The Regulators - Stephen King [23]
Don't be stupid, the part of her that still belonged to her said. That part was dismayingly small these days, but it was still there. It's not all about you, Mare; no matter what shit you've been rolling in, the world still doesn't revolve just around you, so why don't you just lighten up a little? You probably wouldn't be half so paranoid if you weren't riding around with no —
Oh shit. Was that Peter down at the end of the block? She couldn't tell for sure, but she thought so. Peter and Old Doc from next door. They seemed to be covering something on the lawn of the house across from the little store.
Thunder bammed this time hard enough to make her jump and gasp. The first drops of rain spattered on to the glass of the windshield, sounding like flecks of metal. She realized she had been sitting here at the corner with the engine idling for . . . well, she didn't know just how long, but for quite a while. The Josephsons and Johnny Marinville must have thought she'd lost her wits. Except the world really didn't revolve just around her; they weren't paying her any attention at all, she saw as she turned the corner. Belinda had given her that one little glance, and now she and the rest of them were looking back down the street again, at whatever her husband and old Billingsley were doing. At whatever they were covering.
Trying to see for herself, groping for the windshield wiper knob as more raindrops — big ones — began to spatter the glass, she didn't have any idea that the yellow space-age van had followed her on to Poplar Street until it rear-ended her.
From Playthings, The International Merchandising Magazine of the Toy Industry, January 1994 (Vol. 94, No. 2), p. 96. Excerpted from Licensing '94: An Overview, by John P. Muller:
CHAPTER FOUR
Poplar Street/4:09 p.m./July 15 1996
He sees everything.
That has been both his blessing and his curse in all his years — the world still falls on his eye as it falls upon the eye of a child, evenly, unchosen, as impartial as the weight of light.
He sees Mary's Lumina at the corner and knows she is trying to puzzle out what she's seeing — too many people standing in stiff, watching attitudes which don't jibe with a lazy late-afternoon in July. When she starts to roll again, he sees the yellow van which is now behind her also starting to roll, hears another vicious crack of thunder, and feels the first cold splashes of rain on his hot forearms. As she starts down the street, he sees the yellow van suddenly speed up and knows what's going to happen, but he still can't believe it.
Watch out, old boy, he thinks. You get too busy watching her and you're apt to get run down like a squirrel in the road.
He steps back, up on the sidewalk in front of the Josephsons' house, head still turned to the left, eyes wide. He sees Mary behind the wheel of her Lumina, but she isn't looking at him — she's looking down the street. Probably recognized her husband, the distance wasn't too far to do that, probably wondering what he's doing, and she isn't seeing Johnny Marinville, isn't seeing the weird yellow van with the polarized glass windows looming behind her, either.
'Mary, look out!' he yells. Brad and Belinda, now mounting their front steps, wheel around. At the same moment, the van's high, blunt front end crashes into the rear of the Lumina, splintering the taillights, snapping the bumper and crimping the trunk. He sees Mary's head snap back and then forward, like the head of a flower on a long stalk pushed back and forth by a high wind. The Lumina's tires scream, and there is a loud dry bang as the right front blows out. The car veers left, the flat tire flapping, the hubcap running off the rim and streaking down the street like the Reed kids' Frisbee.
Johnny sees everything, hears everything, feels everything; input floods him and his mind insists on lining up each crazy increment, as if something coherent were happening here, something which could actually