The House of Thunder (37 page)
But what in God’s name was it?
And wasn’t the Milestone Corporation supposed to be located in Newport Beach, California? That was where she lived. That was where she was supposed to work.
Get the hell out of here, she told herself urgently.
She turned left and drove downhill, away from the Milestone Corporation.
Through the rain and through the thin fog that blanketed the lowlands, Willawauk was visible as a collection of soft, fuzzy lights, none of which had clear points of origin, many of which bled together into yellow and white and pale pink blobs.
Susan remembered that Dr. Viteski had said the town boasted a population of eight thousand. It had to be exactly that: a boast. It just didn’t look that big. At best, it appeared to be half that size.
Past the midpoint of the long hill, leaning over the steering wheel while she drove, squinting between the thumping windshield wipers, Susan watched a change come over the lights of Willawauk. Now they seemed to shimmer and wink and ripple and blink as if the entire town was an enormous, intricate neon sign. Of course that was only an effect of the weather.
One thing that did not change was the impression of size that the lights imparted. The town still appeared to be considerably smaller than eight thousand souls. Maybe even smaller than four thousand.
The county road took a hard turn to the right and descended a last slope, past the first houses in town. In some of them, lights shone at the windows; others were dark; all were obscured by the rain and by the eddying fog.
The county road became Main Street. They couldn’t have picked a more bland or more apt name for their primary avenue. The heart of Willawauk was like ten thousand other towns scattered across the country. There was a pocket-size park with a war memorial statue at the entrance of it. There was a bar and grill named the Dew Drop Inn; its sign was fashioned out of orange neon, and the D in Drop was flickering on the edge of burnout; the windows were decorated with other neon advertisements, all for various brands of beer. The town supported a lot of small businesses, some local enterprises, some minor outlets of major national chains: Jenkin’s Hardware; Laura Lee’s Flowers; a Sears storefront that dealt solely in catalogue orders; the Plenty Good Coffee Shop, where Susan could see about a dozen customers seated in booths beyond the huge plate-glass windows; two dress shops; a men’s store; the First National Bank of Willawauk; the Main Street Cinema, which was currently playing a double feature comprised of two of last summer’s comedies,
Arthur
and
Continental Divide;
Thrift Savings and Loan, with its big electronic time-and-temperature sign; an intersection with three service stations—Arco, Union 76, and Mobii—and with a computer games arcade, Rocketblast, on the fourth corner; Giullini Brothers, TV and Appliances; a small bookstore and another bar and grill on the left; a drugstore and a G. C. Murphy’s five-and-dime on the right; a funeral home, Hathaway and Sons, set back from the street on a big chunk of property; an empty storefront, a hamburger joint, a furniture store...
Arthur
and
Continental Divide;
Thrift Savings and Loan, with its big electronic time-and-temperature sign; an intersection with three service stations—Arco, Union 76, and Mobii—and with a computer games arcade, Rocketblast, on the fourth corner; Giullini Brothers, TV and Appliances; a small bookstore and another bar and grill on the left; a drugstore and a G. C. Murphy’s five-and-dime on the right; a funeral home, Hathaway and Sons, set back from the street on a big chunk of property; an empty storefront, a hamburger joint, a furniture store...
Although Willawauk was like ten thousand other towns in so many details, a couple of things seemed...
wrong.
It seemed to Susan that everything in town was too neat. Every one of the stores looked as if it had been painted within the last month. Even the Arco, Union 76, and Mobil stations sparkled pristinely in the rain, gasoline pumps gleaming, service bay doors raised to proudly reveal brightly lighted, neatly ordered garages. There was not a single piece of litter in the gutters. Trees were planted in regularly spaced cutouts in the sidewalks on both sides of the street, and these were not merely well pruned, but meticulously shaped into two long lines of perfect clones. In all of the many street lamps, not one bulb was burned out. Not one. The only advertising sign with a fluttering neon letter was the one at the Dew Drop Inn, and that seemed to be the town’s worst example of blight.
wrong.
It seemed to Susan that everything in town was too neat. Every one of the stores looked as if it had been painted within the last month. Even the Arco, Union 76, and Mobil stations sparkled pristinely in the rain, gasoline pumps gleaming, service bay doors raised to proudly reveal brightly lighted, neatly ordered garages. There was not a single piece of litter in the gutters. Trees were planted in regularly spaced cutouts in the sidewalks on both sides of the street, and these were not merely well pruned, but meticulously shaped into two long lines of perfect clones. In all of the many street lamps, not one bulb was burned out. Not one. The only advertising sign with a fluttering neon letter was the one at the Dew Drop Inn, and that seemed to be the town’s worst example of blight.
Perhaps Willawauk had an exceptionally strong and widely shared civic pride and an especially energetic citizenry. Or perhaps the rain and the thin veil of fog were softening the scene, concealing the frayed and tattered edges of everything. Except that rain usually made a town look drearier and shabbier than it actually was, not better. And could civic pride really explain a town that looked almost as if robots inhabited it?
Another strange thing was the small number of cars in view. In three blocks, she had passed only three cars and a camper van parked at the curb. In the lot beside the Main Street Cinema, there had been only two cars, and at the Dew Drop Inn, there had been only one other and one pickup truck. So far, she hadn’t passed another car in motion; she was the only one driving tonight.
Well, the weather
was
wretched. People were wise to stay home on a night like this.
was
wretched. People were wise to stay home on a night like this.
On the other hand, how many people did she know who usually did the wise thing?
Not very damned many.
Not
this
many.
this
many.
The Dew Drop Inn was the kind of place that did good business in the middle of a blizzard. A simple rain wouldn’t stop the serious drinkers from making their way to their favorite hangout, and most of them would come in cars, the better to kill each other as they weaved blearily home at two o’clock in the morning.
Keep driving, Susan told herself. Drive all the way through this burg and keep on going. Don’t stop here. Something is wrong with this place.
But she didn’t have a map, and she wasn’t familiar with the countryside around these parts, and she didn’t know how far it was to the nearest town, and she was also afraid that what had happened to her in the hospital—in
Milestone—
was turning her into a paranoid after all. Then, at the beginning of the fourth block, she saw a place where she was sure to find help, and she pulled her car into the parking lot.
Milestone—
was turning her into a paranoid after all. Then, at the beginning of the fourth block, she saw a place where she was sure to find help, and she pulled her car into the parking lot.
WILLAWAUK COUNTY SHERIFF
HEADQUARTERS
WILLAWAUK, OREGON
It was a squat, stone building with a slate roof and all-glass front doors, just south of the considerably more stately county courthouse.
Susan parked the stolen Pontiac near the entrance. She was glad to be getting out of the car; already, the odor of stale tobacco smoke had ceased to be the least bit appealing, even if it didn’t remind her of the hospital.
She ran through the hammering rain. She ducked under a mammoth spruce tree, through which the cold wind soughed in an enormous chorus of whispers. From there she dashed to the shelter of a white aluminum awning, and thus to the glass doors, through which she pushed.
She found herself in a typically drab, institutional room with gray walls, fluorescent lights and a speckled, multicolored Armstrong tile floor designed to conceal wear. A U-shaped counter separated the largest part of the main room from a waiting area just inside the doors. Susan walked past several uncomfortable-looking metal chairs, past two small tables on which were stacked a variety of public service pamphlets, and went straight to the counter.
On the other side, there were several desks, file cabinets, a large work table, a bottled-water dispenser, a photocopier, a giant wall map of the county, and a huge bulletin board that was covered with tacked-on bulletins and photographs and wanted notices and odd scraps of paper.
In an adjacent alcove, out of sight, a woman dispatcher was talking to a patrol officer on a shortwave radio. The storm was throwing in bursts of static.
In the main room, there was only one man. He was sitting at a desk, typing on an IBM Selectric, his back turned to the counter and to Susan.
“Excuse me,” Susan said, brushing at her rain-beaded eyelashes with the back of one hand. “Can you help me?”
He swung around on his swivel chair, smiled, and said, “I’m Officer Whitlock. What can I do for you?”
He was young, perhaps twenty or twenty-one.
He was a bit on the pudgy side.
He had dirty blond hair, a round face, a dimpled chin, a pug nose, and the small quick eyes of a pig.
He had a twisted, nasty smile.
He was Carl Jellicoe.
Susan sucked in a breath that seemed to pierce her lungs as if it were a nail, and she wasn’t able to expel it.
When he had been wearing a hospital orderly’s uniform, he had called himself Dennis Bradley. Now he was wearing a brown uniform with the County Sheriff’s Department seal stitched to his left sleeve and to the breast pocket of his shirt, and he carried a .45-caliber revolver in a black leather holster on his hip, and he called himself Officer Whitlock.
Susan couldn’t speak. Shock had seared her vocal cords as thoroughly as a gas flame could have; her throat was parched, cracking; her mouth was suddenly hot, dry, and filled with a burnt-out taste.
She couldn’t move.
She finally let out her breath with a sob, and she gasped for more air, but she still couldn’t move.
“Surprise, surprise,” Jellicoe said, giggling, getting up from his swivel chair.
Susan shook her head, slowly at first, then vehemently, trying to deny his existence.
“Did you really think you could get away from us that easily? Did you really?” he asked, standing with his legs spread, hitching up his holster.
Susan stared at him, transfixed, her feet fused to the floor. Her hands were clenched tightly around the edge of the wooden counter, as if that were her only grip on reality.
Not taking his piggish little eyes off Susan, Jellicoe called out to someone in an adjoining room. “Hey, come look at what we’ve got here!”
Another deputy appeared. He was twenty or twenty-one, tall, with red hair and hazel eyes and a fair complexion that was spattered with freckles. In his hospital orderly’s uniform, he had called himself Patrick O’Hara. Susan didn’t know what he called himself now, but she knew what he had called himself thirteen years ago, when he had been a student at Briarstead College, when he had helped kill Jerry Stein in the House of Thunder: Herbert Parker.
“My, my,” Parker said. “The lady looks distressed.”
“Well, you see, the poor thing thought she’d gotten away from us,” Jellicoe said.
“Did she really?” Parker said.
“Really.”
“Doesn’t she know she can never get away from us? Doesn’t she know we’re dead?”
Jellicoe grinned at her. “Don’t you know we’re dead, you silly little bitch?”
“You read about it in the newspapers,” Parker reminded her. “Don’t you recall?”
“The car accident?” Jellicoe prodded.
“About eleven years ago, it was.”
In the communications alcove, the unseen dispatcher continued to talk with cruising patrol officers over the shortwave radio, as if nothing unusual were happening out here in the main room. But the woman
must
know.
must
know.
“We rolled that damned car over like it was just a little toy,” Jellicoe said.
“Rolled it twice,” Parker said.
“What a mess it was.”
“What a mess
we
were.”
we
were.”
“All because of this slut.”
They both started toward the counter, neither of them in a hurry, ambling between the desks, smiling.
“And now she thinks it’ll be easy to run away from us,” Carl Jellicoe said.
Parker said, “We’re dead, you stupid bitch. Don’t you understand what that means? You can’t
hide
from dead men.”
hide
from dead men.”
“Because we can be anywhere—”
“—everywhere—”
“—all at the same time.”
“That’s one of the advantages of being dead.”
“Which doesn’t
have
many advantages.”
have
many advantages.”
Jellicoe giggled again.
They were almost to the counter.
Susan was gasping now, breathing as frantically as a pumping bellows in a blazing forge.
“You aren’t dead, damn you,” she said, abruptly finding her voice.
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