Desperation   ::   Кинг Стивен

When you see that, I want you to exit your vehicle and get into the back of mine. And quickly.”

He craned his neck, saw Kirsten—she was now holding onto her mother’s leg and peering cautiously around it—and gave her a smile. “Hi, girly-o.”

Kirstie smiled back at him.

The cop shifted his eyes briefly to David. He nodded, and David nodded back noncommittally. “Who’s out there, sir.” David asked.

“A bad guy,” the cop said. “That’s all you need to know for now, son. A very bad guy.

Takr’ “Officer—” Ralph began.

“Sir, with all due respect, I feel like a clay pigeon in a shooting gallery. There’s a dangerous man out here he’s good with a rifle, and that piece of highway carpet suggests he’s nearby. Further discussion of the situation must wait until our position has been improved, do you understand.”

Tak. Ralph wondered. Was that the bad guy’s name9 “Yes, but—”

“You first, sir. Carry your little girl. The boy next Your wife last. You’ll have to cram, but you can all fit into the car.”

Ralph unbelted and stood up. “Where are we going” he asked.

“Desperation. Mining town. Eight miles or so from here.”

Ralph nodded, rolled up his window, then picked up Kirsten. She looked at him with troubled eyes that were not far from tears.

“Daddy, is it Mr. Big Boogeyman.” she asked. Mr. Big Boogeyman was a monster she had brought home from school one day. Ralph didn’t know which of the kids had described this shadowy closet-dweller to his gentle seven—r year-old daughter, but he thought if he could have found him (he simply assumed it was a boy, it seemed to him that the care and feeding of the monsters in the school-yards of America always fell to the boys), he would have cheerfully strangled the bugger. It had taken two months to get Kirstie more or less soothed down about Mr. Big Boogeyman. Now this.

“No, not Mr. Big Boogeyman,” Ralph said. “Probably just a postal worker having a bad day.”

“Daddy, you work for the post office,” she said as he carried her back toward the door in the middle of the Wayfarer’s cabin.

“Yup,” he said, aware that Ellie had put David in front of her and was walking with her hands on his shoulders. “It’s sort of ajoke, see.”

“Like a knock-knock without the knocking.”

“Yup,” he said again. He looked out the window in the RV’s cabin door and saw the cop had opened the back door of the police cruiser. He also saw that when he opened the Wayfarer’s door, it would overlap the car door, making a protective wall.