by Stephen King
From behind them came another rattle of gunfire. And screams.
“Do you hear that?” Mel asked. “You want to go back into that ?”
Aubrey looked at him patiently. “You don’t have to come with me, but you’re going to cover me. Do you understand that? You do that or I’ll shoot you myself.”
18
Chief Randolph’s face split in a taut grin. “The enemy is engaged at the rear of our objective. All according to plan. Roll, Stewart. Straight up the driveway. We’ll disembark and cut through the studio.”
“What if they’re in the barn?” Stewart asked.
“Then we’ll still be able to hit them from behind. Now roll ! Before we miss it!”
Stewart Bowie rolled.
19
Andy heard the gunfire from behind the storage building, but Chef didn’t whistle and so he stayed where he was, snug behind his tree. He hoped everything was going all right back there, because now he had his own problems: a town truck preparing to turn into the station’s driveway.
Andy circled his tree as it came, always keeping the oak between him and the truck. It stopped. The doors opened and four men got out. Andy was pretty sure that three of them were the ones who’d come out here before … and about Mr. Chicken there was no doubt. Andy would have recognized those beshitted green gumrubber boots anywhere. Bitter men. Andy had no intention of letting them blindside The Chef.
He emerged from behind the tree and began walking straight up the middle of the driveway, CLAUDETTE held across his chest in the port arms position. His feet crunched on the gravel, but there was plenty of sound-cover: Stewart had left the truck running and loud gospel music was pouring from the studio.
He raised the Kalashnikov, but made himself wait. Let them bunch together, if they’re going to. As they approached the front door of the studio, they did indeed bunch together.
“Well, it’s Mr. Chicken and all his friends,” Andy said in a passable John Wayne drawl. “How you doing, boys?”
They started to turn. For you, Chef, Andy thought, and opened fire.
He killed both Bowie brothers and Mr. Chicken with his first fusillade. Randolph he only winged. Andy popped the clip as Chef Bushey had taught him, grabbed another from the waistband of his pants, and slammed it home. Chief Randolph was crawling toward the door of the studio with blood pouring down his right arm and leg. He looked back over his shoulder, his peering eyes huge and bright in his sweaty face.
“Please, Andy,” he whispered. “Our orders weren’t to hurt you, only to bring you back so you could work with Jim.”
“Right,” Andy said, and actually laughed. “Don’t bullshit a bull-shitter. You were going to take all this—”
A long, stuttering blast of gunfire erupted behind the studio. Chef might be in trouble, might need him. Andy raised CLAUDETTE.
“Please don’t kill me!” Randolph screamed. He put a hand over his face.
“Just think about the roast beef dinner you’ll be eating with Jesus,” Andy said. “Why, three seconds from now you’ll be spreading your napkin.”
The sustained blast from the Kalashnikov rolled Randolph almost all the way to the studio door. Then Andy ran for the rear of the building, ejecting the partially used clip and putting in a full one as he went.
From the field came a sharp, piercing whistle.
“I’m coming, Chef!” Andy shouted. “Hold on, I’m coming!”
Something exploded.
20
“You cover me,” Aubrey said grimly from the edge of the woods. He had taken off his shirt, torn it in two, and cinched half of it around his forehead, apparently going for the Rambo look. “And if you’re thinking about scragging me, you better get it right the first time, because if you don’t, I’ll come back here and cut your goddam throat.”
“I’ll cover you,” Mel promised. And he would. At least from here at the edge of the woods, he’d be safe.
Probably.
“That crazy tweeker is not getting away with this,” Aubrey said. He was breathing rapidly, psyching himself up. “That loser. That druggie fuck.” And, raising his voice: “I’m coming for you, you nutbag druggie fuck!”
Chef had emerged from behind the Meals On Wheels truck to look at his kill. He redirected his attention to the woods just as Aubrey Towle burst from them, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Then Mel began to fire, and although the burst was nowhere near him, Chef crouched instinctively. When he did, the garage door opener tumbled from the sagging waistband of his pajama pants and into the grass. He bent to get it, and that was when Aubrey opened up with his own automatic rifle. Bulletholes stitched a crazy course up the side of the Meals On Wheels truck, making hollow punching sounds in the metal and smashing the passenger-side window to glistening crumbs. A bullet whined off the strip of metal at the side of the windshield.
Chef abandoned the garage door opener and returned fire. But the element of surprise was gone, and Aubrey Towle was no sitting duck. He was weaving from side to side and heading toward the radio tower. It wouldn’t provide cover, but it would clear Searles’s line of fire.
Aubrey’s clip ran dry, but the last bullet in it grooved the left side of Chef’s head. Blood flew and a clump of hair fell onto one of Chef’s thin shoulders, where it stuck in his sweat. Chef plopped down on his ass, momentarily lost his hold on GOD’S WARRIOR, then regained it. He didn’t think he was seriously wounded, but it was high time for Sanders to come if he could still do so. Chef Bushey stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
Aubrey Towle reached the fence surrounding the radio tower just as Mel opened fire again from the edge of the woods. Mel’s target this time was the rear end of the Meals On Wheels truck. The slugs tore it open in metal hooks and flowers. The gas tank exploded and the truck’s rear half rose on a cushion of flame.
Chef felt monstrous heat bake against his back and had time to think of the grenades. Would they blow? He saw the man by the radio tower aiming at him, and suddenly there was a clear choice: shoot back or grab the door opener. He chose the door opener, and as his hand closed on it, the air around him was suddenly full of unseen buzzing bees. One stung his shoulder; another punched into his side and rearranged his intestines. Chef Bushey tumbled and rolled over, once more losing his grip on the door opener. He reached for it and another swarm of bees filled the air around him. He crawled into the high grass, leaving the door opener where it was, now only hoping for Sanders. The man from the radio-tower—One brave bitter man among seven, Chef thought, yea, verily—was walking toward him. GOD’S WARRIOR was very heavy now, his whole body was heavy, but Chef managed to get to his knees and pull the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Either the clip was empty or it had jammed.
“You numb fuck,” Aubrey Towle said. “You nutbag tweeker. Tweek on this, fuckhea—”
“Claudette!” Sanders screamed.
Towle wheeled around, but he was too late. There was a short, hard rattle of gunfire, and four 7.62 Chinese slugs tore most of Aubrey’s head from his shoulders.
“Chef!” Andy screamed, and ran to where his friend knelt in the grass, blood streaming from his shoulder, side, and temple. The entire left side of Chef’s face was red and wet. “Chef! Chef!” He fell to his knees and hugged Chef. Neither of them saw Mel Searles, the last man standing, emerge from the woods and begin to walk cautiously toward them.
“Get the trigger,” Chef whispered.
“What?” Andy looked down at CLAUDETTE’s trigger for a moment, but that obviously wasn’t what Chef meant.
“Door opener,” Chef whispered. His left eye was drowning in blood; the other regarded Andy with bright and lucid intensity. “Door opener, Sanders.”
Andy saw the garage door opener lying in the grass. He picked it up and handed it to the Chef. Chef wrapped his hand around it.
“You … too … Sanders.”
Andy curled his hand over Chef’s hand. “I love you, Chef,” he said, a
nd kissed Chef Bushey’s dry, blood-freckled lips.
“Love … you … too … Sanders.”
“Hey, fags!” Mel cried with a kind of delirious joviality. He was standing just ten yards away. “Get a room! No, wait, I got a better idea! Get a room in hell! ”
“Now … Sanders … now. ”
Mel opened fire.
Andy and Chef were driven sideways by the bullets, but before they were torn asunder, their joined hands pushed the white button marked OPEN.
The explosion was white and all-encompassing.
21
On the edge of the orchard, the Chester’s Mill exiles are having a picnic lunch when gunfire breaks out—not from 119, where the visiting continues, but to the southwest.
“That’s out on Little Bitch Road,” Piper says. “God, I wish we had some binoculars.”
But they need none to see the yellow bloom that opens when the Meals On Wheels truck explodes. Twitch is eating deviled chicken with a plastic spoon. “I dunno what’s going on down there, but that’s the radio station for sure,” he says.
Rusty grabs Barbie’s shoulder. “That’s where the propane is! They stockpiled it to make drugs! That’s where the propane is! ”
Barbie has one moment of clear, premonitory terror; one moment when the worst is still ahead. Then, four miles distant, a brilliant white spark flicks the hazy sky, like a stroke of lightning that goes up instead of down. A moment later, a titanic explosion hammers a hole straight through the center of the day. A red ball of fire blots out first the WCIK tower, then the trees behind it, and then the whole horizon as it spreads north and south.
The people on Black Ridge scream but are unable to hear themselves over the vast, grinding, building roar as eighty pounds of plastic explosive and ten thousand gallons of propane undergo an explosive change. They cover their eyes and stagger backward, stepping on their sandwiches and spilling their drinks. Thurston snatches Alice and Aidan into his arms and for a moment Barbie sees his face against the blackening sky—the long and terrified face of a man observing the literal Gates of Hell swing open, and the ocean of fire waiting just beyond.
“We have to go back to the farmhouse!” Barbie yells. Julia is clinging to him, crying. Beyond her is Joe McClatchey, trying to help his weeping mother to her feet. These people are going nowhere, at least for a while.
To the southwest, where most of Little Bitch Road will within the next three minutes cease to exist, the yellowy-blue sky is turning black and Barbie has time to think, with perfect calm: Now we’re under the magnifying glass.
The blast shatters every window in the mostly deserted downtown, sends shutters soaring, knocks telephone poles askew, rips doors from their hinges, flattens mailboxes. Up and down Main Street, car alarms go off. To Big Jim Rennie and Carter Thibodeau, it feels as if the conference room has been struck by an earthquake.
The TV is still on. Wolf Blitzer is asking, in tones of real alarm, “What’s that? Anderson Cooper? Candy Crowley? Chad Myers? Soledad O’Brien? Does anybody know what the hell that was? What’s going on?”
At the Dome, America’s newest TV stars are looking around, showing the cameras only their backs as they shield their eyes and stare toward town. One camera pans up briefly, for a moment disclosing a monstrous column of black smoke and swirling debris on the horizon.
Carter gets to his feet. Big Jim grabs his wrist. “One quick look,” Big Jim says. “To see how bad it is. Then get your butt back down here. We may have to go to the fallout shelter.”
“Okay.”
Carter races up the stairs. Broken glass from the mostly vaporized front doors crunches beneath his boots as he runs down the hall. What he sees when he comes out on the steps is so beyond anything he has ever imagined that it tumbles him back into childhood again and for a moment he freezes where he is, thinking It’s like the biggest, awfulest thunderstorm anyone ever saw, only worse.
The sky to the west is a red-orange inferno surrounded by billowing clouds of deepest ebony. The air is already stenchy with exploded LP. The sound is like the roar of a dozen steel mills running at full blast.
Directly above him, the sky is dark with fleeing birds.
The sight of them—birds with nowhere to go—is what breaks Carter’s paralysis. That, and the rising wind he feels against his face. There has been no wind in Chester’s Mill for six days, and this one is both hot and vile, stinking of gas and vaporized wood.
A huge smashed oak lands in Main Street, pulling down snarls of dead electrical cable.
Carter flees back down the corridor. Big Jim is standing at the head of the stairs, his heavy face pale and frightened and, for once, irresolute.
“Downstairs,” Carter says. “Fallout shelter. It’s coming. The fire’s coming. And when it gets here, it’s going to eat this town alive.”
Big Jim groans. “What did those idiots do ?”
Carter doesn’t care. Whatever they did, it’s done. If they don’t move quickly, they will be done, too. “Is there air-purifying machinery down there, boss?”
“Yes.”
“Hooked to the gennie?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Thank Christ for that. Maybe we’ve got a chance.”
Helping Big Jim down the stairs to make him move more quickly, Carter only hopes they don’t cook alive down there.
The doors of Dipper’s roadhouse have been chocked open, but the force of the explosion breaks the chocks and sweeps the doors shut. The glass coughs inward and several of the people standing at the back of the dance floor are cut. Henry Morrison’s brother Whit suffers a slashed jugular.
The crowd stampedes toward the doors, the big-screen TV completely forgotten. They trample poor Whit Morrison as he lies dying in a spreading pool of his own blood. They hit the doors, and more people are lacerated as they push through the jagged openings.
“Birds!” someone cries. “Ah, God, look at all them birds!”
But most of them look west instead of up—west, where burning doom is rolling down upon them below a sky that is now midnight-black and full of poison air.
Those who can run take a cue from the birds and begin trotting, jogging, or flat-out galloping straight down the middle of Route 117. Several others throw themselves into their cars, and there are multiple fender-benders in the gravel parking lot where, once upon an antique time, Dale Barbara took a beating. Velma Winter gets into her old Datsun pickup and, after avoiding the demolition derby in the parking lot, discovers her right-of-way to the road is blocked by fleeing pedestrians. She looks right—at the firestorm billowing toward them like some great burning dress, eating the woods between Little Bitch and downtown—and drives blindly ahead in spite of the people in her way. She strikes Carla Venziano, who is fleeing with her infant in her arms. Velma feels the truck jounce as it passes over their bodies, and resolutely blocks her ears to Carla’s shrieks as her back is broken and baby Steven is crushed to death beneath her. All Velma knows is that she has to get out of here. Somehow, she has to get out.
At the Dome, the reunions have been ended by an apocalyptic party-crasher. Those on the inside have something more important than relatives to occupy them now: the giant mushroom cloud that’s growing to the northwest of their position, rising on a muscle of fire already almost a mile high. The first feather of wind—the wind that has sent Carter and Big Jim fleeing for the fallout shelter—strikes them, and they cringe against the Dome, mostly ignoring the people behind them. In any case, the people behind them are retreating. They’re lucky; they can.
Henrietta Clavard feels a cold hand wrap around hers. She turns and sees Petra Searles. Petra’s hair has come loose from the clips that were holding it and hangs against her cheeks.
“Got any more of that joy-juice?” Petra asks, and manages a ghastly let’s-party smile.
“Sorry, all out,” Henrietta says.
“Well—maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“Hang onto me, honey,” Henrietta says. “Just hang onto
me. We’re going to be okay.”
But when Petra looks into the old woman’s eyes, she sees no belief and no hope. The party’s almost over.
Look, now. Look and see. Eight hundred people are crammed against the Dome, their heads tilted up and their eyes wide, watching as their inevitable end rushes toward them.
Here are Johnny and Carrie Carver, and Bruce Yardley, who worked at Food City. Here is Tabby Morrell, who owns a lumber-yard soon to be reduced to swirling ash, and his wife, Bonnie; Toby Manning, who clerked at the department store; Trina Cole and Donnie Baribeau; Wendy Goldstone with her friend and fellow teacher Ellen Vanedestine; Bill Allnut, who wouldn’t go get the bus, and his wife, Sarah, who is screaming for Jesus to save her as she watches the oncoming fire. Here are Todd Wendlestat and Manuel Ortega with their faces raised dumbly to the west, where the world is disappearing in smoke. Tommy and Willow Anderson, who will never book another band from Boston into their roadhouse. See them all, a whole town with its back to an invisible wall.
Behind them, the visitors go from backing up to retreat, and from retreat into full flight. They ignore the buses and pound straight down the highway toward Motton. A few soldiers hold position, but most throw their guns down, tear after the crowd, and look back no more than Lot looked back at Sodom.
Cox doesn’t flee. Cox approaches the Dome and shouts: “You! Officer in charge!”
Henry Morrison turns, walks to the Colonel’s position, and braces his hands on a hard and mystic surface he can’t see. Breathing has become difficult; bad wind pushed by the firestorm hits the Dome, swirls, then backdrafts toward the hungry thing that’s coming: a black wolf with red eyes. Here, on the Motton town line, is the lambfold where it will feed.
“Help us,” Henry says.
Cox looks at the firestorm and estimates it will reach the crowd’s current position in no more than fifteen minutes, perhaps as few as three. It’s not a fire or an explosion; in this closed and already polluted environment, it is a cataclysm.