A dead woman in green fatigues and a flak-jacket sprawled headdown on the porch steps, glaring at the sky through the bloodsmeared lenses of her glasses. There was dirt in her hair, a pistol in her hand, and a ragged black hole in her midsection. A man lay draped over the railing at the north end of the porch with one booted foot propped on the lawn-glider. He was also wearing fatigues and a flak-jacket. An assault-rifle with a banana clip sticking out of it lay in a flowerbed below him. Blood ran down his fingers and dripped from his nails. To Ralph’s heightened eye, the drops looked black and dead.
Felton, he thought. If the police are still yelling at Charlie Pickering-if Pickering’s inside-then that must be Frank Felton.
And what about Susan Day? Ed’s down the coast somewhere-Lois seemed sure of that, and I think she’s’ right-but what if Susan Day’s in there? Jesus, is that possible?
He supposed it was, but the possibilities didn’t matter-not now.
Helen and Natalie were almost certainly in there, along with God knew how many other helpless, terrorized women, and that did matter.
There was the sound of breaking glass from inside the house, followed by a soft explosion-almost a gasp. Ralph saw new flames jump up behind the panes of the front door.
Molotov cocktails, he thought. Charlie Pickering_finally got a chance to throw a few. How wonderful for him.
Ralph didn’t know how many cops were crouched behind the cars parked at the head of the driveway-it looked like at least thirty-but he picked out the two who had busted Ed Deepneau at once.
Chris Nell was crouched behind the front tire of the Derry police car closest to the house, and John Leydecker was down on one knee beside him. Nell was the one with the bullhorn, and as Ralph and Lois approached the police strongpoint, he glanced at Leydecker.
Leydecker nodded, pointed at the house, then pushed his palms at Nell in a gesture Ralph read easily: Be careful. He read something more distressing in Chris Nell’s aura-the younger man was too excited to be careful. Too stoked. And at that instant, almost as if Ralph’s thought had caused it to happen, Nell’s aura began changing color. It cycled from pale blue to dark gray to dead black with gruesome speed.
“GIVE IT UP, Pickering,!” Nell shouted, unaware that he was a dead man breathing.
The wire stock of an assault-rifle smashed through the glass of a window on the lower floor of the north wing, then disappeared back inside. At the same instant the fanlight over the front door exploded, showering the porch with glass. Flames roared out through the hole.
A second later the door itself shuddered open, as if nudged by an invisible hand. Nell leaned out farther, perhaps believing the shooter had finally seen reason and intended to give himself up.
Ralph, screaming: [“Pull him back, Johnny! PULL HIM BACK!
The rifle emerged again, barrel-first this time.
Leydecker reached for Nell’s collar, but he was too slow. The automatic rifle hacked its series of rapid dry coughs, and Ralph heard the metallic pank.tpank!pank. of bullets poking holes in the thin steel of the police car. Chris Nell’s aura was totally black now-it had become a deathbag. He jerked sideways as a bullet caught him in the neck, breaking Leydecker’s grip on his collar and sprawling into the dooryard with one foot kicking spasmodically. The bullhoril spilled from his hand with a brief squawk of feedback. A policeman behind one of the other cars cried out in surprise and horror. Lois’s shriek was much louder.
More bullets stitched across the ground toward Nell and then slapped small black holes into the thighs of his blue uniform. Ralph could dimly see the man inside the deathbag which was suffocating him; he was making blind efforts to roll over and get up. There was something singularly horrible about his struggles-to Ralph it was like watching a creature caught in a net drown in shallow, filthy water.
Leydecker lunged out from behind the police-car, and as his fingers disappeared into the black membrane surrounding Chris Nell, Ralph heard Old Dor say, I wouldn’t touch him anymore if I were you, Ralph-I can’t see your hands.
Lois: [“Don’t.” Don’t, he’s dead, he’s already dead!”] The gun poking out of the window had started to move to the right. Now it swivelled unhurriedly back toward Leydecker, the man behind it undeterred-and apparently unhurt-by the hail of bullets directed at him from the other police. Ralph raised his right hand and brought it down in the karate-chop gesture again, but this time instead of a wedge of light, his fingertips produced something that looked like a large blue teardrop. It spread across Leydecker’s lemon-colored aura just as the rifle sticking out of the window opened fire. Ralph saw two slugs strike the tree just to Leydecker’s right, sending chips of bark flying into the air and making black holes in the fir’s yellowish-white undersurface. A third struck the blue covering which had coated Leydecker’s aura-Ralph saw a momentary flicker of dark red just to the left of the detective’s temple and heard a low whine as the bullet either ricocheted or skipped, the way a flat stone will skip across the surface of a pond.
Leydecker pulled Nell back behind the car, looked at him, then’ tore open the driver’s-side door and threw himself into the front seat.
Ralph could no longer see him, but could hear him screaming at someone over the radio, asking where the fuck the rescue vehicles were.
More shattering glass, and Lois was grabbing frantically at Ralph’s arm, pointing at something-at a brick tumbling end over end into the dooryard. It had come through one of the low, narrow windows at the base of the north wing. These windows were almost obscured by the flowerbeds which edged the house.
“Help us!” a voice screamed through the broken window, even as the man with the assault-rifle fired reflexively at the tumbling brick, sending up puffs of reddish dust and then breaking it into three jagged chunks. Neither Ralph nor Lois had ever heard that voice raised in a scream, but both recognized it at once, nevertheless; it was Helen Deepneau’s voice. “Help us, Please.” We’re in the cellar.” We have children.” Please don’t let us burn to death, WE HAVE CHILDREN!”
Ralph and Lois exchanged a single wide-eyed glance, then ran for the house.
Two uniformed figures, looking more like pro-football linemen than cops in their bulky Kevlar vests, charged from behind one of the cruisers, running flat-out for the porch with their riot guns held at port arms. As they crossed the dooryard on a diagonal, Charlie Pickering leaned out of his window, still laughing wildly, his gray hair zanier than ever. The volume of fire directed at him was enormous, showering him with splinters from the sides of the window and actually knocking down the rusty gutter above his head-it struck the porch with a hollow honk-but not a single bullet touched him.
How can they not be hitting him? Ralph thought as he and Lois mounted the porch toward the lime-colored flames which were now billowing through the open front door.
Christ Jesus, it’s almost pointblank range, how can they possibly not be hitting him?
But he knew how… and why. Clotho had told them that both Atropos and Ed Deepneau had been surrounded by forces which were malignant yet protective. Was it not likely that those same forces were now taking care of Charlie Pickering, much as Ralph himself had taken care of Leydecker when he’d left the protection of the police-car to drag his dying colleague back to cover?
Pickering opened up on the charging State Troopers, his weapon switched to rapid-fire. He aimed low to negate the value of the vests they were wearing and swept their legs out from under them. One of them fell in a silent heap; the other crawled back the way he had come, shrieking that he was hit, he was hit, oh fuck, he was hit bad.