Needful Things - Stephen King [326]
"I don't know what you're talking about!" George T. Nelson shouted back. "All I know is that you're brave enough to kill teenytiny parakeets but you don't have balls enough to take me on in a fair fight!"
"Don't know what don't know what I'm talking about?" Frank sputtered. The muzzle of the Llama wavered wildly back and forth.
He could not believe the gall of the man below him on the sidewalk; simply could not believe it. To be standing there with one foot on the pavement and the other practically in eternity and to simply go on lying
"No! I don't! Not the slightest idea!"
In the extremity of his rage, Frank jewett regressed to the childhood response to such outrageous, boldface denial: "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"
"Coward!" George T. Nelson smartly returned. "Baby-coward!
Parakeet-killer!"
"Blackmailer!"
"Loony! Put the gun away, loony! Fight me fair!"
Frank grinned down at him. "Fair? Fight you fair? What do you know about fair?"
George T. Nelson held up his empty hands and waggled the fingers at Frank. "More than you, it looks like."
Frank opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. He was temporarily silenced by George T. Nelson's empty hands.
"Go on," George T. Nelson said. "Put it away. Let's do it like they do in the Westerns, George. If you've got the sack for it, that is. Fastest man wins."
Frank thought: Well, why not? just why the hell not?
He hadn't much else to live for, one way or the other, and if he did nothing else, he could show his old "friend" he wasn't a coward.
"Okay," he said, and shoved the Llama into the waistband of his own pants. He held his hands out in front of him, hovering just I above the butt of the gun. "How do you want to do it, GeorgiePorgie?"
George T. Nelson was grinning. "You start down the steps," he said. "I start up. Next time the thunder goes overhead-" "All right,"
Frank said. "Fine. Let's do it."
He started down the stairs. And George T. Nelson started up.
7
Polly had just spotted the green awning of Needful Things up ahead when the funeral parlor and the barber shop went up. The glare of light and the roar of sound were enormous. She saw debris burst out of the heart of the explosion like asteroids in a science fiction movie and ducked instinctively. It was well that she did; several chunks of wood and the stainless-steel lever from the side of Chair #2-Henry Gendron's chair-smashed through the windshield of her Toyota. The lever made a weird, hungry humming sound as it flew through the car and exited by way of the rear window. Broken glass whispered through the air in a widening shotgun cloud.
The Toyota, with no driver to steer it, bumped up over the curb, struck a fire hydrant, and stalled.
Polly sat up, blinking, and stared out through the hole in the windshield. She saw someone coming out of Needful Things and heading toward one of the three cars parked in front of the store.
In the bright light of the fire across the street, she recognized Alan easily.
"Alan!" She yelled it, but Alan didn't turn. He moved with single-minded purpose, like a robot.
Polly shoved open the door of her car and ran toward him, screaming his name over and over. From down the street came the rapid rattle of gunfire. Alan did not turn in that direction, nor did he look at the conflagration which, only moments ago, had been the funeral parlor and the barber shop. He seemed to be locked entirely on his own interior course of action, and Polly suddenly realized that she was too late. Leland Gaunt had gotten to him. He had bought something after all, and if she didn't make it to his car before he embarked on whatever wild-goose chase it was that Gaunt was sending him on, he would simply leave and God only knew what might happen then.
She ran faster.