Firestarter

by Stephen King

  The wait had been good for him. He felt that he had been able to make his peace with all of this. Not understanding, no. He felt he would never have that, even if he and Charlie somehow managed to beat the fantastic odds and get away and go on living. He could find no fatal flaw in his own character on which to blame this royal ballsup, no sin of the father that needed to be expiated upon his daughter. It wasn't wrong to need two hundred dollars or to participate in a controlled experiment, any more than it was wrong to want to be free. If I could get clear, he thought, I'd tell them this. teach your children, teach your babies, teach them well, they say they know what they are doing, and sometimes they do, but mostly they lie.

  But it was what it was, n'est-ce pas? One way or another they would at least have a run for their money. But that brought him no feeling of forgiveness or understanding for the people who had done this. In finding peace with himself, he had banked the fires of his hate for the faceless bureaucretins who had done this in the name of national security or whatever it was. Only they weren't faceless now: one of them stood before him, smiling and twitching and vacant. Andy felt no sympathy for Cap's state at all.

  You brought it on yourself, chum.

  "Hello, Andy," Cap said. "All ready?"

  "Yes," Andy said. "Carry one of my bags, would you?"

  Cap's vacuity was broken by one of those falsely shrewd glances. "Have you checked them?" he barked. "Checked them for snakes?"

  Andy pushed--not hard. He wanted to save as much as he could for an emergency. "Pick it up," he said, gesturing at one of the two suitcases.

  Cap walked over and picked it up. Andy grabbed the other one.

  "Where's your car?"

  "It's right outside," Cap said. "It's been brought around."

  "Will anyone check on us?" What he meant was Will anyone try to stop us?

  "Why would they?" Cap asked, honestly surprised. "I'm in charge."

  Andy had to be satisfied with that. "We're going out," he said, "and we're going to put these bags in the trunk--"

  "Trunk's okay," Cap broke in. "I checked it this morning."

  "--and then we're going to drive around to the stable and get my daughter. Any questions?"

  "No," Cap said.

  "Fine. Let's go."

  They left the apartment and walked to the elevator. A few people moved up and down the hall on their own errands. They glanced cautiously at Cap and then looked away. The elevator took them up to the ballroom and Cap led the way down a long front hall.

  Josie, the redhead who had been on the door the day Cap had ordered Al Steinowitz to Hastings Glen, had gone on to bigger and better things. Now a young, prematurely balding man sat there, frowning over a computer-programming text. He had a yellow felt-tip pen in one hand. He glanced up as they approached.

  "Hello, Richard," Cap said. "Hitting the books?"

  Richard laughed. "They're hitting me is more like it." He glanced at Andy curiously. Andy looked back noncommittally.

  Cap slipped his thumb into a slot and something thumped. A green light shone on Richard's console.

  "Destination?" Richard asked. He exchanged his felt-tip for a ballpoint. It hovered over a small bound book.

  "Stable," Cap said briskly. "We're going to pick up Andy's daughter and they are going to escape."

  "Andrews Air Force Base," Andy countered, and pushed.

  Pain settled immediately into his head like a dull meat cleaver.

  "Andrews AFB," Richard agreed, and jotted it into the book, along with the time. "Have a good day, gentlemen."

  They went out into breezy October sunshine. Cap's Vega was drawn up on the clean white crushed stone of the circular driveway. "Give me your keys," Andy said. Cap handed them over, Andy opened the trunk, and they stowed the luggage. Andy slammed the trunk and handed the keys back. "Let's go."

  Cap drove them on a loop around the duckpond to the stables. As they went, Andy noticed a man in a baseball warmup jacket running across to the house they had just left, and he felt a tickle of unease. Cap parked in front of the open stable doors.

  He reached for the keys and Andy slapped his hand lightly. "No. Leave it running. Come on." He got out of the car. His head was thudding, sending rhythmic pulses of pain deep into his brain, but it wasn't too bed yet. Not yet.

  Cap got out, then stood, irresolute. "I don't want to go in there," he said. His eyes shifted back and forth wildly in their sockets. "Too much dark. They like the dark. They hide. They bite."

  "There are no snakes," Andy said, and pushed out lightly. It was enough to get Cap moving, but he didn't look very convinced. They walked into the stable.

  For one wild, terrible moment Andy thought she wasn't there. The change from light to shadow left his eyes momentarily helpless. It was hot and stuffy in here, and something had upset the horses; they were whinnying and kicking at their stalls. Andy could see nothing.

  "Charlie?" he called, his voice cracked and urgent. "Charlie?"

  "Daddy!" she called, and gladness shot through him--gladness that turned to dread when he heard the shrill fear in her voice. "Daddy, don't come in! Don't come--"

  "I think it's a little late for that," a voice said from somewhere overhead.

  10

  "Charlie," the voice had called down softly. It was somewhere overhead, but where? It seemed to come from everywhere.

  The anger had gusted through her--anger that was fanned by the hideous unfairness of it, the way that it never ended, the way they had of being there at every turn, blocking every lunge for escape. Almost at once she felt it start to come up from inside her. It was always so much closer to the surface now ... so much more eager to come bursting out. Like with the man who had brought her over. When he drew his gun, she had simply made it hot so he would drop it. He was lucky the bullets hadn't exploded right inside it.

  Already she could feel the heat gathering inside her and beginning to radiate out as the weird battery or whatever it was turned on. She scanned the dark lofts overhead but couldn't spot him. There were too many stacks of bales. Too many shadows.

  "I wouldn't, Charlie," His voice was a little louder now, but still calm. It cut through the fog of rage and confusion.

  "You ought to come down bere!" Charlie cried loudly. She was trembling. "You ought to come down before I decide to set everything on fire! I can do it!"

  "I know you can," the soft voice responded. It floated down from nowhere, everywhere. "But if you do, you're going to burn up a lot of horses, Charlie. Can't you hear them?"

  She could. Once he had called it to her attention, she could. They were nearly mad with fear, whinnying and battering at their latched doors. Necromancer was in one of those stalls.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Again she saw the trench of fire running across the Manders yard and the chickens exploding.

  She turned toward the bucket of water again and was now badly frightened. The power was trembling on the edge of her ability to control it, and in another moment

  (back off!)

  it was going to blow loose

  (!BACK OFF!)

  and just go sky high.

  (!!BACK OFF, BACK OFF, DO YOU HEAR ME, BACK OFF!!)

  This time the half-full bucket did not just steam; it came to an instant, furious boil. A moment later the chrome faucet just over the bucket twisted twice, spun like a propeller, and then blew off the pipe jutting from the wall. The fixture flew the length of the stable like a rocket payload and caromed off the far wall. Water gushed from the pipe. Cold water; she could feel its coldness. But moments after the water spurted out it turned to steam and a hazy mist filled the corridor between the stalls. A coiled green hose that hung on a peg next to the pipe had fused its plastic loops.

  (BACK OFF!)

  She began to get control of it again and pull it down. A year ago she would have been incapable of that; the thing would have had to run its own destructive course. She was able to hold on better now... ah, but there was so much more to control!
/>   She stood there, shivering.

  "What more do you want?" she asked in a low voice. "Why can't you just let us go?"

  A horse whinnied, high and frightened. Charlie understood exactly how it felt.

  "No one thinks you can just be let go," Rainbird's quiet voice answered. "I don't think even your father thinks so. You're dangerous, Charlie. And you know it. We could let you go and the next men that grabbed you might be Russians, or North Koreans, maybe even the Heathen Chinee. You may think I'm kidding, but I'm not."

  "That's not my fault!" she cried.

  "No," Rainbird said meditatively. "Of course it isn't. But it's all bullshit anyway. I don't care about the Z factor, Charlie. I never did. I only care about you."

  "Oh, you liar!" Charlie screamed shrilly. "You tricked me, pretended to be something you weren't--"

  She stopped. Rainbird climbed easily over a low pile of bales, then sat down on the edge of the loft with his feet dangling down. The pistol was in his lap. His face was like a ruined moon above her.

  "Lied to you? No. I mixed up the truth, Charlie, that's all I ever did. And I did it to keep you alive."

  "Dirty liar," she whispered, but was dismayed to find that she wanted to believe him; the sting of tears began behind her eyes. She was so tired and she wanted to believe him, wanted to believe he had liked her.

  "You weren't testing," Rainbird said. "Your old man wasn't testing, either. What were they going to do? Say 'Oh, sorry, we made a mistake' and put you back on the street? You've seen these guys at work, Charlie. You saw them shoot that guy Manders in Hastings Glen. They pulled out your own mother's fingernails and then k--"

  "Stop it!" she screamed in agony, and the power stirred again, restlessly close to the surface.

  "No, I won't," he said. "Time you had the truth, Charlie. I got you going. I made you important to them. You think I did it because it's my job? The fuck I did. They're assholes. Cap, Hockstetter, Pynchot, that guy Jules who brought you over here--they're all assholes."

  She stared up at him, as if hypnotized by his hovering face. He was not wearing his eyepatch, and the place where his eye had been was a twisted, slitted hollow, like a memory of horror.

  "I didn't lie to you about this," he said, and touched his face. His fingers moved lightly, almost lovingly, up the scars gored in the side of his chin to his flayed cheek to the burned-out socket itself. "I mixed up the truth, yeah. There was no Hanoi Rathole, no Cong. My own guys did it. Because they were assholes, like these guys."

  Charlie didn't understand, didn't know what he meant. Her mind was reeling. Didn't he know she could burn him to a crisp where he sat?

  "None of this matters," he said. "Nothing except you and me. We've got to get straight with each other, Charlie. That's all I want. To be straight with you."

  And she sensed he was telling the truth--hut that some darker truth lay just below his words. There was something he wasn't telling.

  "Come on up," he said, "and let's talk this out."

  Yes, it was like hypnosis. And, in a way, it was like telepathy. Because even though she understood the shape of that dark truth, her feet began to move toward the loft ladder. It wasn't talking that he was talking about. It was ending. Ending the doubt, the misery, the fear... ending the temptation to make ever bigger fires until some awful end came of it. In his own twisted, mad way, he was talking about being her friend in a way no one else could be. And ... yes, part of her wanted that. Part of her wanted an ending and a release.

  So she began to move toward the ladder, and her hands were on the rungs when her father burst in.

  11

  "Charlie?" he called, and the spell broke.

  Her hands left the rungs and terrible understanding spilled through her. She turned toward the door and saw him standing there. Her first thought (daddy you got fat!)

  passed through her mind and was gone so quickly she barely had a chance to recognize it. And fat or not, it was he; she would have known him anywhere, and her love for him spilled through her and swept away Rainbird's spell like mist. And the understanding was that whatever John Rainbird might mean to her, he meant only death for her father.

  "Daddy!" she cried. "Don't come in!"

  A sudden wrinkle of irritation passed over Rainbird's face. The gun was no longer in his lap; it was pointed straight at the silhouette in the doorway.

  "I think it's a little late for that," he said.

  There was a man standing beside her daddy. She thought it was that man they all called Cap. He was just standing there, his shoulders slumped as if they had been broken.

  "Come in," Rainbird said, and Andy came. "Now stop."

  Andy stopped. Cap had followed him, a pace or two behind, as if the two of them were tied together. Cap's eyes shifted nervously back and forth in the stable's dimness.

  "I know you can do it," Rainbird said, and his voice became lighter, almost humorous. "In fact, you can both do it. But, Mr. McGee ... Andy ? May I call you Andy?"

  "Anything you like," her father said. His voice was calm.

  "Andy, if you try using what you've got on me, I'm going to try to resist it just long enough to shoot your daughter. And, of course, Charlie, if you try using what you've got on me, who knows what will happen?"

  Charlie ran to her father. She pressed her face against the rough wale of his corduroy jacket.

  "Daddy, Daddy," she whispered hoarsely.

  "Hi, cookie," he said, and stroked her hair. He held her, then looked up at Rainbird. Sitting there on the edge of the loft like a sailor on a mast, he was the one-eyed pirate of Andy's dream to the life. "So what now?" he asked Rainbird. He was aware that Rainbird could probably hold them here until the fellow he had seen running across the lawn brought back help, but somehow he didn't think that was what this man wanted.

  Rainbird ignored his question. "Charlie?" he said.

  Charlie shuddered beneath Andy's hands but did not turn around.

  "Charlie," he said again, softly, insistently. "Look at me, Charlie."

  Slowly, reluctantly, she turned around and looked up at him.

  "Come on up here," he said, "like you were going to do. Nothing has changed. We'll finish our business and all of this will end."

  "No, I can't allow that," Andy said, almost pleasantly. "We're leaving."

  "Come up, Charlie," Rainbird said, "or I'm going to put a bullet into your father's head right now. You can burn me, but I'm betting I can pull this trigger before it happens."

  Charlie moaned deep in her throat like a hurt animal.

  "Don't move, Charlie," Andy said.

  "He'll be fine," Rainbird said. His voice was low, rational, persuasive. "They'll send him to Hawaii and he'll be fine. You choose, Charlie. A bullet in the head for him or the golden sands there on Kalami Beach. Which is it going to be? You choose."

  Her blue eyes never leaving Rainbird's one, Charlie took a trembling step away from her father.

  "Charlie!" he said sharply. "No!"

  "It'll be over," Rainbird said. The barrel of the pistol was unwavering; it never left Andy's head. "And that's what you want, isn't it? I'll make it gentle and I'll make it clean. Trust me, Charlie. Do it for your father and do it for yourself. Trust me."

  She took another step. And another.

  "No," Andy said. "Don't listen to him, Charlie."

  But it was as if he had given her a reason to go. She walked to the ladder again. She put her hands on the rung just above her head and then paused. She looked up at Rainbird, and locked her gaze with his.

  "Do you promise he'll be all right?"

  "Yes," Rainbird said, but Andy felt it suddenly and completely: the force of the lie ... all his lies.

  I'll have to push her, he thought with dumb amazement. Not him, but her.

  He gathered himself to do it. She was already standing on the first rung, her hands grasping the next one over her head.

  And that was when Cap--they had all forgotten him--began to scream.

  1
2

  When Don Jules got back to the building Cap and Andy had left only minutes before, he was so wild-looking that Richard, on door duty, grasped the gun inside his drawer.

  "What--" he began.

  "The alarm, the alarm!" Jules yelled.

  "Do you have auth--"

  "I've got the authorization I need, you fucking twit! The girl! The girl's making a break for itl"

  On Richard's console there were two simple combination-type dials, numbered from one to ten. Flustered, Richard dropped his pen and set the lefthand dial to a little past seven. Jules came around and set the righthand dial just past one. A moment later a low burring began to come from the console, a sound that was being repeated all over the Shop compound.

  Groundskeepers were turning off their mowers and running for sheds where rifles were kept. The doors to the rooms where the vulnerable computer terminals were slid closed and locked. Gloria, Cap's secretary, produced her own handgun. All available Shop agents ran toward loudspeakers to await instructions, unbuttoning coats to free weapons. The charge in the outer fence went from its usual mild daytime tickle to killing voltage. The Dobermans in the run between the two fences heard the buzzing, sensed the change as the Shop geared up to battle status, and began to bark and leap hysterically. Gates between the Shop and the outside world slid shut and locked automatically. A bakery truck that had been servicing the commissary had its rear bumper chewed off by one sliding gate, and the driver was lucky to escape electrocution.

  The buzz seemed endless, subliminal.

  Jules grabbed the mike from Richard's console and said, "Condition Bright Yellow. I say again, Condition Bright Yellow. No drill. Converge on stables; use caution." He searched his mind for the code term assigned to Charlie McGee and couldn't come up with it. They changed the fucking things by the day, it seemed. "It's the girl, and she's using it! Repeat, she's using it!"

  13

  Orv Jamieson was standing underneath the loudspeaker in the third-floor lounge of the north house, holding the Windsucker in one hand. When he heard Jules's message, he sat down abruptly and holstered it.

  "Uh-uh," he said to himself as the three others he had been shooting eight ball with ran out. "Uh-uh, not me, count me out." The others could run over there like hounds on a hot scent if they wanted to. They had not been at the Manders farm. They had not seen this particular third-grader in action.