The Regulators - Stephen King [66]
'JACKSON!'
But that is real, that voice, just as the bullet which took Mary's life was real. He screams through a grin of pain, jerking her body closer to his chest for a moment and then dropping her to the street in a tumble without even being aware of it. It is as if someone pressed the end of an electric bullhorn to one of his ears, turned the volume up all the way, and then bellowed his name into it. Blood bursts from his nose and begins to seep from the corners of his eyes.
'THATAWAY, PARD!' The black-and-silver figure, now insubstantial but still threatening, points at the Wyler house. The voice is the only reality, but it is all the reality Peter needs; it's like the blade of a chainsaw. He jerks his head back so hard his glasses fall askew on his face. 'WE GOT US SOME HOORAWIN TO DO! BEST GIT STARTED!'
He doesn't walk toward Herbie and Audrey's house; he is pulled towards it, reeled in. As he walks through the black, faceless figure, a crazy image fills his mind for just a moment: spaghetti, the unnaturally red kind that comes in a can, and hamburger. All mixed together in a white bowl with Warner Bros cartoon figures — Bugs, Elmer, Daffy — dancing around the rim. Just thinking about that kind of food usually nauseates him, but for the moment the image holds in his mind, he is desperately hungry; he lusts for those pallid strands of pasta and that unnatural red sauce. For that moment even the pain in his head ceases to exist.
He walks through the projected image of the black van just as it starts to roll again, and then he's moving up the cement path to the house. His glasses finally give up their tenuous hold and fall off; he doesn't notice. He can still hear a few isolated gunshots, but they are distant, in another world. The twangy guitar is still playing in his head, and as the door to the Wyler house opens all by itself, the guitar is joined by horns and he places the tune. It's the theme to that old TV show, Bonanza.
I just got home from work, he thinks, stepping into a dark, fetid room that smells of sweat and old hamburger. I just got home from work, and the door slams shut behind him. I just got home from work, and he's crossing the living room, headed for the arch and the sound of the TV. 'What are you wearing that uniform for?' someone asks. 'War's been over near-bout three years, ain't you heard?'
I just got home from work, Peter thinks, as if that explained everything — his dead wife, the shooting, the man with no face, the rancid air of this little room — and then the thing sitting in front of the TV turns around to face him and Peter thinks nothing at all.
Out on the street, the vans which have composed the fire-corridor accelerate, the black one quickly catching up with Dream Floater and the Justice Wagon. The bearded man in the turret throws one final round. It hits the blue US mailbox outside the E-Z Stop, putting a hole the size of a softball in it. Then the raiders turn left on Hyacinth and are gone. Rooty-Toot, Freedom, and Tracker Arrow leave on Bear Street, disappearing into the mist which first blurs them and then swallows them.
In the Carver house, Ralphie and Ellen are shrieking at the sight of their mother, who has collapsed in the doorway leading to the hall. She isn't unconscious, however; her body snaps furiously from side to side as convulsions tear through