Christine - Stephen King [191]
Six rings. Seven. Nobody some.
'Shit on it,' Will whispered, and slammed the phone back down. His face was pale, his nostrils flared wide, like the nostrils of an animal scenting fire upwind. His cigar had gone out. He threw it on the carpet and groped in his bathrobe pocket as he hurried back to the window. His hand found the comforting shape of his aspirator, and his fingers curled around its pistol grip.
Headlights shone momentarily in his face, nearly blinding him, and Will raised his free hand to shield his eyes. Christine hit the snowbank again. Little by little she was bludgeoning her way through to the driveway. He watched her back up across the road and wished savagely for a plough to come along now and hit the damned thing broadside.
No plough came. Christine came again instead, engine howling, lights glaring across his snow-covered lawn. She struck the snowbanks pushing mounds of snow violently to either side. The front end canted up and for a moment Will thought she was going to come right over what was left of the frozen, hard-packed embankment. Then the rear wheels lost traction and spun frantically.
She backed up.
Will's throat felt as if its bore was down to a pinhole. His lungs strained for air. He took the aspirator out and used it. The police. He ought to call the police. They could come. Cunningham's '58 couldn't get him. He was safe in his house. He was -
Christine came again, accelerating across the road, and this time she hit the bank and came over it easily, front end at first tilting up, splashing the front of his house with light, then crashing back down. She was in the driveway. Yes, all right, but she could come no further, she it
Christine never slowed. Still accelerating, she crossed the semicircular driveway on a tangent, ploughed through the shallower, looser snow of the side yard, and roared directly at the picture window where Will Darnell stood looking out.
He staggered backward, gasping hard, and tripped over his own easy chair.
Christine hit the house. The picture window exploded, letting in the shrieking wind. Glass flew in deadly arrows, each of them reflecting Christine's headlamps. Snow blew in and -danced over the rug in erratic corkscrews. The headlights momentarily illuminated the room with the unnatural glare of a television studio, and then she withdrew, her front bumper dragging, her hood popped up, her grille smashed into a chrome-dripping grin full of fangs.
Will was on his hands and knees, gagging harshly for breath, his chest heaving. He was vaguely aware that, had he not tripped over his chair and fallen down, he probably would have been cut to ribbons by flying glass. His robe had come undone and flapped behind him as he got to his feet. The wind streaming in the window picked up the TV Guide from the little table by his chair, and the magazine flew across the room to the foot of the stairs, pages riffling. Will got the telephone in both hands and dialled 0.
Christine reversed along her own tracks through the snow. She went all the way back to the flattened snowback at the entrance to the driveway. Then she came forward, accelerating rapidly, and as she came the bonnet immediately began to uncrimp, the grille to regenerate itself. She slammed into the side of the house below the picture window again. More glass flew; wood splintered and groaned and creaked. The big window's low ledge cracked in two, and for a moment Christine's windscreen, now cracked and milky, seemed to peer in like a giant alien eye.
'Police,' Will said to the operator. His voice was hardly there; it was all wheeze and whistle. His bathrobe flapped in the cold blizzard wind coming in through the shattered window. He saw that the wall below the window was nearly shattered. Broken chunks of lathing protruded like fractured bones. It couldn't get in, could it? Could it?
'I'm sorry, sir, you'll have to speak up,'the operator said. 'We seem to have a very bad connection.'
Police, Will said,