'Pete.' He took Pete's chin in his hand and turned his face away from the sky, to his own. Overhead, the last two lights were paling.

'It's some sort of electrical phenomenon, that's all.'

'You think?' Pete looked absurdly disappointed.

'Yeah - something related to the storm. But even if it's the first wave of the Butterfly Aliens from Planet Alnitak, it isn't going to make any difference to us if we turn into Popsicles out here. Now I need you to help me. I need you to do that trick of yours. Can you?'

'I don't know,' Pete said, venturing one final look at the sky. There was only one light now, and so dim you wouldn't have known it was there if you hadn't been looking for it. 'Ma'am? Ma'am, they're almost gone. Mellow out, okay?'

She made no reply, only stood with her face pressed against the tire. The streamers on her hat flapped and flew. Pete sighed and turned to Henry.

'What do you want?'

'You know the loggers' shelters along this road?' There were eight or nine of them, Henry thought, nothing but four posts each, with pieces of rusty corrugated tin on top for roofs. The pulpers stored cut logs or pieces of equipment beneath them until spring.

'Sure,' Pete said.

'Where's the closest one? Can you tell me?'

Pete closed his eyes, raised one finger, and began moving it back and forth. At the same time he made a little ticking sound with the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. This had been a part of Pete ever since high school. It didn't go back as far as Beaver's gnawed pencils and chewed toothpicks, or Jonesy's love of horror movies and murder stories, but it went back a long way. And it was usually reliable. Henry waited, hoping it would be reliable now.

The woman, her ears perhaps catching that small regular ticking sound beneath the boom of the wind, raised her head and looked around. There was a large dark smear across her forehead from the tire.

At last Pete opened his eyes. 'Right up there,' he said, pointing in the direction of Hole in the Wall. 'Go around that curve and then there's a hill. Go down the other side of the hill and there's a straight stretch. At the end of the straight there's one of those shelters. It's on the left. Part of the roof's fallen in. A man named Stevenson had a nosebleed there once.'

'Yeah?'

'Aw, man, I don't know.' And Pete looked away, as if embarrassed.

Henry vaguely remembered the shelter . . . and the fact that the roof had partially fallen in was good, or could be; if it had fallen the right way, it would have turned the wall-less shelter into a lean-to.

'How far?'

'Half a mile. Maybe three-quarters.'

'And you're sure.'

'Yeah.'

'Can you walk that far on your knee?'

'I think so - but will she?'

'She better,' Henry said. He put his hands on the woman's shoulders, turned her wide-eyed face to his, and moved in until they were almost nose to nose. The smell of her breath was awful - antifreeze with something oily and organic beneath it - but he stayed close, and made no move to draw back.

'We need to walk!' he told her, not quite shouting but speaking loudly and in a tone of command. 'Walk with me now, on three! One, two, three three!'

He took her hand and led her back around the Scout and into the road. There was one moment of resistance and then she followed with perfect docility, not seeming to feel the push of the wind when it struck them. They walked for about five minutes, Henry holding the woman's gloved right hand in his left one, and then Pete lurched.

'Wait,' he said. 'Bastardly knee's tryin to lock up on me again.

While he bent and massaged it, Henry looked up at the sky. There were no lights up there now. 'Are you all right? Can you make it?'

'I'll make it,' Pete said. 'Come on, let's go.'

6

They made it around the curve all right and halfway up the hill all right and then Pete dropped, groaning and cursing and clutching his knee. He saw the way Henry was looking at him and made a peculiar sound, something caught between a laugh and a snarl. 'Don't you worry about me,' he said. 'Petie-bird's gonna make it.'

'You sure?'

'Ayuh.' And to Henry's alarm (although there was amusement, too, that dark amusement which never seemed to leave him now), Pete balled his gloved hands into fists and began pounding on his knee.

'Pete-'

'Let go, you hump, let go go!' Pete cried, ignoring him completely. And during this the woman stood slump-shouldered with the wind now at her back and the orange hat-ribbons blowing out in front of her, as silent as a piece of equipment that has been turned off.

'Pete?'

'I'm all right now,' Pete said. He looked up at Henry with exhausted eyes . . . but they, too, were not without amusement. 'Is this a total fuckarow or not?'

'It is.'

'I don't think I could walk all the way back to Derry, but I'll get to that shelter.' He held out a hand. 'Help me up, chief'

Henry took his old friend's hand and pulled. Pete came up stiff-legged, like a man rising from a formal bow, stood still for a moment, then said: 'Let's go. I'm lookin forward to gettin out of this wind.' He paused, then added: 'We should have brought a few beers.'

They got to the top of the hill and the wind was better on the other side. By the time they got to the straight stretch at the bottom, Henry had begun allowing himself to hope that this part of it, at least, was going to go all right. Then, halfway along the straight with a shape up ahead that just about had to be the loggers' shelter, the woman collapsed - first to her knees, then onto her front. She lay like that for a moment, head turned, only the breath rising from her open mouth to indicate she was still alive ( and how much simpler this would be if she wasn't and how much simpler this would be if she wasn't, Henry thought). Then she rolled over on her side and let out another long bray of a belch.

'Oh you troublesome cunt,' Pete said, sounding not angry but only tired. He looked at Henry. 'What now?'

Henry knelt by her, told her in his loudest voice to get up, snapped his fingers, clapped his hands, and counted to three several times. Nothing worked.

'Stay here with her. Maybe I can find something up there to drag her on.'

'Good luck.'

'You have a better idea?'

Pete sat down in the snow with a grimace, his bad leg stretched out in front of him. 'Nosir,' he said, 'I do not. I'm fresh out of ideas.'

7

It took Henry five minutes to walk up to the shelter. His own leg was stiffening where the turnsignal lever had gouged it, but he thought he was all right. If he could get Pete and the woman to shelter, and if the Arctic Cat back at Hole in the Wall would start, he thought this might still turn out okay. And damn, it was interesting interesting, there was that. Those lights in the sky . . .