The Regulators - Stephen King [87]
'Let me ask you a very personal question,' Steve said. He thought his voice did not sound even remotely like his own. 'How scared are you?'
'Very.' The big guy armed more sweat off his forehead. It was very hot in here, but in spite of the dripping, rustling leaves, the heat felt strangely dry to Steve, not in the least greenhouse-ish. The smells were that way, too. Not unpleasant, but dry. Egyptian, almost. 'Don't lose hope, though. I see the path, I think.'
It was indeed the path, they stepped on to it less than a minute after getting moving again, and Steve saw signs — comforting ones, under the circumstances — of the animals which had used this particular game-trail: a potato-chip bag, the wrapper from a pack of baseball cards, a couple of double-A batteries which had maybe been pried out of some kid's Walkman after they went dead, initials carved on a tree.
He saw something far less comforting on the other side of the track: a misshapen growth, prickly and virulent green, among the sumach and scrub trees. Two more stood behind it, their lumpy arms sticking stiffly up like the arms of alien traffic cops.
'Holy shit, do you see those?' Steve asked.
Collie nodded. 'They look like cactuses. Or cacti. Or whatever you say for more than one.'
Yes, Steve thought, but only in the way that women painted by Picasso during his Cubist phase looked like real women. The simplicity of the cactuses and their lack of symmetry — like the bird with the mismatched wings — gave them a surreal aspect that hurt his head. It was like looking at something that wouldn't quite come into focus.
It does look a little like a buzzard, Old Doc had said. As a child might draw it.
Things were starting to group together in his mind. Not fit together, at least not yet, but forming themselves naturally into what they had been taught to call a set back in Algebra I. The vans, which looked like props from a kids' Saturday matinee. The bird. Now these violent green cactuses, like something you'd see in an energetic first grader's picture.
Collie approached the one closest to the path and stuck out a tentative finger.
'Man, don't do that, you're nuts!' Steve said.
Collie ignored him. Reached the finger further. Closer. And closer yet, until —
'Ouch! You mother!'
Steve jumped. Collie yanked his hand back and peered at it like a kid with an interesting new scrape. Then he turned to Steve and held it out. A bead of blood, small and dark and perfect, was forming on the pad of his index finger. 'They're real enough to poke,' he said. 'This one is, anyway.'
'Sure. And what if it poisons you? Like something from the Congo Basin, something like that?'
Collie shrugged as if to say too late now, pal, and started along the path. It was headed south at this point, toward Hyacinth. With the red-orange sunlight flooding through the trees from the right, it was at least impossible to become disoriented. They started down the hill. As they went, Steve saw more and more of the misshapen cacti in the woods to the east of the path. They were actually crowding out the trees in places. The underbrush was thinning, and for a very good reason: the topsoil was also thinning, being replaced by a grainy gray sandbed that looked like . . . like . . .
Sweat ran in Steve's eyes, stinging. He wiped it away. So hot, and the light so strong and red. He felt sick to his stomach.
'Look.' Collie pointed. Twenty yards ahead, another clump of cacti guarded a fork in the path. Jutting out from them like the prow of a ship was an overturned shopping cart. In the dying light, the metal basket-rods looked as if they had been dipped in blood.
Collie jogged down to the fork. Steve hurried to keep up, not wanting to get separated from the other