Salem's Lot

32

‘Hey,’ the bus driver said, ‘this is Hartford, Mac.’

Callahan looked out the wide, polarized window at the strange country, made even stranger by the first seeping light of morning. In the Lot they would be going back now, back into their holes.

‘I know,’ he said.

‘We got a twenty-minute rest stop. Don’t you want to go in and get a sandwich or something?’

Callahan fumbled his wallet out of his pocket with his bandaged hand and almost dropped it. Oddly, the burned hand didn’t seem to hurt much anymore; it was only numb. It would have been better if there had been pain. Pain was at least real. The taste of death was in his mouth, a moronic, mealy taste like a spoiled apple. Was that all? Yes. That was bad enough.

He held out a twenty. ‘Can you get me a bottle?’

‘Mister, the rules-’

‘And keep the change, of course. A pint would be fine.’

‘I don’t need nobody cutting up on my bus, mister. We’ll be in New York in two hours. You can get what you want there. Anything.’

I think you are wrong, friend, Callahan thought. He looked into the wallet again to see what was there. A ten, two fives, a single. He added the ten to the twenty and held it out in his bandaged hand.

‘A pint would be fine,’ he said. ‘And keep the change, of course.’

The driver looked from the thirty dollars to the dark, socketed eyes, and for one terrible moment thought he was holding conversation with a living skull, a skull that had somehow forgotten how to grin.

‘Thirty dollars for a pint? Mister, you’re crazy.’ But he took the money, walked to the front of the empty bus, then turned back. The money had disappeared. ‘But don’t you go cutting up on me. I don’t need nobody cutting up on my bus.’

Callahan nodded like a very small boy accepting a deserved reprimand.

The bus driver looked at him a moment longer, then got off.

Something cheap, Callahan thought. Something that will burn the tongue and sizzle the throat. Something to take away that bland, sweet taste… or at least allay it until he could find a place to begin drinking in earnest. To drink and drink and drink -

He thought then that he might break down, begin to cry. There were no tears. He felt very dry, and completely empty. There was only… that taste.

Hurry, driver.

He went on looking out the window. Across the street, a teenaged boy was sitting on a porch stoop with his head folded into his arms. Callahan watched him until the bus pulled out again, but the boy never moved.