Part 18 (1/2)

'What's over there?' Clay asked, pointing toward the glow. It had already begun to wane again.

'It might be Glen's Falls,' the Headmaster said. 'Or it might be Littleton.'

'Wherever it is, there's shrimp on the barbie,' Tom said. 'They're burning. And our bunch knows. They heard.'

'Or felt,' felt,' Alice said. She shuddered, then straightened and bared her teeth. 'I hope they did!' Alice said. She shuddered, then straightened and bared her teeth. 'I hope they did!'

As if in answer, there was another groan from Tonney Field: many voices raised as one in a cry of sympathy and-perhaps-shared agony. The one boombox-it was the master, Clay a.s.sumed, the one with an actual compact disc in it-continued to play. Ten minutes later, the others joined in once more. The music-it now was 'Close to You,' by The Carpenters-swooped up, just as it had previously swooped down. By then Headmaster Ardai, limping noticeably on his cane, had led them back to Cheatham Lodge. Not long after that, the music stopped again* but this time it simply clicked off, as it had the previous morning. From far away, carried across G.o.d alone knew how many miles by the wind, came the faint pop of a gunshot. Then the world was eerily and completely silent, waiting for the dark to give place to the day.

19.

As the sun began to spoke its first red rays through the trees on the eastern horizon, they watched the phone-crazies once again begin leaving the soccer field in close-order patterns, headed for downtown Gaiten and the surrounding neighborhoods. They fanned out as they went, headed downhill toward Academy Avenue as if nothing untoward had happened near the end of the night. But Clay didn't trust that. He thought they had better do their business at the Citgo station quickly, today, if they intended to do it at all. Going out in the daylight might mean shooting some of them, them, but as long as they only moved en ma.s.se at the beginning and end of the day, he was willing to take that risk. but as long as they only moved en ma.s.se at the beginning and end of the day, he was willing to take that risk.

They watched what Alice called 'the dawn of the dead' from the dining room. Afterward, Tom and the Head went into the kitchen. Clay found them sitting at the table in a bar of suns.h.i.+ne and drinking tepid coffee. Before Clay could begin explaining what he wanted to do later in the day, Jordan touched his wrist.

'Some of the crazies are still there,' he said. And, in a lower voice: 'I went to school with some of them.'

Tom said, 'I thought they'd all be shopping Kmart by now, looking for Blue Light Specials.'

'You better check it out,' Alice said from the doorway. 'I'm not sure it's another-what-would-you-call-it, developmental step forward, but it might be. It probably is.'

'Sure it is,' Jordan said gloomily.

The phone-crazies who had stayed behind-Clay thought it was a squad of about a hundred-were removing the dead from beneath the bleachers. At first they simply carried them off into the parking lot south of the field and behind a long low brick building. They came back empty-handed.

'That building's the indoor track,' the Head told them. 'It's also where all the sports gear is stored. There's a steep drop-off on the far side. I imagine they're throwing the bodies over the edge.'

'You bet,' Jordan said. He sounded sick. 'It's all marshy down there. They'll rot.'

'They were rotting anyway, Jordan,' Tom said gently.

'I know,' he said, sounding sicker than ever, 'but they'll rot even faster in the sun.' A pause. 'Sir?'

'Yes, Jordan?'

'I saw Noah Chutsky. From your Drama Reading Club.'

The Head patted the boy's shoulder. He was very pale. 'Never mind.'

'It's hard not to,' Jordan whispered. 'He took my picture once. With his* with his you-know.'

Then, a new wrinkle. Two dozen of the worker-bees peeled off from the main group with no pause for discussion and headed for the shattered greenhouses, moving in a V-shape that reminded the watchers of migrating geese. The one Jordan had identified as Noah Chutsky was among these. The rest of the body-removal squad watched them go for a moment, then marched back down the ramps, three abreast, and resumed fis.h.i.+ng dead bodies out from under the bleachers.

Twenty minutes later the greenhouse party returned, now spread out in a single line. Some were still empty-handed, but most had acquired wheelbarrows or handcarts of the sort used to transport large bags of lime or fertilizer. Soon the phone-crazies were using the carts and barrows to dispose of the bodies, and their work went faster.

'It's a step forward, all right,' Tom said.

'More than one,' the Head added. 'Cleaning house; using tools to do it.'

Clay said, 'I don't like this.'

Jordan looked up at him, his face pale and tired and far older than its years. 'Join the club,' he said.

20.

They slept until one in the afternoon. Then, after confirming that the body detail had finished its work and gone to join the rest of the foragers, they went down to the fieldstone pillars marking the entrance to Gaiten Academy. Alice had scoffed at Clay's idea that he and Tom should do this on their own. 'Never mind that Batman and Robin c.r.a.p,' she said.

'Oh my, I always wanted to be the Boy Wonder,' Tom said with a trace of a lisp, but when she gave him a humorless look, her sneaker (now beginning to look a bit tattered) clasped in one hand, he wilted. 'Sorry.'

'You can go across to the gas station on your own,' she said. 'That much makes sense. But the rest of us will stand lookout on the other side.'

The Head had suggested that Jordan should stay behind at the Lodge. Before the boy could respond-and he looked ready to do so hotly-Alice asked, 'How are your eyes, Jordan?'

He had given her a smile, once more accompanied by the slightly starry look. 'Good. Fine.'

'And you've played video games? The ones where you shoot?'

'Sure, a ton.'

She handed him her pistol. Clay could see him quiver slightly, like a tapped tuning fork, when their fingers touched. 'If I tell you to point and shoot-or if Headmaster Ardai tells you-will you do it?'

'Sure.'

Alice had looked at Ardai with a mixture of defiance and apology. 'We need every hand.'

The Head had given in, and now here they were and there was the Academy Grove Citgo, on the other side of the street and just a little way back toward town. From here the other, slightly smaller, sign was easy to read: academy lp gas. The single car standing at the pumps with its driver's door open already had a dusty, long-deserted look. The gas station's big plate-gla.s.s window was broken. Off to the right, parked in the shade of what had to be one of northern New England's few surviving elm trees, were two trucks shaped like giant propane bottles. Written on the side of each were the words Academy LP Gas Academy LP Gas and and Serving Southern Serving Southern New Hamps.h.i.+re Since 1982. New Hamps.h.i.+re Since 1982.

There was no sign of foraging phone-crazies on this part of Academy Avenue, and although most of the houses Clay could see had shoes on their front stoops, several did not. The rush of refugees seemed to be drying up. Too early to tell, Too early to tell, he cautioned himself. he cautioned himself.

'Sir? Clay? What's that?' Jordan asked. He was pointing to the middle of the Avenue-which of course was still Route 102, although that was easy to forget on this sunny, quiet afternoon where the closest sounds were birds and the rustle of the wind in the leaves. There was something written in bright pink chalk on the asphalt, but from where they were, Clay couldn't make it out. He shook his head.

'Are you ready?' he asked Tom.

'Sure,' Tom said. He was trying to sound casual, but a pulse beat rapidly on the side of his unshaven throat. 'You Batman, me Boy Wonder.'

They trotted across the street, pistols in hand. Clay had left the Russian automatic weapon with Alice, more or less convinced it would spin her around like a top if she actually had to use it.

The message scrawled in pink chalk on the macadam was KASHWAK=NO-FO.