Dreamcatcher

still heavy, too many were hitting. Other men, some only partially dressed (one bruiser came sprinting through the snow displaying a bare chest that would have looked at home
on a comic-book superhero) were Joining the group. At its center stood a tall man with gray hair. Beside him was a stockier guy. As Henry watched, the skinny man raised his rifle and fired, seemingly without bothering to aim. There was a s
panng

sound and Henry sensed something pass right in front of his nose, a small wicked droning thing.
Owen actually laughed. “The skinny one with the gray hair is Kurtz. He’s in charge,
and can that fucker shoot.”
More bullets spanged off the “Cat’s treads, its body. Henry sensed another of those buzzing, hustling presences in the cab, and suddenly the radio was silent. The distance

between them and the shooters clustered around the Winnebago was getting longer, but it didn’t seem to matter. As far as Henry was concerned, all those fuckers could shoot. It was
only a matter of time before one of them took a hit… and yet Owen looked
happy.
It occurred to Henry that he had hooked up with someone even more suicidal than himself.
“The guy beside Kurtz is Freddy Johnson. Those Mouseketeers are all Kurtz’s boys,
the ones who were supposed to-whoops, look out!”

Another spang, another whining steel bee-between them, this time-and suddenly the
knob on the transmission stick was gone. Owen burst out laughing. “Kurtz!” he shouted.
“Bet you a nickel! Two years from mandatory retirement age and he still shoots like Annie
Oakley!” He hammered a fist on the steering yoke. “But that’s enough. Fun is fun and done is done. Turn out their lights, beautiful.”
“Huh?”

Still grinning, Owen jerked a thumb at the box with the blinking amber bulbs. The curved streaks of byrus under his eyes now looked like warpaint to Henry. “Push the buttons, bub. Push the buttons and yank down the shades.”
12
Suddenly-it was always sudden, always magical-the world fell away and Kurtz was
in the zone. The scream of the blizzard wind, the pelt of the snow, the howl of the siren,

the beat of the buzzer-all gone. Kurtz lost his awareness of Freddy Johnson next to him and the other Imperial Valleys gathering around. He fixed on the departing Sno-Cat and nothing else. He could see Owen Underhill in the left seat, right through the steel shell of
the cab he could see him, as if he, Abe Kurtz, were all at once equipped with Superman’s

X-ray vision. The distance was incredibly long, but it didn’t matter. The next round he fired was going right into the back of Owen Underhill’s treacherous, line-crossing head.
He raised the rifle, sighted down-
Two explosions ripped the night, one of them close enough to hammer Kurtz and his
men with the shockwave. A trailer-box with the words INTEL INSIDE printed on it rose
into the air, turned over, and came down on Spago’s, the cook-tent. “Holy Christ!” one of

the men shouted.
Not all of the lights went out-a half hour wasn’t long and Owen had had time to equip
only two of the gennies with thermite charges (all the time muttering “Banbury Cross, Banbury Cross, ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross” under his breath), but suddenly the
fleeing Sno-Cat was swallowed in moving fire-flecked shadows, and Kurtz dropped his
rifle into the snow without discharging it.

“Fuck a duck,” he said tonelessly. “Cease firing. Cease firing, you humps. Quit it, praise Jesus. Inside. Every one of you but Freddy. join hands and pray for God the Father
Almighty to get our asses out of the sling they’re in. Come here, Freddy. Step lively.”

The others, nearly a dozen, trooped up the steps to the Winnebago, looking uneasily at the burning generators, the blazing cook-tent (already the commissary-tent next door was catching; the infirmary and the morgue would be next). Half the pole lights in the compound were out.
Kurtz put his arm around Freddy Johnson’s shoulders and walked him twenty paces
into the blowing snow, which the wind was now lifting and carrying in veils that looked

like mystic steam. Directly ahead of the two men, Gosselin’s-what was left of it was burning merry hell. The barn had already caught. Its shattered doors gaped.
“Freddy, do you love Jesus? Tell me the truth.”
Freddy had been through this before. It was a mantra. The boss was clearing his head.
“I love Him, boss.”
“Do you swear that’s true?” Kurtz looking keenly. Looking through him, more than

likely. Planning ahead, if such creatures of instinct could be said to plan. “As you face the
eternal pit of hell for a lie?”
“I swear it’s true.”
“You love Him a lot, do you?”
“Lots, boss.”
“More than the group? More than going in hot and getting the job done?” A pause.
“More than you love me?‘Not questions you wanted to answer wrong if you wanted to go
on living. Fortunately, not hard ones, either. “No, boss.”
“Telepathy gone, Freddy?”

“I had a touch of something, I don’t know if it was telepathy, exactly, voices in my
head-”
Kurtz was nodding. Red-gold flames the color of the Ripley fungus burst through the
roof of the barn.
“-but that’s gone.”
“Other men in the group?”
“Imperial Valley, you mean?” Freddy nodded toward the Winnebago.
“Who else would I mean, The Firehouse Five Plus Two?
Yes, them!”
“They’re clean, boss.”
“That’s good, but it’s also bad. Freddy, we need a couple of infected Americans. And
when I say
we,

I mean you and I. I want Americans who are
crawling
with that red shit, understand me?”
“I do.” What Freddy didn’t understand was why, but at the moment the why didn’t
matter. He could see Kurtz taking hold, visibly taking hold, and that was a relief. When Freddy needed to know, Kurtz would tell him. Freddy looked uneasily at the blazing store,
the blazing barn, the blazing cook-tent. This situation was FUBAR.
Or maybe not. Not if Kurtz was taking hold.

“Goddam telepathy’s responsible for most of this,” Kurtz mused, “but it wasn’t
telepathy that
triggered
it. That was pure human fuckery, praise Jesus. Who betrayed Jesus, Freddy? Who gave him that traitor’s kiss?”
Freddy had read his Bible, mostly because Kurtz had given it to him. “Judas Iscariot,
boss.”
Kurtz was nodding rapidly. His eyes were moving everywhere, tabulating the

destruction, calculating the response, which would be severely limited by the storm.
“That’s right, buck. Judas betrayed Jesus and Owen Philip Underhill betrayed us. Judas got thirty pieces of silver. Not much of a payday, do you think?”
“No, boss.” He delivered this reply partially turned away from Kurtz because
something in the commissary had exploded. A steel hand clutched his shoulder and turned

him back. Kurtz’s eyes were wide and burning. The white lashes made them look like ghost-eyes.
“Look at me when I talk to you,” Kurtz said. “Listen to me when I speak to you.”
Kurtz put his free hand on the nine-millimeter’s grip. “Or I’ll blow your guts out on the
snow. I have had a hard night here and
don’t you make it any worse, you hound, do you
understand me? Catch the old drift-ola?”

Johnson was a man of good physical courage, but now he felt something turn over in
his stomach and try to crawl away. “Yes, boss, I’m sorry.”
“Accepted. God loves and forgives, we must do the same. I don’t know how many
pieces of silver Owen got, but I can tell you this: we’re going to catch him, we’re going to
spread his cheeks, and we are going to tear that boy a splendid new asshole. Are you with
me?”

“Yes.” There was nothing Freddy wanted more than to find the person who had
turned his previously ordered world upside down and fuck that person over. “How much
of this do you reckon Owen’s responsible for, boss?”
“Enough for me,” Kurtz said serenely. “I have an idea I’m finally going down,
Freddy-”
“No, boss.”
“-but I won’t go down alone.” Ann still around Freddy’s shoulders, Kurtz began to

lead his new second back toward the “Bago. Squat, dying pillars of fire marked the burning gennies. Underhill had done that; one of Kurtz’s own boys. Freddy still found it
difficult to believe, but he had begun to get steamed, just the same.
How many pieces of
silver, Owen? How many did you get, you traitor?
Kurtz stopped at the foot of the steps.
“Which one of those fellows do you like to command a search-and-destroy mission,
Freddy?”
“Gallagher, boss.”
“Kate?”
“That’s right.”

“Is she a cannibal, Freddy? The person we leave in charge has to be a cannibal.”
“She eats em raw with slaw, boss.”
“Okay,” Kurtz said. “Because this is going to be dirty. I need two Ripley Positives,
hopefully Blue Boy guys. The rest of them… like the animals, Freddy. Imperial Valley is
now a search-and-destroy mission. Gallagher and the rest are to hunt down as many as they can. Soldiers and civilians alike. From now until 1200 hours tomorrow, it’s feeding

time. After that, it’s every man for himself Except for us, Freddy.” The firelight painted Kurtz’s face with byrus, turned his eyes into weasel’s eyes. “We’re going to hunt down Owen Underhill and teach him to love the Lord.”
Kurtz bounded up the Winnebago’s steps, sure as a mountain goat on the packed and
slippery snow. Freddy Johnson followed him.
13
The Sno-Cat plunged down the embankment to the Swanny Pond Road fast enough

to make Henry’s stomach roll over. It slued, then turned south. Owen worked the clutch and mangled the stick-shift, working the “Cat up through the gears and into high. With the
galaxies of snow flying at the windshield, Henry felt as if they were travelling at approximately mach one. He guessed it might actually be thirty-five miles an hour. That
would get them away from Gosselin’s, but he had an idea Jonesy was moving much faster.
Turnpike ahead?
Owen asked.

It is, isn’t it?
Yes. About four miles.
We’ll need to switch vehicles when we get there.
No one gets hurt if we can help it. And no one gets killed.
Henry…I don’t know how to break it to you, but this isn’t high school basketball.
“No one gets hurt. No one gets killed. At least not when we’re swapping vehicles.
Agree to that or I’m rolling out this door right now.”
Owen glanced at him. “You would, too, wouldn’t you? And goddam what your

friend’s got planned for the world.” “my friend isn’t responsible for any of this. He’s been
kidnapped.” “All right. No one gets hurt when we swap over. If we can help it. And no one gets killed. Except maybe us. Now where are we going?”
Derry.
That’s where he is? This last surviving alien?
I think so. In any case, I have a friend in Derry who can help us. He sees the line.
What line?
“Never mind,” Henry said, and thought:
It’s complicated.
“

What do you mean, complicated? And no bounce, no play what’s that?”
I’ll tell you while we’re driving south. If I can.
The Sno-Cat rolled toward the Interstate, a capsule preceded by the glare of its lights.
“Tell me again what we’re going to do,” Owen said.
“Save the world.”
“And tell me what that makes us-I need to hear it.”
“It makes us heroes,” Henry said. Then he put his head back and closed his eyes. In
seconds he was asleep.
Part Three
QUABBIN
As I was going up the stair

I met a man who wasn’t there;
He wasn’t there again today!
I wish, I wish he’d stay away.
Hughes Meams
Chapter Eighteen
THE CHASE BEGINS
1
Jonesy had no idea what time it was when the green DYSART’s Sign twinkled out of
the snowy gloom-the Ram’s dashboard clock was bitched up, just flashing 12:00 A.M.
over and over-but it was still dark and still snowing hard. Outside of Derry, the plows were

losing their battle with the storm. The stolen Ram was “a pretty good goer”, as Jonesy’s
Pop would have said, but it too was losing its battle, slipping and slueing more frequently
in the deepening snow, fighting its way through the drifts with increasing difficulty.
Jonesy had no idea where Mr Gray thought he was going, but Jonesy didn’t believe he would get there. Not in this storm, not in this truck.

The radio worked, but not very well; so far everything that came through was faint,
blurred with static. He heard no time-checks, but picked up a weather report. The storm had switched over to rain from Portland south, but from Augusta to Brunswick, the radio
said, the precipitation was a wicked mix of sleet and freezing rain. Most communities were without power, and nothing without chains on its wheels was moving.
Jonesy liked this news just fine.
2

When Mr Gray turned the steering wheel to head up the ramp toward the beckoning
green sign, the Ram pickup slid broadside, spraying up great clouds of snow. Jonesy knew
he likely would have gone off the exit ramp and into the ditch if he’d been in control, but
he wasn’t. And although he was no longer immune to Jonesy’s emotions, Mr Gray seemed

much less prone to panic in a stress situation. Instead of wrenching blindly against the skid, Mr Gray turned into it, held the wheel over until the slide stopped, then straightened
the truck out again. The dog sleeping in the passenger footwell never woke up, and Jonesy’s pulse barely rose. If he had been in control, Jonesy knew, his heart would have

been hammering like hell. But, of course, his idea of what to do with the car when it stormed like this was to put it in the garage.
Mr Gray obeyed the stop-sign at the top of the ramp, although Route 9 was a drifted
wasteland in either direction. Across from the ramp was a huge parking lot brilliantly lit
by arc-sodiums; beneath their glare, the wind-driven snow seemed to move like the frozen

respiration of an enormous, unseen beast. On an ordinary night, Jonesy knew, that yard would have been full of rumbling diesel semis, Kenworths and Macks and Jimmy-Petes
with their green and amber cab-lights glimmering. Tonight the area was almost deserted,
except for the area marked LONGTERM SEE YARD MANAGER MUST HAVE
TICKET. In there were a dozen or more freight-haulers, their edges softened by the drifts.

Inside, their drivers would be eating, playing pinball, watching Spank-O-Vision in the truckers” lounge, or trying to sleep in the grim dormitory out back, where ten dollars got
you a cot, a clean blanket, and a scenic view of a cinderblock wall. All of them no doubt
thinking the same two thoughts:
When can I roll?
And
How much is this going to cost me?

Mr Gray stepped down on the gas, and although he did it gently, as Jonesy’s file concerning winter driving suggested, all four of the pickup’s wheels spun, and the truck began to jitter sideways, digging itself in.
Go on!
Jonesy cheered from his position at the office window.
Go on, stick it! Stick it
right up to the rocker-panels! Because when you’re stuck in a four-wheel drive, you’re
really stuck!

Then the wheels caught-first the front ones, where the weight of the motor gave the
Ram a little more traction-then the back ones. The Ram trundled across Route 9 and toward the sign marked ENTRANCE. Beyond it was another: WELCOME TO THE
BEST TRUCK STOP IN NEW ENGLAND. Then the truck’s headlights picked out a
third, snowcaked but readable: HELL, WELCOME TO THE BEST TRUCK STOP ON
EARTH.
Is this the best truck stop on earth?
Mr Gray asked.

Of course,
Jonesy said. And then-he couldn’t help it-he burst out laughing.
Why do you do that? Why do you make that sound?
Jonesy realized an amazing thing, both touching and terrifying: Mr Gray was smiling
with Jonesy’s mouth. Not much, just a little, but it was a smile.
He doesn’t really know
what laughter
is, Jonesy thought. Of course he hadn’t known what anger was, either, but he had proved to be a remarkably fast learner; he could now tantrum with the best of them.

What you said struck me funny.
What exactly is funny?
Jonesy had no idea how to answer the question. He wanted Mr Gray to experience
the entire gamut of human emotions, suspecting that humanizing his usurper might
ultimately be his only chance of survival-we have met the enemy and he is us, Pogo had
once said. But how did you explain funny to a collection of spores from another world?
And what
was

funny about Dysart’s proclaiming itself the best truck stop on earth?
Now they were passing yet another sign, one with arrows pointing left and right.
BIGUNS it said beneath the left arrow. And LITTLEUNS under the right.
Which are we?
Mr Gray asked, stopping at the sign.
Jonesy could have made him retrieve the information, but what would have been the
point?
We’re a littleun,

he said, and Mr Gray turned the Ram to the right. The tires spun a little and the truck lurched. Lad raised his head, let fly another long and fragrant fart, then whined. His lower midsection had swelled and distended; anyone who didn’t know better
would no doubt have mistaken him for a bitch about to give birth to a good-sized litter.

There were perhaps two dozen cars and pickups parked in the littleuns” lot, the ones most deeply buried in snow belonging to the help-mechanics (always one or two on duty),
waitresses, short-order cooks. The cleanest vehicle there, Jonesy saw with sharp interest,
was a powder-blue State Police car with packed snow around the roof-lights. Being

arrested would certainly put a spike in Mr Gray’s plans; on the other hand, Jonesy had already been present at three murder-sites, if you counted the cab of the pickup. No witnesses at the first two crime scenes, and probably no Gary Jones fingerprints, either, but here? Sure. Plenty of them. He could see himself standing in a courtroom somewhere
and saying,
But Judge, it was the alien inside me who committed those murders. It was Mr
Gray.

Another joke that Mr Gray wouldn’t get.
That worthy, meanwhile, had been rummaging again.
Dry Farts,
he said.
Why do you
call this place Dry Farts when the sign says Dysart’s?
It’s what Lamar used to call it,
Jonesy said, remembering long, hilarious breakfasts here, usually going or coming back from Hole in the Wall. And this fit night into the tradition, didn’t it?
My Dad called it that, too.
Is it funny?

Moderately, I guess. It’s a pun based on similar sounds. Puns are what we call the
lowest form of humor.
Mr Gray parked in the rank closest to the lighted island of the restaurant, but all the
way down from the State Police cruiser. Jonesy had no idea if Mr Gray understood the significance of the lightbars on top or not. He reached for the Ram’s headlight knob and

pushed it in. He reached for the ignition, then stopped and issued several hard barks of laughter: “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
How’d that feel?
Jonesy asked, more than a little curious. A little apprehensive, too.
“Like nothing,” Mr Gray said flatly, and turned off the ignition. But then, sitting there
in the dark with the wind howling around the cab of the truck, he did it again, and with a
little more conviction: “
Ha! Ha, ha, ha!”

In his office refuge, Jonesy shivered. It was a creepy sound, like a ghost trying to remember how to be human.
Lad didn’t like it either. He whined again, looking uneasily at the man behind the steering wheel of his master’s truck.
3
Owen was shaking Henry awake, and Henry responded reluctantly. He felt as if he
had gone to sleep only seconds ago. His limbs all seemed to have been dipped in cement.
“Henry.”

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