Carter yanked out the tails of his shirt. A screaming woman--it was Carla Venziano--ran into him, and he hurled her aside. Then he jammed the VADER envelope into his belt at the small of his back and bloused the tails of his shirt out over it.
A little insurance was always a good thing.
He backed toward the stage, not wanting to be blindsided. When he reached the stairs, he turned and trotted up them. Randolph, the town's fearless Chief, was still in his seat with his hands planted on his meaty thighs. He could have been a statue except for the single vein pulsing in the center of his forehead.
Carter took Big Jim by the arm. "Come on, boss."
Big Jim looked at him as if he did not quite know where or even who he was. Then his eyes cleared a little. "Grinnell?"
Carter pointed to the body of the woman sprawled in the center aisle, the growing puddle around her head matching her dress.
"Okay, good," Big Jim said. "Let's get out of here. Downstairs. You too, Peter. Get up." And when Randolph continued to sit and stare at the maddened crowd, Big Jim kicked him in the shin. "Move."
In the pandemonium, no one heard the shots from next door.
25
Barbie and Rusty stared at each other.
"What the hell is going on over there?" Rusty asked.
"I don't know," Barbie said, "but it doesn't sound good."
There were more gunshots from the Town Hall, then one that was much closer: from upstairs. Barbie hoped it was their guys ... and then he heard someone yell, "No, Junior! What are you, crazy? Wardlaw, back me up!" More gunshots followed. Four, maybe five.
"Ah, Jesus," Rusty said. "We're in trouble."
"I know," Barbie said.
26
Junior paused on the PD steps, looking over his shoulder toward the newly hatched uproar at the Town Hall. The people on the benches outside were now standing and craning their necks, but there was nothing to see. Not for them, and not for him. Perhaps someone had assassinated his father--he could hope; it would save him the trouble--but in the meantime, his business was inside the PD. In the Coop, to be specific.
Junior pushed through the door with WORKING TOGETHER: YOUR HOMETOWN POLICE DEPARTMENT AND YOU printed on it. Stacey Moggin came hurrying toward him. Rupe Libby was behind her. In the ready-room, standing in front of the grumpy sign reading COFFEE AND DONUTS ARE NOT FREE, was Mickey Wardlaw. Hulk or not, he looked very frightened and unsure of himself.
"You can't come in here, Junior," Stacey said.
"Sure, I can." Sure came out surrr. It was the numbness at the side of his mouth. Thallium poisoning! Barbie! "I'm on the force." Um onna forsh.
"You're drunk, is what you are. What's going on over there?" But then, perhaps deciding he was incapable of any coherent reply, the bitch gave him a push in the center of his chest. It made him stagger on his bad leg and almost fall. "Go away, Junior." She looked back over her shoulder and spoke her last words on Earth. "You stay where you are, Wardlaw. No one goes downstairs."
When she turned back, meaning to bulldoze Junior out of the station ahead of her, she found herself looking into the muzzle of a police-issue Beretta. There was time for one more thought--Oh no, he wouldn't--and then a painless boxing glove hit her between the breasts and drove her backward. She saw Rupe Libby's amazed face upside down as her head tilted back. Then she was gone.
"No, Junior! What are you, crazy?" Rupe shouted, clawing for his gun. "Wardlaw, back me up!"
But Mickey Wardlaw only stood gaping as Junior pumped five bullets into Piper Libby's cousin. His left hand was numb, but his right was still okay; he didn't even need to be a particularly good shot, with a stationary target just seven feet away. The first two rounds went into Rupe's belly, driving him against Stacey Moggin's desk and knocking it over. Rupe doubled up, holding himself. Junior's third shot went wild, but the next two went into the top of Rupe's head. He went down in a grotesquely balletic posture, his legs splaying out to either side and his head--what remained of it--coming to rest on the floor, as if in a final deep bow.
Junior limped into the ready room with the smoking Beretta held out in front of him. He couldn't remember exactly how many shots he had fired; he thought seven. Maybe eight. Or eleventy-nine--who could know for sure? His headache was back.
Mickey Wardlaw raised his hand. There was a frightened, placa-tory smile on his large face. "No trouble from me, bro," he said. "You do what you got to do." And made the peace sign.
"I will," Junior said. "Bro."
He shot Mickey. The big boy went down, peace sign now framing the hole in his head that had lately held an eye. The remaining eye rolled up to look at Junior with the dumb humility of a sheep in the shearing pen. Junior shot him again, just to be sure. Then he looked around. He had the place to himself, it appeared.
"Okay," he said. "Oh ... kay. "
He started toward the stairs, then went back to Stacey Moggin's body. He verified the fact that she was carrying a Beretta Taurus like his, and ejected the mag from his own gun. He replaced it with a full one from her belt.
Junior turned, staggered, went to one knee, and got up again. The black spot on the left side of his vision now seemed as big as a manhole cover, and he had an idea that meant his left eye was pretty much fucked. Well, that was all right; if he needed more than one eye to shoot a man locked in a cell, he wasn't worth a hoot in a henhouse, anyway. He walked across the ready room, slipped in the late Mickey Wardlaw's blood, and almost fell again. But he caught himself in time. His head was thumping, but he welcomed it. It's keeping me sharp, he thought.
"Hello, Baaarbie, " he called down the stairs. "I know what you did to me and I'm coming for you. If you've got a prayer to say, better make it a quick one."
27
Rusty watched the limping legs descend the metal stairs. He could smell gunsmoke, he could smell blood, and he understood perfectly well that his time of dying had come round. The limping man was here for Barbie, but he would almost certainly not neglect a certain caged physician's assistant on his way by. He was never going to see Linda or the Js again.
Junior's chest came into view, then his neck, then his head. Rusty took one look at the mouth, which was dragged down on the left in a frozen leer, and at the left eye, which was weeping blood, and thought: Very far gone. A wonder he's still on his feet and a pity he didn't wait just a little longer. A little longer and he wouldn't have been capable of crossing the street.
Faintly, in another world, he heard a bullhorn-amplified voice from the Town Hall: "DO NOT RUN! DO NOT PANIC! THE DANGER IS OVER! THIS IS OFFICER HENRY MORRISON, AND I REPEAT: THE DANGER IS OVER!"
Junior slipped, but by then he was on the last stair. Instead of falling and breaking his neck, he only went to one knee. He rested that way for a few moments, looking like a prizefighter waiting for the mandatory eight-count to rise and resume the bout. To Rusty everything seemed clear, near, and very dear. The precious world, suddenly grown thin and insubstantial, was now only a single gauze wrapping between him and whatever came next. If anything.
Go all the way down, he thought at Junior. Fall on your face. Pass out, you motherfucker.
But Junior laboriously rose to his feet, gazed at the gun in his hand as if he had never seen such a thing before, then looked down the corridor to the cell at the end, where Barbie stood with his hands wrapped around the bars, looking back.
"Baaarbie," Junior said in a crooning whisper, and started forward.
Rusty stepped backward, thinking that perhaps Junior would miss him on his way by. And perhaps kill himself after finishing with Barbie. He knew these were craven thoughts, but he also knew they were practical thoughts. He could do nothing for Barbie, but he might be able to survive himself.
And it could have worked, had he been in one of the cells on the left side of the corridor, because that was Junior's blind side. But he had been put in one on the right, and Junior saw him move. He stopped and peered in at Rusty, his half-frozen face simultaneously bewildered a
nd sly.
"Fusty," he said. "Is that your name? Or is it Berrick? I can't remember."
Rusty wanted to beg for his life, but his tongue was pasted to the roof of his mouth. And what good would begging do? The young man was already raising the gun. Junior was going to kill him. No power on earth would stop him.
Rusty's mind, in its last extremity, sought an escape many other minds had found in their last moments of consciousness--before the switch was pulled, before the trap opened, before the pistol pressed against the temple spat fire. This is a dream, he thought. All of it. The Dome, the craziness in Dinsmore's field, the food riot; this young man, too. When he pulls the trigger the dream will end and I'll wake up in my own bed, on a cool and crisp fall morning. I'll turn to Linda and say, "What a nightmare I had, you won't believe it."
"Close your eyes, Fusty," Junior said. "It'll be better that way."
28
Jackie Wettington's first thought upon entering the PD lobby was Oh my dear God, there's blood everywhere.
Stacey Moggin lay against the wall below the community out-reach bulletin board with her cloud of blond hair spread around her and her empty eyes staring up at the ceiling. Another cop--she couldn't make out which one--was sprawled on his face in front of the overturned reception desk, his legs spread out to either side in an impossibly deep split. Beyond him, in the ready room, a third cop lay dead on his side. That one had to be Wardlaw, one of the new kids on the block. He was too big to be anyone else. The sign over the coffee-station table was spattered with the kid's blood and brains. It now read C FEE AND DO ARE OT FREE.
There was a faint clacking sound from behind her. She whirled, unaware that she had raised her gun until she saw Rommie Burpee in the front sight. Rommie didn't even notice her; he was staring at the bodies of the three dead cops. The clack had been his Dick Cheney mask. He had taken it off and dropped it on the floor.
"Christ, what happened here?" he asked. "Is this--"
Before he could finish, a shout came from downstairs in the Coop: "Hey, fuckface! I got you, didn't I? I got you good!"
And then, incredibly, laughter. It was high-pitched and maniacal. For a moment Jackie and Rommie could only stare at each other, unable to move.
Then Rommie said, "I t'ink dat's Barbara."
29
Ernie Calvert sat behind the wheel of the phone company van, which was idling at a curb stenciled POLICE BUSINESS 10 MINS ONLY. He had locked all the doors, afraid of being carjacked by one or more of the panic-stricken people fleeing down Main Street from the Town Hall. He was holding the rifle Rommie had stowed behind the driver's seat, although he wasn't sure he could shoot anybody who tried to break in; he knew these people, had for years sold them their groceries. Terror had rendered their faces strange but not unrecognizable.
He saw Henry Morrison coursing back and forth on the Town Hall lawn, looking like a hunting dog searching for scent. He was shouting into his bullhorn and trying to bring a little order out of the chaos. Someone knocked him over and Henry got right back up, God bless him.
And now here were others: Georgie Frederick, Marty Arsenault, the Searles kid (recognizable by the bandage he was still wearing on his head), both Bowie brothers, Roger Killian, and a couple of the other newbies. Freddy Denton was marching down the Hall's broad front steps with his gun drawn. Ernie didn't see Randolph, although anyone who didn't know better would have expected the Chief of Police to be in charge of the pacification detail, which was itself teetering on the edge of chaos.
Ernie did know better. Peter Randolph had always been an ineffectual bluster-bug, and his absence at this particular Snafu Circus did not surprise Ernie in the least. Or concern him. What did concern him was that no one was coming out of the Police Department, and there had been more gunshots. These were muffled, as if they'd originated downstairs where the prisoners were kept.
Not ordinarily a praying fellow, Ernie prayed now. That none of the people fleeing the Town Hall would notice the old man behind the wheel of the idling van. That Jackie and Rommie would come out safe, with or without Barbara and Everett. It occurred to him that he could just drive away, and was shocked by how tempting the idea was.
His cell phone rang.
For a moment he just sat there, not sure of what he was hearing, and then he yanked it off his belt. When he opened it, he saw JOANIE in the window. But it wasn't his daughter-in-law; it was Norrie.
"Grampa! Are you all right?"
"Fine," he said, looking at the chaos in front of him.
"Did you get them out?"
"It's happening right now, honey," he said, hoping it was the truth. "I can't talk. Are you safe? Are you at ... at the place?"
"Yes! Grampy, it glows at night! The radiation belt! The cars glowed too, but then they stopped! Julia says she thinks it isn't dangerous! She says she thinks it's a fake, to scare people away!"
You better not count on that, Ernie thought.
Two more muffled, thudding gunshots came from inside the PD. Someone was dead downstairs in the Coop; just about had to be.
"Norrie, I can't talk now."
"Is it going to be all right, Grampa?"
"Yes, yes. I love you, Norrie."
He closed the phone. It glows, he thought, and wondered if he would ever see that glow. Black Ridge was close (in a small town, everything's close), but just now it seemed far away. He looked at the PD's doors, trying to will his friends to come out. And when they didn't, he climbed from the van. He couldn't just sit out here any longer. He had to go inside and see what was happening.
30
Barbie saw Junior raise the gun. He heard Junior tell Rusty to close his eyes. He shouted without thinking, with no idea of what he was going to say until the words emerged from his mouth. "Hey, fuckface! I got you, didn't I? I got you good!" The laughter that followed sounded like the laugh of a lunatic who has been ditching his meds.
So that's how I laugh when I'm fixing to die, Barbie thought. I'll have to remember that. Which made him laugh harder.
Junior turned toward him. The right side of his face registered surprise; the left was frozen in a scowl. It reminded Barbie of some supervillain he'd read about in his youth, but he couldn't remember which. Probably one of Batman's enemies, they were always the creepiest. Then he remembered that when his little brother Wendell tried to say enemies it came out enemas. This made him laugh harder than ever.
There could be worse ways to go out, he thought as he reached both hands through the bars and shot Junior a nice double-bird. Remember Stubb, in Moby-Dick? "Whatever my fate, I'll go to it laughing."
Junior saw Barbie giving him the finger--in stereo--and forgot all about Rusty. He started down the short corridor with his gun held out in front of him. Barbie's senses were very clear now, but he didn't trust them. The people he thought he heard moving around and speaking upstairs were almost surely just his imagination. Still, you played your string out to the end. If nothing else, he could give Rusty a few more breaths and a little more time.
"There you are, fuckface," he said. "Remember how I cleaned your clock that night in Dipper's? You cried like a little bitch."
"I didn't."
It came out sounding like an exotic special on a Chinese menu. Junior's face was a wreck. Blood from his left eye was dribbling down one stubble-darkened cheek. It occurred to Barbie that he might just have a chance here. Not a good one, but bad chances were better than no chances. He began to pace from side to side in front of his bunk and his toilet, slowly at first, then faster. Now you know what a mechanical duck in a shooting gallery feels like, he thought. I'll have to remember that, too.
Junior followed his movements with his one good eye. "Did you fuck her? Did you fuck Angie?" Dih-ooo fuh'er? Dih-oo fuh An'yee?
Barbie laughed. It was the crazy laugh, one he still didn't recognize as his own, but there was nothing counterfeit about it. "Did I fuck her? Did I fuck her? Junior, I fucked her with her rightside up, her upside down, and her backside all pre
sent and accounted for. I fucked her until she sang 'Hail to the Chief' and 'Bad Moon Rising.' I fucked her until she pounded on the floor and yelled for a whole lot more. I--"
Junior tilted his head toward the gun. Barbie saw it and jigged to the left without delay. Junior fired. The bullet struck the brick wall at the back of the cell. Dark red chips flew. Some hit the bars--Barbie heard the metallic rattle, like peas in a tin cup, even with the gunshot ringing in his ears--but none of them hit Junior.
Shit. From down the hall, Rusty yelled something, probably trying to distract Junior, but Junior was done being distracted. Junior had his prime target in his sights.
Not yet, you don't, Barbie thought. He was still laughing. 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 woodchucks 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. Thank God I put in that fresh clip, Junior thought.