“it’s all right!” he cried, almost laughing and putting an arm around her as he echoed her thought. “It’s okay, they can ‘t get in!”

“Yes, they can!” she shouted back. “The birds can, if we stay here! If we give them time!

And the snakes the scorpions.

“What. What are you saying.”

“Could they make holes in the tires.” It was the RV she was seeing in her mind’s eye, all its tires flat… the RV, and the purplefaced man back there in the ranch—house, his face tattooed with holes in pairs, holes so small they looked almost like flecks of red pepper.

“They could, couldn’t they. Enough of them, all stinging and biting at once, they could.”

“No,” he said, and gave a strange little yawp of laughter. “Little bitty desert scorpions, four inches long, stingers no bigger than thorns, are you kidding.” But then the wind dropped momentarily, and from beneath them—already from beneath them-they heard scurrying, jos-tling sounds, and she saw something she could have skipped: he didn’t believe what he was saying. He wanted to,but he didn’t.

The cellular phone was lying all the way across the holding area, at the foot of a file—cabinet with a PAT BUCHANAN FOR PRESIDENT sticker on it. The gadget didn’t look broken, but—Johnny pulled up the antenna and flipped it open. The phone beeped and the S appeared, good, but there were no transmission-bars, bad. Very bad. Still, he had to try. He pushed the NAME/MENU button until STEVE appeared, then squeezed the SEND button.

“Mr. Marinville.” It was Mary, standing in the door-way. “We have to go. The cop-”

“I know, I know, just a second.”

Nothing. No ring, no robot, no reception. Just a very faint hollow roaring sound, the sort of thing you heard in a conch shell.

“Fucked,” he said, and closed the phone’s speaker-pad. “But that was Steve, I know it was. If we’d only gotten outside thirty seconds sooner… thirty cocksucking little seconds…

“Johnny, please.”

“Coming.” He followed her back downstairs.

Mary had the Rossi shotgun in her hand, and when they were back outside, Johnny saw that David Carver had taken back the pistol and was holding it beside his leg. Ralph now held one of the rifles. He had it in the crook of his arm, like he thought he was Dan’l Boone. Oh, Johnny, a mocking voice spoke up from inside his head-it was Terry, the never-say-die bitch who had gotten him into this fuckarow in the first place. Don’t tell me you’re jealous of Mr. Suburban Ohio-you.

Well, maybe. Just a little. Mostly because Mr. Sub-urban Ohio’s rifle was loaded, unlike the Mossberg shot-gun which Johnny now picked up.

“That’s a Ruger.44,” the old man was telling Ralph. “Four rounds. I left the chamber empty. If you have to shoot, remember that.”

“I will,” Ralph said.

“She’ll kick you hard. Remember that, too.”

Billingsley lifted the last gun, the.30.-.06. For a moment Johnny thought the old fart was going to offer to trade him, but he didn’t. “All right,” he said, “I guess we’re ready. Don’t shoot at any varmints unless they come at us. You’d just miss, use up ammunition, and probably draw more. Do you understand that, Carver.”

“Yes,” Ralph said.

“Son.”

“Yes.”

“Ma’ am.”

“Yes,” Mary said. She sounded resigned to being a ma’am, at least until she got back to civilization.

“And I won’t swing unless they get close, I promise,” Johnny said. It was supposed to be a joke, a little mood—brightener, but all it earned him from Billingsley was a look of cool contempt. It wasn’t a look Johnny thought he deserved.

“Do you have a problem with me, Mr. Billingsley.” he asked.

“I don’t care for your looks much,” Billingsley shot back. “We don’t have much respect out in these parts for older folks who wear their hair long. As to whether or not I have a problem with you, that I couldn’t say just yet.”

“So far as I can see, what you do to folks out in these parts is gutshoot them and then hang them on hooks like deer, so maybe you’ll pardon me if I don’t take your opin-ions too deeply to heart.”

“Now listen here-”

“And if that hair’s laying across your ass because you missed your daily quart of sour mash, don’t take it out on me.” He was ashamed at the way the old man’s eyes flick-ered when he said that, and at the same time he was bit-terly gratified. You knew your own, by God. There were a lot of know-it-all buttheads in Alcoholics Anonymous, but they were right about that. You knew your own even when you couldn’t smell the booze on their breath or wafting out of their pores. You could almost hear them pinging in your head like sonar.

“Stop it!” Mary snapped at him. “If you want to be an asshole, do it on your own time!”

Johnny looked at her, wounded by her tone of voice, wanting to say something childish like Hey, he started itf “Where should we go.” David asked. He shone his light across the street, at the Desperation Coffee Shop and Video Stop. “Over there. The coyotes and the buzzard I saw are gone.

“Too close, I think,” Ralph said. “What about we get out of here completely. Did you find any car-keys.”

Johnny rummaged and came up with the keyring David had taken from the dead cop.

“Only one set on here. I imagine they go to the cruiser Entragian was driving.”

—‘Is driving,” David said. “It’s gone. It’s what he took my mom away in.” His face as he said this was unread able. His father put a hand on the back of the boy’s neck “It might be safer not to be driving just now, anyway, Ralph said. “A car’s pretty conspicuous when it’s the only one on the road.”

“Anyplace will do, at least to start with,” Mary said.

“Anyplace, yeah, but the farther from the cop’s home base, the better,” Johnny said.

“That’s the asshole’s opin-ion, anyhow.”

Mary gave him an angry look. Johnny bore it, not looking away. After a moment she did, flustered.

Ralph said, “We might do well to hide up, at least for a little while.”

“Where.” Mary asked.

“Where do you think, Mr. Billingsley.” David asked.

“The American West,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Reckon that’d do to start with.”

“What is it.” Johnny asked. “A bar.”

“Movie theater,” Mary said. “I saw it when he drove us into town. It looked closed up.”

Billingsley nodded. Is. Would have been torn down ten year ago, if there was anything to put up in its place. It’s locked, but I know a way in. Come on. And remember what I said about the varmints. Don’t shoot unless you have to.”

“And stay close together,” Ralph added. “Lead the way, Mr. Billingsley.”

Once again Johnny brought up the rear as they set off north along Main Street, their shoulders hunched against the scouring drive of the west wind. Johnny looked ahead at Billingsley, who just happened to know a way into the town’s old deserted movie theater.

Billingsley, who turned out to have all sorts of opinions on all sorts of issues, once you got him wound up a little. You’re a late—stage alcoholic, aren’t you, my friend. Johnny thought. You’ve got all the bells and whistles.

If so, the man was operating well for one who hadn’t had a shot in awhile. Johnny wanted something to reduce the throb in his nose, and he suspected that getting a drink into old Tommy at the same time might be an investment in their future.

They were passing beneath the battered awning of Des-peration’s Owl’s Club. “Hold it,”

Johnny said. “Going in here for a minute.”

“Are you nuts.” Mary asked. “We have to get off the street!”

“There’s nobody on the street but us,” Johnny said, “didn’t you notice.” He moderated his voice, tried to sound reasonable. “Look, I just want to get some aspirin. My nose is killing me. Thirty seconds-a minute, max.”

He tried the door before she could answer. It was locked. He hit the glass with the rifle butt, actually looking forward to the bray of the burglar alarm, but the only sound was the tinkle of glass falling onto the floor inside and the relentless howl of the wind. Johnny knocked out the few jagged bits of glass sticking up from the side of the doorframe, then reached through and felt for the lock.