Rose Madder by Stephen King Read Free Book Online Page B

behind them she could see stretches of open field.
    I’ve gotten away from him, she thought. No matter what happens to me now, I’ve gotten away from him. Even if I have to sleep in doorways, or under bridges, I’ve gotten away from him. He’ll never hit me again, because I’ve gotten away from him.
    But she discovered she did not entirely believe it. He would be furious with her, and he would try to find her. She was sure of it.
    But how can he? I’ve covered my trail; I didn’t even have to write down my old school chum’s name in order to get my ticket. I threw away the bank card, that’s the biggest thing. So how can he find me?
    She didn’t know, exactly . . . but finding people was what he did, and she would have to be very, very careful.
    I’m really Rosie . . . and I’m Rosie Real . . .
    Yes, she supposed both sides of that were the truth, but she had never felt less like a great big deal in her whole life. What she felt like was a tiny speck of flotsam in the middle of a trackless ocean. The terror which had filled her near the end of her brief dream was still with her, but so were traces of the exhilaration and happiness; a sense of being, if not powerful, at least free.
    She leaned against the high-backed bus seat and watched the last of the fast-food restaurants and muffler shops fall away. Now it was just the countryside—newly opened fields and belts of trees that were turning that fabulous cloudy green that belongs only to April. She watched them roll past with her hands clasped loosely in her lap and let the big silver bus take her on toward whatever lay ahead.

II
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

1
    S he had a great many bad moments during the first weeks of her new life, but even at what was very nearly the worst of them all—getting off the bus at three in the morning and entering a terminal four times the size of Portside—she did not regret her decision.
    She was, however, terrified.
    Rosie stood just inside the doorway of Gate 62, clutching her purse tightly in both hands and looking around with wide eyes as people rushed past in riptides, some dragging suitcases, some balancing string-tied cardboard boxes on their shoulders, some with their arms around the shoulders of their girlfriends or the waists of their boyfriends. As she watched, a man sprinted toward a woman who had just gotten off Rosie’s bus, seized her, and spun her around so violently that her feet left the ground. The woman crowed with delight and terror, her cry as bright as a flashgun in the crowded, confused terminal.
    There was a bank of video games to Rosie’s right, and although it was the darkest hour of the morning, kids—most with their baseball caps turned around backward and at least eighty per cent of their hair buzzed off—were bellied up to all of them. “Try again, Space Cadet!” the one nearest to Rosie invited in a grinding, inhuman voice. “Try again, Space Cadet! Try again, Space Cadet!”
    She walked slowly past the video games and into the terminal, sure of only one thing: she didn’t dare go out at this hour of the morning. She felt the chances were excellent that she would be raped, killed, and stuffed into the nearest garbage can if she did. She glanced left and saw a pair of uniformed policemen coming down the escalator from the upper level. One was twirling his nightstick in a complex pattern. The other was grinning in a hard, humorless way that made her think of a man eight hundred miles behind her. He grinned, but there was no grin in his constantly moving eyes.
    What if their job is to tour the place every hour or so and kick out everyone who doesn’t have a ticket? What will you do then?
    She’d handle that if it came up, that was what she’d do. For the time being she moved away from the escalator and toward an alcove where a dozen or so travelers were parked in hard plastic contour