IX. The Expedition to the Pharmacy.

I told Mrs. Turman, and I told Amanda, and then I told Billy. He seemed better this morning; he had eaten two donuts and a bowl of Special K for breakfast. Afterward I raced him up and down two of the aisles and even got him giggling a little. Kids are so adaptable that they can scare the living shit right out of you. He was too pale, the flesh under his eyes was still puffed from the tears he had cried in the night, and his face had a horribly used look. In a way it had become like an old man's face, as if too much emotional voltage had been running behind it for too long. But he was still alive and still able to laugh... at least until he remembered where he was and what was happening.

After the windsprints we sat down with Amanda and Hattie Turman and drank Gatorade from paper cups and I told him I was going over to the drugstore with a few other people. “I don't want you to,” he said immediately, his face clouding. “It'll be all right, Big Bill. I'll bring you a Spiderman comic book.” “I want you to stay here.” Now his face was not just. cloudy; it was thundery. I took his hand. He pulled it away. I took it again. “Billy, we have to get out of here sooner or later. You see that, don't you?” 'When the fog goes away...” But he spoke with no conviction at all. He drank his Gatorade slowly and without relish. “Billy, it's been almost one whole day now.” “I want Mommy.” “Well, maybe this is the first step on the way to getting back to her.” Mrs. Turman said, “Don't build the boy's hopes up, David.” “What the hell,” I snapped at her, “the kid's got to hope for something.” She dropped her eyes. “Yes. I suppose he does.” Billy took no notice of this. “Daddy... Daddy, there are things out there. Things.” “Yes, we know that. But a lot of them-not all, but a lot-don't seem to come out until it's nighttime.” “They'll wait,” he said. His eyes were huge, centered on mine. “They'll wait in the fog... and when you can't get back inside, they'll come to eat you up. Like in the fairy stories.” He hugged me with fierce, panicky tightness. “Daddy, please don't go.” I pried his arms loose as gently as I could and told him that I had to. “But I'll be back, Billy.”

“All right,” he said huskily, but he wouldn't look at me anymore. He didn't believe I would be back. It was on his face, which was no longer thundery but woeful and grieving. I wondered again if I could be doing the right thing, putting myself at risk. Then I happened to glance down the middle aisle and saw Mrs. Carmody there. She had gained a third listener, a man with a grizzled cheek and a mean and rolling bloodshot eye. His haggard brow and shaking hands almost screamed the word hangover. It was none other than your friend and his, Myron LaFleur, The fellow who had felt no compunction at all about sending a boy out to do a man's job.

That crazy cunt. That witch.

I kissed Billy and hugged him hard. Then I walked down to the front of the store-but not down the housewares aisle. I didn't want to fall under her eye. Three-quarters of the way down, Amanda caught up with me. “Do you really have to do this?” she asked. “Yes, I think so.” “Forgive me if I say it sounds like so much macho bullshit to me.” There were spots of color high on her cheeks and her eyes were greener than ever. She was highly-no, royally-pissed. I took her arm and recapped my discussion with Dan Miller. The riddle of the cars end the fact that no one from the pharmacy had joined us didn't move her much. The business about Mrs. Carmody did. “He could be right,” she said. “Do you really believe that?” “I don't know. There's a poisonous feel to that woman. And if people are frightened badly enough for long enough, they'll turn to anyone that promises a solution.” “But human sacrifice, Amanda? “The Aztecs were into it,” she said evenly. “Listen, David. You come back. If anything happens... anything... you come back. Cut and run if you have to. Not for me, what happened last night was nice, but that was last night. Come back for your boy.” “Yes. I will.” “I wonder,” she said, and now she looked like Billy, haggard and old. It occurred to me that most of us looked that way. But not Mrs. Carmody. Mrs. Carmody looked younger somehow, and more vital. As if she had come into her own. As if... as if she were thriving on it.

We didn't get going until 9:30 A. M. Seven of us went: Ollie, Dan Miller, Mike Hatlen, Myron LaFleur's erstwhile buddy Jim (also hungover, but seemingly determined to find some way to atone), Buddy Eagleton, myself. The seventh was Hilda Reppler. Miller and Hatlen tried halfheartedly to talk her out of coming. She would have none of it. I didn't even try. I suspected she might be more competent than any of us, except maybe for Ollie. She was carrying a small canvas shopping basket, and it was loaded with an arsenal of Raid and Black Flag spray cans, all of them uncapped and ready for action. In her free hand she held a Spaulding Jimmy Connors tennis racket from a display of sporting goods in Aisle 2. “What you gonna do with that, Mrs. Reppler?” Jim asked. “I don,t know,” she said. She had a low, raspy, competent voice. “But it feels right in my hand.” She looked him over closely, and her eye was cold. “Jim Grondin, isn't it? Didn't I have you in school?” Jim's lips stretched in an uneasy egg-suck grin. “Yes'm. Me and my sister Pauline.” “Too much to drink last night?” Jim, who towered over her and probably outweighed her by one hundred pounds, blushed to the roots of his American Legion crewcut. “Aw, no—” She turned away curtly, cutting him off. “I think we're ready,” she said. All of us had something, although you would have called it an odd assortment of weapons. Ollie had Amanda's gun, Buddy Eagleton had a steel pinchbar from out back somewhere. I had a broom handle. “Okay,” Dan Miller said, raising his voice a bit. “You folks want to listen up a minute?”

A dozen people had drifted down toward the OUT door to see what was going 'on. They were loosely knotted, and to their right stood Mrs. Carmody and her new friends. “We're going over to the drugstore to see what the situation is there. Hopefully, we'll be able to bring something back to aid Mrs. Clapham.” She was the lady who had been trampled yesterday, when the bugs came. One of her legs had been broken and she was in a great deal of pain. Miller looked us over. “We're not going to take any chances,” he said. “At the first sign of anything threatening, we're going to pop back into the market—” “And bring all the fiends of hell down on our heads!” Mrs. Carmody cried. “She's right!” one of the summer ladies seconded. “You'll make them notice us! You'll make them come! Why can't you just leave well enough alone?” There was a murmur of agreement from some of the people who had gathered to watch us go. I said, “Lady, is this what you call well enough?” She dropped her eyes, confused.

Mrs. Carmody marched a step forward. Her eyes were blazing. “You'll die out there, David Drayton! Do you want to make your son an orphan?” She raised her eyes and raked all of us with them. Buddy Eagleton dropped his eyes and simultaneously raised the pinchbar, as if to ward her off. “All of you will die out there! Haven't you realized that the end of the world has come? The Fiend has been let loose! Star Wormwood blazes and each one of you that steps out that door will be torn apart! And they'll come for those of us who are left, just as this good woman said! Are you people going to let that happen?” She was appealing to the onlookers now, and a little mutter ran through them. “After what happened to the unbelievers yesterday? It's death! It's death! It' s—”

A can of peas flew across two of the checkout lanes suddenly and struck Mrs. Carmody on the right breast. She staggered backward with a startled squawk. Amanda stood forward. “Shut up,” she said. “Shut up, you miserable buzzard.” “She serves the Foul Onel” Mrs. Carmody screamed. A jittery smile hung on her face. “Who did you sleep with last night, missus? Who did you lie down with last night? Mother Carmody sees, oh yes, Mother Carmody sees what others miss.” But the moment's spell she had created was broken, and Amanda's eyes never wavered. “Are we going or are we going to stand here all day?” Mrs. Reppler asked.