The Regulators - Stephen King [111]
The thing began to decay at once, paw-fingers turning black, ribcage collapsing, eyes falling in like marbles. Steam began to rise from its fur, and the stench rose with it. A moment or two later, those thick pink streams began to ooze out of its liquefying corpse.
Johnny and Brad set Jim Reed's body gently down. Johnny reached for the .30-.06 and poked the barrel at the coyote. He blinked with surprise (moderate surprise; his capacity for any large emotional reaction seemed pretty well drained) as it slid past the darkening hide with no feeling of resistance at all.
'It's like prodding cigarette smoke,' he said, handing the gun back to Cynthia. 'I don't think it's here at all. I don't think any of it's here, not really.'
Steve Ames stepped forward, took Johnny's hand, and guided it to the shoulder of his shirt. Johnny felt a line of ragged punctures made by the mountain lion's claws. Blood had soaked through the cotton enough for it to squelch under Johnny's fingers. 'The thing that did this to me wasn't cigarette smoke,' Steve said.
Johnny started to reply, then was distracted by a strange rattling sound. It reminded him of cocktail shakers in the be-bop bars of his youth. Back in the fifties, that had been, when you couldn't get smashed without a tie on if you were a member of the country club set. The sound was coming from Dave Reed, who was standing rigidly beside his mother. It was his teeth.
'Come on,' Brad said. 'Let's get the hell back under cover before something else comes. Vampire bats, maybe, or — '
'You want to stop right there,' Cynthia said. 'I'm warning you, big boy.'
'Sorry,' Brad said. Then, gently: 'Get moving, Cammie, okay?'
'Don't you tell me to get moving!' she responded crossly. Her arm was around Dave's waist. She might as well have been hugging an iron bar, so far as Johnny could see. Except for the shivering, that was. And that weird thing with the teeth. 'Can't you see he's scared to death?'
More howls drifted through the darkness. The stench of the coyote Cynthia had shot was rapidly becoming unbearable.
'Yes, Cammie, I can,' Brad said. His voice was low and kind. Johnny thought the man could have made a fortune as a psychiatrist. 'But you have to get moving. Else we'll have to go on and leave you here. We have to get inside. We have to get to shelter. You know that, don't you?'
'See that you bring my other boy,' she said sharply. 'You're not leaving him beside the path for the . . . you're just not leaving him beside the path. Not!'
We'll bring him,' Brad said in the same low, soothing voice. He bent and took hold of Jim Reed's legs again. Won't we, John?'
'Yes,' Johnny said, wondering what was going to be left of poor old Collie Entragian come morning . . . assuming there would be a morning. Collie didn't have a mother present to stand up for him.
Cammie watched them lift her son's corpse between them, then stood on tiptoe and whispered something into Dave's ear. It must have been the right thing, because the kid got moving again.
They had made only a few steps when there was a subdued rattle up ahead, the gritty crunch of a footstep on the new surface of the ground, then a muffled cry of exasperated pain. Dave Reed shrieked as piercingly as a starlet in a horror movie. This sound more than that of strangers in the woods made Johnny's balls pull up against his groin. From the corner of his eye he saw the hippie grab hold of the rifle barrel when Cynthia brought it up. Steve pushed it back down again, murmuring for her to hold on, just hold on.
'Don't shoot!' a voice called from the tangle of shadows up ahead and to their left. It was a voice Johnny recognized. 'We're friends, so just take it easy. Okay?'
'Doc?' Johnny, who had come close to dropping his end of Jim Reed, now renewed his grip in spite of his aching arms and shoulders. Before the sounds from up ahead had begun, he'd been thinking of something from Intruder in the Dust.