Desperation

“What is he, then.” Ellie asked. “What is this guy. And how did he get hold of the stuff you use to stop speeders. The watchamacallit.”

“Highway carpet, Mom,” David said. He ran a finger up and down the metal mesh between the front and back seats, his face intent and thoughtful and troubled. Not even a ghost of a smile there now.

“Same way he got the guns he’s toting and the car he’s driving,” the man behind the wheel said. Now they were passing the Rattlesnake Trailer Park, now the head-quarters of the Desperation Mining Corporation. Up ahead was a huddle of business buildings. A blinker-light flashed yellow under a hundred thousand miles of blue—denim sky. “He’s a cop. And I’ll tell you one thing, Carvers: when you’ve got a nutty cop on your hands, I. you ye got a situation.”

“How do you know our name.” David asked. “You didn’t ask to see my dad’s driver’s license, so how do you know our name.”

“Saw it when your dad opened the door,” the cop said, looking up into the rearview mirror. “Little plaque over.

the table. GOD BLESS OUR ROAMING HOME. THE CARVERS.

Cute.”

Something about this bothered Ralph, but for now he paid no attention. His fright had grown into a sense of foreboding so strong and yet so diffuse that he felt a little as if he’d eaten something laced with poison. He thought that if he held his hand up it would be steady, but that didn’t change the fact that he had become more scared not less, since the cop had sped them away from their disabled roaming home with such spooky ease. It appar ently wasn’t the kind of fear that made your bands shake (it’s a dry fright, he thought with a tiny and not very char acteristic twinkle of humor), but it was real enough, for all that.

“A cop,” Ralph mused, thinking of a movie he’d rented from the video store down the street one Saturday night not too long ago. Maniac Cop, it had been called. The line of ad-copy above the title had read: YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT.

PERMANENTLY. Fu

“A cop, right,” their cop replied. He sounded as if he ‘—might be smiling.

Oh, really. Ralph asked himself. And just how does a smile sound.

He was aware that Ellie was looking at him with a kind of strained curiosity, but this didn’t seem like a good time to return her glance. He didn’t know what they might read in each other’s eyes, and wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

The cop had been smiling, though. He was somehow sure of it.

Why would he he. What’s fu

He didn’t know. But the cop had sounded as if he were smiling.

“A state trooper, did you say.” Ralph asked as they drove beneath the blinker.

“Look, Mummy!” Kirsten said brightly, Melissa Sweet heart at least temporarily forgotten. “Bikes! Bikes in the street, and standing on their heads! See down there. Isn’t that fu

“Yes, honey, I see them,” Ellie said. She didn’t sound as if she found the upside-down bikes in the street any-where near as hilarious as her daughter did.

“Trooper. No, I didn’t say that.” The big man behind the wheel still sounded as if he were smiling. “Not a state trooper, a town cop.”

“Really,” Ralph said. “Wow. How many cops do you have in a little place like this, Officer.”

“Well, there were two others,” the cop said, the smile in his voice more obvious than ever, “but I killed them.”

He turned his head to look back through the mesh, and he wasn’t smiling after all. He was gri

“Now I’m the only law west of the Pecos.”

Ralph stared at him, mouth gaping. The cop gri

“Carvers,” he said, speaking solemnly through his grin, “welcome to Desperation.”

An hour Later the cop ran at the woman in the jeans and the workshirt, his cowboy boots rattling on the hard—wood floor, his hands outstretched, but his grin was gone and Ralph felt savage triumph leap up his throat, like something ugly on a spring. The cop was coming hard, but the woman in the jeans had managed—probably due more to luck than to any conscious decision on her part—to keep the desk between them, and that was going to make the difference. Ralph saw her pull back the ham-mers of the shotgun which had been lying on the desk, saw her raise it to her shoulder as her back struck the bars of the room’s largest cell, saw her curl her finger around the double triggers.

The big cop was going like hell, but it wasn’t going to do him any good.

Shoot him, lady. Ralph thought. Not to save us but because he killed my daughter. BLow his motherfucking head off The instant before Mary pulled the triggers, the cop fell to his knees on the other side of the desk, his head drop-ping like the head of a man who has knelt to pray. The double roar of the shotgun was terrific in the closed holding area. Flame licked out of the barrels.

Ralph heard his wife scream—in triumph, he thought. If so, it was premature. The cop’s Smokey Bear hat flew off his head, but the loads went high. Shot hit the back wall of the room and thudded into the plastered stairwell outside the open door with a sound like wind-driven sleet hitting a windowpane. There was a bulletin-board to the right of the doorway, and Ralph saw round black holes spatter across the papers tacked up there. The cop’s hat was a shredded ruin held together only by a thin leather hat-band. It had been buckshot in the gun, not bird. If it had hit the cop in the midsection, it would have torn him apart. Knowing that made Ralph feel even worse.

The big cop threw his weight against the desk and shoved it across the room toward the cell Ralph had de-cided was the drunk-tank—toward the cell and the woman pressed against the cell’s bars. The chair was pe

The big cop spread his arms like Samson preparing to pull down the temple and grasped the sides of the desk. Although his ears were still ringing from the shotgun blast, Ralph heard the seams under the arms of the maniac cop’s khaki uniform shirt give way. The cop pulled the desk back. “Drop it!” he yelled. “Drop the gun, Mary!”

The woman shoved the chair away from her, raised the shotgun, and pulled back the double hammers again. She was sobbing with pain and effort. Out of the corner of his eye, Ralph saw Ellie put her hands over her ears as the dark-haired woman curled her finger around the triggers, but this time there was only a dry click when the hammers fell. Ralph felt disappointment as bitter as gall crowd his throat. He had known just looking at it that the shotgun wasn’t a pump or an auto, and still he had somehow. thought it would fire, had absolutely expected it to fire, as if God himself would reload the chambers and perform a Winchester miracle.

The cop shoved the desk forward a second time. If not for the chair, Ralph saw, she would have been safe in the kneehole. But the chair was there, and it slammed into her midsection again, doubling her forward and drawing a harsh retching noise from her.