by Stephen King
“This is your room,” he said, and threw open a door on a dusty damp room that held the weight of years. He did not seem to have heard Richards’s comment. “It’s not much of an accommodation, I’m afraid, but—” He turned to face Richards with his patient I-want-to-please smile. “You may stay as long as you want. Bradley Throckmorton is the best friend I’ve ever had.” The smile faltered a bit. “The only friend I’ve ever had. I’ll watch after my Mom. Don’t worry.”
Richards only repeated: “I better go.”
“You can’t, you know. That head bandage didn’t even fool Mom for long. I’m going to drive your car to a safe place, Mr. Richards. We’ll talk later.”
He left quickly, lumberingly. Richards noted that the seat of his uniform pants was shiny. He seemed to leave a faint odor of apologia in the room.
Pulling the ancient green shade aside a little, Richards saw him emerge on the cracked front walk below and get into the car. Then he got out again. He hurried back toward the house, and Richards felt a stab of fear.
Ponderously climbing tread on the stairs. The door opened, and Elton smiled at Richards. “Mom’s right,” he said. “I don’t make a very good secret agent. I forgot the keys.”
Richards gave them to him and then essayed a joke: “Half a secret agent is better than none.”
It struck a sour chord or no chord at all; Elton Parrakis carried his torments with him too clearly, and Richards could almost hear the phantom, jeering voices of the children that would follow him forever, like small tugs behind a big liner.
“Thank you,” Richards said softly.
Parrakis left, and the little car that Richards had come from New Hampshire in was driven away toward the park.
Richards pulled the dust cover from the bed and lay down slowly, breathing shallowly and looking at nothing but the ceiling. The bed seemed to clutch him in a perversely damp embrace, even through the coverlet and his clothes. An odor of mildew drifted through the channels of his nose like a senseless rhyme.
Downstairs, Elton’s mother was weeping.
…Minus 050 and COUNTING…
He dozed a little but could not sleep. Darkness was almost full when he heard Elton’s heavy tread on the stairs again, and Richards swung his feet onto the floor with relief.
When he knocked and stepped in, Richards saw that Parrakis had changed into a tentlike sports shirt and a pair of jeans.
“I did it,” he said. “It’s in the park.”
“Will it be stripped?”
“No,” Elton said. “I have a gadget. A battery and two alligator clips. If anyone puts his hand or a crowbar on it, they’ll get a shock and a short blast on a siren. Works good. I built it myself.” He seated himself with a heavy sigh.
“What’s this about Cleveland?” Richards demanded (it was easy, he found, to demand of Elton).
Parrakis shrugged. “Oh, he’s a fellow like me. I met him once in Boston, at the library with Bradley. Our little pollution club. I suppose Mom said something about that.” He rubbed his hands together and smiled unhappily.
“She said something,” Richards agreed.
“She’s…. a little dim,” Parrakis said. “She doesn’t understand much of what’s been happening for the last twenty years or so. She’s frightened all the time. I’m all she has.”
“Will they catch Bradley?”
“I don’t know. He’s got quite a…uh, intelligence network.” But his eyes slipped away from Richards’s.
“You—”
The door opened and Mrs. Parrakis stood there. Her arms were crossed and she was smiling, but her eyes were haunted. “I’ve called the police,” she said. “Now you’ll have to go.”
Elton’s face drained to a pearly yellowish-white. “You’re lying.”
Richards lurched to his feet and then paused, his head cocked in a listening gesture.
Faintly, rising, the sound of sirens.
“She’s not lying,” he said. A sickening sense of futility swept him. Back to square one. “Take me to my car.”
“She’s lying,” Elton insisted. He rose, almost touched Richards’s arm, then withdrew his hand as if the other man might be hot to the touch. “They’re fire trucks.”
“Take me to my car. Quick.”
The sirens were becoming louder, rising and falling, wailing. The sound filled Richards with a dreamlike horror, locked in here with these two crazies while—
“Mother—” His face was twisted, beseeching.
“I called them!” she blatted, and seized one of her son’s bloated arms as if to shake him. “I had to! For you! That darky has got you all mixed up! We’ll say he broke in and we’ll get the reward money—”
“Come on,” Elton grunted to Richards, and tried to shake free of her.
But she clung stubbornly, like a small dog bedeviling a Percheron. “I had to. You’ve got to stop this radical business, Eltie! You’ve got to—”
“Eltie!” he screamed. “Eltie!” And he flung her away. She skidded across the room and fell across the bed.
“Quick,” Elton said, his face full of terror and misery. “Oh, come quick.”
They crashed and blundered down the stairs and out the front door, Elton breaking into a gigantic, quivering trot. He was beginning to pant again.
And upstairs, filtering both through the closed window and the open door downstairs, Mrs. Parrakis’s scream rose to a shriek which met and mixed and blended with the approaching sirens: “I DID IT FOR YOOOOOOOOOOO—”
…Minus 049 and COUNTING…
Their shadows chased them down the hill toward the park, waxing and waning as they approached and passed each of the mesh-enclosed G.A. streetlamps. Elton Parrakis breathed like a locomotive, in huge and windy gulps and hisses.
They crossed the street and suddenly headlights picked them out on the far sidewalk in hard relief. Blue flashing lights blazed on as the police car came to a screeching, jamming halt a hundred yards away.
“RICHARDS! BEN RICHARDS!”
Gigantic, megaphone-booming voice.
“Your car…up ahead…see?” Elton panted.
Richards could just make the car out. Elton had parked it well, under a copse of run-to-seed birch trees near the pond.
The cruiser suddenly screamed into life again, rear tires bonding hot rubber to the pavement in lines of acceleration, its gasoline-powered engine wailing in climbing revolutions. It slammed up over the curb, headlights skyrocketing, and came down pointing directly at them.
Richards turned toward it, suddenly feeling very cool, feeling almost numb. He dragged Bradley’s pistol out of his pocket, still backing up. The rest of the cops weren’t in sight. Just this one. The car screamed at them across the October-bare ground of the park, self-sealing rear tires digging out great clods of ripped black earth.
He squeezed off two shots at the windshield. It starred but did not shatter. He leaped aside at the last second and rolled. Dry grass against his face. Up on his knees, he fired twice more at the back of the car and then it was coming around in a hard, slewing power turn, blue lights turning the night into a crazy, shadow-leaping nightmare. The cruiser was between him and the car, but Elton had leaped the other way, and was now working frantically to remove his electrical device from the car door.
Someone was halfway out of the passenger side of the police car, which was on its way again. A thick stuttering sound filled the dark. Sten gun. Bullets dug through the turf around him in a senseless pattern. Dirt struck his cheeks, pattered against his forehead.
He knelt as if praying, and fired again into the windshield. This time, the bullet punched a hole through the glass.
The car was on top of him—
He sprang to the left and the reinforced steel bumper struck his left foot, snapping his ankle and sending him sprawling on his face.
The cruiser’s engine rose to a supercharged scream, digging through another power turn. Now the headlights were on him again, turning everything stark monochrome. Richa
rds tried to get up, but his broken ankle wouldn’t support him.
Sobbing in great gulps of air, he watched the police car loom again. Everything became heightened, surreal. He was living in an adrenaline delirium and everything seemed slow, deliberate, orchestrated. The approaching police car was like a huge, blind buffalo.
The Sten gun rattled again, and this time a bullet punched through his left arm, knocking him sideways. The heavy car tried to veer and get him, and for a moment he had a clear shot at the figure behind the wheel. He fired once and the window blew inward. The car screamed into a slow, digging, sidewards roll, then went up and over, crashing down on the roof and then onto its side. The motor stalled, and in sudden, shocking silence, the police radio crackled clearly.
Richards still could not get to his feet and so he began to crawl toward the car. Parrakis was in it now, trying to start it, but in his blind panic he must have forgotten to lever the safety vents open; each time he turned the key there was only a hollow, coughing boom of air in the chambers.
The night began to fill up with converging sirens.
He was still fifty yards from the car when Elton realized what was wrong and yanked down the vent lever. The next time he turned the key the engine chopped erratically into life and the air car swept toward Richards.
He got to a half-standing position and tore the passenger door open and fell inside. Parrakis banked left onto Route 77 which intersected State Street above the park, the lower deck of the car no more than an inch from the paving, almost low enough to drag and spill them.
Elton gulped in huge swatches of air and let them out with force enough to flap his lips like window blinds.
Two more police cars screamed around the corner behind them, the blue lights flashed on, and they gave chase.
“We’re not fast enough!” Elton screamed. “We’re not fast—”
“They’re on wheels!” Richards yelled back. “Cut through that vacant lot!”
The air car banked left and they were slammed upward violently as they crossed the curb. The battering air pressure shoved them into drive.
The police cars swelled behind them, and then they were shooting. Richards heard steel fingers punching holes in the body of their car. The rear window blew in with a tremendous crash, and they were sprinkled with fragments of safety glass.
Screaming, Elton whipped the air car left and right.
One of the police cars, doing sixty-plus, lost it coming up over the curb. The car veered wildly, revolving blue dome-lights splitting the darkness with lunatic bolts of light, and then it crashed over on its side, digging a hot groove through the littered moraine of the empty lot, until a spark struck its peeled-back gas tank. It exploded whitely, like a road flare.
The second car was following the road again, but Elton beat them. They had cut the cruiser off, but it would gain back the lost distance very shortly. The gas-driven ground cars were nearly three times faster than air drive. And if an air car tried to go too far off the road, the uneven surface beneath the thrusters would flip the car over, as Parrakis had nearly flipped them crossing the curb.
“Turn right!” Richards cried.
Parrakis pulled them around in another grinding, stomach-lurching turn. They were on Route 1; ahead, Richards could see that they would soon be forced up the entranceway to the Coast Turnpike. No evasive action would be possible there; only death would be possible there.
“Turn off! Turn off, goddammit! That alley!” For a moment, the police car was one turn behind them, lost from view.
“NO! No!” Parrakis was gibbering now. “We’ll be like rats in a trap!”
Richards leaned over and hauled the wheel around, knocking Elton’s hand from the throttle with the same gesture. The air car skidded around in a nearly ninety-degree turn. They bounced off the concrete of the building on the left of the alley’s mouth, sending them in at a crooked angle. The blunt nose of the car struck a pile of heaped trash, garbage cans, and splintered crates. Behind these, solid brick.
Richards was pitched violently into the dashboard as they crashed, and his nose broke with a sudden snap, gushing blood with violent force.
The air car lay askew in the alley, one cylinder still coughing a little. Parrakis was a silent lump lolling over the steering wheel. There was no time for him yet.
Richards slammed his shoulder against the crimped passenger door. It popped open, and he hopped on one leg to the mouth of the alley. He reloaded his gun from the crumpled box of shells Bradley had supplied him with. They were greasy-cool to the touch. He dropped some of them around his feet. His arm had begun to throb like an ulcerated tooth, making him feel sick and nauseated with pain.
Headlights turned the deserted city expressway from night to sunless day. The cruiser skidded around the turn, rear tires fighting for traction, sending up the fragrant smell of seared rubber. Looping black marks scored the expansion-joint macadam in parabolas. Then it was forward again. Richards held the gun in both hands, leaning against the building to his left. In a moment they would realize they could see no taillights ahead. The cop riding shotgun would see the alley, know—
Snuffling blood through his broken nose, he began to fire. The range was nearly pointblank, and at this distance, the highpowered slugs smashed through the bulletproof glass as if it had been paper. Each recoil of the heavy pistol pulsed through his wounded arm, making him scream.
The car roared up over the curb, flew a short, wingless distance, and crashed into the blank brick wall across the street. ECHO FREE-VEE REPAIR, a faded sign on this wall read. BECAUSE YOU WATCH IT, WE WON’T BOTCH IT.
The police car, still a foot above the ground, met the brick wall at high speed and exploded.
But others were coming; always others.
Panting, Richards made his way back to the air car. His good leg was very tired.
“I’m hurt,” Parrakis was groaning hollowly. “I’m hurt so bad. Where’s Mom? Where’s my Momma?”
Richards fell on his knees, wriggled under the air car on his back, and began to pull trash and debris from the air chambers like a madman. Blood ran down his cheeks from his ruptured nose and pooled beside his ears.
…Minus 048 and COUNTING…
The car would only run on five of its six cylinders, and it would go no faster than forty, leaning drunkenly to one side.
Parrakis directed him from the passenger seat, where Richards had manhandled him. The steering column had gone into his abdomen like a railspike, and Richards thought he was dying. The blood on the dented steering wheel was warm and sticky on Richards’s palms.
“I’m very sorry,” Parrakis said. “Turn left here…It’s really my fault. I should have known better. She…she doesn’t think straight. She doesn’t…” He coughed up a glut of black blood and spat it listlessly into his lap. The sirens filled the night, but they were far behind and off to the west. They had gone out Marginal Way, and from there Parrakis had directed him onto back roads. Now they were on Route 9 going north, and the Portland suburbs were petering out into October-barren scrub countryside. The strip lumberers had been through like locusts, and the end result was a bewildering tangle of second growth and marsh.
“Do you know where you’re telling me to go?” Richards asked. He was a huge brand of pain from one end to the other. He was quite sure his ankle was broken; there was no doubt at all about his nose. His breath came through it in flattened gasps.
“To a place I know,” Elton Parrakis said, and coughed up more blood. “She used to tell me a boy’s best friend is his Mom. Can you believe that? I used to believe it. Will they hurt her? Take her to jail?”
“No,” Richards said shortly, not knowing if they would or not. It was twenty minutes of eight. He and Elton had left the Blue Door at ten minutes past seven. It seemed as if decades had passed.
A far distance off, more sirens were joining in the general chorus. The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible, Richards thought disjointedly. If you can’t stand the heat, g
et out of the kitchen. He had dispatched two police cars singlehanded. Another bonus for Sheila. Blood money. And Cathy. Would Cathy sicken and die on milk paid for with bounty cash? How are you, my darlings? I love you. Here on this twisting, crazy back road fit only for deer jackers and couples looking for a good make-out spot, I love you and wish that your dreams be sweet. I wish—
“Turn left,” Elton croaked.
Richards swung left up a smooth tarred road that cut through a tangle of denuded sumac and elm, pine and spruce, scrubby nightmare second growth. A river, ripe and sulphurous with industrial waste, smote his nose. Low-hanging branches scraped the roof of the car with skeleton screeches. They passed a sign which read: SUPER PINE TREE MALL—UNDER CONSTRUCTION—KEEP OUT!—TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED!!
They topped a final rise and there was the Super Pine Tree Mall. Work must have stopped at least two years ago, Richards thought, and things hadn’t been too advanced when it did. The place was a maze, a rat warren of half-built stores and shops, discarded lengths of pipe, piles of cinderblock and boards, shacks and rusted Quonset huts, all overgrown with scrubby junipers and laurels and witchgrass and blue spruce, blackberry and blackthorn, devil’s paintbrush and denuded goldenrod. And it stretched on for miles. Gaping oblong foundation holes like graves dug for Roman gods. Rusted skeleton steel. Cement walls with steel core-rods protruding like shadowy cryptograms. Bulldozed oblongs that were to be parking lots now grassed over.
Somewhere overhead, an owl flew on stiff and noiseless wings, hunting.
“Help me…into the driver’s seat.”
“You’re in no condition to drive,” Richards said, pushing hard on his door to open it.
“It’s the least I can do,” Elton Parrakis said with grave and bloody absurdity. “I’ll play hare…drive as long as I can.”
“No,” Richards said.
“Let me go!” He screamed at Richards, his fat baby face terrible and grotesque. “I’m dying and you just better let me guh—guh—guh—” He trailed off into hideous silent coughs that brought up fresh gouts of blood. It smelled very moist in the car; like a slaughterhouse. “Help me,” he whispered. “I’m too fat to do it by myself. Oh God please help me do this.”
