Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [182]
He knelt in the shadows and set the cooler behind him, close to the launching platform. “Don’t you move,” he told Old Bob softly. “Just stand there. You ain’t carrying a gun, are you?”
Old Bob shook his head. His big hands hung limply at his sides, and his body slumped. “Don’t do this, Deny. There are women and children up there. They could be hurt.”
“Ain’t nobody going to be hurt, old man. What do you think I am, stupid?”
He kept the gun leveled as he lifted the cooler onto the platform and shoved it back into the shadows between the fireworks cases where it couldn’t be seen if you weren’t looking. Well, okay, maybe a few people would end up getting hurt, hit by debris or something. After all, that was part of the plan, wasn’t it? Someone gets hurt, MidCon looks even worse. Derry gave a mental shrug. Point is, the strike will be over and in the long run everyone’ll be happy.
He reached behind the cooler to where he had placed the timer switch and activated it. He had five minutes. He stood up, feeling good. “See, easy as pie. Now you turn around and walk down along the riverbank, Robert Freemark, nice and slow. I’ll be right behind...”
Then everything flared white hot about him, and it felt as if a giant fist had slammed into his back.
The force of the bomb’s blast blew Derry Howe forward into Old Bob and carried both of them fifteen feet through the air before it dumped them in a tangled heap. Old Bob lay crumpled in the grass, one arm twisted awkwardly, Derry sprawled half on top of him. His ears rang and his head throbbed, and after a minute he felt the pain begin. I’m dying, he thought. Fireworks were exploding all around him, rockets going off in their launcher tubes or spinning wildly off into the darkness or streaming fire into the trees and sky and out over the river. The launching platform was in flames, and the frameworks for the flag display and others hung in ragged, half-burned tatters. The spectators were running and screaming in all directions, blankets scattered, lawn chairs dumped, coolers abandoned. Deep booms and ear-piercing whistles marked the detonation of explosive after explosive from within the white-hot inferno below. Old Bob felt blood on his chest and face and could not tell if it was his or Derry’s. He could feel blood leaking inside his mouth and down his throat. When he tried to free himself from Deny, he found he could not move.
He closed his eyes against his pain and weariness.
Well, that’s it, that’s all she wrote.
He had just enough time left to wonder about Nest, and then everything went black.
Chapter Thirty-One
The creature that emerged from the shattered remnants of the old oak was so loathsome that it defied comparison with anything John Ross had ever seen. It slouched out of the smoke and ruin, materializing as the pulsating green light fragmented, a nightmare come to life. It walked upright on two legs, but it was hunched over and crook-backed, as if its huge shoulders would not permit it to straighten. Tufts of coarse, black hair dotted its scaly surface, and it had a snake’s hooded yellow eyes and wicked tongue. Toes and fingers split in tripods from its feet and hands, ending in claws that seemed better suited to a great cat. Its face was long and narrow and featureless except for the slits that served as its eyes and mouth, and its head was a smooth, sinuous extension of its corded neck. It was big, fully ten feet in height, even stooped as