（外文电子版资料）SK.Desperation.doc

PAGE PAGE 97 PART 1 HIGHWAY 50 CHAPTER 1 1 “Oh! Oh, Jesus! Gross!” “What, Mary, what?” “Didn’t you see it?” “See what?” She looked at him, and in the harsh desert sunlight he saw that a lot of the color had gone out of her face, leaving just the marks of sunburn on her cheeks and across her brow, where not even a strong sunblock cream would entirely protect her. She was very fair and burned easily. “On that sign. That speed-limit sign.” “‘What about it?” “There was a dead cat on it, Peter! Nailed there or glued there or some damned thing.” He hit the brake pedal. She grabbed his shoulder at once. “Don’t you even think about going back.” “But—” “But what? Did you want to take a picture of it? No way, Josd. If I have to look at that again, I’ll throw up.” “Was it a white cat?” He could see the back of a sign in the rearview mirror—the speed-limit sign she was talking about, presumably—but that was all. And when they’d passed it, he had been looking off in the other direction, at some birds flying toward the nearest wedge of mountains. Strictly attending to the highway was not something one had to do every second out here; Nevada called its stretch of U.S. 50 “The Loneliest Highway in America,” and in Peter Jackson’s opinion, it lived up to its billing. Of course he was a New York boy, and he supposed he might be suffering a cumulative case of the creeps. Desert ago-raphobia, Ballroom Syndrome, something like that. “No, it was a tiger-stripe,” she said. “What difference does it make?” “I thought maybe Satanists in the desert,” he said. “This place is supposed to be filled with weirdos, isn’t that what Marielle said?” “ ‘Intense’ was the word she used,” Mary said. “ ‘Cen-tral Nevada’s full of intense people.’ Quote-unquote. Gary said pretty much the same. But since we haven’t seen anybody since we crossed the California state line—” “Well, in Falion—“ “Pit-stops don’t count,” she said. “Although even there, the people .?.?.” She gave him a funny, helpless look that