The Bachman Books

by Stephen King

  Four sticks on the kitchen counter, beside his bottle of Southern Comfort. Four sticks in the living room. Four in the dining room. Four in the hall.

  He trailed fuse back into the living room, a little out of breath from going up and down stairs. But there was one more trip to make. He went back up and got the crate, which was considerably lighter now. There were only eleven sticks of explosive left inside it. The crate, he saw, had once contained oranges. Written on the side, in faded letters, was this word:

  POMONA

  Beside the word was a picture of an orange with one leaf clinging to the stem. He took the crate out to the garage, using the breezeway this time, and put the box on the back seat of his car. He wired each stick of malglinite with a short fuse, then joined all eleven to a long length with electrician's tape and strung the long fuse back into the house, being careful to slip the fuse into the crack beneath the side door that opened onto the breezeway and then relocking it.

  In the living room he joined the house master fuse with the one that came from the garage. Working carefully, still humming, he cut another length and joined it to the other two with electrician's tape. He payed this final fuse over to the battery and peeled the insulation from the end with the steak knife.

  He separated the copper core wires and twisted each bunch into a little pigtail. He took the jumper cables and attached a black alligator clip to one pigtail, a red alligator clip to the other. He went to the storage battery and attached the other black alligator clip to the terminal marked:

  POS

  He left the red clip unhooked, lying beside the post marked

  NEG

  Then he went to the stereo, turned it on, and listened to the Rolling Stones. It was five minutes past four. He went to the kitchen, made himself another drink, and went back to the living room with it, suddenly at loose ends. There was a copy of Good Housekeeping on the coffee table. There was an article in it about the Kennedy family and their problems. He read the article. After that he read an article titled "Women and Breast Cancer." It was by a woman doctor.

  They came at a little past ten, just after the bells of the Congregational Church five blocks over had rung in the hour, calling people to matins, or whatever in hell the Congregationalists called them.

  There was a green sedan and a black-and-white police car. They pulled up at the curb and three men got out of the green sedan. One of them was Fenner. He didn't know who the other two were. Each of them had a briefcase.

  Two policemen got out of the black-and-white and leaned against it. It was obvious from their attitudes that they expected no trouble; they were discussing something as they leaned against the hood of the black-and-white, and their words came out of their mouths in visible white puffs.

  Things stopped.

  Stoptime, January 20, 1974

  well fred this is it i guess put up or shut up time oh i know in one sense it's too late to shut up i've got explosives strung all over the house like birthday decorations a gun in my hand and another one in my belt like fucking john dillinger well what do you say this is the last decision like climbing a tree i pick this fork then i pick that fork now this now that

  (the men frozen in tableau outside in the hallway between seconds fenner in a green suit one foot six inches off the pavement as it steps forward good shoes clad in low fashionable rubbers if there is such a thing as fashionable rubbers his green topcoat flapping open like a crusading attorney in a tv lead-in his head is slightly turned slightly cocked the man in back of him has made some comment and fenner is cocking his head to catch it the man who has spoken has a white plume half out of his mouth this second man is wearing a blue blazer and dark brown pants his topcoat is also open and the wind has caught it stoptime has caught his topcoat in midflap and the third man is just turning from the car and the cops are leaning against their black-and-white with their heads turned to one another they could be discussing anything marriage or a tough case or the shitty season the musties had or the state of their balls and the sun has come through the scud overhead just enough to make a single twinkle on a single shell of one policeman's assigned equipment said shell pushed through one of many little leather loops on said policeman's belt the other cop is wearing shades and the sun has pricked out a compass point on the right lens and his lips are thick sensual caught at the beginning of a smile: this is the photograph)

  i'm going ahead freddy my boy do you have anything you'd care to say at this auspicious moment at this point in the proceedings yes says fred you're going to hold out for the newspeople aren't you i sure am says george the words the pictures the newsreels demolition i know has only the point of visibility but freddy does it strike you how lonely this is how all over this city and the world people are eating and shitting and fucking and scratching their eczema all the things they write books about while we have to do this alone yes i've considered that george in fact i tried to tell you something about it if you'll recall and if it's any consolation to you this seems right right now it seems okay because when you can't move you can give them their roadwork but please george don't kill anybody no not on purpose fred but you see the position i am in yes i see i understand by george i'm scared now i'm so scared no don't be scared i'm going to handle this and i'm in perfect control myself

  roll it

  January 20, 1974

  "Roll it," he said aloud, and everything began to move.

  He put the rifle to his shoulder, sighted on the right front wheel of the police cruiser, and pulled the trigger.

  The gun kicked crushingly against his shoulder and the muzzle jerked upward after the bullet had been fired. The large living room window burst outward, leaving only jagged hunks protruding from the molding like impressionistic glass arrows. The cruiser's front tire did not flatten; it exploded with a loud bang, and the whole car shuddered on its springs like a dog that had been kicked while asleep. The hubcap flew off and rattled aimlessly on the frozen composition surface of Crestallen Street West.

  Fenner stopped and looked unbelievingly at the house. His face was raw with shock. The fellow in the blue blazer dropped his briefcase. The other fellow had better reflexes, or perhaps a more developed sense of self-preservation. He wheeled and ran around the green sedan, crouched low, and disappeared from sight.

  The policemen moved right and left, behind their own cruiser. A moment later the one wearing sunglasses bounced up from behind the hood, his service revolver held in both hands, and fired three times. The gun made an innocuous popping sound after the Weatherbee's massive crack. He fell behind his chair and heard the bullets pass overhead-you really could hear them, and the noise they made in the air was zzizzz!-and bury themselves in the plaster above the couch. The sound they made entering the plaster reminded him of the sound fists made hitting the heavy bag in a gymnasium. He thought: that's what they'd sound like going into me.

  The cop wearing sunglasses was shouting at Fenner and the man in the blue blazer. "Get down! Goddammit, get down! He's got a fucking howitzer in there!"

  He raised his head a little more to see better and the cop in the sunglasses saw him do it and fired twice more. The bullets thudded into the wall and this time Mary's favorite picture, "Lobstermen" by Winslow Homer, fell off the wall, hit the couch, and then went to the floor. The glass facing on the picture shattered.

  He raised his head again because he had to see what was happening (why hadn't he thought to get a kid's periscope?), he had to see if they were trying to flank him which was how Richard Widmark and Marty Milner always took the Jap pillboxes on the late movies, and if they were trying to do that he would have to try to shoot one, but the cops were still behind their cruiser and Fenner and the guy in the blue blazer were dashing behind the green car. Blue Blazer's briefcase lay on the sidewalk like a small dead animal. He aimed at it, wincing at the recoil of the big rifle even before it came, and fired.

  CRRRACKK! and the briefcase exploded into two pieces and jumped savagely into the air, flapping, disgorging a f
lutter of papers for the wind to stir an invisible finger through.

  He fired again, this time at the right front wheel of the green sedan, and the tire blew. One of the men behind the car screamed in soprano terror.

  He looked over at the police car and the driver's side door was open. The cop with the sunglasses was lying half in on the seat, using his radio. Soon all the party-goers would be here. They were going to give him away, a little piece for anyone who wanted one, and it would not be personal anymore. He felt a relief that was as bitter as aloes. Whatever it had been, whatever mournful sickness that had brought him to this, the last crotch of a tall tree, it was not his alone anymore, whispering and crying in secret. He had joined the mainstream of lunacy, he had come out of the closet. Soon they could reduce him to safe headline-SHAKY CEASE-FIRE HOLDS ON CRESTALLEN STREET.

  He put the rifle down and scrambled across the living room floor on his hands and knees, being careful not to cut himself on the glass from the shattered picture frame. He got the small pillow and then scrambled back. The cop was not in the car anymore.

  He picked up the Magnum and put two shots across their bow. The pistol bucked heavily in his hand, but the recoil was manageable. His shoulder throbbed like a rotted tooth.

  One of the cops, the one without sunglasses, popped up behind the cruiser's hunk to return his fire and he sent two bullets into the cruiser's back window, blowing it inward in a twisted craze of cracks. The cop ducked back down without firing.

  "Hold it!" Fenner bawled. "Let me talk to him!"

  "Go ahead," one of the cops said.

  "Dawes! " Fenner yelled toughly, sounding like a detective in the last reel of a Jimmy Cagney movie. (The police spotlights are crawling relentlessly back and forth over the front of the sleazy slum tenement where "Mad Dog" Dawes has gone to ground with a smoking .45 automatic in each hand." "Mad Dog" is crouched behind an overturned easy chair, wearing a strappy T-shirt and snarling.) "Dawes, can you hear me in there! "

  (And "Mad Dog, " his face twisted with defiance-although his brow is greased with sweat-screams out:)

  "Come and get me, ya dirty coppers! " He bounced up over the easy chair and emptied the Magnum into the green sedan, leaving a ragged row of holes.

  "Jesus!" somebody screamed. "Oh Jesus he's nuts!"

  "Dawes! " Fenner yelled.

  "You'll never take me alive! " he yelled, delirious with joy. "You're the dirty rats who shot my ,kid brother! I'll see some of ya in hell before ya get me!" He reloaded the Magnum with trembling fingers and then put enough shells into the Weatherbee to fill its magazine.

  "Dawes! " Fenner yelled again. "How about a deal?

  "How about some hot lead, ya dirty screw!" he screamed at Fenner, but he was looking at the police car and when the cop wearing sunglasses put his head stealthily over the hood, he sent him diving with two shots. One of them went through the picture window of the Quinns' house across the street.

  "Dawes! " Fenner yelled importantly.

  One of the cops said: "Oh shut the fuck up. You're just encouraging him."

  There was an embarrassed silence and in it the sound of sirens, still distant, began to rise. He put the Magnum down and picked up the rifle. The joyous delirium had left him feeling tired and achey and needing to shit.

  Please let them be quick from the TV stations, he prayed. Quick with their movie cameras.

  When the first police car screamed around the corner in a calculated racing drift like something out of The French Connection he was ready. He had fired two of the howitzer shells over the parked cruiser to make them stay down, and he drew a careful bead on the grille of the charging cruiser and squeezed the trigger like a seasoned Richard Widmark-type veteran and the whole grille seemed to explode and the hood flew up. The cruiser roared straight over the curb about forty yards up the street and hit a tree. The doors flew open and four cops spilled out with their guns drawn, looking dazed. Two of them walked into each other. Then the cops behind the first cruiser (his cops, he thought of them with a trace of propriety) opened fire and he submarined behind the chair while the bullets whizzed above him. It was seventeen minutes of eleven. He thought that now they would try to flank him.

  He stuck his head up because he had to and a bullet droned past his right ear. Two more cruisers were corning up Crestallen Street from the other direction, sirens whooping, blue lights flashing. Two of the cops from the crashed cruiser were trying to climb the stake fence between the sidewalk and the Upslingers' backyard and he fired the rifle at them three times, not firing to hit or miss but only to make them go back to their car. They did. Wood from Wilbur Upslinger's fence (ivy climbed on it in the spring and summer) sprayed everywhere, and part of it actually fell over into the snow.

  The two new cruisers had pulled up in a V that blocked the road in front of Jack Hobart's house. Police crouched in the apex of the V. One of them was talking to the police in the crash cruiser on a walkie-talkie. A moment later the newest arrivals began laying down a heavy pattern of covering fire, making him duck again. Bullets struck the front door, the front of the house, and all around the picture window. The mirror in the front hall exploded into jumbled diamonds. A bullet punched through the quilt covering the Zenith TV, and the quilt danced briefly.

  He scrambled across the living room on his hands and knees and stood up by the small window behind the TV. From here he could look directly into the Upslingers' backyard. Two policemen were trying the flanking movement again. One of them had a nosebleed.

  Freddy, I may have to kill one of them to make them stop.

  Don't do that, George. Please. Don't do that.

  He smashed the window with the butt of the Magnum, cutting his hand. They looked around at the noise, saw him, and began to shoot. He returned their fire and saw two of his bullets punch holes in Wilbur's new aluminum siding (had the city recompensed him for that?). He heard bullets punching into his own house just below the window and on both sides of it. One whined off the frame and splinters flew in his face. He expected a bullet to rip off the top of his head at any moment. It was hard to tell how long the exchange went on. Suddenly one of the cops grabbed his forearm and cried out. The cop dropped his pistol like a child that has grown tired of a stupid game. He ran in a small circle. His partner grabbed him and they began to run back toward their crashed cruiser, the unhurt one with his arm around his partner's waist.

  He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled back to the overturned chair and peeked out. Two more cruisers on the street now, one corning from each end. They parked on the Quinns' side of the street and eight policemen got out and run behind the cruiser with the flat tire and the green sedan.

  He put his head down again and crawled into the hall. The house was taking very heavy fire now. He knew he should take the rifle and go upstairs, he would have a better angle on them from up there, could maybe drive them back from their car to cover in the houses across the street. But he didn't dare go that far from the master fuse and the storage battery. The TV people might come at any time.

  The front door was full of bullet holes, the dark brown varnish splintered back to show the raw wood underneath. He crawled into the kitchen. All the windows were broken in here and broken glass littered the linoleum. A chance shot had knocked the coffeepot from the stove and it lay overturned in a puddle of brown goo. He crouched below the window for a moment, then bounced up and emptied the Magnum into the V-parked cars. Immediately fire intensified on the kitchen. Two bullet holes appeared in the white enamel of the refrigerator and another struck the Southern Comfort bottle on the counter. It exploded, spraying glass and southern hospitality everywhere.

  Crawling back to the living room he felt something like a bee sting in the fleshy part of his tight thigh just below the buttocks, and when he clapped his hand to it, his fingers came away bloody.

  He lay behind the chair and reloaded the Magnum. Reloaded the Weatherbee. Poked his head up and ducked back down, wincing, at the ferocity of fire that came at
him, bullets striking the couch and the wall and the TV, making the quilt shimmy. Poked his head up again and fined at the police cars parked across the street. Blew in one window. And saw-

  At the top of the street, a white station wagon and a white Ford van. Written in blue letters on the sides of both was:

  WHLM NEWSBEAT

  CHANNEL 9

  Panting, he crawled back to the window that looked out on the Upslingers' side yard. The news vehicles were crawling slowly and dubiously down Crestallen Street. Suddenly a new police car shot around them and blocked them off, tires smoking. An arm dressed in blue shot out of the cruiser's back window and began waving the newsmobiles off.

  A bullet struck the windowsill and jumped into the room at an angle.

  He crawled back to the easy chair, holding the Magnum in his bloody right hand and screamed: "Fenner!"

  The fire slackened a little.

  "Fenner! " he screamed again.

  "Hold on! " Fenner yelled. "Stop! Stop a minute! "

  There were a few isolated pops, then nothing.

  "What do you want?" Fenner called.

  "The news people! Down behind those cars on the other side of the street! I want to talk to them! "

  There was a long, contemplative pause.

  "No! " Fenner yelled.

  "I'll stop shooting if I can talk to them!" That much was true, he thought, looking at the battery.

  "No! " Fenner yelled again.

  Bastard, he thought helplessly. Is it that important to you? You and Ordner and the rest of you bureaucratic bastards?

  The firing began again, tentatively at first, then gaining strength. Then, incredibly, a man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans was running down the sidewalk, holding a pistol-grip camera in one hand.

  "I heard that!" the man in the plaid shirt yelled. "I heard every word! I'll get your name, fella! He offered to stop shooting and you-"