The Regulators

Chapter Eight

At the moment of Kirsten Carver’s death, Johnny was thinking of his literary agent, Bill Harris, and Bill’s reaction to Poplar Street: pure, unadulterated horror. Good agent that he was, he had managed to maintain a neutral, if slightly glazed, smile on the ride from the airport, but the smile began to slip when they entered the suburb of Wentworth (which a sign proclaimed to be OHIO’s “GOOD CHEER” COMMUNITY!), and it gave way entirely when his client, who had once been spoken of in the same breath with John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, and (after Delight) Vladimir Nabokov, pulled into the driveway of the small and perfectly anonymous suburban house on the corner of Poplar and Bear. Bill had stared with a kind of dazed incomprehension at the lawn sprinkler, the aluminum screen door with the scrolled M in the center of it, and that avatar of suburban life, a grass-stained power-mower, standing in the driveway like a gasoline god waiting to be worshipped. From there Bill had turned his gaze upon a kid roller-blading down the far sidewalk with Walkman earphones on his head, a melting ice-cream cone from Milly’s in his hand, and a happy brainless grin on his pimply face. Six years ago this had been, in the summer of 1990, and when Bill Harris, power agent, had looked back at Johnny again, the smile had been gone.

You can’t be serious, Bill had said in a flat, disbelieving voice. Oh, Bill, but I think I am, Johnny had responded, and something in his tone seemed to get through to Bill, enough at least so that when he spoke again he’d sounded plaintive rather than disbelieving. But why? he asked. Dear Jesus, why here? I can sense my IQ dropping and I just fucking got here. I feel an almost irresistible urge to subscribe to Reader’s Digest and listen to talk radio. So you tell me why. I think you owe me that. First the goddam puddy-tat detective, and now a neighborhood where fruit cocktail is probably considered a delicacy. Tell me what the deal is, okay? And Johnny had said okay, the deal is, it’s all over.

No, of course not. Belinda had said that. Not Bill Harris but Belinda Josephson. Just now.

Johnny cleared his mind with an effort and looked around. He was sitting on the living-room floor, holding one of Kirsten’s hands in both of his. The hand was cold and still. Belinda was leaning over Kirstie with a dishtowel in her hand and a square of white linen-it looked to Johnny like a for-best table napkin-folded over her shoulder like a waiter’s towel. Belinda’s eyes were tearless, but there was nevertheless an expression of love and sorrow on her face that moved Johnny’s heart, and made him think of how it must have been when the two Marys-Magdalene and the one Matthew simply called “the other Mary”-had prepared the body of Jesus for its interral in Joseph of Arimathaea’s tomb. Brad’s wife was wiping Kirsten’s blood-masked face with the dishtowel, uncovering what remained of her features.

“Did you say-” Johnny began.

“You heard me.” Belinda held the stained dishtowel out without looking, and Brad took it.

She took the napkin off her shoulder, unfolded it, and spread it over Kirsten’s face. “God have mercy on her soul.”

“I second that,” Johnny said. There was something hypnotic about the small red poppies blooming on the white linen napkin, three on one side of the draped shape that was Kirsten’s nose, two on the other, maybe half a dozen above her brow. Johnny put his hand to his own brow and wiped away a palmful of sweat. “Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

Belinda looked at him, then at her husband. “We’re all sorry, I guess. The question is, what’s next?”

Before either man could answer, Cammie Reed came into the room from the kitchen. Her face was pale but composed. “Mr Marinville?”

He turned to her. “Johnny,” he said.

She had to mull it over-another classic case of shock-slowed thinking-before understanding that he wanted her to call him by his first name. Then she got it and nodded. “Johnny, okay, sure. Did you find the pistol? And are there bullets to go with it?”

“Yes to both.”

“Can I have them? My boys want to go for help. I’ve thought it over and have decided to give them my permission. If you’ll let them take David’s gun, that is.”

“I don’t have any objection to giving up the gun,” Johnny said, not knowing if he was telling the complete truth about that or not, “but leaving shelter could be extremely dangerous, don’t you think?”

She gave him a level look, no sign of impatience in her eyes or voice, but she fingered a spot of blood on her blouse as she spoke. A souvenir of Ellen Carver’s nosebleed. “I’m aware of the danger, and if it were a question of using the street, I’d say no. But the boys know a path which runs through the greenbelt behind the houses on this side. They can use it to go over to Anderson Avenue. There’s a deserted building over there that used to be a moving company’s warehouse-”

“Veedon Brothers,” Brad said, nodding.

“-and a waterpipe that runs from the lot behind it all the way over to Columbus Broad, where it empties into a stream. If nothing else, they can get to a working phone and report what’s going on here.”

“Cam, do either of your boys know how to use a gun?” Brad asked.

Again the level stare, one which did not quite come out and ask Why do you insult my intelligence? “They both took a safety course with their dad two years ago. The primary focus was on rifles and hunting safety, but handguns were covered, yes.”

“If Jim and Dave know about this path, the shooters who are doing this may, too,” Johnny said. “Have you thought about that?”

“Yes.” The impatience finally showing, but only a little. Johnny admired her control. “But these… lunatics… are strangers. They have to be. Have you ever seen any of those vans before today?”

I may have, at that, Johnny thought. I’m not sure where yet, but if I can just get a little time to think…

“No, but I believe-” Brad began.

“We moved here in 1982, when the boys were three,” Cammie said. “They say there’s a path that hardly anyone knows about or uses except for kids, and they say there’s a pipe. I believe them.”

Sure you do, Johnny thought, but that’s secondary. So’s the hope of their bringing back help. You just want them out of here, don’t you? Of course you do, and I don’t blame you.

“Johnny,” she said, perhaps assuming his silence meant he was against the idea, “there were boys not much older than my sons fighting in Vietnam not so long ago.”

“Some even younger,” he said. “I was there. I saw them.” He got up, pulled the pistol from the waistband of his slacks with one hand, pulled the box of cartridges out of his shirt pocket with the other. “I’ll be glad to turn this over to your boys… but I’d like to go along with them.”

Cammie glanced down at Johnny’s belly-not as large as Brad’s, but still considerable. She didn’t ask him why he wanted to go, or what good he thought he could do. Her mind was, at least for the time being, colder than that. She said, “The boys play soccer in the fall and run track in the spring. Can you keep up with them?”

“Not in the mile or the four-forty, of course not,” he replied. “On a path through the woods, and maybe through a viaduct? I think so.”

“Are you kidding yourself, or what?” Belinda asked abruptly. It was Cammie she was talking to, not Johnny. “I mean, if there was still a working phone within earshot of Poplar Street, do you think we’d still be sitting here with dead people lying out front and a house burning to the ground?”

Cammie glanced at her, touched the blood-spot on her blouse again, then looked back at Johnny. Behind her, Ellie was peering around the corner into the living room. The girl’s eyes were wide with shock and grief, her mouth and chin streaked with blood from her nose.

“If it’s okay with the boys, it’s okay with me,” Cammie said, not addressing Belinda’s question at all. Cammie Reed currently had no interest in speculation. Maybe later, but not now. Now there was only one thing that did interest her: rolling the dice while she judged the odds were still heavily in her favor. Rolling them and getting her sons out the back door.

“It will be,” he said, and handed her the gun and the cartridges before heading back toward the kitchen. They were good boys, which was nice, and they were also boys who had been programmed to go along, in nine cases out of ten, with what their elders wanted. In this situation, that was even nicer. As Johnny walked, he touched the object he had stowed in his left front pants pocket. “But before we go, it’s important that I talk to someone. Very important.”

“Who?” Cammie asked.

Johnny picked Ellen Carver up. He hugged her, kissed one bloodstained cheek, and was glad when her arms went around his neck and she hugged him back fiercely. You couldn’t buy a hug like that. “Ralphie Carver,” he said, and carried Ralphie’s sister back into the kitchen.

As it happened, Tom Billingsley did have a couple of guns kicking around, but first he found Collie a shirt. It wasn’t much-an old Cleveland Browns tee with a rip under one arm-but it was an XL, and better than trying the path through the greenbelt naked from the waist up. Collie had used the route often enough to know there were blackberry bushes, plus assorted other prickers and brambles, out there.

“Thanks,” he said, pulling the shirt on as Old Doc led them past the Ping-Pong table at the far end of his basement.

“Don’t mention it,” Billingsley said, reaching up and tugging the string that turned on the fluorescents. “Can’t even remember where it came from. I’ve always been a Bengals fan, myself.”

In the corner beyond the Ping-Pong table was a jumble of fishing equipment, a few orange hunting vests, and an unstrung bow. Old Doc squatted with a grimace, moved the vests, and uncovered a quilt that had been rolled and tied with twine. Inside it were four rifles, but two of them were in pieces. Billingsley held up the ones that were whole. “Should do,” he said.

Collie took the.30-.06, which probably made a lot more sense for a woods patrol than his service pistol, anyway (and would raise fewer questions if he had to shoot someone). That left Ames with the other, smaller gun. A Mossberg. “It’s only chambered for.22s,” Doc said apologetically as he rummaged in a cabinet mounted next to the fusebox and laid out cartons of cartridges on the Ping-Pong table, “but it’s a damned fine gun, just the same. Holds nine in a row for more go. What do you think?”

Ames offered a grin Collie couldn’t help liking. “I think oy vey, such a deal,” he said, taking the Mossy. Billingsley laughed at that-a cracked old man’s chortle-and led them back upstairs.

Cynthia had put a pillow under Marielle’s head, but she was still lying on the living-room floor (under the picture of Daisy, the mathematically inclined Corgi, actually). They hadn’t dared move her; Billingsley was afraid his stitches might tear open again. She was still alive, which was good, and still unconscious, which might also be good, considering what had happened to her. But she was breathing in great, irregular gasps that did not sound good to Collie at all. It sounded like the kind of breathing that might stop any time.

Her husband, the charming Gary, was sitting in a kitchen chair which he had turned around so he could at least look at his wife while he drank. Collie saw that the bottle he had found contained Mother DeLucca’s Best Cooking Sherry, and felt his stomach turn over.

Gary saw him looking (or perhaps felt it), and looked over at Collie. His eyes were red and puffy. Sore-looking. Miserable. Collie hunted in his heart and found some sympathy for the man. Not much, though. “Losser damn arm,” he told Collie in a furry, confiding voice. “Gaw hepper.” Collie thought this over and translated it as Drunkish for either Got to help her or God help her.

“Yes,” he said. “We’re going to get her some help.”

“Aw be here awreddy. Losser mahfuhn arm. Zin the mahfuhn fritch!”

“I know.”

Cynthia joined them. “You used to be a vet, didn’t you, Mr Billingsley?”

Billingsley nodded.

“I thought so. Could you come here? Take a look at something out the front door?”

“Do you think that’s safe?”

“For the time being, I think so. The thing that’s out there… well, I’d rather you looked for yourself.” She glanced at the other two men. “Selves.”

She led Billingsley across the living room to the door looking out on Poplar Street. Collie glanced at Steve, who shrugged. Collie’s assumption was that the girl wanted to show Billingsley how the houses across the street had changed, although what that had to do with Billingsley’s being a vet he didn’t know.

“Holy shit,” he said to Steve as they reached the door. “They’ve gone back to normal! Or did we just imagine they’d changed in the first place?” It was the Geller house he kept staring at. Ten minutes ago, when he and the hippie and the counter-girl had been looking out this same door, he could have sworn that the Geller place had turned into an adobe-the sort of thing you saw in pictures of New Mexico and Arizona back when they were territories. Now it was clad in plain old Ohio aluminum siding again.

“We didn’t imagine it and things haven’t gone back to normal,” Steve said. “At least, not all the way. Check that one.”

Collie followed Steve’s pointing finger and stared at the Reed house. The modern aluminized siding had returned, replacing the logs, and the roof was once more neat asphalt shingles instead of whatever it had been before (sod, he thought); the mid-sized satellite dish was back on top of the carport. But the house’s foundation was rough wood planking instead of brick, and all the windows were tightly shuttered. There were loopholes in those shutters, too, as if the inhabitants of the house expected their day-to-day problems to include marauding Indians as well as Seventh-day Adventists and wandering insurance salesmen.

Collie couldn’t say for sure, but he didn’t think the Reed house had even had shutters before this afternoon, let alone ones with rifleport loopholes.

“Sa-aaay.” Billingsley sounded like a man who is finally getting the idea that all of this is a Candid Camera stunt. “Are those hitching rails in front of Audrey’s? They are, aren’t they? What is all this?”

“Never mind that,” Cynthia said. She reached up, took the old man’s face between her hands, and turned it like a camera on a tripod so he was looking at the corpse of Peter Jackson’s wife.

“Oh my God,” Collie said.

There was a large bird perched on the woman’s bare thigh, its yellow talons buried in her skin. It had already snacked off most of her remaining face, and was now burrowing into the flesh under her chin. Collie had a brief, unwelcome memory of going after Kellie Eberhart in exactly the same place one night at the West Columbus Drive-in, her saying that if he gave her a hickey, her dad would probably shoot them both.

He didn’t realize he had lifted the.30-.06 into firing position until Steve pushed the barrel back down with the palm of his hand. “No, man. I wouldn’t. Better to keep quiet, maybe.”

He was right, but… God. It wasn’t just what it was doing, but what it was.

“Losser goddam arm!” Gary announced from the kitchen, as if afraid they might forget this if he allowed them to. Old Doc ignored him. He had crossed the living room looking like a man who expects to be shot dead in his tracks at any moment, but now he seemed to have forgotten all about killers, weird vans, and transforming houses.

“My good gosh, look at that!” he exclaimed in a tone that sounded very much like awe. “I ought to photograph it. Yes! Excuse me… I’ll just get my camera…”

He began to turn away. Cynthia grabbed him by the shoulder. “The camera can wait, Mr Billingsley.”

He seemed to come back a little to their situation at that. “Yes… I suppose, but…”

The bird turned, as if hearing them, and seemed to stare at the vet’s bungalow with its red-rimmed eyes. Its pink skull appeared black with stubble. Its beak was a simple yellow hook.

“Is that a buzzard?” Cynthia asked. “Or maybe a vulture?”

“Buzzard? Vulture?” Old Doc looked startled. “Good gosh, no. I’ve never seen a bird like that in my life.”

“In Ohio, you mean,” Collie said, knowing that wasn’t what Billingsley meant, but wanting to hear it for himself.

“I mean anywhere.”

The hippie looked from the bird to Billingsley and then back to the bird again. “What is it, then? A new species?”

“New species my fanny! Excuse my French, young lady, but that’s a fucking mutant!” Billingsley stared, rapt, as the bird opened its wings, flapping them in order to help it move a little farther up Mary’s leg. “Look how big its body is, and how short its wings are in relation to it-damned thing makes an ostrich look like a miracle of aerodynamics! I don’t think the wings are even the same length!”

“No,” Collie said. “I don’t think they are, either.”

“How can it fly ?” Doc demanded. “How can it possibly fly ?”

“I don’t know, but it does.” Cynthia pointed down toward the thick billows which had now blotted out all vestiges of the world below Hyacinth Street. “It flew out of the smoke. I saw it.”

“I’m sure you did, I didn’t think someone pulled up in a… a Birdmobile and dropped it off, but how it can possibly fly is beyond all-” He broke off, peering at the thing. “Although I can understand how you might have thought it was a buzzard before the inevitable second thoughts set in.” Collie thought Old Doc was mostly talking to himself by this point, but he listened intently just the same. “It does look a little like a buzzard. As a child might draw it, anyway.”

“Huh?” Cynthia said.

“As a child might draw it,” Billingsley repeated. “Perhaps one who got it all mixed up in his mind with a bald eagle.”

The sight of Ralphie Carver hurt Johnny’s heart. Put aside by Jim Reed, whose solicitude had been superseded by his excitement at the impending mission, Ralphie stood between the stove and the refrigerator with his thumb in his mouth and a big wet spot spreading on the front of his shorts. All his bratty bluster had departed. His eyes were huge and still and shiny. He looked to Johnny like drug addicts he had known.

Johnny stopped inside the kitchen door and put Ellie down. She didn’t want to go, but at last he managed to pry her hands gently off his neck. Her eyes were also shocked, but held none of the merciful glaze Johnny could see in her brother’s. He looked past her and saw Kim and Susi Geller sitting on the floor with their arms around each other. Probably suits Mom just fine, Johnny thought, remembering how the woman had seemed to struggle with young

David Reed for possession of the girl. He had won then, but now David had bigger fish to fry; he was bound for Anderson Avenue and parts unknown. That didn’t change the fact that there were two little kids here who had become orphans since lunch, however.

“Kim?” he asked. “Could you maybe help a little with-”

“No,” she said. No more, no less. And calm. No defiance in her gaze, no hysteria in her tone… but no fellow feeling, either. She had an arm around her daughter, her daughter had an arm around her, cozy as can be, just a coupla white girls sittin around and waitin for the clouds to roll by. Understandable, maybe, but Johnny was furious with her, nevertheless; she was suddenly everyone he had ever known who looked bored when the conversation came around to AIDS, or homeless children, or the defoliation of the rain forests; she was everyone who had ever stepped over a homeless man or woman sleeping on the sidewalk without so much as a single glance down. As he had on occasion done himself. Johnny could picture himself grabbing her by the arms, hauling her to her feet, whirling her around, and planting a swift kick square in the middle of her narrow midwestern ass. Maybe that would wake her up. Even if it didn’t, it would certainly make him feel a little better.

“No,” he repeated, feeling his temples throb with stupid rage.

“No,” she agreed, and gave him a wan little at-last-you-under-stand smile. Then she turned her head toward Susi and began to stroke the girl’s hair.

“Come on, dear heart,” Belinda said to Ellen, leaning down and opening her arms. “Come over here and spend some time with Bee.” The girl came, silent, her face twisting in an awful cramp of grief that made the silence somehow even worse, and Belinda enfolded her.

The Reed twins watched this, but really didn’t see. They were standing by the back door, looking bright-eyed and excited. Cammie approached them, stood in front of them, appraised them with an expression Johnny at first mistook for dourness. A moment more and he realized what it really was: terror so large it could only be partially concealed.

“All right,” she said at last. Her voice was dry and businesslike. “Which one carries it?”

The boys looked at each other, and Johnny had a sense of communication between them-brief but complex, perhaps the sort of thing in which only twins could engage. Or perhaps, he thought, it’s just that your brains have boiled, John. That was not actually so farfetched. They certainly felt boiled.

Jim held out his hand. For just a moment his mother’s upper lip trembled. Then it firmed and she passed him David Carver’s pistol. Dave took the shells and opened the box while his brother rolled the.45’s cylinder and held the gun up to the light, checking to make sure the chambers were empty just as Johnny had done. We’re careful because we understand the potential a gun has to maim and kill, Johnny thought, but it’s more than that. On some level we know they’re evil. Devilish. Even their biggest fans and partisans sense it.

Dave was holding out a palmful of shells to his brother. Jim took them one at a time, loading the gun.

“You act like your father was with you every minute,” Cammie said as he did it. “If you think of doing something he wouldn’t let you do if he was here, don’t . Is that understood?”

“Yes, Mom.” Jim snapped the pistol’s cylinder closed and then held it at the end of his arm with his finger outside the trigger-guard and the muzzle pointing at the floor. He looked both embarrassed by his mother’s orders-she sounded like the CO in an old Leon Uris novel, laying down the law for a couple of green privates-and wildly excited at the prospect of what lay ahead.

She turned her attention to the other twin. “David?”

“Yes, Mom?”

“If you see people-strangers-in the woods, come right back. That’s the most important thing. Don’t ask questions, don’t respond to anything they might say, don’t even approach them.”

Jim began, “Mom, if they don’t have guns-”

“Don’t ask questions, don’t approach them,” she repeated. She didn’t speak much louder, but there was something in her voice they both flinched back from a little. Something that finished the discussion.

“Suppose they see cops, Mrs Reed?” Brad asked. “The police may have decided the greenbelt is their best approach to the street.”

“Safest to stay away,” Johnny said. “Any cops we run into are apt to be… well, nervous. Nervous cops have been known to hurt innocent people. They never mean to, but it’s better to be safe. Avoid accidents.”

“Are you coming with us, Mr Marinville?” Jim asked.

“Yes.”

Neither twin said anything, but Johnny liked the relief he saw in their eyes.

Cammie gave Johnny a forbidding look-Are you done? May I get back to business? it said-and then resumed her instructions. “Go to Anderson Avenue. If everything looks all right there… “she faltered a moment, as if realizing how unlikely that was, and then pushed on “… ask to use someone’s phone and call the police. But if Anderson Avenue’s like it is here, or if things seem even the slightest bit… well…”

“Hinky,” Johnny said. In Vietnam they’d had as many words for the feeling she was talking about as Indians had for variations in the weather, and it was funny how they all came back, turning on like neon signs in a dark room. Hinky. Weirded-out. Bent. Snafu’d. Dinky-dau. Yeah, doc, it’s all coming back to me now. Pretty soon I’ll be whipping a bandanna into a rope and tying it around my forehead to keep back the sweat, maybe leading the congregation in the Fish Cheer.

Cammie was still looking at her boys. Johnny hoped she’d hurry up. They were still looking back at her with respect (and a little fear), but most of what she had to say from this point on would go in one ear and out the other just the same.

“If you don’t like what you see on Anderson Avenue, use that pipe you know about. Get over to Columbus Broad. Call the police. Tell them what’s happened here. And don’t you even think of coming back to Poplar Street!”

“But Mom-” Jim began.

She reached up and seized his lips, pinching them shut. Not painfully, but firmly. Johnny could easily imagine her doing the same thing when the twins were ten years younger, only bending down to do it.

“You save “but Mom” for another time,” she said. “This time you just mind Mom. Get to a safe place, call the police, then stay put until this craziness is over. Got it?”

They nodded. Cammie nodded back and let go of Jim’s lips. Jim was smiling an embarrassed smile-ohboy, that’s my ma-and blushing to the tips of his ears. He knew better than to remonstrate, however.

“And be careful,” she finished. Something came into her eyes-an urge to kiss them, Johnny thought, or maybe just an urge to call the whole thing off while she still could. Then it was gone.

“Ready, Mr Marinville?” Dave asked. He was looking enviously at the gun dangling at the end of his brother’s arm. Johnny suspected they would not be too far down the path through the greenbelt before he asked to carry it a while.

“Just a second,” he said, and knelt down in front of Ralphie. Ralphie backed away until his little butt was flush against the wall, then looked at Johnny over his thumb. Down here at Ralphie’s level, the smell of urine and fear was so strong it was jungly.

From his pocket Johnny took the figure he’d found in the upstairs hall-the alien with the big eyes, the horn of a mouth, and the stiff strip of yellow hair running up the center of his otherwise bald head. He held it in front of Ralphie’s eyes. “Ralphie, what’s this?”

For a moment he didn’t think the boy was going to answer. Then, slowly, he reached out with the hand that wasn’t anchored in his mouth and took it. For the first time since the shooting had begun, a spark of life showed in his face. “That’s Major Pike,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Yes. He’s a Canopalean.” He pronounced this word carefully, proudly. “That means he’s a nailien. But a good nailien. Not like No Face.” A pause. “Sometimes he drives Bounty’s Power Wagon. Major Pike wasn’t with them, was he?” Tears overspilled Ralphie’s eyes, and Johnny suddenly remembered the story every kid used to know about the Black Sox baseball scandal in 1919. A weeping little boy had supposedly approached Shoeless Joe Jackson, begging the ballplayer to tell him that the fix hadn’t been in-to say it wasn’t so. And although Johnny had seen this freak-or someone wearing a mask to make him look like this freak-he immediately shook his head and gave Ralphie a comforting pat on the shoulder.

“Is Major Pike from a movie or a TV show?” Johnny asked, but he knew the answer already. It was coming together now, maybe should have come together a lot earlier. In the last few years he had taught a lot of classes in schools where grownups had to lean over seriously in order to drink from the water fountains, did a lot of readings in library rooms where the chairs were mostly three feet high. He listened to the run of their talk, but he didn’t watch their shows or go to their movies. He knew instinctively that that sort of research would hinder his work rather than help it. So he didn’t know everything, and still had plenty of questions, but he thought he was beginning to believe that this craziness could be understood.

“Ralphie?”

“From a TV show,” Ralphie said around his thumb. He was still holding Major Pike up in front of his eyes, much as Johnny had done. “He’s a MotoKop.”

“And Dream Floater. What’s that, Ralphie?”

“Mr Marinville,” Dave began, “we really ought to-”

“Give him a second, son,” Brad said.

Johnny never took his eyes off Ralphie. “Dream Floater?”

“Cassie’s Power Wagon,” Ralphie said. “Cassie Styles. I think she’s Colonel Henry’s girlfriend. My friend Jason says she isn’t because MotoKops don’t have girlfriends, but I think she is. Why are the Power Wagons on Poplar Street, Mr Marinville?”

“I don’t know, Ralphie.” Except he almost did.

“Why are they so big ? And if they’re good guys, why did they shoot my daddy and mommy?”

Ralphie dropped the Major Pike figure on the floor and kicked it all the way across the room. Then he put his hands over his face and began to sob. Cammie Reed started forward, but before she could get there, Ellen had wriggled free of Belinda. She went to Ralphie and put her arms around him. “Never mind,” she said. “Never mind, Ralphie, I’ll take care of you.”

Won’t that be a treat.” Ralphie said through his sobs, and Johnny clapped a hand over his mouth almost hard enough to make his lips bleed. It was the only way he could keep from bursting into mad, yodeling laughter.

If they’re good guys, why did they shoot my daddy and mommy?

“Come on, boys,” he said, standing up and turning to the Reed twins. “Let’s go exploring.”

On Poplar Street, the sun was starting to go down. It was too early for it to be going down, but it was, just the same. It glared above the horizon in the west like a baleful red eye, turning the puddles in the street and the driveways and on the stoops to fire. It turned the broken glass which littered the block into embers. It turned the eyes of the faux-buzzard into red pits as it lifted off from the body of Mary Jackson on its improbable wings and flew across the street to the Carver lawn. Here it alit, looking from David Carver’s body to that of Susi Geller’s friend. It seemed unsure upon which to start. So much to eat, so little time. At last it chose Ellen and Ralphie’s father, approaching the dead man in a series of clumsy hops. One of its yellow claw-feet sported five talons, the other only two.

Across the street, in the Wyler house-in the smell of dirt, old hamburger, and tomato soup-the TV blared on. It was the first saloon scene of The Regulators.

“You’re a right purty lady,” Rory Calhoun was saying. That knowing leer in his voice, the one that said Babydoll, I’m going to eat you like ice cream before this shitty little oat-opera is over, and both of us know it. “Why don’t you sit down “n have a drink? Bring me some luck?”

“I don’t drink with trash,” Karen Steele responded coldly, and all of Rory Calhoun’s men-the ones not currently hiding outside of town, that was-guffawed.

“Well, ain’t you a little spitfire?” Rory Calhoun said, relaxed, and his men guffawed some more.

“Want some Doritos, Pete?” Tak said. Now it spoke in the voice of Lucas McCain, who rode the cable-TV range in The Rifleman.

Peter Jackson, seated in the La-Z-Boy in front of the TV, didn’t reply. He was grinning broadly. Moving shadows played across his face, occasionally making the grin look like a silent scream, but it was a grin, all right.

“He should have some, all right, Paw,” Tak said, now in the almost-adolescent voice of Johnny Crawford, who had played Lucas’s son. “They’re the good ones. Cool Ranch. Come on, Mr Jackson, over the teeth and over the gums, look out guts, “cause here they come.”

The boy held chips out in one grimy hand and waved them up and down in front of Peter Jackson’s face. Peter took no notice. He stared at the TV, through the TV, with eyes that bulged out of his head like those of some exotic deep-dwelling fish that has undergone explosive decompression. And he grinned.

“Don’t appear he’s hongry, Paw.”

“I think he is, son. Hongry as hell. You’re hongry, ain’t you, Pete? Just need a little help, that’s all. So take the damn chips!”

There was a kind of humming in the room. A line of static appeared briefly on the TV, where Rory Calhoun was now trying to kiss Karen Steele. She slapped his face and knocked off his hat. That wiped away his leering, teasing grin. Folks-even womenfolks-didn’t knock off Jeb Murdock’s hat with impunity.

Peter slowly raised the chips. He bypassed his relentlessly grinning mouth and began poking them against his nose instead, crumbling them, catching some of the smaller pieces in his nostrils. His unnaturally bulging eyes never left the TV.

“Little too high, Mr Jackson.” Now it was the earnest voice of Hoss Cartwright. Hoss had been one of Seth’s favorites before Tak came to stay inside him, and so now he was one of Tak’s favorites, too. They rolled that way, like a wheel. “Let’s try again, what do you say?”

The hand went down slowly and jerkily, like a freight elevator. This time the chips went into Peter’s mouth, and he began to chew mechanically. Tak smiled at him with Seth’s mouth. It hoped-in its strange way it did have emotions, although none of them was precisely human-that Peter was enjoying the Doritos, because they were going to be his last meal. It had sucked a great deal of life-force out of Peter, first replenishing the gaudy amounts of energy it had expended this afternoon, then taking in more. Getting ready for the next step.

Getting ready for the night.

Peter chewed and chewed, Dorito fragments spilling out of his grin and tumbling down the front of his tee-shirt, the one with happy old Mr Smiley-Smile on the front. His eyeballs, bulging so far out of their sockets that they seemed to be lying on his cheeks, quivered with the motion of his jaw. The left one had split like a squeezed grape when Tak invaded his mind and stole most of it-the useful part-but he could still see a little out of the right one. Enough so he’d be able to do the next part mostly on his own. Once, that was, his motor was running again.

“Peter? I say, Peter, can you hear me, old boy?” Tak now spoke in the clipped British tones of Andrew Case, Peter’s department head. Like all of Tak’s imitations, it was quite good. Not as good as its Western movie and TV show imitations (at which it had had much more practice), but still not bad.

And the voice of authority did wonders, it had found, even for the terminally brain-damaged. A vague flicker of life came into Peter’s face. He turned and saw Andrew Case in a spiffy houndstooth jacket instead of Seth Garin in a pair of MotoKops Underoos decorated with reddish-orange blobs of Chef Boyardee sauce.

“I’ll want you to go across the street now, old boy. Into the woods, eh? But you needn’t toddle all the way to grandmother’s house. Just to the path. Do you know the path in the woods?”

Peter shook his head. His protruding eyeballs trembled above the stretched clown rictus of his lips.

“No matter, you’ll find it. Hard to miss, old top. When you get to the fork, you can sit down with your… friend.”

“My friend,” Peter said. Not quite a question.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Peter had never actually met the man he would be joining at the fork in the path and never actually would, not really, but there was no sense in telling Peter these things. He didn’t have mind enough left to understand them, for one thing. He was shortly going to be dead, for another. As dead as Herb Wyler. As dead as the man with the shopping-cart, the one Peter would shortly be meeting in the woods.

“My friend,” Peter said a second time. A little surer now.

“Yep.” The British department head was gone; Tak returned to John Payne doing his Gary Cooper thing. “Best be crawling, pard.”

“Down the path to the fork.”

“Reckon so.”

Peter rose to his feet like an old clockwork toy with rust in its gears. His eyeballs jiggled in the silver dreamlight from the TV.

“Best be crawling. And when I get to the fork, I can sit down with my friend.”

“Yessir, that’s the deal.” Now it was the half-leering, half-laughing voice of Rory Calhoun. “He’s quite the boy, your friend. You could say he got this whole thing started. Lit the fuse, anyway. You git on, now, pard. Happy trails to you, until we meet again.”

Peter walked through the arch, not glancing with his one dying eye at Audrey, who was slumped over sideways in one of the living-room chairs with her eyes half-open. She appeared to be in a daze or perhaps even a state of coma. She was breathing slowly and regularly. Her legs, long and pretty (the first things about her to attract Herb back in the days when she had still been Audrey Garin), were stretched out before her, and Peter almost stumbled over them in his sleepwalk to the front door. When he opened the door and the red light of the declining day fell on his grin, it looked more like a scream than ever.

Halfway down the walk with that red light falling like strained blood through the rising pillar of smoke from the Hobart place, the Rory Calhoun voice filled his head, ripping at it like a razor blade: Close the door behind you, partner, was you born in a barn?

Peter made a drunken about-face, came back and did as he was told. The door was smooth and intact, the only one on the block not riddled with bullet-holes. He did another about-face (almost falling off the stoop in the process) and then set sail through the red light toward his own house, where he would walk up the driveway, past the breezeway, and into the backyard. From there he would climb over the low wire fence and enter the greenbelt. Find the path. Find the fork. Find his friend. Sit down with his friend.

He stepped over the sprawled body of his wife, then paused as a wild cry rose in the hot, smoky air: Wh-Wh-Whooo… As far gone as he was, that cry brought a scatter of gooseflesh to his arms. What was a coyote doing in Ohio? In a suburb of Colum-

Best be crawling, pard. Git along, little dogie.

Pain, even more excruciating than before. He moaned through the frozen curve of his grin. Fresh blood oozed from his ruptured eye and trickled down his cheek.

He started forward again, and when the cry returned-this time joined by a second, a third, and finally a fourth-he didn’t react. He thought only of the path, the fork, the friend. Tak made one final check of the man’s mind (it did not take long, as there was not much mind left in Peter to check) and then withdrew.

Now there was only it and the woman. It supposed it knew why it had let her live, like the bird that is reputed to live in the very jaws of the crocodile, the bird safe from the croc’s teeth because it cleans among them, but Tak would not save her much longer. In many ways the boy had been an inspired host-perhaps the only host in which it could have lived and grown so much-but there was this one ironic drawback: what Tak could conceive and desire, the boy’s body could not carry out. It could dress the woman and dye her hair, it could strip her naked, it could make her pinch her own nipples and do all sorts of other puerile things if it desired. It did not desire. What it desired was to couple with her, and that it could not do. Under certain circumstances it felt that it might have been able to manage some sort of joining in spite of its host’s immaturity… but Seth himself was still inside, and on the occasions it had really tried, Seth had prevented it. Tak could have challenged the boy and almost certainly prevailed, but it was perhaps wiser not to do so. It had not emerged from its black place under the Nevada dust, after all the millennia of imprisonment, to have sex with a woman who was much younger than Tak itself and much older than its host body.

And what had it come for?

Well… to have fun. And…

To watch television, a voice far back in its mind whispered. To watch television, to eat SpaghettiOs, and to make. To build.

“You want to try me, Sheriff?” Rory Calhoun asked, and Tak’s eyes drifted back to the TV.

Some of the others might be moving into the woods. It could have made sure of this one way or another if it had really desired, but it did not. Let them go into the woods if they wanted. They would not like what they found. And where could they go? Back, that was all. Back to the houses. In a very real sense, there was nowhere else. Meantime, it would save its energy.

Just relax and watch the movie. Soon enough it would be time to bring on the night.

Why don’t we just stand down, think things over?” John Payne asked, and Seth and Tak came together again, as the Westerns-this one in particular-had always brought them together. Tak bent forward, eyes never leaving the screen, and picked up a bowl filled with a congealed mixture of Franco-American spaghetti and hamburger. It began to eat, eyes glued to the TV screen, oblivious of the chunks of meat that tumbled down its naked chest from time to time, coming to rest in its lap. Soon the final shootout would begin yet again-KAPOW and KA-BAM all the way home-and Tak let itself float into the story and the silvery black-and-white images, drinking in the atmosphere of violence, as ripe and electric as an impending thunderstorm. As it watched, entranced, Seth Garin separated himself from Tak and moved away from it with the stealth of Jack creeping past the sleeping giant. He glanced at the TV and wasn’t surprised to find that, whatever Tak might believe, he no longer liked The Regulators very much. Then he turned away, found one of the secret passages he had made for himself during Tak’s reign, and disappeared quietly into it. Deeper into his own mind he went, the passage taking him ever downward. He walked at first, then began to jog. He didn’t understand much more of this world than he did the one outside, but now it was the only world he had.

From The Regulators, screenplay by Craig Goodis and Quentin Woolrich

SHERIFF STREETER watches DEPUTY LAINE yank CANDY to his feet. Behind them, in the adobe which houses Lushan’s Chinese Laundry, a number of Chinese workers watch from the doorway, where they are huddled.

What’re you chinkies lookin” at?!

They don’t recoil this time.

CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN You! Clothes needee washee now, sure, sure!

The other CHINESE laugh. Even STREETER smiles a little. CANDY looks dazed. Can’t believe STREETER has beaten him in a fair fight, can’t believe these “Chink-Chink-China Boys” are laughing at him, can’t believe any of this is happening.

Best get on inside, boys.

The LAUNDRYMEN go back inside, but look out the windows.

STREETER (to LAINE) Make sure he gets his hat, Josh. Wouldn’t want him to have to go to jail without his hat.

Grinning, LAINE picks up CANDY’s pinned-back Johnny Reb cavalry hat, which fell off CANDY’s head when STREETER knocked him over the hitching rail. Now, grinning more broadly than ever, DEPUTY LAINE slams it down on the defeated thug’s head. There is a puff of dust.

LAINE Come on, Cap'n. I done saved you the nicest tent in the bivouac. Wait'11 you see it.

He shoves the dazed and defeated CANDY toward the jail. SHERIFF STREETER is watching them go with a grin, and does not at first see the batwing doors of The Lady Day Saloon open as MAJOR MURDOCK pushes out on to the sidewalk. For once, MURDOCK’s trademark grin is gone.

MURDOCK You think puttin” Candy in jail’s gonna solve your problems, Sheriff?

STREETER turns toward him. MURDOCK pulls his mud-splattered cavalry duster back, freeing the butt of his army-issue Colt.

STREETER (smiles) Could be I just arrested my first ghost. Where are the rest of your regulators hold up? Desatoya Canyon? Skate Rock? You ready to tell me yet?

You’re crazy as a snakebit varmit!

STREETER That so? Well, we’ll see. I’m guessing there won’t be any ghosts riding tonight without Captain Candell to hand out the sheets.

Still smiling, STREETER turns toward the jail again.

MURDOCK Suppose I told you the regulators were a lot closer than Desatoya Mountain or Skate Rock? Suppose I told you they were right outside of town, just waitin” for the first gunshot? How would you like that, you damn Yankee?

I think I’d like it just fine.

He looks up, raises his fingers to his mouth, and WHISTLES.

MEN start appearing from behind every sign, chimney, and false front. Formerly terrified TOWNSMEN, now looking grim and carrying rifles. They’re on the Chinese laundry, the Owl County Store, Worrell’s Mercantile, even Craven’s Undertaking Parlor. Among them we see PREACHER YEOMAN and LAWYER BRADLEY. YEOMAN, no longer concerned that the regulators are a supernatural visitation meant to punish the town for its sins, raises one hand to the SHERIFF in a salute.

RESUME MAIN STREET, WITH STREETER AND MURDOCK

STREETER returns YEOMAN’s salute with a flick of his hand, then turns back to MURDOCK, who looks furious and confused. A dangerous combination!

STREETER Yep, bring “em on, if that’s your pleasure.

MURDOCK’s face tightens. He drops his hand until it hovers just above the butt of his Colt. Neither of them sees LAURA push her way out of the saloon from behind MURDOCK. She’s wearing one of her spangly outfits and carrying her

You want to try me, Sheriff?

STREETER Why don’t we just stand down? Think this thing over?

But he knows it’s too late, he’s pushed MURDOCK too far. STREETER drops his own hand to just above the butt of his gun.

Time for talking’s done, Sheriff.

STREETER Well now, if that’s the way you want it.

MURDOCK You could have stood aside and nobody would have got hurt.

STREETER That’s not the way we do things around here. We-(sees LAURA)

Laura, no!

While he’s distracted, MURDOCK GOES FOR HIS GUN. LAURA darts between the two men, pointing the DERRINGER at MURDOCK. She pulls the trigger, but there’s only a CLICK. MISFIRE! A split second later, MURDOCK fires his cavalry Colt, and the bullet meant for STREETER hits LAURA instead. She CRUMPLES.

The TOWNSMEN raise their guns to fire.

RESUME MAIN STREET IN FRONT OF THE SALOON

MURDOCK sees what’s about to happen and dives back through the batwings and into the relative safety of The Lady Day. STREETER chases him with a couple of shots, then runs to LAURA and kneels beside her.

FLIP MORAN, the hostler, lets go with a round. A couple of others follow suit, but only a couple, luckily.

RESUME MAIN STREET IN FRONT OF THE SALOON

A BULLET WHINES off one of the batwing doors, knocking a splinter out.

Don’t shoot, he’s gone!

The men lower their guns. FLIP MORAN looks confused and ashamed of himself.

The SHERIFF’s hard shell is temporarily gone-smashed. He looks down at the DYING DANCEHALL GIRL and realizes he loves her!

Laura!

LAURA (coughing) Gun misfired… you always said… never trust a… a hideout gun…

She breaks down coughing. STREETER Don’t talk. I’ll send Joe Prudum for the doc-LAURA (coughing) Too… too late. Just hold me! STREETER does. She looks up at him CURIOUSLY. LAURA Why, Sheriff!… are you crying? EXT. REAR OF THE LADY DAY MURDOCK comes bursting out. SERGEANT MATHIS is still there, holding the horses.

What happened? I heard shootin'!

MURDOCK (swings up on his horse) Never mind. It’s time to get the boys.

You mean-?!

Suddenly MURDOCK’s insanity breaks free. His eyes BLAZE. SCENE CONTINUES His lips pull back in a snarl that looks almost like a GRIN. It is the grin of a cornered ANIMAL! MURDOCK We’re gonna wipe this town off the map!

They wheel their horses away to join the rest of the regulators.