Chris woke suddenly and the clock on the night table said five minutes of one. Someone was pounding on the door.
'Billy!' the voice was yelling. 'Get up! Hey! Hey!'
Billy stirred, rolled over, and knocked the cheap alarm clock on to the floor. 'What the Christ?' he said thickly, and sat up. His back stung. The bitch had covered it with long scratches. He'd barely noticed it at the time, but now decided he was going to have to send her home bowlegged. Just to show her who was boss..
Silence struck him. Silence. The Cavalier did not close until two; as a matter of fact, he could still see the neon twinkling and flicking through the dusty garret window. Except for the steady pounding
(something happened)
the place was a graveyard.
'Billy, you in there? Hey!'
'Who is it?' Chris whispered. Her eyes were glittering and watchful in the intermittent neon.
'Jackie Talbot,' he said absently, then raised his voice. 'What?'
'Lemme in, Billy. I got to talk to you!'
Billy got up and padded to the door, naked. He unlocked the old-fashioned hook-and-eye and opened it.
Jackie Talbot burst in. His eyes were wild and his face was smeared with soot. He had been drinking it up with Steve and Henry when the news came at ten minutes of twelve. They had gone back to town in Henry's elderly Dodge convertible, and had seen the Jackson Avenue gas main explode from the vantage point of Brickyard Hill. When Jackie had borrowed the Dodge and started to drive back at 12:30, the town was a panicky shambles.
'Chamberlain's burning up,' he said to Billy. 'Whole f**kin town. The school's gone. The Centre's gone. West End blew up - gas. And Carlin Street's on fire. And they're saying Carrie White did it!'
'Oh God,' Chris said. She started to get out of bed and grope for her clothes. 'What did-'
'Shut up,' Billy said mildly, 'or I'll kick your ass.' He looked at Jackie again and nodded for him to go on.
'They seen her. Lots of people seen her. Billy, they say she's all covered with blood. She was at that f**kin prom tonight... Steve and Henry didn't get it but ... Billy, did you ... that pig blood ... was it-'
'Yeah,' Billy said.
'Oh, no.' Jackie stumbled back against the doorframe. His face was a sickly yellow in the light of the one hall lightbulb. 'Oh Jesus, Billy, the whole town-.'
'Carrie trashed the whole town? Carrie White? You're full of shit.' He said it calmly, almost serenely. Behind him, Chris was dressing rapidly.
'Go and look out the window,' Jackie said.
Billy went over and looked out. The entire eastern horizon had gone crimson, and the sky was alight with it. Even as he looked, three fire trucks screamed by. He could make out the names on them in the glow of the street light that marked The Cavalier's parking lot.
'Son of a whore,' he said. 'Those trucks are from Brunswick.'
'Brunswick?' Chris said. 'That's forty miles away. That can't be . . .'
Billy turned back to Jackie Talbot. 'All right. What happened?'
Jackie shook his head. 'Nobody knows, not yet. It started at the high school. Carrie and Tommy Ross got the King and Queen, and then somebody dumped a couple of buckets of blood on them and she ran out. Then the school caught on fire, and they say nobody got out. Then Teddy's Amoco blew up, then that Mobil station on Summer Street-!'
'Citgo.' Billy corrected. 'It's a Citgo.'
'Who the f**k cares?' Jackie screamed. 'It was her, every place something happened it was her! And those buckets ... none of us wore gloves...'
'I'll take care of it,' Billy said.
'You don't get it, Billy. Carrie
'Get out.'
'Billy-'
'Get out or I'll break your arm and feed it to you.'
Jackie backed out of the door warily.
'Go home. Don't talk to nobody. I'm going to take care of everything.'
'All right,' Jackie said. 'Okay. Billy, I just thought-'
Billy slammed the door.
Chris was on him in a second. 'Billy what are we going to do that bitch Carrie oh my Lord what are we going to-'
Billy slapped her, getting his whole arm into it, and knocked her on to the floor. Chris sat sprawled in stunned silence for a moment, and then held her face and began to sob.
Billy put on his pants, his tee shirt, his boots. Then he went to the chipped porcelain washstand in the corner, clicked on the light, wet his head, and began to comb his hair, bending down to see his reflection in the spotted, ancient mirror. Behind him, wavy and distorted, Chris Hargensen sat on the floor, wiping blood from her split lip.
'I'll tell you what we're going to do,' he said. 'We're going into town and watch the fires. Then we're coming home. You're going to tell your dear old daddy that we were out to The Cavalier drinking beers when it happened. I'm gonna tell my dear ole mummy the same thing. Dig.'
'Billy, your fingerprints,' she said. Her voice was muffled, but respectful.
'Their fingerprints,' he said. 'I wore gloves.'
'Would they tell?' she asked. 'If the police took them in and questioned them-'
'Sure,' he said. 'They'd tell.' The loops and swirls were almost right. They glistened in the light of the dun, flyspecked globe like eddies on deep water. His face was calm, reposeful. The comb he used was a battered old Ace, clotted with grease. His father had given it to him on -his eleventh birthday, and not one tooth was broken in it. Not one.
'Maybe they'll never find the buckets,' he said. 'If they do, maybe the fingerprints will all be burnt of. I don't know. But if Doyle takes any of 'em in, I'm heading for California. You do what you want.'
'Would you take me with you?' she asked. She looked at him from the floor, her lip puffed to negroid size, her eyes pleading.
Chapter Ninteen
He smiled. 'Maybe.' But he wouldn't. Not any more. 'Come on. We're going to town.'
They went downstairs and through the empty dance hall, where chairs were still pushed back and beers were standing flat on the tables.