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.Sailor shakes his head. Pretty fucking stupid. Florida nods. Don t see what good all this is gonna do us. They taught pigeons to run machines by pecking buttons.Deadheads are as smart as pigeons. Not by much. No, Sailor agrees. They re like plants that turn to follow the sun.Only they follow live meat.But we can redirect that impulse to get them to goafter something else if we give them meat as a reward.Clustered stimuli and delayed gratification.They used to do the same thing to get people toquit smoking. Florida laughs and scratches a muscular arm. Dead? Call Schick! But Sailor, what do we need em for? We do all right by ourselves. Sailor shrugs. I want to use them, he says simply. You re still pissed at those techno-weenies out in the desert? Fuck em, bud.Let em rot.Ain t nothing those peckerwoods got that we can t getourselves. There s more to it than that, Sailor mutters. You re taking this pretty personally, says Florida.Sailor turns on him. They wouldn t feed a fucking baby. Sailor, it was a deadhead. They didn t know that. So what? What possible difference can it make? Aw, man, fuck you, all right? At the fence, finished with his bit of cat, cyanotic-tinged face against the broad steel mesh, Jo-Jo watches.Beside him now are the others,carnitropically attracted.They jostle and vie mindlessly, like teenagers before the gate at a rock concert.The upraised elbow of a deadhead(PARTY ANIMAL) strikes the temple of a skinny woman wearing a blank T-shirt that has a bumper sticker slapped onto it: IEAT ROAD KILL.Sailor and Florida turn at the sound of approaching music.Cheesecake has a ghetto blaster the size of a suitcase on his muscular shoulder.RunD.M.C.are demanding that sucker emcees call them sire.How Cheesecake can walk and dance at the same time is a mystery to Sailor, whosemusical taste always ran to Tangerine Dream and King Crimson anyhow.Well-ordered, high-tech music.White-boy stuff.Cheesecake s eyes glint in the light from the building the others are burning down across the quad.His irises are bright, mirrored rings. Fuck, whispers Florida, and reaches for his holster.Sailor stops him with a hand on his elbow.Florida glances at him, and Sailor shakes his head.Cheesecake stops before them and sets the ghetto blaster down, dancing jointlessly. I thought you d gone deadhead, Florida says mildly.Cheesecake dances. Say what? The music is pretty goddamn loud.file:///C|/.prehensive%20collection/Anthologies/Book%20of%20The%20Dead/Stephen%20King%20-%20Book%20of%20the%20Dead.htm[3/19/2010 4:15:02 PM] I nearly shot your nigger-brains out! yells Florida. Wha for? Florida and Sailor glance at each other and laugh. Oh, man& says Florida, shaking his head. Hey, you like these? Cheesecake points to his eyes. They bad, or what? Where d you get em? yells Sailor. I dunno.Some building. He waves across the quad, where the building burns. Optical sciences, says Sailor. Yeah. The song changes; the beat doesn t. You re gonna get your ass shot off with those on, yells Florida. Say what? Florida shakes his head and turns to Sailor. I don t think the others are gonna be too enthused on coming down on that place, Sailor, he says. Nopercentage in it. Sailor nods. Figured. I have to tell you, too. He watches Cheesecake dancing. Sweetpea thinks& well, she wants some of the guys to split up, you know, and comewith her.You aren t exactly Number One on her hit parade. She wants to leave, let her. Yeah, but& a lot of the guys d go with her.You know how it is. There s girls at that station in the desert. Yeah? Hearing this last, Cheesecake brightens. Hey, yeah? Sailor nods, and begins to elaborate, but stops when he sees Florida staring at the zoo pen.He turns to look. Hey, Jo-Jo! Cheesecake points and grins. Check you out, bro! sounds they make i remember from boxes it made me move not toward like food but with and sometimes with sounds and moving with her* * * Jesus Christ, Sailor breathes, watching Jo-Jo stiffly dancing. He remembers. Later that night Jimmy sees Cheesecake coming down the steps of the Student Union and blows his nigger brains all over the concrete.Engineeringdefeats American History. He was walkin funny an his eyes was all fucked an shit, he tells Sailor. What the hell was I supposed to think? Fuck if I know, replies Sailor, certain now that it s time he moved on.[10]Leonard in the monitor room is drawing circles on a yellow legal pad.He draws them two lines tall and one after the other, circle beside circle.Hefile:///C|/.prehensive%20collection/Anthologies/Book%20of%20The%20Dead/Stephen%20King%20-%20Book%20of%20the%20Dead.htm[3/19/2010 4:15:02 PM] is trying to teach himself to draw a perfect circle every time.He will not stop until he draws two consecutive rows of perfect circles.At the end of each row he surveys the monitor screens.Cameras are placed around the station, along with an alarm system on the bottom row ofglass panes around the perimeter.Leonard does not see the Ryder truck with its lights out glide to the base of the slope and stop several hundred yards from the south end of theEcosphere.He does not see the driver s-side door open and close (without the cab light coming on), nor the black-clad driver hurrying to the backto raise the door.He does not see the masked Pied Piper with a flashlight beam lead a group of shambling figures toward the Ecosphere.Leonard draws a row of nearly perfect circles and surveys the monitors.He looks directly at the Ryder truck at the bottom left of Monitor Five, butmotionless in the dark it looks like the rest of the angular landscape and he returns to drawing circles.He completes a perfect row, and is halfway through a second when the alarm goes off.[11]Marly awakens to the sound of a distant bell.It is dark inside her two-man tent.She slips out of her sleeping bag and pushes past the entranceflaps.Stars shine in the Arizona sky above glass above desert built in desert.She zips her coverall and tries to get her bearings.It s the general alarm; somebody on monitor watch must have hit it.Monitor watch?A chill clenches her stomach
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