Running with the Demon (6 page)

“What do you mean?” Al Garcia asked quickly.

“I mean, they’ll allow it because they’re going to start up the fourteen-inch again over the weekend and have it up and running by Tuesday. Right after the Fourth. I got it from a friend on the inside.” Howe’s temple pulsed and his lips tightened. “They want to break the union, and this is their best chance. Get the company running again without us.”

“Been tried already.” Al Garcia sniffed.

“So now it’s gonna get tried again. Think about it, Al. What have they got to lose?”

“No one from the union is going back to help them do it,” Penrod Williamson declared, glowering at Howe. “That’s foolish talk.”

“You don’t think there’s enough men out there with wives and children to feed that this ain’t become more important to them than the strike?” Howe snapped. He brushed at his close-cropped hair. “You ain’t paying attention then, Penny. The bean counters have taken over, and guys like us, we’re history! You think the national’s going to bail us out of this? Hell! The
company’s going to break the union and we’re sitting here letting them do it!”

“Well, it’s not like there’s a lot else we can do, Derry,” Mel Riorden pointed out, easing his considerable weight back in his metal frame chair. “We’ve struck and picketed and that’s all the law allows us. And the national’s doing what it can. We just have to be patient. Sooner or later this thing will get settled.”

“How’s that gonna happen, Mel?” Howe pressed, flushed with anger. “Just how the hell’s that gonna happen? You see any negotiating going on? I sure as hell don’t! Striking and picketing is fine, but it ain’t getting us anywhere. These people running the show, they ain’t from here. They don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to us. If you think they do, well you’re a damn fool!”

“He’s got a point,” Junior Elway agreed, leaning forward over his coffee, nodding solemnly, lank blond hair falling into his face. Old Bob pursed his lips. Junior always thought Derry Howe had a point.

“Damn right!” Howe was rolling now, his taut features shoved forward, dominating the table. “You think we’re going to win this thing by sitting around bullshitting each other? Well, we ain’t! And there ain’t no one else gonna help us either. We have to do this ourselves, and we have to do it quick. We have to make them hurt more than we’re hurting. We have to pick their pocket the way they’re picking ours!”

“What’re you talking about?” Penny Williamson growled. He had less use for Derry Howe than any of them; he’d once had Howe booted off his shift.

Howe glared at him. “You think about it, Mr. Penrod Williamson. You were in the Nam, too. Hurt them worse than they hurt you, that was how you survived. That’s how you get anywhere in a war.”

“We ain’t in a war here,” Penny Williamson observed, his finger pointed at Howe. “And the Nam’s got nothing to do with this. What’re you saying, man? That we ought to go down to the mill and blow up a few of the enemy? You want to shoot someone while you’re at it?”

Derry Howe’s fist crashed down on the table. “If that’s what it takes, hell yes!”

There was sudden silence. A few heads turned. Howe was shaking with anger as he leaned back in his chair, refusing to look away. Al Garcia wiped at his spilled coffee with his napkin and shook his head. Mel Riorden checked his watch.

Penny Williamson folded his arms across his broad chest, regarding Derry Howe the way he might have regarded that postal worker in his dress, fur coat, and gorilla mask. “You better watch out who you say that to.”

“Derry’s just upset,” said a man sitting next to him. Old Bob hadn’t noticed the fellow before. He had blue eyes that were so pale they seemed washed of color. “His job’s on the line, and the company doesn’t even know he’s alive. You can understand how he feels. No need for us to be angry with each other. We’re all friends here.”

“Yeah, Derry don’t mean nothing,” Junior Elway agreed.

“What do you think we ought to do?” Mike Michaelson asked Robert Roosevelt Freemark suddenly, trying to turn the conversation another way.

Old Bob was still looking at the man next to Howe, trying to place him. The bland, smooth features were as familiar to him as his own, but for some reason he couldn’t think of his name. It was right on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t get a handle on it. Nor could he remember exactly what it was the fellow did. He was a mill man, all right. Too young to be retired, so he must be one of the strikers. But where did he know him from? The others seemed to know him, so why couldn’t he place him?

His gaze shifted to Michaelson, a tall, gaunt, even-tempered millwright who had retired about the same time Old Bob had. Old Bob had known Mike all his life, and he recognized at once that Mike was trying to give Derry Howe a chance to cool down.

“Well, I think we need a stronger presence from the national office,” he said. “Derry’s right about that much.” He folded his big hands on the table before him and looked down at them. “I think we need some of the government people to do more—
maybe a senator or two to intervene so we can get things back on track with the negotiations.”

“More talk!” Derry Howe barely hid a sneer.

“Talk is the best way to go,” Old Bob advised, giving him a look.

“Yeah? Well, it ain’t like it was in your time, Bob Freemark. We ain’t got local owners anymore, people with a stake in the community, people with families that live here like the rest of us. We got a bunch of New York bloodsuckers draining all the money out of Hopewell, and they don’t care about us.” Derry Howe slouched in his chair, eyes downcast. “We got to do something if we expect to survive this. We can’t just sit around hoping for someone to help us. It ain’t going to happen.”

“There was a fellow out East somewhere, one of the major cities, Philadelphia, I think,” said the man sitting next to him, his strange pale eyes quizzical, his mouth quirked slightly, as if his words amused him. “His wife died, leaving him with a five-year-old daughter who was mildly retarded. He kept her in a closet off the living room for almost three years before someone discovered what he was doing and called the police. When they questioned the man, he said he was just trying to protect the girl from a hostile world.” The man cocked his head slightly. “When they asked the girl why she hadn’t tried to escape, she said she was afraid to run, that all she could do was wait for someone to help her.”

“Well, they ain’t shutting me up in no closet!” Derry Howe snapped angrily. “I can help myself just fine!”

“Sometimes,” the man said, looking at no one in particular, his voice low and compelling, “the locks get turned before you even realize that the door’s been closed.”

“I think Bob’s right,” Mike Michaelson said. “I think we have to give the negotiation process a fair chance. These things take time.”

“Time that costs us money and gives them a better chance to break us!” Derry Howe shoved back his chair and came to his feet. “I’m outta here. I got better things to do than sit around here all day. I’m sick of talking and doing nothing. Maybe you
don’t care if the company takes away your job, but I ain’t having none of it!”

He stalked away, weaving angrily through the crowded tables, and slammed the door behind him. At the counter, Josie Jackson grimaced. A moment later, Junior Elway left as well. The men still seated at the table shifted uncomfortably in their chairs.

“I swear, if that boy wasn’t my sister’s son, I wouldn’t waste another moment on him,” Melvin Riorden muttered.

“He’s right about one thing,” Old Bob sighed. “Things aren’t the way they used to be. The world’s changed from when we were his age, and a lot of it’s gotten pretty ugly. People don’t want to work things out anymore like they used to.”

“People just want a pound of flesh,” Al Garcia agreed. His blocky head pivoted on his bull neck. “It’s all about money and getting your foot on the other guy’s neck. That’s why the company and the union can’t settle anything. Makes you wonder if the government hasn’t put something in the water after all.”

“You see where that man went into a grocery store out on Long Island somewhere and walked up and down the aisles stabbing people?” asked Penny Williamson. “Had two carving knives with him, one in each hand. He never said a word, just walked in and began stabbing people. He stabbed ten of them before someone stopped him. Killed two. The police say he was angry and depressed. Well, hell, who ain’t?”

“The world’s full of angry, depressed people,” said Mike Michaelson, rearranging his coffee cup and silver, staring down at his sun-browned, wrinkled hands fixedly. “Look what people are doing to each other. Parents beating and torturing their children. Young boys and girls killing each other. Teachers and priests taking advantage of their position to do awful things. Serial killers wandering the countryside. Churches and schools being vandalized and burned. It’s a travesty.”

“Some of those people you talk about live right here in Hopewell.” Penny Williamson grunted. “That Topp kid who killed his common-law wife with a butcher knife and cut her up in pieces a few years back? I grew up with that kid. Old man Peters killed all those horses two weeks back, said they were
the spawn of Satan. Tilda Mason, tried to kill herself three times over the past six months—twice in the mental hospital. Tried to kill a couple of the people working there as well. That fellow Riley Crisp, the one they call ‘rabbit’ lives down on Wallace? He stood out on the First Avenue Bridge and shot at people until the police came, then shot at them, and then jumped off the bridge and drowned himself. When was that? Last month?” He shook his head. “Where’s it all going to end, I wonder?”

Old Bob smoothed back his white hair. None of them had the answer to that one. It made him wonder suddenly about Evelyn and her feeders. Might just as easily be feeders out there as something the government had put in the water.

He noticed suddenly that the man who had been sitting with Derry Howe was gone. His brow furrowed and his wide mouth tightened. When had the man left? He tried again to think of his name and failed.

“I got me some more work to do out at Preston’s,” Richie Stoudt advised solemnly. “You can laugh, but it keeps bread on the table.”

The conversation returned to the strike and the intractable position of the company, and the stories started up again, and a moment later Old Bob had forgotten the man completely.

T
he demon stepped out into the midday heat in front of Josie’s and felt right at home. Perhaps it was his madness that made him so comfortable with the sun’s brilliant white light and suffocating swelter, for it was true that it burned as implacably hot. Or perhaps it was his deep and abiding satisfaction at knowing that this community and its inhabitants were his to do with as he chose.

He followed Derry Howe and Junior Elway to the latter’s Jeep Cherokee and climbed into the cab with them, sitting comfortably in the backseat, neither one of them quite aware that he was there. It was one of the skills he had acquired—to blend in so thoroughly with his surroundings that he seemed to be a part of them, to make himself appear so familiar that even those sitting right beside him felt no need to question his presence. He supposed there was still just enough of them in him that he was able to accomplish this. He had been human once himself, but that was long ago and all but forgotten. What remained of his humanity was just a shadow of a memory of what these creatures were, so that he could appear and act like them to the extent that his duplicity required it. His gradual transformation from human to demon had driven out the rest. He had found, after a time, that he did not miss it.

Junior turned over the Jeep’s engine and switched on the air, blowing a thick wash of heat through the vents and into the closed interior. Junior and Derry rolled down their windows to let the heat escape as the Jeep pulled away from the curb, but the demon just breathed in contentedly and smiled. He had been in Hopewell a little more than a week, not wanting to
come any sooner because John Ross still tracked him relentlessly and had displayed a disturbing ability to locate him even when there was no possible way he should have been able to do so. But a week had gone by, the Fourth of July approached, and it seemed possible that this time Ross might prove a step too slow. It was important that Ross not interfere, for the demon had sown his destructive seed deep and waited long for it to grow. Now the seed’s harvest was at hand, and the demon did not want any interference. Everything was in place, everything that he had worked so long and hard to achieve—a clever subterfuge, an apocalyptic ruin, and an irreversible transformation that would hasten the coming of the Void and the banishment of the Word.

His mind spun with the possibilities as the Jeep turned off Second Avenue onto Fourth Street and headed west out of town. On his left the long, dark, corrugated-metal roofs of MidCon Steel could be glimpsed through gaps in the rows of the once-elegant old homes that ran the length of West Third coming in toward town from several blocks above Avenue G. The air-conditioning had kicked in, and with the windows rolled up again the demon took comfort instead from his inner heat. His passion enveloped him, a cocoon into which he could retreat and from which he could feed, a red haze of intolerance and hate and greed for power.

“Those old boys don’t know nothing,” Derry Howe was saying, slouched back in his bucket seat, his bullet head shining in the sun. “I don’t plan to listen to them no more. All they do is sit around and talk about sitting around some more. Old farts.”

“Yeah, they ain’t seeing it like it is,” Junior agreed.

No, not like you
, thought the demon contentedly.
Not with the bright, clear knowledge I have given to you
.

“We got to do something if we want to keep our jobs,” Derry said. “We got to stop the company from breaking the union, and we got to stop them right now.”

“Yeah, but how we gonna do that?” Junior asked, glancing over uncertainly, then gunning the Jeep through a yellow light turning red.

“Oh, there’s ways. There’s ways, buddy.”

Yes, there are lots and lots of ways
.