Salem's Lot - Stephen King [183]
Then recognition came, and his body relaxed. ‘Oh. Dream.’
Mark nodded in perfect understanding.
Jimmy looked out the window and said ‘Daylight’ the way a miser might say money. He got up and went over to Matt, took his wrist and held it.
‘Is he all right?’ Mark asked.
‘I think he’s better than he was last night,’ Jimmy said. ‘Ben, I want the three of us to leave by way of the service elevator in case someone noticed Mark last night. The less risk, the better.’
‘Will Mr Burke be okay alone?’ Mark asked.
‘I think so,’ Ben said. ‘We’ll have to trust to his ingenuity, I guess. Barlow would like nothing better than to have us tied up another day.’
They tiptoed down the corridor and used the service elevator. The kitchen was just cranking up at this hour almost quarter past seven. One of the cooks looked up, waved a hand, and said, ‘Hi, Doc.’ No one else spoke to them.
‘Where first?’ Jimmy asked. ‘The Brock Street School?’
‘No,’ Ben said. ‘Too many people until this afternoon. Do the little ones get out early, Mark?’
‘They go until two o’clock.’
‘That leaves plenty of daylight,’ Ben said. ‘Mark’s house first. Stakes.’
34
As they drew closer to the Lot, an almost palpable cloud of dread formed in Jimmy’s Buick, and conversation lagged. When Jimmy pulled off the turnpike at the large green reflectorized sign that read:
ROUTE 12 JERUSALEM ‘S LOT
CUMBERLAND CUMBERLAND CTR
Ben thought that this was the way he and Susan had come home after their first date-she had wanted to see something with a car chase in it.
‘It’s gone bad,’ Jimmy said. His boyish face looked pale and frightened and angry. ‘Christ, you can almost smell it.’
And you could, Ben thought, although the smell was mental rather than physical: a psychic whiff of tombs.
Route 12 was nearly deserted. On the way in they passed Win Purinton’s milk truck, parked off the road and deserted. The motor was idling, and Ben turned it off after looking in the back. Jimmy glanced at him inquiringly as he got back in. Ben shook his head. ‘He’s not there. The engine light was on, and it was almost out of gas. Been idling there for hours.’ Jimmy pounded his leg with a closed fist.
But as they entered town, Jimmy said in an almost absurdly relieved tone, ‘Look there. Crossen’s is open.’
It was. Milt was out front, fussing a plastic drop cover over his rack of newspapers, and Lester Silvius was standing next to him, dressed in a yellow slicker.
‘Don’t see the rest of the crew, though,’ Ben said.
Milt glanced up at them and waved, and Ben thought be saw lines of strain on both men’s faces. The ‘Closed’ sign was still posted inside the door of Foreman’s Mortuary. The hardware store was also closed, and Spencer’s was locked and dark. The diner was open, and after they had passed it, Jimmy pulled his Buick up to the curb in front of the new shop. Above the show window, simple goldfaced letters spelled out the name: ‘Barlow and Straker-Fine Furnishings.’ And taped to the door, as Callahan had said, a sign which had been hand-lettered in a fine script which they all recognized from the note they had seen the day before: ‘Closed until further notice.’
‘Why are you stopping here?’ Mark asked.
‘Just on the off-chance that he might be holing up inside,’ Jimmy said. ‘It’s so obvious he might figure we’d overlook it. And I think that sometimes customs men put an okay on boxes they’ve checked through. They write it on with chalk.’
They went around to the back, and while Ben and Mark hunched their shoulders against the rain, Jimmy poked one overcoated elbow through the glass in the back door until they could all climb inside.
The air was noxious and stale, the air of a room shut up for centuries rather than days. Ben poked his head out into the showroom, but there was no place to hide out there. Sparsely furnished, there was no sign that Straker had been replenishing his stock.
‘Come here!’ Jimmy called hoarsely, and Ben’s heart leaped into his throat.
Jimmy and Mark were standing by a long crate