“Then give your personal walkie to Marta. Agree on a com channel. If something should go wrong with Janelle, I’ll come on the run.”

“All right. Thanks, honeybunch. Is there any chance you could get out there this afternoon?”

As Rusty considered that, he saw Dougie Twitchell coming down the hall. He had a cigarette tucked behind his ear and was walking in his usual don’t-give-a-shit amble, but Rusty saw concern on his face.

“I might be able to play hookey for an hour. No promises.”

“I understand, but it would be so great to see you.”

“You too. Be careful out there. And tell folks not to eat the hot-dogs. Burpee’s probably had them in cold storage for ten thousand years.”

“Those are his mastodon steaks,” Linda said. “Over and out, sweet man. I’ll look for you.”

Rusty stuck the walkie in the pocket of his white coat and turned to Twitch. “What’s up? And get that cigarette out from behind your ear. This is a hospital.”

Twitch plucked the cigarette from its resting place and looked at it. “I was going to smoke it out by the storage shed.”

“Not a good idea,” Rusty said. “That’s where the extra propane’s stored.”

“That’s what I came to tell you. Most of the tanks are gone.”

“Bullshit. Those things are huge. I can’t remember if they hold three thousand gallons each or five thousand.”

“So what are you saying? I forgot to look behind the door?”

Rusty began to rub his temples. “If it takes them—whoever they are—more than three or four days to short out that force field, we’re going to need mucho LP.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Twitch said. “According to the inventory card on the door, there’s supposed to be seven of those puppies, but there are only two.” He stowed the cigarette in the pocket of his own white coat. “I checked the other shed just to make sure, thought somebody might have moved the tanks—”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“I dunno, O Great One. Anyway, the other shed’s for the really important hospital supplies: gardening and landscaping shit. In that one the tools are present and accounted for, but the fucking fertilizer’s gone.”

Rusty didn’t care about the fertilizer; he cared about the propane. “Well—if push comes to shove, we’ll get some from the town supplies.”

“You’ll get a fight from Rennie.”

“When Cathy Russell might be his only option if that ticker of his vapor-locks? I doubt it. You think there’s any chance I can get away for a while this afternoon?”

“That’d be up to The Wiz. He now appears to be the ranking officer.”

“Where is he?”

“Sleeping in the lounge. Snores like a mad bastard, too. You want to wake him up?”

“No,” Rusty said. “Let him sleep. And I’m not going to call him The Wiz anymore. Given how hard he’s worked since this shit came down, I think he deserves better.”

“Ah so, sensei. You have reached a new level of enlightenment.”

“Blow me, grasshopper,” Rusty said.

10

Now see this; see it very well.

It’s two forty PM on another eye-bustingly gorgeous autumn day in Chester’s Mill. If the press were not being kept away they’d be in photo-op heaven—and not just because the trees are in full flame. The imprisoned people of the town have migrated to Alden Dinsmore’s dairy field en masse. Alden has struck a use-fee deal with Romeo Burpee: six hundred dollars. Both men are happy, the farmer because he jacked the businessman up considerable from Burpee’s starting offer of two hundred, Romeo because he would have gone to a thousand, if pressed.

From the protestors and Jesus-shouters Alden collected not a single crying dime. That doesn’t mean he isn’t charging them, however; Farmer Dinsmore was born at night, but not last night. When this opportunity came along, he marked out a large parking area just north of the place where the fragments of Chuck Thompson’s plane came to rest the day before, and there he has stationed his wife (Shelley), his older son (Ollie; you remember Ollie), and his hired man (Manuel Ortega, a no-greencard Yankee who can ayuh with the best of them). Alden’s knocking down five dollars a car, a fortune for a shirttail dairyman who for the last two years has been keeping his farm out of Keyhole Bank’s hands by the skin of his teeth. There are complaints about the fee, but not many; they charge more to park at the Fryeburg Fair, and unless folks want to park by the side of the road—which has already been lined on both sides by early arrivals—and then walk half a mile to where all the excitement is, they have no choice.

And what a strange and varied scene! A three-ring circus for sure, with the ordinary citizens of The Mill in all the starring roles. When Barbie arrives with Rose and Anse Wheeler (the restaurant is closed again, will reopen for supper—just cold sandwiches, no grill orders), they stare in openmouthed silence. Both Julia Shumway and Pete Freeman are taking pictures. Julia stops long enough to give Barbie her attractive but somehow inward-turning smile.

“Some show, wouldn’t you say?”

Barbie grins. “Yessum.”