Desperation   ::   Кинг Стивен

“—on the guy who nailed the cat to the speed-limit sign,” Peter finished.

“Why’s he going so fast with his flashers off.”

“Who’s there to run them for out here.”

“Well,” she said, giving him that odd-funny look again, “there’s—He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. She was right. The cop must have been seeing them for at least as long as they’d been seeing him, maybe longer, so why hadn’t he flipped on his lights and flashers, just to be safe. Of course Peter had known enough to get over on his own, give the cop as much Of the road as he possibly could, but still—The police car’s taillights suddenly came on. Peter hit his own brake without even thinking of it, although he had already slowed to sixty and the cruiser was far enough ahead so there was no chance of a collision. Then the cruiser swerved over into the westbound lane.

“What’s he doing.” Mary asked.

“I don’t know, exactly.”

But of course he knew: he was slowing down. From his cut-em-off-at-the-pass eighty—five or ninety he had dropped to fifty. Frowning, not wanting to catch up and not knowing why, Peter slowed even more himself. The speedometer of Deirdre’s car dropped down toward forty.

“Peter.” Mary sounded alarmed. “Peter, I don’t like this.”

“It’s all right,” he said, but was it. He stared at the cop—car, now tooling slowly up the westbound lane to his left, and wondered. He tried to get a look at the person behind the wheel and couldn’t. The cruiser’s rear window was caked with desert dust.

Its taillights, also caked with dust, flickered briefly as the car slowed even more. Now it was doing barely thirty. A tumbleweed bounced into the road, and the cruiser’s radial tires crushed it under. It came out the back looking—to Peter Jackson like a nestle of broken fingers. All at—once he was frightened, very close to terror, in fact, and he hadn’t the slightest idea why.

Because Nevada ’s full of intense people, Marielle said so and Gary agreed, and this is how intense people act. In—a word, weird.

Of course that was bullshit, this really wasn’t weird, not very weird, anyhow, although—The cop-car taillights flickered some more. Peter pressed his own brake in response, not even thinking about what he was doing for a second, then looking at the speedometer and seeing he was down to twenty-five.

“What does he want, Pete.” By now, that was pretty obvious. “To be behind us again.

“Why.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t he just pull over on the shoulder and let us go past, if that’s what he wants.”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“What are you going to—”

“Go by, of course.” And then, for no reason at all, he added: “After all, we didn’t nail the goddam cat to the speed-limit sign.”

He pushed down on the accelerator and immediately began to catch up with the dusty cruiser, which was now floating along at no more than twenty.

Mary grabbed the shoulder of his blue workshirt hard enough for him to feel the pressure of her short fingernails. “No, don’t.”

“Mare, there’s not a lot else I can do.”

And the conversation was already obsolete, because he was going by even as he spoke. Deirdre’s Acura drew alongside the dusty white Caprice, then passed it. Peter looked through two pieces of glass and saw very little. A big shape, a man-shape, that was about all. Plus the sense that the driver of the police-car was looking back at him. — Peter glanced down at the decal on the passenger door.

Now he had time to read it: DESPERATION POLICE DEPART-MENT in gold letters below the town seal, which appeared to be a miner and a horseman shaking hands. — Desperation, he thought. Even better than Destry. Much better.

As soon as he was past, the white car swung back into the eastbound lane, speeding up to stay on the Acura’s bumper. They travelled that way for thirty or forty sec-onds (to Peter it felt considerably longer). Then the blue flashers on the Caprice’ s roof came on. Peter felt a sinking in his stomach, but it wasn’t surprise. Not at all.

Mary still had hold of him, and now, as Peter swung onto the shoulder, she began digging in again.

“What are you doing. Peter, what are you doing.”

“Stopping. He’s got his flashers on and he’s pulling me over. — “1 don’t like it,” she said, looking nervously around. There was nothing to look at but desert, foothills, and leagues of blue sky. “What were we doing.”

“Speeding seems logical.” He was looking in the out-side mirror. Above the words CAUTION OBJECTS MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR, he saw the dusty white driver’s door of the cop-car swing open. A khaki leg swung out. It was prodigious.

As the man it belonged to followed it out, swung the door of his cruiser closed, and settled his Smokey Bear hat on his head (he wouldn’t have been wearing it in the car, Peter supposed; not enough clearance), Mary turned around to look. Her mouth dropped ajar.

“Holy God, he’s the size of a football player!”

“At least,” Peter said. Doing a rough mental calculation that used the roof of the car as a steering-point—about five feet—he guessed that the cop approaching Deirdre’ s Acura had to be at least six-five. And over two hundred and fifty pounds. Probably over three hundred.

Mary let go of him and scooted over against her door as far as she could, away from the approaching giant. On one hip the cop wore a gun as big as the rest of him, but his hands were empty—no clipboard, no citation-book. Peter didn’t like that. He didn’t know what it meant, but he didn’t like it. In his entire career as a driver, which had included four speeding tickets as a teenager and one OUI (after the faculty Christmas party three years ago), he had never been approached by an empty-handed cop, and he most definitely didn’t like it. His heartbeat, already faster than normal, sped up a little more. His heart wasn’t pounding, at least not yet, but he sensed it could pound. That it could pound very easily.

You’re being stupid, you know that, don’t you. he asked himself. It’s speeding, that’s all, simple speeding. The posted limit is a joke and everyone knows it’s a joke, but this guy’s undoubtedly got a certain quota to meet. And when it comes to speeding tickets, out—of-staters are always best. You know that. So… what’s that old Van Halen album title.

Eat Em and Smile.

The cop stopped beside Peter’s window, the buckle of his Sam Browne belt on a level with Peter’s eyes.