Mile 81 by Stephen King Read Free Book Online

and—”
    “This call is being recorded,” a man’s voice overrode her. “If you wish to report an emergency, push one. If you wish to report adverse road conditions, push two. If you wish to report a stranded motorist—”
    “Rache? Rachie? Where Mommy? Where Da—”
    “ Shhh !” Rachel said sternly, and pushed 1. It was hard to do. Her hand was trembling and her eyes were all blurry. She realized she was crying. When had she started crying? She couldn’t remember.
    “Hello, this is nine-one-one,” a woman said.
    “Are you real or another recording?” Rachel asked.
    “I’m real,” the woman said, sounding a little amused. “Do you have an emergency?”
    “Yes. A bad car ate up our mother and our daddy. It’s at the—”
    “Quit while you’re ahead,” the 911 woman advised. She sounded more amused than ever. “How old are you, kiddo?”
    “I’m six and a half. My name is Rachel Ann Lussier, and a car, a bad car—”
    “Listen, Rachel Ann or whoever you are, I can trace this call. Did you know that? I bet you didn’t. Now just hang up and I won’t have to send a policeman to your house to paddle your—”
    “ They’re dead, you stupid phone person !” Rachel shouted into the phone, and at the d-word, Blakie began to cry again.
    The 911 woman didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, in a voice no longer amused: “Where are you, Rachel Ann?”
    “At the empty restaurant! The one with the orange barrels!”
    Blakie sat down and put his arms over his face. That hurt Rachel in a way she had never been hurt before. It hurt her deep in her heart.
    “That’s not enough information,” the 911 lady said. “Can you be a little more specific, Rachel Ann?”
    Rachel didn’t know what specific meant, but she knew what she was seeing: the back tire of the station wagon, the one closest to them, was melting a little. A tentacle of what looked like liquid rubber was moving slowly across the pavement toward Blakie.
    “I have to go,” Rachel said. “We have to get away from the bad car.”
    She dragged Blake to his feet, staring at the melting tire. The tentacle of rubber started to go back where it had come from ( because it knows we’re out of reach , she thought), and the tire started to look like a tire again, but that wasn’t good enough for Rachel. She kept dragging Blake down the ramp and toward the turnpike.
    “Where we goin, Rachie?”
    I don’t know .
    “Away from that car.”
    “I want my Transformers!”
    “Not now, later.” She kept a tight hold on Blake and kept backing, down toward the turnpike where the occasional traffic was whizzing by at seventy and eighty miles an hour.
    Nothing is as piercing as a child’s scream; it’s one of nature’s more efficient survival mechanisms. Pete Simmons’s sleep had already thinned to little more than a doze, and when Rachel screamed at the 911 lady, he heard it and finally woke up all the way.
    He sat up, winced, and put a hand to his head. It ached, and he knew what that sort of ache was: the dreaded HANGOVER. His tongue tasted furry, and his stomach was blick. Not I’m-gonna-hurl blick, but blick, just the same.
    Thank God I didn’t drink any more , he thought, and got to his feet. He went to one of the mesh-covered windows to see who was yelling. He didn’t like what he saw. Some of the orange barrels blocking the entrance ramp to the rest area had been knocked over, and there were cars down there. Quite a few of them.
    Then he saw a couple of kids—a little girl in pink pants and a little boy wearing shorts and a tee-shirt. He caught just a glimpse of them, enough to tell that they were backing away—as if something had scared them—and then they disappeared behind what looked to Pete like a horse-trailer.
    Something was wrong. There had been an accident or something, although nothing down there looked like an accident. His first impulse was to get away from here in a hurry, before he got caught up in whatever had happened.