The Regulators - Stephen King [86]
LAURA (coughing)
Too . . . too late. Just hold me!
STREETER does. She looks up at him CURIOUSLY.
LAURA
Why, Sheriff! . . . are you crying?
EXT. REAR OF THE LADY DAY
MURDOCK comes bursting out. SERGEANT MATHIS is still there, holding the horses.
SARGE
What happened? I heard shootin'!
MURDOCK (swings up on his horse)
Never mind. It's time to get the boys.
SARGE
You mean — ?!
SuddenlyMURDOCK'S insanity breaks free. His eyes BLAZE.
SCENE CONTINUES
His lips pull back in a snarl that looks almost like a GRIN. It is the grin of a cornered ANIMAL!
MURDOCK
We're gonna wipe this town off the map!
They wheel their horses away to join the rest of the regulators.
CHAPTER NINE
1
There was no need for Steve and Collie to hop the fence at the far end of Doc's yard; there was a gate, although they had to tear out a fair amount of well-entrenched ivy before they could use it. They exchanged words only twice before reaching the path. The first time it was Steve who spoke. He looked around at the trees — scrubby, weedy-looking things, for the most part, now mysterious with the rustle of rainwater dripping off the leaves — and then asked: 'Are these poplars?'
Collie, who had been working his way around a particularly vicious clump of thornbushes, looked back at him. 'Say what?'
'I asked if these trees are poplars. Since Poplar Street is where we came from, I just wondered.'
'Oh.' Collie looked around doubtfully, swapping the .30-.06 from one hand to the other and then running an arm across his forehead. It was very hot in the greenbelt. 'I don't know if they're poplars or pines or goddam eucalyptuses, to tell you the truth. Botany was never my thing. That one over there is a skinny-ass birch, and that's about all I know on the subject.' With that, he started off again.
Five minutes later (Steve wondering by now if there really was a path back here, or only wishful thinking), Collie stopped. He looked back past Steve, his eyes so intense that Steve turned himself to see what he was looking at. He saw nothing but the tangled greenery through which they had already made their way. No sign of Old Doc's house; the Jacksons', either. He could see a tiny wedge of red that he thought might be the chimney atop the Carver house, but that was all. They almost could have been a hundred miles from the nearest human habitation. Thinking that — and realizing it was a true thought — gave Steve a chill.
'What?' he asked, thinking the cop would ask him why they couldn't hear any cars, not even some kid's glasspack-equipped low-rider, or a single bass-powered sound-system, or a motorcycle, or a horn, or a shout, or anything.
Instead, Collie said: 'We're losing the light.'
'We can't be. It's only — ' Steve looked at his watch, but it had stopped. The battery had given out, probably; he'd never replaced it since his sister had given it to him for Christmas a couple of years ago. It was odd, though, that it should have stopped just past four o'clock, which had to be not long after the time he had first wheeled into this marvellous little neighborhood.
'Only what?'
'I can't say exactly, my watch has stopped, but just think about it. It can't be much more than five-thirty, five forty-five. Maybe even earlier. Don't they say you overestimate elapsed time when you're in a crisis situation?'
'I don't even know who 'they' are, never have,' Collie said. 'But look at the light. The quality of the light.'
Steve did, and yes, the cop had a point. Steve didn't like to admit it, but he did. The light slanted through the tangle (and that was the proper word for it, not greenbelt) in hot red shafts. Red sun at night, sailor's delight, he thought, and suddenly, as if that was a trigger, it all tried to crash in on him, all the things that were wrong, and he couldn't stand it. He raised his hands and clapped them over his eyes, whacking himself a damned good one on the side of the head with the butt of the .22 he was carrying, feeling his