The Regulators - Stephen King [50]
'Where's Mary?' Peter asked. 'Where's Mary? Where's Mary? Where's Mary?' Each time he asked the question his voice grew more plaintive. The fourth repetition was little more than a falsetto squeak. Abruptly he clutched his face in his hands and turned away from all of them, leaning his forehead against the wall between BARON, a Labrador Retriever that could spell its name with blocks, and DIRTYFACE, a morose-looking goat that was apparently able to play a number of rudimentary tunes on the harmonica. It occurred to Steve that if he ever heard a goat playing 'The Yellow Rose of Texas' on a Hohner, he would probably fucking kill himself.
Marielle Soderson, meanwhile, was staring at Billingsley with the intensity of a vampire looking at a man with a shaving cut. 'Hurts,' she croaked. 'Give me something for it.'
'Yes,' Billingsley said, 'but first we tourniquet.'
He nodded impatiently at the cop. The cop started forward. He had the tongue of his belt threaded through the buckle now, making a loop. He reached out gingerly to the skinny woman, whose blond hair had gone two shades darker with sweat. She reached out with her good arm and pushed him with surprising strength. The cop wasn't expecting it. He went back two steps, hit the arm of the old guy's sprawled-out easy-chair, and fell into it. He looked like a comic who's just taken a pratfall in a movie.
The skinny woman didn't give him a second glance. Her attention was focused on the old guy, and the old guy's black bag.
'Now!' she barked at him, and it really did sound as if she were barking. 'Give me something for it now you quacky old fuck, it's killing me!'
The cop struggled out of the chair and caught Steve's eye. Steve got the message, nodded, and began edging toward the woman named Marielle, drifting in from the right, flanking her. Be careful, he told himself, she's flipped out, apt to scratch or bite or any damn thing, so be careful.
Marielle thrust herself away from the wall, swayed, steadied, and advanced on the old guy. She was once more holding her arm out in front of her, as if it were Exhibit A in a trial. Billingsley backed up a step, looking nervously from the barechested cop to Steve.
'Give me some Demerol, you weasel!' she cried in her barking, exhausted voice. 'You give it to me or I'll choke you until you bark like a bloodhound! I'll — '
The cop nodded to Steve again and sprang forward on the left. Steve moved with him and threw an arm around the woman's neck. He didn't want to choke her, but he was scared to go around her back, maybe grabbing her wounded arm by mistake and hurting it worse. 'Hold still!' he shouted. He didn't mean to shout, he meant to just say it, but that wasn't how it came out. At the same moment the cop slipped the loop of his belt over her left hand and up her arm.
'Hold her, buddy!' the cop cried. 'Hold her still!'
For a second or two Steve did, and then a drop of sweat, warm and stinging, ran into his eye, and he relaxed his choke-hold just as Collie Entragian ran the makeshift belt tourniquet tight. Marielle lurched to the right, her baleful falcon's gaze still fixed on the old guy, and her arm came off in the barechested cop's hands. Steve could see her wristwatch, an Indiglo with the second-hand stopped dead between the four and the five. The belt held on at her shoulder for a moment and then dropped to the floor, a loop with nothing in it. The counter-girl shrieked, her huge eyes fixed on the arm. The cop looked down at it with his mouth open.
'Get it on ice!' Gary bawled. 'Get it on ice right away! Right aw — ' Then, all at once, he seemed to really realize what had happened. What the cop was holding. He opened his mouth, twisted his head in a peculiar way, and unloaded on the photo of the cigarette-smoking parrot.
Marielle noticed none of it. She staggered toward the clearly terrified veterinarian, her remaining hand outstretched. 'I want a shot and I want it now!' she croaked. 'Do you hear me, you old woman? I want a fucking shuh-shuh — '
She collapsed on to her knees. Her head