"Car?"
Bradenton tried desperately to think. Had he gotten this man a car? It was so far away, all the flames of delirium were in between, and the delirium seemed to have done something to his thought processes, burned out whole banks of memory. Whole sections of his past were scorched cabinets filled with smoldering wires and blackened relays. Instead of the car this awful man wanted to know about, an image of the first car he'd ever owned drifted up, a 1953 Studebaker with a bullet nose that he had painted pink.
Gently, Fry put one hand over Bradenton's mouth and pinched his nostrils shut with the other. Bradenton began to buck beneath him. Furry moans escaped around Fry's hand. Fry took both hands away and said, "Does that help you remember?"
Strangely, it did.
"Car..." he said, and then panted like a dog. The world swirled, steadied, and he was able to go on. "Car's parked... behind the Conoco station... just outside of town. Route 51."
"North or south of town?"
"Suh... suh..."
"Yes suh! I got it. Go on."
"Covered with a tarp. Byoo... Byoo... Buick. Registration's on the steering post. Made out... Randall Flagg." He collapsed into panting again, unable to say more or do anything except look at Fry with dumb hope.
"Keys?"
"Floormat. Under..."
Fry's backside cut off any further words by settling on Bradenton's chest. He settled there the way he might have settled on a comfortable hassock in a friend's apartment and suddenly Bradenton couldn't even get a small breath.
He expelled the last of his tidal breath on a single word: "...please..."
"And thank you," Richard Fry/Randall Flagg said with a prim grin. "Say goodnight, Kit."
Unable to speak, Kit Bradenton could only roll his eyes whitely in their puffed sockets.
"Don't think unkindly of me," the dark man said softly, looking down at him. "It's just that we have to hurry now. The carnival is opening early. They're opening all the rides, and the Pitch-til-U-Win, and the Wheel of Fortune. And it's my lucky night, Kit. I feel that. I feel that very strongly. So we have to hurry."
It was a mile and a half to the Conoco station, and by the time he got there it was quarter past three in the morning. The wind had picked up, whining along the street, and on his way here he had seen the corpses of three dead dogs and one dead man. The man had been wearing some sort of uniform. Above, the stars shone hard and bright, sparks struck off the dark skin of the universe.
The tarp which covered the Buick had been pegged tautly to the ground, and the wind made the canvas flap. When Flagg pulled the pegs the tarpaulin went cartwheeling off into the night like a large brown ghost, moving east. The question was, in which direction was he heading?
He stood beside the Buick, which was a well-preserved 1975 model (cars did well out here: there was little moisture and rust had a hard time starting), scenting the summer night sir like a coyote. There was desert perfume on it, the kind you can only smell clearly at night. The Buick stood whole in an automobile mortuary of dismembered parts, Easter Island monoliths in the windy silence. An engine block. An axle looking like some muscle-boy's dumbbell. A pile of tires for the wind to make hooting sound effects in. A cracked windshield. More.
He thought best in scenes like these. In scenes like these, any man could be Iago.
He walked past the Buick and ran his hand across the dented hood of what might once have been a Mustang. "Hey, little Cobra, don't ya know ya gonna shut em down..." he sang softly. He kicked over a stove-in radiator with one dusty boot and disclosed a nest of jewels, winking back at him with dim fire. Rubies, emeralds, pearls the size of goose eggs, diamonds to rival the stars. Snapped his finger at them. They were gone. Where was he to go?
The wind moaned through the shattered wing window of an old Plymouth and tiny living things rustled inside.
Something else rustled behind him. He turned and it was Kit Bradenton, clad only in absurd yellow underpants, his poet's pot hanging over the waistband like an avalanche held in suspended animation. Bradenton walked toward him over the heaped remains of Detroit rolling iron. A leafspring pierced through his foot like crucifixion, but the wound was bloodless. Bradenton's navel was a black eye.
The dark man snapped his fingers and Bradenton was gone.