The Tommyknockers, Page 69

  "I think he might be in a lot of trouble too, Dave--it sounds like he's gone section-eight."

  "I know how it sounds. I just don't think that's the way it is."

  "David," Torgeson said in a tone of great patience, "it might be possible--at least in a movie--to take over a little town and poison it somehow. But there's a highway that runs through that little town. There's people in that little town. And phones. Do you think someone could poison a whole town or shut it off from the outside world with no one the wiser?"

  "Old Derry Road isn't really a highway," Bright pointed out. "Not since they finished the stretch of 1-95 between Bangor and Newport thirty years ago. Since then, the Old Derry Road has been more like this big deserted landing strip with a yellow line running down the middle of it."

  "You're not trying to tell me nobody's tried to use it lately, are you?"

  "No. I'm not trying to tell you much of anything ... but Johnny did say he'd found some people who hadn't seen their relatives in Haven for a couple of months. And some people who tried to go in to check on them got sick and had to leave in a hurry. Most of them chalked it up to food poisoning or something. He also mentioned a store in Troy where this old crock is doing a booming business in T-shirts because people have been coming out of Haven with bloody noses ... and that it's been going on for weeks."

  "Pipe dreams," Torgeson said. Looking across the barracks ready-room, he saw the dispatcher sit up abruptly and switch the telephone he was holding to his left hand, so he could write. Something had happened somewhere, and from the goosed look on the dispatcher's face, it wasn't a fender-bender or purse-snatching. Of course, people being what they were, something always did happen. And, as little as he liked to admit it, something might be happening in Haven as well. The whole thing sounded as mad as the tea party in Alice, but David had never impressed him as a member of the fruits-and-nuts brigade. At least not a card-carrying one, he amended.

  "Maybe they are," Bright was saying, "but their essential pipe-dreaminess can be proved or disproved by a quick trip out to Haven by one of your guys." He paused. "I'm asking as a friend. I'm not one of Johnny's biggest fans, but I'm worried about him."

  Torgeson was still looking into the dispatcher's office, where Smokey Dawson was now ratchet-jawing away a mile a minute. Smokey looked up, saw Torgeson looking, and held up one hand, all the fingers splayed. Wait, the gesture said. Something big.

  "I'll see that someone takes a ride out there before the end of the day," Torgeson said. "I'll go myself if I can, but--"

  "If I was to come over to Derry, could you pick me up?"

  "I'll have to call you," Torgeson said. "Something's happening here. Dawson looks like he's having a heart attack."

  "I'll be here," Bright said. "I'm seriously worried, Andy."

  "I know," Torgeson said--there had not even been a flicker of interest from Bright when Torgeson mentioned something big was apparently up, and that wasn't like him at all. "I'll call you."

  Dawson came out of the dispatcher's office. It was high summer, and except for Torgeson, who was catching, the entire complement of troopers on duty was out on the roads. The two of them had the barracks to themselves.

  "Jesus, Andy," Dawson said. "I dunno what to make of this. "

  "Of what?" He felt the old tight excitement building in the center of his chest--Torgeson had his own intuitions from time to time, and they were accurate within the narrow band of his chosen profession. Something big, all right. Dawson looked as if someone had hit him with a brick. That old tight excitement--most of him hated it, but part of him was a junkie for it. And now that part of him made a sudden exhilarating connection--it was irrational but it was also irrefutable. This had something to do with what Bright had just called about. Somebody get the Dormouse and the Mad Hatter, plop the Dormouse into the pot, he thought. I think the tea party's getting under way.

  "There's a forest-fire in Haven," Dawson said. "Must be a forest-fire. Report says it's probably in Big Injun Woods."

  "Probably? What's this probably shit?"

  "The report came from a fire-watch station in China Lakes," Dawson said. "They logged smoke over an hour ago. Around two o'clock. They called Derry Fire Alert and Ranger Station Three in Newport. Engines were sent from Newport, Unity, China, Woolwich--"

  "Troy? Albion? What about them? Christ, they border the town!"

  "Troy and Albion didn't report."

  "Haven itself?"

  "The phones are dead."

  "Come on, Smokey, don't break my balls. Which phones?"

  "All of them." He looked at Torgeson and swallowed. "Of course, I haven't verified that for myself. But that isn't the nuttiest part. I mean, it's pretty crazy, but--"

  "Go on and spill it."

  Dawson did. By the time he finished, Torgeson's mouth was dry.

  Ranger Station Three was in charge of fire control in Penobscot County, at least as long as a fire in the woods didn't develop a really broad front. The first task was surveillance; the second was spotting; the third was locating. It sounded easy. It wasn't. In this case, the situation was even worse than usual, because the fire had been reported from twenty miles away. Station Three called for conventional fire engines because it was still technically possible that they might be of some use: they hadn't been able to reach anyone from Haven who could tell them one way or the other. As far as the fire wardens at Three knew, the fire could be in Frank Spruce's east pasture or a mile into the woods. They also sent out three two-man crews of their own in four-wheel-drive vehicles, armed with topographical maps, and a spotter plane. Dawson had called them Big Injun Woods, but Chief Wahwayvokah was long gone, and today the new, nonracist name on the topographical maps seemed more apt: Burning Woods.

  The Unity fire engines arrived first ... unfortunately for them. Three or four miles from the Haven town line, with the growing pall of smoke still at least eight miles distant, the men on the pumper began to feel ill. Not just one or two; the whole seven-man crew. The driver pressed on ... until he suddenly lost consciousness behind the wheel. The pumper ran off Unity's Old Schoolhouse Road and crashed into the woods, still a mile and a half shy of Haven. Three men were killed in the crash; two bled to death. The two survivors had literally crawled out of the area on hands and knees, puking as they went.

  "They said it was like being gassed," Dawson said.

  "That was them on the phone?"

  "Christ, no. The two still alive are on their way to Derry Home in an amb'lance. That was Station Three. They're trying to get things together, but right now it looks like there's a hell of a lot more going on in Haven than a forest-fire. But that's spreading out of control, the Weather Service says there's going to be an easterly wind by nightfall, and it don't seem like no one can get in there to put it out!"

  "What else do they know?"

  "Jack shit!" Smokey Dawson exclaimed, as if personally offended. "People who get close to Haven get sick. Closer you get, the sicker you are. That's all anyone knows, besides something's burning."

  Not a single fire unit had gotten into Haven. Those from China and Woolwich had gotten closest. Torgeson went to the anemometer on the wall and thought he saw why. They'd been coming from upwind. If the air in and around Haven was poisoned, the wind was blowing it the other way.

  Dear God, what if it's something radioactive?

  If it was, it was like no kind of radiation Torgeson had ever heard of--the Woolwich units had reported one-hundred-percent engine failure as they approached the Haven town line. China had sent a pumper and a tanker. The pumper quit on them, but the tanker kept running and the driver had somehow managed to reverse it out of the danger zone with vomiting men stuffed into the cab, clinging to the bumpers, and spread-eagled on top of the tank. Most had nosebleeds; a few, ear-bleeds; one had a ruptured eye.

  All of them had lost teeth.

  What kind of fucking radiation is THAT?

  Dawson glanced into the dispatcher's booth and saw that all of his incoming
lines were lighted.

  "Andy, the situation's still developing. I gotta--"

  "I know," Torgeson said, "you've got to go talk to crazy people. I've got to call the attorney general's office in Augusta and talk to other crazy people. Jim Tierney's the best A.G. we've had in Maine since I put on this uniform, and do you know where he is this gay day, Smokey?"

  "No."

  "On vacation," Torgeson said with a laugh that was slightly wild "First one since he took the job. The only man in the administration that might be able to understand this nuttiness is camping with his family in Utah. Fucking Utah! Nice, huh?"

  "Nice."

  "What the fuck's going on?"

  "I don't know."

  "Any other casualties?"

  "A forest ranger from Newport died," Dawson said reluctantly.

  "Who?"

  "Henry Amberson."

  "What? Henry? Christ!"

  Torgeson felt as if he had been hit hard in the pit of the stomach. He had known Henry Amberson for twenty years--the two of them hadn't been best friends, nothing like it, but they had played some cribbage together when times were slow, done a little fly-fishing. Their families had taken dinner together.

  Henry, Jesus, Henry Amberson. And Tierney was in fucking Utah. "Was he in one of the Jeeps they sent out?"

  "Yeah. He had a pacemaker, you know, and--"

  "What? What?" Torgeson took a step toward Smokey as if to shake him. "What?"

  "The guy driving the Jeep apparently radioed in to Three that it exploded in Amberson's chest."

  "Oh my Jesus Christ!"

  "It's not sure yet," Dawson said quickly. "Nothing is. The situation is still developing."

  "How could a pacemaker explode?" Torgeson asked softly.

  "I don't know."

  "It's a joke," Torgeson said flatly. "Either some weird joke or something like that radio show that time. War of the Worlds. "

  Timidly Smokey said: "I don't think it's a joke ... or a hoax."

  "Neither do I," Torgeson said. He headed for his office and the telephone.

  "Fucking Utah," he said softly, and then left Smokey Dawson to try to keep up with the increasingly unbelievable information that was coming in from the area of which Bobbi Anderson's farm was the center.

  3

  Torgeson would have called the A.G.'s office first if Jim Tierney hadn't been in fucking Utah. Since he was, he put it off long enough to make a quick call to David Bright at the Bangor Daily News.

  "David? It's Andy. Listen, I--"

  "We've got reports there's a fire in Haven, Andy. Maybe a big one. Have you got that?"

  "Yeah, we do. David, I can't take you over there. The information you gave me checks out, though. Fire crews and recon people can't get into town. They get sick. We've lost a forest ranger. A guy I knew. I heard ..." He shook his head. "Forget what I heard. It's too goddam crazy to be true."

  Bright's voice was excited. "What was it?"

  "Forget it."

  "But you say firemen and rescue crews are getting sick?"

  "Recon people. We don't know yet if anyone needs rescuing or not. Then there's the shit about the fire trucks and Jeeps. Vehicles seem to stop running when they get close to or into Haven--"

  "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "You mean it's like the pulse?"

  "Pulse? What pulse?" He had a crazy idea that Bright was talking about Henry's pacemaker, that he had known all along.

  "It's a phenomenon that's supposed to follow big nuclear bangs. Cars stop dead."

  "Christ. What about radios?"

  "Them too."

  "But your friends said--"

  "All over the band, yes. Hundreds. Can I at least quote you on the sick firemen and rescue people? The vehicles stopping?"

  "Yeah. As Mr. Source. Mr. Informed Source."

  "When did you first hear--"

  "I don't have time to do the Playboy interview, David. Your Leandro went to Maine Med Supplies for air?"

  "Yes."

  "He thought it was the air," Torgeson said, more to himself than to Bright. "That's what he thought."

  "Andy ... you know what else stops cars dead, according to the reports we get from time to time?"

  "What?"

  "UFOs. Don't laugh; it's true. People who sight flying saucers at close range when they're in their cars or planes almost always say their motors just drop dead until the thing goes away." He paused. "Remember the doctor who crashed his plane in Newport a week or, two ago?"

  War of the Worlds, Torgeson thought again. What a pile of crap.

  But Henry Amberson's pacemaker had ... what? Exploded? Could that possibly be true?

  He would make it his business to find out; that you could take to the bank.

  "I'll be talking to you, Davey," Torgeson said, and hung up. It was 3:15. In Haven, the fire which had begun at the old Frank Garrick farm had been burning for over an hour, and was now spreading toward the ship in a widening crescent.

  4

  Torgeson called Augusta at 3:17 P.M. At that time, two sedans with a total of six investigators in them were already northbound on 1-95; Fire Station Three had called the A.G.'s office at 2:26 P.M. and the Derry state police barracks at 2:49. The Derry report included the first jagged elements--the crash of the Unity pumper, the death of a forest ranger who appeared to have been shotgunned by his own pacemaker. At 1:30 P.M. mountain time, a Utah State Police cruiser stopped at the camp-ground where Jim Tierney and his family were staying. The trooper informed him there was an emergency in his home state. What sort of emergency? That, the trooper had been told, was information obtainable strictly on a need-to-know basis. Tierney could have called Derry, but Torgeson in Cleaves Mills was a guy he knew and trusted. Right now he wanted more than anything else to talk to someone he trusted. He felt a slow, sinking dread in his gut, a feeling that it had to be Maine Yankee, had to be something with the state's only nuclear plant, had to be, only something that big could have caused this kind of extraordinary response almost a whole country away. The trooper patched him through. Torgeson was both delighted and relieved to hear Tierney's voice.

  At 1:37 P.M. mountain time, Tierney climbed into the shotgun seat of the cruiser and said, "How fast does this go?"

  "Sir! This vehicle will go one hundred and thirty miles an hour and I am a Mormon sir and I am not afraid to drive it at that speed sir because I am confident that I will avoid hell! Sir!"

  "Prove it," Tierney said.

  At 2:03 P.M. mountain time, Tierney was in a Learjet with no markings but the U.S. flag on its tail. It had been waiting for him at a small private airfield near Cottonwoods ... the town of which Zane Grey wrote in Riders of the Purple Sage, the book which had been Roberta Anderson's favorite as a girl, the one which had perhaps set her course forever as a writer of westerns.

  The pilot was in mufti.

  "Are you Defense Department?" Tierney asked.

  The pilot looked at him with expressionless dark glasses. "Shop." It was the only word he spoke before, during, or after the flight.

  That was how the Dallas Police entered the game.

  5

  Haven had been nothing but a wide place in the road, dreaming its life away comfortably off the major Maine tourist tracks. Now it had been noticed. Now people headed there in droves. Since they knew nothing of the anomalies that were being reported in ever-increasing numbers, it was only the growing pall of smoke on the horizon which drew them at first like moths to candle flames. It would be almost seven o'clock that evening before the state police, with the help of the local National Guard unit, would be able to block off all the roads to the area--the minor ones as well as the major. By morning, the fire would become the greatest forest-fire in Maine history. The brisk easterly wind came up right on schedule, and once it did, there was no way the fire's running start could be overcome. The realization did not sink in all at once, but it did sink in: the fire might have burned unchecked even if the day had been dead calm.
You couldn't do much about a fire you couldn't get to, and efforts to get near this one had unpleasant results.

  The spotter plane had crashed.

  A busload of National Guardsmen from Bangor ran off the road, struck a tree, and exploded when the driver's brain simply burst like a tomato loaded with a cherry-bomb. All seventy weekend warriors died, but maybe only half of them in the crash; the rest died in a fruitless effort to crawl out of the poison belt.

  Unfortunately, the wind was blowing the wrong way ... as Torgeson could have told them.

  The forest-fire which had begun in Burning Woods had crisped half of Newport before fire-fighters could properly go to work ... but by then they were strung too thin to do much good, because the fire line was nearly six miles long.

  By seven that evening, hundreds of people--some self-appointed fire-fighters, most your common garden-variety Homo rubberneckus--had poured into the area. Most promptly poured right back out again, faces white, eyes bulging, noses and ears jetting blood. Some came clutching their lost teeth in their hands like pitted pearls. And not a few of them died ... not to mention the hundred or so hapless residents of eastern Newport who got a sudden dose of Haven when the wind turned brisk. Most of those died in their houses. Those who came to gawk and stayed to asphyxiate on the rotten air were found in or beside various roads, curled in fetal positions, hands clutched over their stomachs. Most, one G.I. later told the Washington Post (under the strict condition that he not be identified), looked like bloody human commas.

  Such was not the fate of Lester Moran, a textbook salesman who lived in a Boston suburb and spent most of his days on the highways of northern New England.

  Lester was returning from his annual late-summer selling trip to the schools in the SADs (school administrative districts) of Aroostook County when he saw smoke--a lot of it--on the horizon. This was at about 4:15 P.M.

  Lester diverted immediately. He was in no hurry to get back, being a bachelor and having no plans for the next two weeks or so, but he would have diverted even if the national sales conference had been slated to begin the next day with him as the principal speaker and his speech still unwritten. He couldn't have helped himself. Lester Moran was a fire-freak. He had been one since earliest childhood. In spite of having spent the last five days on the road, in spite of a fanny that felt like a board and kidneys that felt like bricks after the constant jolting his sprung car had taken on the shitty roads of townships so small they mostly had map coordinates for names, Lester never thought twice. His weariness fell away; his eyes glowed with that preternatural light which fire-chiefs from Manhattan to Moscow know and dread: the unholy excitement of the natural-born fire-freak.