On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field.
Авторы: King Stephen Edwin
It was crazy, nuts, but there it was. Not quite yet, you ugly one-eyed motherfucker.
‘She said you couldn’t get it up,Junior. She called you El Limpdick Supremo. We used to laugh about that while we were—’ He leaped to the right at the same instant Junior fired. This time he heard the bullet pass the side of his head: the sound was zzzzzz. More brick chips jumped. One stung the back of Barbie’s neck.
‘Come on,Junior, what’s wrong with you?You shoot like wood-chucks do algebra. You a headcase? That’s what Angie and Frankie always used to say—’
Barbie faked to the right and then ran at the left side of the cell. Junior fired three times, the explosions deafening, the stink of the blown gunpowder rich and strong. Two of the bullets buried themselves in brick; the third hit the metal toilet low down with a spang sound. Water began to pour out. Barbie struck the far wall of the cell hard enough to rattle his teeth.
‘Got you now,’Junior panted. Gah-ooo d’now. But deep down in what remained of his overheated thinking-engine, he wondered. His left eye was blind and his right one had blurred over. He saw not one Barbie but three.
The hateful sonofabitch hit the deck as Junior fired, and this bullet also missed. A small black eye opened in the center of the pillow at the head of the bunk. But at least he was down. No more jigging and jogging. Tliank God I put in that fresh clip, Junior thought.
‘You poisoned me, Baaarbie.’
Barbie had no idea what he was talking about, but agreed at once. ‘That’s right, you loathsome little fuckpuppet, I sure did.’
Junior pushed the Beretta through the bars and closed his bad left eye; that reduced the number of Barbies he saw to just a pair. His tongue was snared between his teeth. His face ran with blood and sweat. ‘Let’s see you run now, Baaarbie..’
Barbie couldn’t run, but he could and did crawl, scuttling right at Junior. The next bullet whistled over his head and he felt a vague burn across one buttock as the slug split his jeans and undershorts and removed the top layer of skin beneath them.
Junior recoiled, tripped, almost went down, caught the bars of the cell on his right, and hauled himself back up. ‘Hold still, motherfucker! ‘
Barbie whirled to the bunk and groped beneath it for the knife. He had forgotten all about the fucking knife.
‘You want it in the back?’Junior asked from behind him.’Okay; that’s all right with me.’
‘Get him!’ Rusty shouted. ‘Get him, GET HIM!’
Before the next gunshot canie, Barbie had just time to think, Jesus Christ, Everett, whose side are you on?
31
Jackie came down the stairs with Rommie behind her. She had time to register the haze of gunsmoke drifting around the caged overhead lights, and the stink of expended powder, and then Rusty Everett was screaming Get him, get him.
She saw Junior Rennie at the end of the corridor, crowding against the bars of the cell at the far end, the one the cops sometimes called the Ritz. He was screaming something, but it was all garbled.
She didn’t think. Nor did she tell junior to raise his hands and turn around. She just put two in his back. One entered his right lung; the other pierced his heart. Junior was dead before he slid to the floor with his face pressed between two bars of the cell, his eyes pulled up so stringently he looked like a Japanese death mask.
What his collapsing body revealed was Dale Barbara himself, crouching on his bunk with the carefully secreted knife in his hand. He had never had a chance to open it.
32
Freddy Denton grabbed Officer Henry Morrison’s shoulder. Denton was not his favorite person tonight, and was never going to be his favorite person again. Not that he ever was, Henry thought sourly. Denton pointed. ‘Why’s that old fool Calvert going into the PD?’ ‘How the hell should I know?’ Henry asked, and grabbed Donnie Baribeau as Donnie ran by, shouting some senseless shit about terrorists.
‘Slow down!’ Henry bellowed into Donnie’s face. ‘It’s all over! Everything’s cool!’
Donnie had been cutting Henry’s hair and telling the same stale jokes twice a month for ten years, but now he looked at Henry as if at a total stranger. Then he tore free and ran in the direction of East Street, where his shop was. Perhaps he meant to take refuge there.
‘No civilians got any business being in the PD tonight,’ Freddy said. Mel Searles steamed up beside him.
‘Well, why don’t you go check him out, killer?’ Henry said. ‘Take this lug with you. Because neither of you are doing the slightest bit of damn good here.’
‘She was going for a gun,’ Freddy said for the first of what would be many times. ‘And I didn’t mean to kill her. Only wing her, like.’
Henry had
