Who knew what he'd been through the past three days?

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