I HEAR CHARLIE call for me, but it sounds far away from up here. I have a pretty good view of Windale as it burns. The fire at the medical center is bigger and brighter than before. And the smoke rising up from the Triangle looks thicker, stronger somehow. Things have mostly gone quiet, but from somewhere really far away, I can hear the hollow cry of a siren. Somebody wants to help. How much good it’ll do, I have no idea.
The contraption that Ricky put together looks even more like a scrap-metal sculpture up close. Shards and strips of metal are either welded together or held in place by wads of electrical tape. There really is a stop sign, still attached to its post and everything. And there is wiring. Lots of it. Looping and swirling up the antenna, coiling around metal piping like black snakes. I’m able to trace most of it down to a bunch of cables that wind their way to a breaker box at one side of the rooftop.
It seems like I have two options: Either dismantle the antenna and toss the pieces off the roof, or cut off whatever connection the wires have to the antenna, hopefully breaking the signal.
I think I’ll go with … both.
Stepping up to the antenna, I take hold of a long piece of metal tubing. When I look through the apparatus to the other side of the roof, intending to shove this whole goddamn thing over the edge, I see the Bug Man standing in my way.
The creases in his leather jacket and the oblong discs of the gas mask lenses are full of pale light from the stars and the growing flames in town. The rest of him is solid black. I don’t hear any breathing, despite the canister screwed to the mouth of the mask, but I hear the creak of his jacket and gloves when he raises his hand.
I half expect a thumbs-up, just like the one he gave me on Dagger Hill the day he took Kimberly. But instead, he has his index finger pointed upward. He ticks it back and forth at me.
No, no, no.