Part 28 (1/2)

Factories were becoming overcrowded as workers refused to return to their dormitories. In London, Labour leaders were blaming the Tories for failing to deal with the crisis, and the Tories were blaming Labour. Skinheads had burst into Parliament and had chain-whipped M.P.s regardless of party affiliation.

Reports from Warsaw and Moscow suggested that Polish and Soviet citizens were enjoying the change of programming.

Six Flags Over Texas had been overrun by entertainment-starved Dallas Yuppies.

Movie theaters everywhere had been reduced to rubble by throngs battling for tickets.

Burbank was being sacked.

The reports were horrifying, hilarious, bizarre, and devastating. The more we listened, the more it seemed as if it all had to be a colossal joke-but the picture on the TV in Pete's hand proved otherwise.

Buddy was in his Jovian heaven, and all was wrong with the world.

Besides which, the Oklahoma Kamikaze had been sitting behind a rural oil tank for over thirty minutes, and neither the cops nor Peggy Sue had pa.s.sed by. I was beginning to feel SkyVue tugging at me, telling me that it had the answer I needed if I would only hurry up and take a look....

”Let's go to El Dorado,” I said.

Pete started the Barracuda, and we left our hiding place just as a constellation of headlight beams appeared from behind the evergreens to the north. Pete killed the Kamikaze's lights and tried to back up, but it was too late. The first of a gang of fifteen motorcycles and pickup trucks had already turned onto the pumper's road, and there was nowhere for us to go.

Gretchen grabbed her tire iron and jumped out of the car as it stopped. ”If I die because of you, Vale,”

she yelled, ”the ghost of Buddy Holly is gonna be the least of your worries!”

Pete shut down the Kamikaze and smiled in the glare of the approaching headlights. ”She's a b.i.t.c.h,” he said. ”I like her.” He got out, and I followed.

The gang's lead vehicle was a monster Harley. It stopped twenty feet from the Kamikaze and sat idling, pinning us with its beam. Several more bikes and three pickups crowded behind it, and their combined noise was like the growl of a tiger the size of a 747.

Gretchen swung her tire iron as if she were warming up for batting practice. ”Come on!” she yelled.

”None of you weenies needs a head anyway, right?”

I stepped forward, hoping to intervene before Gretchen could get us shot, or worse. ”Listen,” I shouted to the gang, ”I know that everybody blames me for what's happened, but I'm innocent! Have you seen The Ox Bow Incident? Same deal!”

”p.i.s.s on that!” Gretchen yelled. ”Wimp!”

A ma.s.sive shadow detached itself from the Harley and strode toward us. ”Where'd you find her, Vale?”

a booming voice asked. ”She seems f.u.c.kin' dangerous.”

”Come a few steps closer, s.h.i.+theap, and find out how much,” Gretchen snarled. She raised the tire iron. Pete reached inside the Kamikaze and turned on its lights, and then I saw that the man who stood before us-his red hair wild, his crescent wrench gleaming in the bib pocket of his overalls-was Boog Burdon.

”Heard a rumor on the radio that you were heading this way again,” Boog said, ”so I thought I'd bring fourteen of my closest friends to give you an escort, if you want one.”

”Rave on!” a voice behind the cl.u.s.ter of headlights cried, and a dozen others answered, ”Rave on!”

”Throwback city,” Gretchen said, lowering her weapon. ”What have we got here? A bunch of middle-aged beer-guts who all think they're Fonzie?”

I moved between her and Boog. ”Boog Burdon, meet Gretchen Laird and Pete Holden.”

”f.u.c.kin' pleasure.” He squinted and looked from side to side. ”Hey, where's the Ariel?”

My chest twinged. ”The last time I saw her, the Bill w.i.l.l.yites had her.”

Boog scowled. ”Some of those snake-handling pud-knockers are having a prayer meeting at the drive-in a few miles north. That's why I wanted to find you. You either need to have some protection or avoid 'em altogether.”

I considered. I didn't want to deal with another mob of folks who thought I was the Antichrist, but whatever secret was hidden at the theater was tugging hard now, as if it were the magnetic heart of the planet and I were the needle of a compa.s.s. I had to go there.

”I'll take the protection,” I said. ”If I can get into SkyVue, I think I may be able to help Buddy.” Although I didn't know how.

Boog's eyebrows rose. ”b.i.t.c.hin'. Me and the boys ain't been in a good fight for three or four hours.”

I turned toward Pete, who was sitting on the Kamikaze's hood. ”I can ride with Boog from here. You've done too much already, and your kids are going to wonder what the h.e.l.l's happened to you. And, Gretchen, well, you've got to get on to Houston. I've messed up your life enough.”

”Big of you to admit it, roadapple,” she said.

Pete entered the Kamikaze through the winds.h.i.+eld gap. ”Oliver,” he said as he buckled himself in, ”I trust Laura and Mike to take care of themselves. I'm not turning back until I see you dead or in jail.”

Gretchen rolled her eyes. ”That could take hours. I'm not going to stand here and wait.”

”So let's rock 'n' roll!” Boog shouted.

”Rock 'n' roll!”his gang roared back.

”Bunch of microcephalic sixties goobers,” Gretchen muttered.

She and I joined Pete, and the Kamikaze followed Boog's Harley to the county road. The other vehicles fell in beside and behind us, and we accelerated toward El Dorado. If I survived SkyVue, I told myself, I wouldn't mind going to jail... because if I lived that long, I was sure to have found some answers.

If, on the other hand, Boog and his brigade couldn't keep the Bill w.i.l.l.yites from burning me at the stake- Then that would be the will of Fate, or of whoever was in charge. Maybe John. Maybe Elvis. Maybe Sam. Maybe Buddy. Maybe, baby. In that case, I was ready to go to the Spirit Land. Mother could fix a pot roast. I had my army and my G.o.ds around me, and despite the loss of Peggy Sue, I was no longer afraid. No more crying. No more waiting. No more hoping, I had indulged in enough of that for one life.

Now it was time todo something.

SHARON.

Notes, continued...

Bruce drove as if possessed, but so did the man on the motorcycle. The one time that we almost caught up, a Datsun cut across the median in front of us. If we had not been wearing our safety belts, both Bruce and I would have gone through the winds.h.i.+eld. A man leaned out of the offending car and shouted at us, but I could not hear what he said over the things that Bruce was shouting himself. I suspected that the people in the Datsun had recognized Oliver's motorcycle and had decided to pursue it, either for a reward or for the opportunity to do Oliver physical harm.

Soon thereafter, Bruce thought that he saw the motorcycle leave the interstate for a two-lane highway; in any case, the Datsun did so. Although I had not seen the Ariel, I decided not to protest Bruce's decision to take the exit. He had become a wild man. His face was peppered with black-and-blond stubble, his hair was tousled, and his eyes were wide. I hoped that I would not have to restrain him from killing Oliver when at last we encountered him.

We zigzagged up and down highways and back roads until well after dark. I could see the Datsun's taillights, but nothing from the motorcycle. Bruce insisted that it was just out of the range of my vision.

”I can count all seven Pleiades,” he told me in an excited rush when we stopped for gasoline. ”Trust me, baby, that bike's there. And we're gonnaget it.”

I wanted to ask whom he thought he was calling ”baby,” but I was busy running for the rest room. When I came out, Bruce stuffed a twenty-dollar bill into the nozzle of the gasoline hose, dropped the nozzle to the pavement, jumped back into the car, and was accelerating before I had both feet inside. The entire refueling stop, including my trip to the rest room, had taken perhaps forty-five seconds.

”Too long!” Bruce cried, pounding his fist on the steering wheel. ”We'll have to go ninety to catch up!”