The Regulators - Stephen King [109]
Then Dave sensed the lack of strength in the hands holding his neck and tore out of Brad's grip. The boy showed no interest in Johnny, however. He charged at his mother instead.
'You too!' he screamed. 'You killed him, too!'
She turned toward him, her face shocked and flabbergasted.
'Why did you send us out here, Ma? Why?'
He snatched the gun from her unresisting hand, held it up in front of his eyes for a moment, and then heaved it into the woods . . . except they weren't woods, not anymore. The changes had continued all around them even while they had been striving one with the other, and they were now standing in a bristling, alien forest of cacti. Even the smell of the burning house had changed; it now smelled like burning mesquite, or maybe sagebrush.
'Dave . . . Davey, I . . . '
She fell silent, only staring at him. He stared back, just as white, just as drawn. It occurred to Brad that not long ago the boy had been standing on his lawn, laughing and throwing a Frisbee. Dave's face began to contort. His mouth drew down and shuddered open. Gleaming strands of spit stretched between his lips. He began to wail. His mother put her arms around him and began to rock him. 'No, it's all right,' she said. Her own eyes were like smooth dark stones in a dry riverbed. 'No, it's all right. No, honey, it's all right, Mom's here and it's all right.'
Johnny stepped back on to the path. He looked briefly at the dead animal, which was now shimmering like something seen through a furnace-haze and oozing runnels of thick pink liquid. Then he looked at Cammie and her remaining son.
'Cammie,' he said. 'Mrs Reed. I did not shoot Jim. I swear I didn't. What happened was — '
'Be still,' she said, not looking at him. Dave was half a foot taller than his mother and had to outweigh her by seventy pounds, but she rocked him as easily now as she must have done when he was eight months old and colicky. 'I don't want to hear what happened. I don't care what happened. Let's just go back. Do you want to go back, David?'
Weeping, not looking, he nodded against her shoulder.
She turned her terrible dry eyes toward Brad. 'Bring my other boy. We're not leaving him out here with that thing.' She looked briefly at the fuming, stinking carcass of the mountain lion, then back at Brad. 'Bring him, do you understand?'
'Yes, ma'am,' Brad said. 'I absolutely do.'
7
Tom Billingsley was standing at the kitchen door, peering out into the growing gloom toward his open back gate and trying to make sense of the sounds and voices he heard coming from beyond it. When a set of fingers tapped him on the shoulder, he almost had a heart attack.
Once he would have spun gracefully and coldcocked the intruder with his fist or elbow before either of them knew what was happening, but the slim young man who had been capable of such speed and agility was long gone. He did strike out, but the redheaded woman in the blue shorts and sleeveless blouse had plenty of time to step back, and Tom's arthritis-bunched knuckles coldcocked nothing but thin air.
'Christ, woman!' he cried.
'I'm sorry.' Audrey's face, normally pretty, was haggard. There was a hand-shaped bruise on her left cheek and her nose was swollen, the nostrils caked with dried blood. 'I was going to say something, but I thought that might scare you even worse.'
What happened to you, Aud?'
'It doesn't matter. Where are the others?'
'Some in the woods, some next door. It — ' A wavering howl rose. The red light had faded from the air now, and all that remained was ashes of orange. 'It doesn't sound too good for the ones that're out. A lot of screaming.' He thought of something. Where's Gary?'
She stood aside and pointed. Gary lay in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. He had passed out while still holding his wife's hand. Now that the screaming and yelling from the greenbelt