Song of Susannah - Stephen King [60]
“You Slick’s big brother?” Andolini asked. He sounded amused. And he sounded closer. Roland put him in front of the store, perhaps on the very spot where he and Eddie had come through. He wouldn’t wait long to make his next move; this was the countryside, but there were still people about. The rising black plume of smoke from the overturned wood-waggon would already have been noticed. Soon they would hear sirens.
“I suppose you’d call me his foreman,” Roland said. He pointed at the gun in Eddie’s hand, then pointed into the storeroom, then pointed at himself: Wait for my signal. Eddie nodded.
“Why don’t you send him out, mi amigo? This doesn’t have to be your concern. I’ll take him and let you go. Slick’s the one I want to talk to. Getting the answers I need from him will be a pleasure.”
“You could never take us,” Roland said pleasantly. “You’ve forgotten the face of your father. You’re a bag of shit with legs. Your own ka-daddy is a man named Balazar, and you lick his dirty ass. The others know and they laugh at you. ‘Look at Jack,’ they say, ‘all that ass-licking only makes him uglier.’ ”
There was a brief pause. Then: “You got a mean mouth on you, mister.” Andolini’s voice was level, but all the bogus good humor had gone out of it. All the laughter. “But you know what they say about sticks and stones.”
In the distance, at last, a siren rose. Roland nodded first to John (who was watching him alertly) and then at Eddie. Soon, that nod said.
“Balazar will be building his towers of cards long after you’re nothing but bones in an unmarked grave, Jack. Some dreams are destiny, but not yours. Yours are only dreams.”
“Shut up!”
“Hear the sirens? Your time’s almost u—”
“Vai!” Jack Andolini shouted. “Vai! Get em! I want that old fucker’s head, do you hear me? I want his head! ”
A round black object arced lazily through the hole where the EMPLOYEES ONLY door had been. Another grenado. Roland had been expecting it. He fired once, from the hip, and the grenado exploded in midair, turning the flimsy wall between the storeroom and the lunchroom into a storm of destructive, splintery blowback. There were screams of surprise and agony.
“Now, Eddie!” Roland shouted, and began to fire into the diesel. Eddie joined in. At first Roland didn’t think anything was going to happen, but then a sluggish ripple of blue flame appeared in the center aisle and went snaking toward where the rear wall had been. Not enough! Gods, how he wished it had been the kind they called gasoline!
Roland tipped out the cylinder of his gun, dropped the spent casings around his boots, and reloaded.
“On your right, mister,” John said, almost conversationally, and Roland dropped flat. One bullet passed through the place where he’d been. The second flipped at the ends of his long hair. He’d only had time to reload three of his revolver’s six chambers, but that was one more bullet than he needed. The two harriers flew backward with identical holes in the center of their brows, just below the hairline.
Another hoodlum dashed around the corner of the store on Eddie’s side and saw Eddie waiting for him with a grin on his bloody face. The fellow dropped his gun immediately and began to raise his hands. Eddie put a bullet through his chest before they got as high as his shoulders. He’s learning, Roland thought. Gods help him, but he is.
“That fire’s a little slow for my taste, boys,” said John, and leaped up onto the loading dock. The store was barely visible through the rolling smoke of the deflected grenado, but bullets came flying through it. John seemed not to notice them, and Roland thanked ka for putting such a good man in their path. Such a hard man.
John took a square silver object from his pants pocket, flipped up the lid, and produced a good flame with the flick of his thumb on a small wheel. He tossed the little flaming tinderbox underhand into the storeroom. Flames burst up all around it with a whoomp sound.
“What’s the matter with you?” Andolini screamed. “Get them!”
“Come and do it yourself!” Roland called. At the same time he pulled on John