"Anyhow, the capacity of the human mind is a lot bigger than the biggest Delco battery. I think it can take a charge almost to infinity. In certain cases, perhaps beyond infinity."

They walked in silence for a while, thinking this over.

"Are we changing?" Stu asked quietly.

"Yes," Glen answered. "Yes, I think we are."

"We've dropped some weight," Ralph said. "I know that just looking at you guys. And me, I used to have a helluva beergut. Now I can look down and see my toes again. In fact, I can see just about my whole feet."

"It's a state of mind," Larry said suddenly. When they looked at him he seemed a trifle embarrassed but went on: "I've had this feeling for the last week or so, and I couldn't understand it. Maybe now I can. I've been feeling high. Like I'd done half a joint of really dynamite grass or snorted just a touch of coke. But there's none of the disorienting feeling that goes with dope. You do some dope and you feel like normal thinking is just a little bit out of your grasp. I feel like I'm thinking just fine, better than ever, in fact. But I still feel high." Larry laughed. "Maybe it's just hunger" .

"Hunger's part of it," Glen agreed, "but not all of it."

"Me, I'm hungry all the time," Ralph said, "but it doesn't seem too important. I feel good."

"I do too," Stu said. "Physically, I haven't felt this good in years."

"When you empty out the vessel, you also empty out all the crap floating around in there," Glen said. "The additives. The impurities. Sure it feels good. It's a whole-body, whole-mind enema."

"You got such a fancy way of puttin things, baldy."

"It may be inelegant, but it's accurate."

Ralph asked, "Will it help us with him?" him?"

"Well," Glen said, "that's what it's for. I don't have much doubt about that. But we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?"

They walked on. Kojak came out of the brush and walked with them for a while, his toenails clicking on the pavement of US 70. Larry reached down and ruffled his fur. "Ole Kojak," he said. "Did you know you were a battery? Just one great big old Delco battery with a lifetime guarantee?"

Kojak didn't appear to know or care, but he wagged his tail to show he was on Larry's side.

They camped that night about fifteen miles west of Sego, and as if to drive home the point of what they had been talking about in the afternoon, there was nothing to eat for the first time since they had left Boulder. Glen had the last of their instant coffee in a Glad Bag, and they shared it out of a single mug, passing it from hand to hand. They had come the last ten miles without seeing a single car.

The next morning, the twenty-second, they came upon an overturned Ford station wagon with four corpses in it-two of them little children. There were two boxes of animal crackers in the car, and a large bag of stale potato chips. The animal crackers were in better shape. They shared them out five ways.

"Don't wolf them, Kojak," Glen admonished. "Bad dog! Where are your manners? And if you have no manners-as I must now conclude-where is your savoir faire?" savoir faire?"

Kojak thumped his tail and eyed the animal crackers in a way which showed pretty conclusively that he had no more savoir faire savoir faire than he did manners. than he did manners.

"Then root, hog, or die," Glen said, and gave the dog the last of his own share-a tiger. Kojak wolfed it down and then went sniffing off.

Larry had saved his entire menagerie-about ten animals-to eat at once. He did so slowly and dreamily. "Did you ever notice," he said, "that animal crackers have a faint, lemony undertaste? I remember that from being a kid. Never noticed it again until now."

Ralph had been tossing his last two crackers from hand to hand, and now he gobbled one. "Yeah, you're right. They do have sort of a lemon taste to em. You know, I kind of wish ole Nicky was here. I wouldn't mind sharing these old animal crackers a little further."

Stu nodded. They finished the animal crackers and went on. That afternoon they found a Great Western Markets delivery truck, apparently bound for Green River, pulled neatly over in the breakdown lane, the driver sitting bolt upright and dead behind the wheel. They lunched on a canned ham from the back, but none of them seemed to want much. Glen said their stomachs had shrunk. Stu said the ham smelled bad to him-not spoiled, just too rich. Too meaty. meaty. It kind of turned his stomach. He could only bring himself to eat a single slice. Ralph said he would have just as soon had two or three more boxes of animal crackers, and they all laughed. Even Kojak ate only a small serving before going off to investigate some scent. It kind of turned his stomach. He could only bring himself to eat a single slice. Ralph said he would have just as soon had two or three more boxes of animal crackers, and they all laughed. Even Kojak ate only a small serving before going off to investigate some scent.

They camped east of Green River that night, and there was a dust of snow in the early morning hours.

They came to the washout a little past noon on the twenty-third. The sky had been overcast all day, and it was cold-cold enough to snow, Stu thought-and not just flurries, either.

The four of them stood on the edge, Kojak at Glen's heel, looking down and across. Somewhere north of here a dam might have given way, or there might have been a succession of hard summer rainstorms. Whatever, there had been a flash flood along the San Rafael, which was only a dry-wash in some years. It had swept away a great thirty-foot slab of I-70. The gully was about fifty feet deep, the banks crumbly, rubbly soil and sedimentary rock. At the bottom was a sullen trickle of water.

"Holy crow," Ralph said. "Somebody oughtta call the Utah State Highway Department about this."

Larry pointed. "Look over there," he said. They looked out into the emptiness, which was now beginning to be dotted with strange, wind-carved pillars and monoliths. About one hundred yards down the course of the San Rafael they saw a tangle of guardrails, cable, and large slabs of asphalt-composition, paving. One chunk stuck up toward the cloudy, racing sky like an apocalyptic finger, complete with white broken passing line.

Glen was looking down into the rubble-strewn cut, hands stuffed into his pockets, an absent, dreaming look on his face. In a low voice, Stu said: "Can you make it, Glen?"

"Sure, I think so."

"How's that arthritis?"

"It's been worse." He cracked a smile. "But in all honesty, it's been better, too."

They had no rope with which to anchor each other. Stu went down first, moving carefully. He didn't like the way the ground sometimes shifted under his feet, starting little slides of rock and dirt. Once he thought his footing was going to go out from under him completely, sending him sliding all the way to the bottom on his can. One groping hand caught a solid rock outcropping and he hung on for dear life, finding more solid ground for his feet. Then Kojak was bounding blithely past him, kicking up little puffs of dirt and sending down only small runnels of earth. A moment later he was standing on the bottom, wagging his tail and barking amiably up at Stu.

"Fucking showoff dog," Stu growled, and carefully made his way to the bottom.

"I'm coming next," Glen called. "I heard what you said about my dog!"

"Be careful, baldy! Be damn careful! It's really loose underfoot."

Glen came down slowly, moving with great deliberation from one hold to the next. Stu tensed every time he saw loose dirt start to slide out from underneath Glen's battered Georgia Giants. His hair blew like fine silver around his ears in the light breeze that had sprung up. It occurred to him that when he had first met Glen, painting a mediocre picture beside the road in New Hampshire, Glen's hair had still been salt-and-pepper.

Until the moment Glen finally planted his feet on the level ground of the mudflat at the bottom of the gully, Stu was sure he was going to fall and break himself in two. Stu sighed with relief and clapped him on the shoulder.

"No sweat, East Texas," Glen said, and bent to ruffle Kojak's fur.

"Plenty here," Stu told him.

Ralph came next, moving carefully from one hold to the next, jumping the last eight feet or so. "Boy," he said. "That shit's just as loose as a goose. Be funny if we couldn't get up that other bank and had to walk four or five miles upstream to find shallower bank, wouldn't it?"

"Be a lot funnier if another flash flood came along while we were looking," Stu said.

Larry came down agilely and well, joining them less than three minutes after they had started down. "Who goes up first?" he asked.

"Why don't you, since you're so perky?" Glen said.

"Sure."

It took him considerably longer to get up, and twice the treacherous footing ran out beneath him and he nearly fell. But finally he gained the top and waved down at them.

"Who's next?" Ralph asked.

"Me," Glen said, and walked across to the other bank.

Stu caught his arm. "Listen," he said. "We can walk upstream and find a shallower bank like Ralph said."

"And lose the rest of the day? When I was a kid, I could have gone up there in forty seconds and registered a pulse-rate under seventy at the top."

"You're no kid now, Glen."

"No. But I think there's still some of him left."

Before Stu could say more, Glen had started. He paused to rest about a third of the way up and then pressed on. Near the halfway point he grabbed an outcrop of shale that crumbled away under his hands and Stu was sure he was going to tumble all the way to the bottom, end over arthritic end.

"Ah, shit-" Ralph breathed.

Glen flailed his arms and somehow kept his balance. He jigged to his right and went up another twenty feet, rested, and then up again. Near the top a spur of rock that he had been standing on tore loose and he would have fallen, but Larry was there. He grabbed Glen's arm and hauled him up.

"Nothing to it," Glen called down.

Stu grinned with relief. "How's your pulse-rate, baldy?"

"Plus ninety, I think," Glen admitted.

Ralph climbed the cut-bank like a stolid mountain goat, checking each hold, shifting his hands and feet with great deliberation. When he reached the top, Stu started up.

Right up until the moment he fell, Stu was thinking that actually this slope was a little easier than the one they had descended. The holds were better, the gradient a tiny bit shallower. But the surface was a mixture of chalky soil and rock fragments that had been badly loosened by the wet weather. Stu sensed that it wanted to be evil, and he went up carefully.

His chest was over the edge when the knob of outcropping his left foot was on suddenly disappeared. He felt himself begin to slide. Larry grabbed for his hand, but this time he missed his grip. Stu grabbed the outjutting edge of the turnpike, and it came off in his hands. He stared at it stupidly for a moment as the speed of his descent began to increase. He discarded it, feeling insanely like Wile E. Coyote. All I need, he thought, is for someone to go beep-beep before I hit the bottom.

His knee struck something, and there was a sudden bolt of pain. He grabbed at the gluey surface of the slope, which was now speeding past him at an alarming rate, and kept coming away with nothing but handfuls of dirt.

He slammed into a boulder sticking out of the rubble like a big blunt arrowhead and cartwheeled, the breath slapped from his body. He fell free for about ten feet, and came down on his lower leg at an angle. He heard it snap. The pain was instantaneous and huge. He yelled. He did a backward somersault. He was eating dirt now. Sharp pebbles scrawled bloody scratches across his face and arms. He came down on the hurt leg again, and felt it snap somewhere else. This time he didn't yell. This time he screamed.

He slid the last fifteen feet on his belly, like a kid on a greasy chute-the-chute. He came to rest with his pants full of mud and his heart beating crazily in his ears. The leg was white fire. His coat and the shirt beneath were both rucked up to his chin.

Broken. But how bad? Pretty bad from the way it feels. Two places at least, maybe more. And the knee's sprung.

Larry was coming down the slope, moving in little jumps that seemed almost a mockery of what had just happened to Stu. Then he was kneeling beside him, asking the question which Stu had already asked himself.

"How bad, Stu?"

Stu got up on his elbows and looked at Larry, his face white with shock and streaked brown with dirt.

"I figure I'll be walking again in about three months," he said. He began to feel as if he were going to puke. He looked up at the cloudy sky, balled his fists up, and shook them at it.

"OHHH, SHIT!" he screamed. he screamed.

Ralph and Larry splinted the leg. Glen had produced a bottle of what he called "my arthritis pills" and gave Stu one. Stu didn't know what was in the "arthritis pills" and Glen refused to say, but the pain in his leg faded to a faraway drone. He felt very calm, even serene. It occurred to him that they were all living on borrowed time, not because they were on their way to find Flagg, necessarily, but because they had survived Captain Trips in the first place. At any rate, he knew what had to be done ... and he was going to see that it was was done. Larry had just finished speaking. They all looked at him anxiously to see what he would say. done. Larry had just finished speaking. They all looked at him anxiously to see what he would say.

What he said was simple enough. "No."

"Stu," Glen said gently, "you don't understand-"

"I understand. I'm saying no. No trip back to Green River. No rope. No car. Against the rules of the game."

"It's no fucking game!" game!" Larry cried. "You'd die here!" Larry cried. "You'd die here!"

"And you're almost surely gonna die over there in Nevada. Now go on and get getting. You've got another four hours of daylight. No need to waste it."

"We're not going to leave you," Larry said.

"I'm sorry, but you are. I'm telling you to."

"No. I'm in charge now. Mother said if anything happened to you-"

"-that you were to go on."

"No. No." Larry looked around at Glen and Ralph for support. They looked back at him, troubled. Kojak sat nearby, watching all four with his tail curled neatly around his paws.

"Listen to me, Larry," Stu said. "This whole trip is based on the idea that the old lady knew what she was talking about. If you start frigging around with that, you're putting everything on the line."

"Yeah, that's right," Ralph said.

"No, it ain't right, right, you sodbuster," Larry said, furiously mimicking Ralph's flat Oklahoma accent. "It wasn't God's will that Stu fell down here, it wasn't even the dark man's doing. It was just loose dirt, that's all, you sodbuster," Larry said, furiously mimicking Ralph's flat Oklahoma accent. "It wasn't God's will that Stu fell down here, it wasn't even the dark man's doing. It was just loose dirt, that's all, just loose dirt just loose dirt! I'm not leaving you, Stu. I'm done leaving people behind."

"Yes. We are going to leave him," Glen said quietly.

Larry stared around unbelievingly, as if he had been betrayed. "I thought you were his friend!"

"I am. But that doesn't matter."

Larry uttered a hysterical laugh and walked a little way down the gully. "You're crazy! You know that?"

"No I'm not. We made an agreement. We stood around Mother Abagail's deathbed and entered into it. It almost certainly meant our deaths, and we knew it. We understood the agreement. Now we're going to live up to it."

"Well, I want want to, for Chrissake. I mean, it doesn't have to be Green River; we can get a station wagon, put him in the back, and go on-" to, for Chrissake. I mean, it doesn't have to be Green River; we can get a station wagon, put him in the back, and go on-"

"We're supposed to walk," Ralph said. He pointed at Stu. "He can't walk."

"Right. Fine. He's got a broken leg. What do you propose we do? Shoot him like a horse?"

"Larry-" Stu began.

Before he could go on, Glen grabbed Larry's shirt and yanked him toward him. "Who are you trying to save?" His voice was cold and stern. "Stu, or yourself?"

Larry looked at him, mouth working.