It

Belch screamed, and his voice was high, almost a girl’s voice.
Everything happened fast then, b ut to Ben Hanscom it all seemed slow; it all seemed to happen in a series of shutterclicks, like action stills in a Life-magazine photo –essay. His panic was gone. He had discovered something inside him suddenly, and because it had no use for panic, that something just ate the panic whole.
In the first shutterclick, Henry had snatched his sweatshirt all the way up to his nipples. Blood was pouring from the shallow vertical cut above his bellybutton.
In the second shutterclick, Henry drew the knife down again, operating fast, like a lunatic battle –surgeon under an aerial bombardment. Fresh blood Sowed.
Backward, Ben thought coldly as blood flowed down and pooled between the waistband of his jeans and his skin. Got to go backward. That’s the only direction I can get away in. Belch and Victor weren’t holding him anymore. In spite of Henry’s command, they had drawn away. They had drawn away in horror. But if he ran, Bowers would catch him.
In the third shutterclick, Henry connected the two vertical slashes with a short horizontal line. Ben could feel blood running into his underpants now, and a sticky snail-trail was creeping down his left thigh.
Henry leaned back momentarily, frowning with the studied concentration of an artist painting a landscape. After H comes E, Ben thought, and that was all it took to get him moving. He pulled forward a little bit and Henry shoved him back again. Ben pushed with his legs, adding his own force to Henry’s. He hit the white-washed railing between Kansas Street and the drop into the Barrens. As he did, he raised his right foot and planted it in Henry’s belly. This was not a retaliatory act; Ben only wanted to increase his backward force. And yet when he saw the expression of utter surprise on Henry’s face, he was filled with a clear savage joy — a feeling so intense that for a split second he thought the top of his head was going to come off.
Then there was a cracking, splintering sound from the railing. Ben saw Victor and Belch catch Henry before he could fall on his ass in the gutter next to the remains of Bulldozer, and then Ben was falling backward into space. He went with a scream that was half a laugh.
Ben hit the slope on his back and buttocks just below the culvert he had spotted earlier. It was a good thing he landed below it; if he had landed on it, he might well have broken his back. As it was? he landed on a thick cushion of weeds and bracken and barely felt the impact. He did a backward somersault, feet and legs snapping over his head. He landed sitting up and went sliding down the slope backward like a kid on a big green Chute-the –Chute, his sweatshirt pulled up around his neck, his hands grabbing for purchase and doing nothing but yanking out tuft after tuft of bracken and witch-grass.
He sa w the top of the embankment (it seemed impossible that he had just been standing up there) receding with crazy cartoon speed. He saw Victor and Belch, their faces round white O’s, staring down at him. He had time to mourn his library books. Then he fetched up against something with agonizing force and nearly bit his tongue in half.
It was a downed tree, and it checked Ben’s fall by nearly breaking his left leg. He clawed his way back up the slope a little bit, pulling his leg free with a groan. The tree had stopped him about halfway down. Below, the bushes were thicker. Water falling from the culvert ran over his hands in thin streams.
There was a shriek from above him. Ben looked up again and saw Henry Bowers come flying over the drop, his knife clenched between his teeth. He landed on both feet, body thrown backward at a steep angle so he would not overbalance. He skidded to the end of a gigantic set of footprints and then began to run down the embankment in a series of gangling kangaroo leaps.
‘I’n goin oo kill ooo, Its!’ Henry was shrieking around the knife, and Ben didn’t need a UN translator to tell him Henry was saying I’m going to kill you, Tits.
‘I’n gain oo huckin kill ooo!’
Now, with that cold general’s eye he had discovered up above on the sidewalk, Ben saw what he had to do. He managed to gain his feet just before Henry arrived, the knife now in his hand and held straight out in front of him like a bayonet. Ben was peripherally aware that the left leg of his jeans was shredded, and his leg was bleeding much more heavily than his stomach . . . but it was supporting him, and that meant it wasn’t broken. At