write this up.”
“Aw, fuck, Matt. Damnit, fuck.”
“Why were you going so fast? I mean, damn.”
“What can I tell you? I’m crazy.”
Matt wrote the ticket and handed it in for Wiley to sign. “This is gonna four-point you, but this is town, you’re in town, and we just-a hundred and eleven is not good, Wiley, I’m sorry.”
Four points added to the eight he already had would mean not only compulsory driver’s ed, but also a court appearance.
“I’m gonna call George Piccolo and tell him you harassed me.”
“You do that and I’ll beat your ass, boy.”
When they were kids, Matt had always won. He was heavier, he was faster, but Wiley was capable of getting more pissed off, as he did now. “Gimme the goddamn ticket, and for the love of God don’t tell Brooke or I’ll get my ass whupped, serious.”
“Well, you might like that.”
“Tell you what, I’m gonna drive home at thirty miles an hour and then I’m goin’ back to the cave for a smoke. I’ll call you on your cell to share my enjoyment with you.”
“Smoke my cigars, you’re gonna eat the butts. Remember that, because I get off duty in an hour and I will check.”
Hiding the ticket carefully, he drove on. He’d find a way to hide the fat check to the county in Quicken. Somehow or other.
Once back in his office, he pulled out the bottle of Woodford Reserve he kept in his bottom-drawer liquor stash and sipped at it.
What seemed like the next moment, voices caused him to come awake. Had he been sleeping? What had just happened? For a disoriented moment, he had the horrifying sense that he’d crossed into the parallel universe. But then the voices resolved into familiar ones. Brooke was coming in from the garage with the kids. She’d brought them home from school.
He looked at his watch in stunned amazement. It was four-thirty and the sun was on its way down. He’d been sitting here all day. Writing? He had no idea.
He listened to Brooke, to Kelsey’s high voice full of excitement about a snake in show and tell, to Nick’s thumping tread on the back stairs.
Then silence fell, and what he listened to now was the silence. Soon, the words came again, the words-whispering, shouting, demanding, from the other universe.
It was Martin, and he was talking to himself, and Wiley knew why. The poor guy had stayed here at the house, and was trying to force himself not to follow his family, and was agonized about that.
Martin was crying out, Martin was more desperate than any human being Wylie had ever known.
FIVE
DECEMBER 3
THE BUNKER
AND NOW, SUDDENLY, WYLIE WAS looking at trees. At grass. He knew that he was far from Harrow, Kansas.
He wanted to return to Martin. He could feel the poor guy’s mind just racing for solutions, could feel his hunger to give up and blow his poor damn brains out, and his agony that he could not because those he loved could not.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and saw that he was in a dark meadow in a pine woods. There were vents low to the ground, humming softly. Two deer, their ears turning this way and that, ventured out from the shadows.
Then he thought maybe he knew what this was. Martin had followed his family after all. He would have loaded his car up with food and water and set out through the woods and across the fields of his beloved Kansas, and that’s where this was.
But no, it was too quiet and too-well, the word was creepy. It had an evil feel to it. Nasty. The deer were uneasy, flipping their tails, their great eyes wary.
Night was falling here, the west was dense with clouds…and there was flickering in the clouds. A sign, he feared, of the disks.
Then he wasn’t in a meadow anymore, he was in a gray place that was softly rumbling. There were walls here, a long corridor lit by bulbs in wire cages.
Footsteps came, somebody moving fast, and a man in uniform wheeled around a corner. General Al North moved along the hallway in what appeared to be a military bunker of
“Aw, fuck, Matt. Damnit, fuck.”
“Why were you going so fast? I mean, damn.”
“What can I tell you? I’m crazy.”
Matt wrote the ticket and handed it in for Wiley to sign. “This is gonna four-point you, but this is town, you’re in town, and we just-a hundred and eleven is not good, Wiley, I’m sorry.”
Four points added to the eight he already had would mean not only compulsory driver’s ed, but also a court appearance.
“I’m gonna call George Piccolo and tell him you harassed me.”
“You do that and I’ll beat your ass, boy.”
When they were kids, Matt had always won. He was heavier, he was faster, but Wiley was capable of getting more pissed off, as he did now. “Gimme the goddamn ticket, and for the love of God don’t tell Brooke or I’ll get my ass whupped, serious.”
“Well, you might like that.”
“Tell you what, I’m gonna drive home at thirty miles an hour and then I’m goin’ back to the cave for a smoke. I’ll call you on your cell to share my enjoyment with you.”
“Smoke my cigars, you’re gonna eat the butts. Remember that, because I get off duty in an hour and I will check.”
Hiding the ticket carefully, he drove on. He’d find a way to hide the fat check to the county in Quicken. Somehow or other.
Once back in his office, he pulled out the bottle of Woodford Reserve he kept in his bottom-drawer liquor stash and sipped at it.
What seemed like the next moment, voices caused him to come awake. Had he been sleeping? What had just happened? For a disoriented moment, he had the horrifying sense that he’d crossed into the parallel universe. But then the voices resolved into familiar ones. Brooke was coming in from the garage with the kids. She’d brought them home from school.
He looked at his watch in stunned amazement. It was four-thirty and the sun was on its way down. He’d been sitting here all day. Writing? He had no idea.
He listened to Brooke, to Kelsey’s high voice full of excitement about a snake in show and tell, to Nick’s thumping tread on the back stairs.
Then silence fell, and what he listened to now was the silence. Soon, the words came again, the words-whispering, shouting, demanding, from the other universe.
It was Martin, and he was talking to himself, and Wiley knew why. The poor guy had stayed here at the house, and was trying to force himself not to follow his family, and was agonized about that.
Martin was crying out, Martin was more desperate than any human being Wylie had ever known.
FIVE
DECEMBER 3
THE BUNKER
AND NOW, SUDDENLY, WYLIE WAS looking at trees. At grass. He knew that he was far from Harrow, Kansas.
He wanted to return to Martin. He could feel the poor guy’s mind just racing for solutions, could feel his hunger to give up and blow his poor damn brains out, and his agony that he could not because those he loved could not.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and saw that he was in a dark meadow in a pine woods. There were vents low to the ground, humming softly. Two deer, their ears turning this way and that, ventured out from the shadows.
Then he thought maybe he knew what this was. Martin had followed his family after all. He would have loaded his car up with food and water and set out through the woods and across the fields of his beloved Kansas, and that’s where this was.
But no, it was too quiet and too-well, the word was creepy. It had an evil feel to it. Nasty. The deer were uneasy, flipping their tails, their great eyes wary.
Night was falling here, the west was dense with clouds…and there was flickering in the clouds. A sign, he feared, of the disks.
Then he wasn’t in a meadow anymore, he was in a gray place that was softly rumbling. There were walls here, a long corridor lit by bulbs in wire cages.
Footsteps came, somebody moving fast, and a man in uniform wheeled around a corner. General Al North moved along the hallway in what appeared to be a military bunker of
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