The Regulators - Stephen King [108]
Mrs Reed's keening stopped. She looked up and the still, questioning expression on her white face frightened Cynthia. 'What?' she said, so low that she might have been speaking to herself. 'What did you say?'
'He killed Jimmy!' Dave Reed bawled. His head was bent strenuously forward under the pressure Brad was exerting on his neck, but he still pointed unerringly at Johnny, who was getting to his feet. Blood trickled from one of the writer's nostrils.
'No,' Johnny said heavily. The woman wasn't listening to him, Cynthia saw that clearly in her white and frozen face, but Marinville didn't. 'I understand how you feel, David, but — '
The woman looked down. Cynthia looked down with her. They saw the .45 on the path at the same moment, and both of them went for it. Cynthia dropped to her knees and actually got her hand on it first, but it did her no good. Fingers as cold as marble and as strong as the talons of an eagle closed over her hand and plucked the pistol away.
' — it was all a terrible accident,' Johnny was mumbling. He seemed to be speaking mostly to Dave. He looked ill, on the verge of fainting. 'That's how you have to think of it. As — '
'Look out!' Steve cried, then: 'Jesus Christ, lady, no! Don't!'
'You killed Jimmy?' the woman asked in a deadly-cold voice. 'Why? Why would you do that?'
But she wasn't interested in the answer, it seemed. She lifted the .45, centering it on Johnny Marinville's forehead. There was no question in Cynthia's mind that she meant to kill him. Would have killed him, if not for the new arrival, who came between Cammie and her intended target just before she could squeeze the trigger.
6
Brad recognized the zombie in spite of its hitching, shambling walk and distorted face. He didn't know what kind of force had been responsible for changing the amiable college English teacher from down the block into the thing he was looking at now, and didn't want to know. Looking was bad enough. It was as if someone whose prodigious strength was only overmatched by his sadistic cruelty had gripped Peter Jackson's head between his hands and squeezed. The man's eyes bulged from their sockets; the left had actually burst and lay on his cheek. His grin was even worse, a grotesque ear-to-ear rictus that made Brad think of The Joker in the Batman comic books.
They all stopped moving; Coleridge's Ancient Mariner with his glittering, enchanted gaze might have entered their company. Brad felt his fingers, laced together at the nape of Dave's neck, loosen, but Dave made no immediate effort to pull away. The longhair in the bloodstained tee-shirt was partially blocking Peter's way, and for a moment Brad thought there was going to be a collision. At the last second the hippie managed a single shaky backward step, making room. Peter turned his strangely distended head toward him. The fading light shone on his bulging eyeballs and grinning teeth.
'Find . . . my . . . friend,' Peter said to the hippie. His voice was faint and queasy, as if he had been gassed enough to fuck him up but not quite enough to put him down. 'Sit . . . down . . . with . . . my friend.'
'Do it, man, knock yourself out,' the hippie said in an unsteady voice, then hunched his shoulder in, away from the grinning man. The hippie had been wounded somehow and it obviously hurt him to do that, but he did it anyway. Brad didn't blame him. He wouldn't have wanted to be touched by that thing, either, even in passing.
It went on up the path, kicking the leg of the outstretched animal, and Brad saw a weird thing: the animal — it had been some sort of cat — was decaying with the speed of time-lapse photography, its pelt turning black and beginning to send up tendrils of nasty-smelling steam or smoke.
They remained frozen — the hippie with his bloody shoulders hunched; the counter-girl on one knee; Cammie standing in front of the girl and pointing the gun; Johnny with his hands up, as if he intended to try catching the bullet; Brad and Dave Reed caught in