The Bachman Books

by Stephen King

  This pipe was narrower still; his shoulders scraped lightly on both sides each time his chest rose in respiration.

  Thank God I'm underfed.

  Panting, he began to back into the unknown darkness of the pipe.

  Minus 068 and COUNTING

  He made slow, molelike progress for about fifty yards through the horizontal pipe, backing up blindly. Then the oil tank in the Y's basement suddenly blew with a roar that set up enough sympathetic vibrations in the pipes to nearly rupture his eardrums. There was a yellow-white flash, as if a pile of phosphorus had ignited. It faded to a rosy, shifting glow. A few moments later a blast of thermal air struck him in the face, making him grin painfully.

  The tape camera in his jacket pocket swung and bounced as he tried to back up faster. The pipe was picking up heat from the fierce explosion and fire that was raging somewhere above him, the way the handle of a skillet picks up heat from a gas-ring. Richards had no urge to be baked down here like a potato in a Dutch oven.

  Sweat rolled down his face, mixing with the black streaks of ordure already there, making him look, in the waxing and waning glow of the reflected fire, like an Indian painted for war. The sides of the pipe were hot to the touch now.

  Lobsterlike, Richards humped backwards on his knees and forearms, his buttocks rising to smack the top of the pipe at every movement. His breath came in sharp, doglike gasps. The air was hot, full of the slick taste of oil, uncomfortable to breathe. A headache surfaced within his skull and began to push daggers into the backs of his eyes.

  I'm going to fry in here. I'm going to fry.

  Then his feet were suddenly dangling in the air. Richards tried to peer through his legs and see what was there, but it was too dark behind and his eyes were too dazzled by the light in front. He would have to take his chance. He backed up until his knees were on the edge of the pipe's ending, and then slid them cautiously over.

  His shoes were suddenly in water, cold and shocking after the heat of the pipe.

  The new pipe ran at right angles to the one Richards had just come through, and it was much larger-big enough to stand in bent over. The thick, slowly moving water came up over his ankles. He paused for just a moment to stare back into the tiny pipe with its soft circle of reflected fireglow. The fact that he could see any glow at all from this distance meant that it must have been a very big bang indeed.

  Richards reluctantly forced himself to know it would be their job to assume him alive rather than dead in the inferno of the YMCA basement, but perhaps they would not discover the way he had taken until the fire was under control. That seemed a safe assumption. But it had seemed safe to assume that they could not trace him to Boston, too.

  Maybe they didn't. After all, what did you really see?

  No. It had been them. He knew it. The Hunters. They had even carried the odor of evil. It had wafted up to his fifth floor room on invisible psychic thermals.

  A rat dog-paddled past him, pausing to look up briefly with glittering eyes.

  Richards splashed clumsily off after it, in the direction the water was flowing.

  Minus 067 and COUNTING

  Richards stood by the ladder, looking up, dumbfounded by the light. No regular traffic, which was something, but light-

  The light was surprising because it had seemed that he had been walking in the sewers for hours piled upon hours. In the darkness, with no visual input and no sound but the gurgle of water, the occasional soft splash of a rat, and the ghostly thumpings in other pipes (what happens if someone flushes a john over my head, Richards wondered morbidly), his time sense had been utterly destroyed.

  Now, looking up at the manhole cover some fifteen feet above him, he saw that the light had not yet faded out of the day. There were several circular breather holes in the cover, and pencil-sized rays of light pressed coins of sun on his chest and shoulders.

  No air-cars had passed over the cover since he had gotten here; only an occasional heavy ground-vehicle and a fleet of Honda-cycles. It made him suspect that, more by good luck and the law of averages than by inner sense of direction, he had managed to find his way to the core of the city-to his own people.

  Still, he didn't dare go up until dark. To pass the time, he took out the tape camera, popped in a clip, and began recording his chest. He knew the tapes were "fastlight," able to take advantage of the least available light, and he did not want to give away too much of his surroundings. He did no talking or capering this time. He was too tired.

  When the tape was done, he put it with the other exposed clip. He wished he could rid himself of the nagging suspicion-almost a certainty-that the tapes were pinpointing him. There had to be a way to beat that. Had to.

  He sat down stolidly on the third rung of the ladder to wait for dark. He had been running for nearly thirty hours.

  Minus 066 and COUNTING

  The boy, seven years old, black, smoking a cigarette, leaned closer to the mouth of the alley, watching the street.

  There had been a sudden, slight movement in the street where there had been none before. Shadows moved, rested, moved again. The manhole cover was rising. It paused and something-eyes?-glimmered. The cover suddenly slid aside with a clang.

  Someone (or something, the boy thought with a trace of fear) was moving out there. Maybe the devil was coming out of hell to get Cassie, he thought. Ma said Cassie was going to heaven to be with Dicky and the other angels. The boy thought that was bullshit. Everybody went to hell when they died, and the devil jabbed them in the ass with a pitchfork. He had seen a picture of the devil in the books Bradley had snuck out of the Boston Public Library. Heaven was for Push freaks. The devil was the Man.

  It could be the devil, he thought as Richards suddenly boosted himself out of the manhole and leaned for a second on the seamed and split cement to get his breath back. No tail and no horns, not red like in that book, but the mother looked crazy and mean enough.

  Now he was pushing the cover back, and now-

  -now holy Jesus he was running toward the alley.

  The boy grunted, tried to run, and fell over his own feet.

  He was trying to get up, scrambling and dropping things, and the devil suddenly grabbed him.

  "Doan stick me wif it!" He screamed in a throat-closed whisper. "Doan stick me wif no fork, you sumbitch-"

  "Shhh! Shut up! Shut up!" The devil shook him, making his teeth rattle like marbles in his head, and the boy shut up. The devil peered around in an ecstacy of apprehension. The expression on his face was almost farcical in its extreme fear. The boy was reminded of the comical fellows on that game show Swim the Crocodiles. He would have laughed if he hadn't been so frightened himself.

  "You ain't the devil," the boy said.

  "You'll think I am if you yell."

  "I ain't gonna," the boy said contemptuously. "What you think, I wanna get my balls cut oft? Jesus, I ain't even big enough to come yet."

  "You know a quiet place we can go?"

  "Doan kill me, man. I ain't got nothin." The boy's eyes, white in the darkness, rolled up at him.

  "I'm not going to kill you."

  Holding his hand, the boy led Richards down the twisting, littered alley and into another. At the end, just before the alley opened onto an airshaft between two faceless highrise buildings, the boy led him into a lean-to built of scrounged boards and bricks. It was built for four feet, and Richards banged his head going in.

  The boy pulled a ditty swatch of black cloth across the opening and fiddled with something. A moment later a weak glow lit their faces; the boy had hooked a small lightbulb to an old cracked car battery.

  "I kifed that battery myself," the boy said. "Bradley tole me how to fix it up. He's got books. I got a nickel bag, too. I'll give it to you if you don't kill me. You better not. Bradley's in the Stabbers. You kill me an he'll make you shit in your boot an eat it."

  "I'm not doing any killings," Richards said impatiently. "At least not little kids. "

  "I ain't no little kid!
I kifed that fuckin battery myself!"

  The look of injury forced a dented grin to Richards's face. "All right. What's your name, kid?"

  "Ain't no kid." Then, sulkily: "Stacey."

  "Okay. Stacey. Good. I'm on the run. You believe that?"

  "Yeah, you on the run. You dint come outta that manhole to buy dirty pos'cards." He stared speculatively at Richards. "You a honky? Kinda hard to tell wif all that dirt."

  "Stacey. I-" He broke off and ran a hand through his hair. When he spoke again, he seemed to be talking to himself. "I got to trust somebody and it turns out to be a kid. A kid. Hot Jesus, you ain't even six, boy."

  "I'm eight in March," the boy said angrily. "My sister Lassie's got cancer," he added. "She screams a lot. Thass why I like it here. Kifed that fuckin battery myself. You wanna toke up, mister?"

  "No, and you don't either. You want two bucks, Stacey?"

  "Chris' yes!" Distrust slid over his eyes. "You dint come outta no manhole with two fuckin bucks. Thass bullshit."

  Richards produced a New Dollar and gave it to the boy. He stared at it with awe that was close to horror.

  "There's another one if you bring your brother," Richards said, and seeing his expression, added swiftly: "I'll give it to you on the side so he won't see it. Bring him alone."

  "Won't do no good to try an kill Bradley, man. He'll make you shit in your boot-"

  "And eat it. I know. You run and get him. Wait until he's alone."

  "Three bucks."

  "No."

  "Lissen man, for three bucks I can get Cassie some stuff at the drug. Then she won't scream so fuckin much."

  The man's face suddenly worked as if someone the boy couldn't see had punched him. "All right. Three."

  "New Dollars," the boy persisted.

  "Yes, for Christ's sake, yes. Get him. And if you bring the cops you won't get anything."

  The boy paused, half in and half out of his little cubbyhole. "You stupid if you think I do that. I hate them fuckin oinkers worse than anyone. Even the devil."

  He left, a seven-year-old boy with Richards's life in his grubby, scabbed hands. Richards was too tired to be really afraid. He turned off the light, leaned back, and dozed off.

  Minus 065 and COUNTING

  Dreaming sleep had just begun when his tight-strung senses ripped him back to wakefulness. Confused, in a dark place, the beginning of the nightmare held him for a moment and he thought that some huge police dog was coming for him, a terrifying organic weapon seven feet high. He almost cried aloud before Stacey made the real world fall into place by hissing:

  "If he broke my fuckin light I'm gonna-"

  The boy was violently shushed. The cloth across the entrance rippled, and Richards turned on the light. He was looking at Stacey and another black. The new fellow was maybe eighteen, Richards guessed, wearing a cycle jacket, looking at Richards with a mixture of hate and interest.

  A switchblade clicked out and glittered in Bradley's hand. "If you're heeled, drop it down. "

  "I'm not."

  "I don't believe that sh-" he broke off, and his eyes widened. "Hey. You're that guy on the Free-Vee. You offed the YMCA on Hunington Avenue." The lowering blackness of his face was split by an involuntary grin. "They said you fried five cops. That probably means fifteen."

  "He come outta the manhole," Stacey said importantly. "I knew it wasn't the devil right away. I knew it was some honky sumbitch. You gonna cut him, Bradley?"

  "Just shut up an let men talk." Bradley came the rest of the way inside, squatting awkwardly, and sat across from Richards on a splintery orange crate. He looked at the blade in his hand, seemed surprised to see it still there, and closed it up.

  "You're hotter than the sun, man," he said finally.

  "That's true."

  "Where you gonna get to?"

  "I don't know. I've got to get out of Boston."

  Bradley sat in silent thought. "You gotta come home with me an Stacey. We gotta talk, an we can't do it here. Too open."

  "All right," Richards said wearily. "I don't care."

  "We go the back way. The pigs are cruising tonight. Now I know why."

  When Bradley led the way out, Stacey kicked Richards sharply in the shin. For a moment Richards stared at him, not understanding, and then remembered. He slipped the boy three New Dollars, and Stacey made it disappear.

  Minus 064 and COUNTING

  The woman was very old; Richards thought he had never seen anyone as old. She was wearing a cotton print housedress with a large rip under one arm; an ancient, wrinkled dug swayed back and forth against the rip as she went about making the meal that Richards's New Dollars had purchased. The nicotine-yellowed fingers diced and pared and peeled. Her feet, splayed into grotesque boat shapes by years of standing, were clad in pink terrycloth slippers. Her hair looked as if it might have been self-waved by an iron held in a trembling hand; it was pushed back into a kind of pyramid by the twisted hairnet which had gone askew at the back of her head. Her face was a delta of time, no longer brown or black, but grayish, stitched with a radiating galaxy of wrinkles, pouches, and sags. Her toothless mouth worked craftily at the cigarette held there, blowing out puffs of blue smoke that seemed to hang above and behind her in little bunched blue balls. She puffed back and forth, describing a triangle between counter, skillet, and table. Her cotton stockings were rolled at the knee, and above them and the flapping hem of her dress varicose veins bunched in clocksprings.

  The apartment was haunted by the ghost of long-departed cabbage.

  In the far bedroom, Cassie screamed, whooped, and was silent. Bradley had told Richards with a kind of angry shame that he should not mind her. She had cancer in both lungs and recently it had spread upward into her throat and down into her belly. She was five.

  Stacey had gone back out somewhere.

  As he and Bradley spoke together, the maddening aroma of simmering ground beef, vegetables, and tomato sauce began to fill the room, driving the cabbage back into the corners and making Richards realize how hungry he was.

  "I could turn you in, man. I could kill you an steal all that money. Turn in the body. Get a thousand more bucks and be on easy street."

  "I don't think you could do it," Richards said. "I know I couldn't."

  "Why're you doing it, anyway?" Bradley asked irritably. "Why you being their sucker? You that greedy?"

  "My little girl's name is Cathy," Richards said. "Younger than Cassie. Pneumonia. She cries all the time, too."

  Bradley said nothing.

  "She could get better. Not like . . . her in there. Pneumonia's no worse than a cold. But you have to have medicine and a doctor. That costs money. I went for the money the only way I could."

  "You still a sucker," Bradley said with flat and somehow uncanny emphasis. "You suckin off half the world and they comin in your mouth every night at six-thirty. Your little girl would be better off like Cassie in this world."

  "I don't believe that."

  "Then you ballsier than me, man. I put a guy in the hospital once with a rupture. Some rich guy. Cops chased me three days. But you ballsier than me. " He took a cigarette and lit it. "Maybe you'll go the whole month. A billion dollars. You'd have to buy a fuckin freight train to haul it off."

  "Don't swear, praise Gawd," the old woman said from across the room where she was slicing carrots.

  Bradley paid no attention. "You an your wife an little girl would be on easy street then. You got two days already."

  "No," Richards said. "The game's rigged. You know those two things I gave Stacey to mail when he and your ma went out for groceries? I have to mail two of those every day before midnight. " He explained to Bradley about the forfeit clause, and his suspicion that they had traced him to Boston by postmark.

  "Easy to beat that."

  "How?"

  "Never mind. Later. How you gonna get out of Boston? You awful hot. Made 'em mad, blowin up their oinkers at the YMCA. They had Free-Vee on that tonight. An those ones you took with th
e bag over your head. That was pretty sharp. Ma!" he finished irritably, "when's that stuff gonna be ready? We're fallin away to shadows right before ya!"

  "She comin on," Ma said. She plopped a cover over the rich, slowly bubbling mass and walked slowly into the bedroom to sit by the girl.

  "I don't know," Richards said. "I'll try to get a car, I guess. I've got fake papers, but I don't dare use them. I'll do something-wear dark glasses-and get out of the city. I've been thinking about going to Vermont and then crossing over into Canada. "

  Bradley grunted and got up to put plates on the table. "By now they got every highway going out of Beantown blocked. A man wearin dark glasses calls tension to himself. They'll turn you into monkeymeat before you get six miles."

  "Then I don't know," Richards said. "If I stay here, they'll get you for an accessory. "

  Bradley began spreading dishes. "Suppose we get a car. You got the squeezin green. I got a name that isn't hot. There's a spic on Milk Street that'll sell me a Wint for three hundred. I'll get one of my buddies to drive it up to Manchester. It'll be cool as a fool in Manchester because you're bottled up in Boston. You eatin, Ma?"

  "Yes an praise Gawd. " She waddled out of the bedroom. "Your sister is sleepin a little. "

  "Good." He ladled up three dishes of hamburger gumbo and then paused. "Where's Stacey?"

  "Said he was goin to the drug," Ma said complacently, shoveling gumbo into her toothless maw at a blinding speed. "Said he goan to get medicine."

  "If he gets busted, I'll break his ass," Bradley said, sitting heavily.

  "He won't," Richards said. "He's got money."

  "Yeah, maybe we don't need no charity money, graymeat."