Robin threw open the door. “Thanks for the ride,” she said, grabbing her pack and scurrying out.
“Be careful.”
She threw the door shut. The rack on the roof blazed with flashing lights and the car sped away.
On the corner nearby was Traveler’s Haven, a motel with a blue neon vacancy sign, a few cars parked in front of its numbered doors. Across the street stood a mini-market that was open and looked busy. A car was leaving its lot. A man entered the store. Half a dozen teenagers were clustered around a pickup truck at the edge of the parking area, sitting on its hood and bumper, standing in front of it, smoking and laughing and drinking from cardboard cups while music blared from the pickup’s radio.
Robin wondered why they were out at this hour.
She wondered if they were trollers.
But she didn’t feel afraid.
The part of town she’d left behind had been empty and silent, a cemetery haunted by the shuffling lost. Here the streets were bright and noisy. Places were open. There were real people. Cars were passing.
She stepped around the corner. Ahead, only two blocks away, stood the dim archway entrance of Funland. Moonlight glowed on the face of the clown.
She walked toward it, passing motels that lined both sides of the street, all-night diners, bars, liquor stores with people coming and going.
When she saw a whiskered bum sitting on the sidewalk with his back to the wall of a closed souvenir shop, she felt no fear. He lowered his bag-wrapped bottle as she approached. “Spare a quarter for a cuppa coffee?”
She dug a dollar bill out of her jeans and gave it to him, but withdrew her hand quickly, fearing his touch.
“G’bless you,” he mumbled.
Robin hurried away.
What was that for? she wondered. A payoff to ease the guilt of fleeing the others, of fearing them, of letting herself toy with the idea that they were aliens on the hunt?
She looked back. He was still sitting against the wall. In the distance, the kids were still gathered at the pickup truck. The music of its radio was faint.
She crossed a street and walked alongside the Funland parking lot. Its ticket booths were closed. A few cars remained on the asphalt field. One had a flat rear tire. She wondered if the others were victims of dead batteries. Or had people abandoned them for other reasons? Or were they abandoned?
The windows of a Chevy near the sidewalk were fogged. She looked away quickly, afraid that someone might suddenly rise and press his face to the glass and peer out at her.
Maybe I should go back, she thought. Check into one of those motels. Just for tonight.
That’d be chicken.
I can take care of myself.
She strode across the street, across the walkway, and up the concrete stairs. The moonlit face of the clown greeted her with a smile.
Nine
Earlier that night, Jeremy was still at home, sprawled on his bed.
He reached out and lifted his pillow off the alarm clock. Twenty till one. The alarm was set to go off in five minutes. He fingered the stem in, shutting it off.
He hadn’t slept at all. He’d tossed and turned, his mind whirling with memories of Cowboy and the boardwalk and the beach and Tanya, with curiosity and hope about tonight, with fantasies about Tanya that made him yearn and ache. He’d trembled. He’d sweated. He’d rolled and squirmed so much that, a few times, his pajamas had become twisted around him, binding him tightly, seams digging into his armpits and crotch. After a while he’d taken them off. But being naked had pitched him into a worse frenzy of excitement, so he’d put them on again.
Two hours had never been so long or so delicious.
At last the waiting was over.
He eased out of bed. He arranged his two pillows lengthwise and covered them with the blanket so that his mother would at least see more than an empty bed if she should wake up and glance in, maybe on her way to the bathroom.
He took off his damp pajamas, balled them up, and stuffed them in with the pillows.
Shivering, he sank to his knees. He reached beneath the bed and pulled out the roll of clothing he’d prepared for tonight’s adventure. Cowboy had instructed him to wear something dark, warned him that it would be “colder than a wet butt in a blizzard,” and suggested that he bring a knife along just in case of trouble.