Roadwork - Stephen King [115]
CRRRACKK! and the briefcase exploded into two pieces and jumped savagely into the air, flapping, disgorging a flutter of papers for the wind to stir an invisible finger through.
He fired again, this time at the right front wheel of the green sedan, and the tire blew. One of the men behind the car screamed in soprano terror.
He looked over at the police car and the driver's side door was open. The cop with the sunglasses was lying half in on the seat, using his radio. Soon all the party-goers would be here. They were going to give him away, a little piece for anyone who wanted one, and it would not be personal anymore. He felt a relief that was as bitter as aloes. Whatever it had been, whatever mournful sickness that had brought him to this, the last crotch of a tall tree, it was not his alone anymore, whispering and crying in secret. He had joined the mainstream of lunacy, he had come out of the closet. Soon they could reduce him to safe headline-SHAKY CEASE-FIRE HOLDS ON CRESTALLEN STREET.
He put the rifle down and scrambled across the living room floor on his hands and knees, being careful not to cut himself on the glass from the shattered picture frame. He got the small pillow and then scrambled back. The cop was not in the car anymore.
He picked up the Magnum and put two shots across their bow. The pistol bucked heavily in his hand, but the recoil was manageable. His shoulder throbbed like a rotted tooth.
One of the cops, the one without sunglasses, popped up behind the cruiser's hunk to return his fire and he sent two bullets into the cruiser's back window, blowing it inward in a twisted craze of cracks. The cop ducked back down without firing.
"Hold it!" Fenner bawled. "Let me talk to him!"
"Go ahead," one of the cops said.
"Dawes! " Fenner yelled toughly, sounding like a detective in the last reel of a Jimmy Cagney movie. (The police spotlights are crawling relentlessly back and forth over the front of the sleazy slum tenement where "Mad Dog" Dawes has gone to ground with a smoking.45 automatic in each hand." "Mad Dog" is crouched behind an overturned easy chair, wearing a strappy T-shirt and snarling.) "Dawes, can you hear me in there! "
(And "Mad Dog, " his face twisted with defiance-although his brow is greased with sweat-screams out:)
"Come and get me, ya dirty coppers! " He bounced up over the easy chair and emptied the Magnum into the green sedan, leaving a ragged row of holes.
"Jesus!" somebody screamed. "Oh Jesus he's nuts!"
"Dawes! " Fenner yelled.
"You'll never take me alive! " he yelled, delirious with joy. "You're the dirty rats who shot my,kid brother! I'll see some of ya in hell before ya get me!" He reloaded the Magnum with trembling fingers and then put enough shells into the Weatherbee to fill its magazine.
"Dawes! " Fenner yelled again. "How about a deal?
"How about some hot lead, ya dirty screw!" he screamed at Fenner, but he was looking at the police car and when the cop wearing sunglasses put his head stealthily over the hood, he sent him diving with two shots. One of them went through the picture window of the Quinns' house across the street.
"Dawes! " Fenner yelled importantly.
One of the cops said: "Oh shut the fuck up. You're just encouraging him."
There was an embarrassed silence and in it the sound of sirens, still distant, began to rise. He put the Magnum down and picked up the rifle. The joyous delirium had left him feeling tired and achey and needing to shit.
Please let them be quick from the TV stations, he prayed. Quick with their movie cameras.
When the first police car screamed around the corner in a calculated racing drift like something out of The French Connection he was ready. He had fired two of the howitzer shells over the parked cruiser to make them stay down, and he drew a careful bead on the grille of the charging cruiser and squeezed the trigger like a seasoned Richard Widmark-type veteran and the whole grille