by Stephen King
Adrenaline hit Brad’s nervous system like something shot from one of Old Doc’s horse syringes. He forgot all about his back and yanked himself upward, tucking his knees between his chest and the fence when he heard the thing charge. It hit just below his feet, hard enough to shake the whole fence. Then Johnny had one of his wrists and Dave Reed had the other and Brad scrabbled to the top of the fence, leaving generous amounts of skin behind. He tried to get his left leg over the top and thumped the ankle on one of the blunt stakes instead. Then he was falling, tearing his shirt all the way down one side in his useless struggle to hold onto the top of the fence with his right hand. He let go in time to keep from breaking his arm, but when he landed (partly on top of Johnny, mostly on top of his admirably padded wife), he could feel blood trickling down from his armpit.
“Want to think about getting off me, handsome?” the admirably padded lady herself asked, sounding breathless. “I mean, if it wouldn’t discommode you any?”
Brad crawled off them both, collapsed in a heap, then rolled over on his back. He looked up at alien stars, swollen things that blinked on and off like the Christmas lights they strung over small-town Main Streets every year on the day after Thanksgiving. What he was looking at were no more real stars than he was the King of Prussia . . . but they were up there, just the same. Yes they were, right over his head, and how bad was your situation when the sky itself was part of the damned conspiracy?
Brad closed his eyes so he wouldn’t look at them anymore. In his mind’s eye—the one that opened widest when the other two closed—he saw Cary Ripton tossing him his Shopper. Saw his own hand, the one not holding the hose, go up and catch it. Good one, Mr. Josephson! Cary called, honestly admiring. It came from far away, that voice, like something echoing down a canyon. Closer by, he heard howls from the greenbelt side of the fence (except now it was the desertbelt). These were followed by a series of hard thuds as the boar-coyotes threw themselves at it.
Christ.
“Brad,” Johnny said. Low voice. Leaning over him, from the sound.
“What.”
“You all right?”
“Fine as paint.” Still not opening his eyes.
“Brad.”
“What!”
“I had an idea. For a movie.”
“You’re a maniac, John.” Eyes still shut. Things were better that way. “But I’ll bite. What’s it going to be called, this movie I can be in?”
“Black Men Can’t Climb Fences,” Johnny said, and began laughing wildly. It had an exhausted, half-crazy sound to it. “I’m gonna get Mario Fucking Van Peebles to direct. Larry Fishburne’s gonna play you.”
“Sure,” Brad said, sitting up painfully. “I love Larry Fishburne. Very intense. Offer him a million up front. Who could resist?”
“Right, right,” Johnny agreed, now laughing so hard he could barely talk . . . only tears were streaming down his face, and Brad didn’t think they were tears of laughter. Not ten minutes ago, Cammie Reed had come within a hair of blowing his head off, and Brad doubted if Johnny had forgotten that. Brad doubted if Johnny forgot much of anything, in fact. It was probably a talent he would have traded, if given the opportunity.
Brad got on his feet, took Bee’s hand, and helped her up. There were more thuds at the fence, more howls, then gnawing sounds, as if the hungry abortions over there were trying to eat their way through the stakes.
“So what do you think?” Johnny asked, letting Brad help him up as well. He staggered, found his balance, wiped his streaming eyes.
“I think that when the chips were down, I climbed just fine,” Brad said. He slipped an arm around his wife, then looked at Johnny. “Come on, honky. You climbed to success over your first black man, you must be all tuckered out. Let’s get in the house.”
2
The thing which hopped unsteadily through the gate at the rear of Tom Billingsley’s backyard was a child’s version of the gila monster Jeb Murdock blows off a rock during his shooting contest with Candy about halfway through The Regulators. Its head, however, was that of an escapee from Jurassic Park.
It hopped up the back steps, slithered to the screen, and pushed at it with its snout. Nothing happened; the screen opened outward. The gila stretched its saurian head forward and began chomping at the bottom panel of the door with its teeth. Three bites was all it took, and then it was in Old Doc’s kitchen.
Gary Soderson became distantly aware of a rotten breeze blowing into his face. He tried to wave it away, but it only grew stronger. He raised one hand, touched something that felt like an alligator shoe—a very large alligator shoe—and opened his eyes. What he saw leaning over him at kissing distance, staring at him with a curiosity which was almost human, was so grotesque that he could not even scream. The lizard-thing’s eyes were bright orange.
Here it is, Gary thought, my first major attack of the dt’s. Ahoy, mateys, A.A. dead ahead.
He closed his eyes. He tried to tell himself that he didn’t smell swamp-breath or hear the toneless clickety-click of a tail dragging across kitchen linoleum. He held his dead wife’s cold hand. He said, “Nothing there. Nothing there. Noth—”
Before he could finish the third repetition (and everyone knows the third time’s the charm), the monster had plunged its teeth into his throat and torn it open.
3
Johnny saw small feet through the open pantry door and looked in. Ellie and Ralphie were lying in there on what looked like a futon, holding each other. They were fast asleep, gunshots from out back notwithstanding, but even in slumber they had not entirely escaped what was happening; their faces were white and strained, their breathing had a watery sound that made him think of stifled sobs, and Ralphie’s feet twitched, as if he dreamed of running.
Johnny guessed that Ellen must have found the futon and brought it into the pantry for herself and her little brother to lie on; certainly Kim Geller hadn’t done it. Kim and her daughter had resumed their former places by the wall, only now sitting in kitchen chairs instead of on the floor.
“Is Jim really dead?” Susi asked, looking at Johnny with wet, shiny eyes as Johnny came in behind Brad and Belinda. “I just can’t believe it, we were playing Frisbee like we always do, and we were going out to the movies tonight—”
Johnny was completely out of patience with her. “Why don’t you go out on the back porch and have a look for yourself?”
“Why are you being such a bastard?” Kim asked angrily. “My daughter may never get over serious trauma like this. She’s had a profound shock!”
“She’s not the only one,” Johnny said. “And while we’re at it—”
“Quit it, man, we don’t need to get fighting,” Steve Ames said.
Undoubtedly true, but Johnny no longer cared. He pointed a finger at Kim, who stared back at him along its length with hot, resentful eyes. “And while we’re at it, the next time you call Belinda Josephson a black bitch, I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.”
“Oh gosh, don’t you think your shit comes out smoking,” Kim said, and rolled her eyes theatrically.
“Stop it, John,” Belinda said, and took his arm. “Right now. We’ve got more important things to—”
“Fat black bitch,” Kim Geller said. She didn’t look at Belinda as she said it but at Johnny. Her eyes were still burning, but now she was smiling. He thought it was the most poisonous smile he had ever seen in his life. “Fat black nigger bitch.” That said, she pointed her own finger at her mouth and visible teeth, like a woman trying to get suicide across in a game of charades. Her daughter was looking at her with a stunned expression. “Okay? Did you hear it? So come on. Knock my teeth down my throat. Let’s see you try.”
Johnny started forward, meaning to do just that. Brad grabbed one of his arms. Steve grabbed the other one.
“Get out of here, you idiot,” Old Doc said. His voice was harsh and dry. It got through to Kim, somehow, and she gave him a startled, considering look. “Get out of here right now.”
Kim rose from her chair, pulling Susi out of hers. For a moment it seemed they would go into the living room together, but then Susi pulled away. Kim reached for her, but Susi continued to back off.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Kim asked. “We’re going into the living room! We’re going to get away from these—”
“Not me,” Susi said, shaking her head quickly. “You, maybe. Not me. Uh-uh.”
Kim stared at her, then looked back at Johnny. Her face was sick with a kind of hateful confusion.
“Get out of here, Kim,” Johnny said. He could still see himself driving his fist into her mouth, but the madness was passing and his voice was almost steady. “You’re not yourself.”
“Susi? You get over here. We’re going away from these hateful people.”
Susi turned her back on her mother, trembling all over. Johnny supposed this did not change his opinion of the girl as a shallow, flighty creature . . . but she seemed a link or two up the food-chain from her mother, at least.
Slowly, like a rusty robot, Dave Reed raised his arms and put them around her. Cammie seemed about to object to this, then subsided.
“All right,” Kim said. Her voice was clear and composed again, the voice of someone giving a speech in a dream. “When you want me, I’ll be in the living room.” Her eyes switched to Johnny, whom she seemed to have identified as the source of all her misery. “And you—”
“Stop it,” Audrey said harshly. Startled, they all turned to look at her, except for Kim, who slipped off into the darkness of the living room. “We have no time for this shit. We might have a chance to get out of this—a small one—but if you fools stand around squabbling, all we’re going to do is die.”
“Who’re you, ma’am?” Steve asked.
“Audrey Wyler.” She was tall, her legs long and coltish and not unsexy below her blue shorts, but her face was pale and haggard. That face made Johnny think of the way the Carver kids looked as they lay sleeping in each other’s arms, and suddenly he found himself trying to remember when he’d last seen Audrey, passed the time of day with her. He couldn’t. It was as if she had dropped out of the casual, back-and-forth life of the street entirely.
Little bitty baby Smitty, he thought suddenly, I seen you bite your mommy’s titty. Then he thought of the vans that had been on the floor of the Wyler den the afternoon he’d spent some time watching Bonanza with Seth. And once he had that, a kind of landslide started in his head. Outlaws that looked like movie stars. Major Pike, a good nailien gone bad. The Western scenery. That most of all. He loves the old Westerns, Audrey had said that day. She’d picked up a few of his toys as she spoke, doing it the way people do stuff when they’re nervous. Bonanza and The Rifleman are his favorites, but anything they’ll bring back on the cable, he’ll watch. If it has horses in it, that is.
“It’s your nephew, Audrey. Isn’t it? It’s Seth doing this.”
“No.” She raised a hand and wiped her eyes with it. “Not Seth. What’s inside Seth.”
4
“I’ll tell you what I can, but there’s not much time. The Power Wagons will be back before long.”
“Who’s inside them?” Old Doc asked. “Do you know, Aud?”
“Regulators. Outlaws. Sci-fi policemen. And this place where we are is partly the Old West as it exists on TV and partly a place called the Force Corridor, which only exists in a TV-cartoon version of the twenty-third century.” She took a deep breath and ran her hands through her hair. “I don’t know everything, but—”
“Take us through as much as you can,” Johnny said.
She looked at her watch and made a sour face. “Stopped.”
“Mine, too,” Steve said. “Everybody’s, I imagine.”
“I think there’s time,” Audrey said. “Which is to say, I think it’s too early for any . . . any movement just yet.” She laughed suddenly, startling Johnny. Startling all of them, from the look. It wasn’t the hysterical undertone so much as the genuine merriness on top. She saw their stares and brought herself under control. “Sorry—it’s a kind of pun. No reason you should understand. Yet, anyway. We have to wait. If he brings the regulators back in the meantime, we’ll have to just . . . endure them, I suppose.”
“Are they getting stronger?” Cammie asked suddenly. “These regulators, are they getting more powerful?”
“Yes,” Audrey said. “And if the thing doing this caught the energy from the people who died out there in the woods, the next run will be the worst yet. I pray that didn’t happen, but I think it probably did.”
She looked around at them, drew in a deep breath, and began.
5
“The thing inside Seth is named Tak.”
“Is it a demon, Aud?” Old Doc asked. “Some kind of demon?”
“No. It has no . . . no religion, I suppose you’d say. Unless TV counts. It’s more like a tumor, I think. One that’s conscious and enjoys cruelty and violence. It’s been inside him for almost two years now. I heard a story once about a Vermont woman who found a black widow spider in her sink. It apparently came into the house in an empty box her husband brought home from the supermarket where he worked. The box had been full of bananas from South America. The spider had gotten in with them when they were packed. That’s pretty much how Tak got to Poplar Street, I think. Except we’re talking about a black widow with a voice. It called Seth when he and his family were crossing the desert. Crossing Nevada. It sensed him, someone it could use, passing close by, and called him.”
She looked down at her hands, which were knotted tightly together in her lap. Kim Geller was standing in the living-room doorway now, drawn back by Audrey’s story. Audrey looked up again. She spoke to them all, but it was Johnny her eyes kept returning to.
“I think it was weak at first, but not too weak to understand that Seth’s family posed a threat to it. I don’t know how much they knew or suspected, but I do know that my last phone conversation with my brother was very strange. I think Bill could have told me a lot . . . if Tak had let him.”
“It can do that?” Steve asked. “Impose control over people like that?”
She gestured at her swollen mouth. “My hand did this,” she said, “but I wasn’t running it.”
“Christ,” Cynthia said. She looked nervously at the knives hanging on their magnetized steel runners over the kitchen counter. “That’s bad. Very.”
“It could be worse, though,” Audrey said. “Tak can only physically control at short range.”
“How short?” Cammie asked.
“Usually no more than twenty or thirty feet. Beyond that, its physical influence runs out in a hurry. Usually. Now, all bets are off. Because it’s never been so loaded with energy.”
“Let her tell her story,” Johnny said. He could feel time almost as a tangible thing, slipping away from them. He didn’t know if he was getting that from Audrey or if it was coming from inside himself, and he didn’t care. Time was short. He had never felt an intuition so strongly in his whole life. Time was short.
“There’s a boy still in there,” she said, speaking slowly and with great emphasis. “A sweet, special child named Seth Garin. And the most despicable thing is that Tak has used what the child loves to do its killing. In the case of my brother and his family, it was Tracker Arrow, one of the MotoKops’ Power Wagons. They were in California, at the end of the trip that took them through Nevada, when it happened. I don’t know where Tak got enough energy to summon Tracker Arrow out of Seth’s thoughts and dreams at that stage of its development. Seth is its basic power-supply, but Seth isn’t enough. It needs more in order to really crank up.”
“It’s a vampire, isn’t it?” Johnny said. “Only what it draws off is psychic energy instead of blood.”
She nodded. “And the energy it uses is most abundantly available when someone is in pain. In the case of Bill and the rest of his family, maybe someone in the neighborhood died or was hurt. Or—”
“Or maybe there was someone it could hurt
itself,” Steve said. “A handy bum, for instance. Just some old wino pushing a shopping cart. Whoever it was, I bet he died with a smile on his face.”
Audrey looked at him, her face sad and sickened. “You know.”
“Not much, but what I know fits what you’re saying,” Steve told her. “There’s a guy like that back there.” He hooked a thumb in the general direction of the greenbelt. “Entragian recognized him. Said he’d been on the street two or three times before since the start of the summer. He got in your nephew’s hooking range, didn’t he? How?”
“I don’t know,” she said dully. “I must have been away.”
“Where?” Cynthia asked. She’d had the idea that Mrs. Wyler was sort of a recluse.
“Never mind,” Audrey said. “Just a place I go. You wouldn’t understand. The point is, Tak killed my brother Bill and the rest of his family. And it used one of the Power Wagons to do it.”
“Maybe he could only manage one lonely trombone then, but he’s got the whole band playing now, doesn’t he?” Johnny asked.
Audrey was looking away from them now, nibbling at lips that looked dry and sore. “Herb and I took him in, and in some ways—in many ways, actually—I was never sorry. We could never have children ourselves. He was a loving boy, a sweetheart of a boy—”
“Somebody probably loved Typhoid Mary, too,” Cammie Reed said in a dry, rasping voice.
Audrey looked at her, still biting at her lips, then looked back at Johnny, appealing with her eyes for understanding. He didn’t want to understand, not after all that had happened, especially not after seeing the terrible distortion in Jim Reed’s face as the bullet slammed into his brain, but he thought maybe he did a little, anyway. Like it or not.