Doctor Sleep (21 page)

Rose was sitting on the sofa in capri pants and a plain white bra, smoking a cigarette and watching the third hour of
Today
on her big wall-mounted TV. That was the “soft” hour, when they featured celebrity chefs and actors doing PR for their new movies. Her tophat was cocked back on her head. Crow Daddy had known her for more years than the rubes lived, and he still didn't know what magic held it at that gravity-defying angle.

She picked up the remote and muted the sound. “Why, it's Henry Rothman, as I live and breathe. Looking remarkably tasty, too, although I doubt you came to be tasted. Not at quarter of ten in the morning, and not with that look on your face. Who died?”

She meant it as a joke, but the wincing frown that tightened his forehead told her it wasn't one. She turned the TV off and made a business of butting her cigarette, not wanting him to see the dismay she felt. Once the True had been over two hundred strong. As of yesterday, they numbered forty-one. If she was right about the meaning of that wince, they were one less today.

“Tommy the Truck,” he said. “Went in his sleep. Cycled once, and then boom. Didn't suffer at all. Which is fucking rare, as you know.”

“Did Nut see him?”
While he was still there to be seen,
she thought but did not add. Walnut, whose rube driver's license and various rube credit cards identified him as Peter Wallis of Little Rock, Arkansas, was the True's sawbones.

“No, it was too quick. Heavy Mary was with him. Tommy woke her up, thrashing. She thought it was a bad dream and gave him an elbow . . . only by then there was nothing left to poke but his pajamas. It was probably a heart attack. Tommy had a bad cold. Nut thinks that might have been a contributing factor. And you know the sonofabitch always smoked like a chimney.”

“We don't
get
heart attacks.” Then, reluctantly: “Of course, we usually don't get colds, either. He was really wheezing the last few days, wasn't he? Poor old TT.”

“Yeah, poor old TT. Nut says it'd be impossible to tell anything for sure without an autopsy.”

Which couldn't happen. By now there would be no body left to cut up.

“How's Mary taking it?”

“How do you think? She's broken-fucking-hearted. They go back to when Tommy the Truck was Tommy the Wagon. Almost ninety years. She was the one who took care of him after he Turned. Gave him his first steam when he woke up the next day. Now she says she wants to kill herself.”

Rose was rarely shocked, but this did the job. No one in the True had ever killed themselves. Life was—to coin a phrase—their only reason for living.

“Probably just talk,” Crow Daddy said. “Only . . .”

“Only what?”

“You're right about us not usually getting colds, but there have been quite a few just lately. Mostly just sniffles that come and go. Nut says it may be malnutrition. Of course he's just guessing.”

Rose sat in thought, tapping her fingers against her bare midriff and staring at the blank rectangle of the TV. At last she said, “Okay, I agree that nourishment's been a bit thin lately, but we took steam in Delaware just a month ago, and Tommy was fine then. Plumped right up.”

“Yeah, but Rosie—the kid from Delaware wasn't much. More hunchhead than steamhead.”

She'd never thought of it just that way, but it was true. Also, he'd been nineteen, according to his driver's license. Well past whatever stunted prime he might have had around puberty. In another ten years he'd have been just another rube. Maybe even five. He hadn't been much of a meal, point taken. But you couldn't always have steak. Sometimes you had to settle for bean sprouts and tofu. At least they kept body and soul together until you could butcher the next cow.

Except psychic tofu and bean sprouts hadn't kept Tommy the Truck's body and soul together, had they?

“There used to be more steam,” Crow said.

“Don't be daft. That's like the rubes saying that fifty years ago people were more neighborly. It's a myth, and I don't want you spreading it around. People are nervous enough already.”

“You know me better than that. And I don't think it
is
a myth, darlin. If you think about it, it stands to reason. Fifty years ago there was more of
everything
—oil, wildlife, arable land, clean air. There were even a few honest politicians.”

“Yes!” Rose cried. “Richard Nixon, remember him? Prince of the Rubes?”

But he wouldn't go chasing up this false trail. Crow might be a bit lacking in the vision department, but he was rarely distracted. That was why he was her second. He might even have a point. Who was to say that humans capable of providing the nourishment the True needed weren't dwindling, just like schools of tuna in the Pacific?

“You better bust open one of the canisters, Rosie.” He saw her eyes widen and raised a hand to stop her from speaking. “Nobody's saying that out loud, but the whole family's thinking about it.”

Rose had no doubt they were, and the idea that Tommy had died of complications resulting from malnutrition had a certain horrid plausibility. When steam was in short supply, life grew hard and lost its savor. They weren't vampires from one of those old Hammer horror pictures, but they still needed to eat.

“And how long since we've had a seventh wave?” Crow asked.

He knew the answer to that, and so did she. The True Knot had limited precognitive skills, but when a truly big rube disaster was approaching—a seventh wave—they all felt it. Although the details of the attack on the World Trade Center had only begun to clarify for them in the late summer of 2001, they had known
something
was going to happen in New York City for months in advance. She could still remember the joy and anticipation. She supposed hungry rubes felt the same way when they smelled a particularly savory meal cooking in the kitchen.

There had been plenty for everybody that day, and in the days following. There might only have been a couple of true steamheads among those who died when the Towers fell, but when the disaster was big enough, agony and violent death had an enriching quality. Which was why the True was drawn to such sites, like insects to a bright light. Locating single rube steamheads was far more difficult, and there were only three of them now with that specialized sonar in their heads: Grampa Flick, Barry the Chink, and Rose herself.

She got up, grabbed a neatly folded boatneck top from the counter, and pulled it over her head. As always, she looked gorgeous in a way that was a bit unearthly (those high cheekbones and slightly
tipped eyes) but extremely sexy. She put her hat back on and gave it a tap for good luck. “How many full canisters do you think are left, Crow?”

He shrugged. “A dozen? Fifteen?”

“In that neighborhood,” she agreed. Better that none of them knew the truth, not even her second. The last thing she needed was for the current unease to become outright panic. When people panicked, they ran in all directions. If that happened, the True might disintegrate.

Meanwhile, Crow was looking at her, and closely. Before he could see too much, she said, “Can you four-wall this place tonight?”

“You kidding? With the price of gas and diesel what it is, the guy who owns it can't fill half his spots, even on weekends. He'll jump at the chance.”

“Then do it. We're going to take canister steam. Spread the word.”

“You've got it.” He kissed her, caressing one of her breasts as he did so. “This is my favorite top.”

She laughed and pushed him away. “Any top with tits in it is your favorite top. Go on.”

But he lingered, a grin tipping one corner of his mouth. “Is Rattlesnake Girl still sniffin around your door, beautiful?”

She reached down and briefly squeezed him below the belt. “Oh my gosh. Is that your jealous bone I'm feeling?”

“Say it is.”

She doubted it, but was flattered, anyway. “She's with Sarey now, and the two of them are perfectly happy. But since we're on the subject of Andi, she can help us. You know how. Spread the word but speak to her first.”

After he left, she locked the EarthCruiser, went to the cockpit, and dropped to her knees. She worked her fingers into the carpet between the driver's seat and the control pedals. A strip of it came up. Beneath was a square of metal with an embedded keypad. Rose ran the numbers, and the safe popped open an inch or two. She lifted the door the rest of the way and looked inside.

Fifteen or a dozen full canisters left. That had been Crow's guess, and although she couldn't read members of the True the way she could read the rubes, Rose was sure he had been purposely lowballing to cheer her up.

If he only knew,
she thought.

The safe was lined with Styrofoam to protect the canisters in case of a road accident, and there were forty built-in cradles. On this fine May morning in Kentucky, thirty-seven of the canisters in those cradles were empty.

Rose took one of the remaining full ones and held it up. It was light; if you hefted it, you would have guessed it too was empty. She took the cap off, inspected the valve beneath to make sure the seal was still intact, then reclosed the safe and put the canister carefully—almost reverently—on the counter where her top had been folded.

After tonight there would only be two.

They had to find some big steam and refill at least a few of those empty canisters, and they had to do it soon. The True's back wasn't to the wall, not quite yet, but it was only inches away.

The Kozy Kampground owner and his wife had their own trailer, a permanent job set up on painted concrete blocks. April showers had brought lots of May flowers, and Mr. and Mrs. Kozy's front yard was full of them. Andrea Steiner paused a moment to admire the tulips and pansies before mounting the three steps to the door of the big Redman trailer, where she knocked.

Mr. Kozy opened up eventually. He was a small man with a big belly currently encased in a bright red strappy undershirt. In one hand he held a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. In the other was a mustard-smeared brat wrapped in a slice of spongy white bread. Because his wife was currently in the other room, he paused for a
moment to do a visual inventory of the young woman before him, ponytail to sneakers. “Yeah?”

Several in the True had a bit of sleeper talent, but Andi was by far the best, and her Turning had proved of enormous benefit to the True. She still used the ability on occasion to lift cash from the wallets of certain older rube gentlemen who were attracted to her. Rose found this risky and childish, but knew from experience that in time, what Andi called her
issues
would fade away. For the True Knot, the only issue was survival.

“I just had a quick question,” Andi said.

“If it's about the toilets, darlin, the caca sucker don't come until Thursday.”

“It's not about that.”

“What, then?”

“Aren't you tired? Don't you want to go to sleep?”

Mr. Kozy immediately closed his eyes. The beer and the brat tumbled out of his hands, leaving a mess on the rug.
Oh well,
Andi thought,
Crow fronted the guy twelve hundred. Mr. Kozy can afford a bottle of carpet cleaner. Maybe even two
.

Andi took him by the arm and led him into the living room. Here was a pair of chintz-covered Kozy armchairs with TV trays set up in front of them.

“Sit,” she said.

Mr. Kozy sat, eyes shut.

“You like to mess with young girls?” Andi asked him. “You would if you could, wouldn't you? If you could run fast enough to catch them, anyway.” She surveyed him, hands on hips. “You're disgusting. Can you say that?”

“I'm disgusting,” Mr. Kozy agreed. Then he began to snore.

Mrs. Kozy came in from the kitchen. She was gnawing on an ice cream sandwich. “Here, now, who are you? What are you telling him? What do you want?”

“For you to sleep,” Andi told her.

Mrs. Kozy dropped her ice cream. Then her knees unhinged and she sat on it.

“Ah, fuck,” Andi said. “I didn't mean there. Get up.”

Mrs. Kozy got up with the squashed ice cream sandwich sticking to the back of her dress. Snakebite Andi put her arm around the woman's mostly nonexistent waist and led her to the other Kozy chair, pausing long enough to pull the melting ice cream sandwich off her butt. Soon the two of them sat side by side, eyes shut.

“You'll sleep all night,” Andi instructed them. “Mister can dream about chasing young girls. Missus, you can dream he died of a heart attack and left you a million-dollar insurance policy. How's that sound? Sound good?”

She snapped on the TV and turned it up loud. Pat Sajak was being embraced by a woman with enormous jahoobies who had just finished solving the puzzle, which was NEVER REST ON YOUR LAURELS. Andi took a moment to admire the mammoth mammaries, then turned back to the Kozys.

“When the eleven o'clock news is over, you can turn off the TV and go to bed. When you wake up tomorrow, you won't remember I was here. Any questions?”

They had none. Andi left them and hurried back to the cluster of RVs. She was hungry, had been for weeks, and tonight there would be plenty for everybody. As for tomorrow . . . it was Rose's job to worry about that, and as far as Snakebite Andi was concerned, she was welcome to it.

It was full dark by eight o'clock. At nine, the True gathered in the Kozy Kampground's picnic area. Rose the Hat came last, carrying the canister. A small, greedy murmur went up at the sight of it. Rose knew how they felt. She was plenty hungry herself.

She mounted one of the initial-scarred picnic tables and looked at them one by one. “We are the True Knot.”

“We are the True Knot,”
they responded. Their faces were solemn, their eyes avid and hungry.
“What is tied may never be untied.”