Needful Things (100 page)

Seat Thomas's second try plowed into the earth right next to Ace, splashing muddy water on the toes of his engineer boots. The old buzzard couldn't shoot for shit, but Ace suddenly realized he had to get the hell out of here, anyway. They had put enough dynamite in the courthouse to blow the whole building sky-high, they had set the timer for five minutes, and here he was, all but leaning against it while fucking Methuselah took potshots at him.

Let the dynamite take care of both of them.

It was time to go see Mr. Gaunt.

Ace got up and ran into the street. The old Deputy fired again, but this one wasn't even close. Ace ran behind the yellow newsvan, but made no attempt to get into it. The Chevrolet Celebrity was parked at Needful Things. It would do excellently as a getaway car. But first he intended to find Mr. Gaunt and get paid off. Surely he had
something
coming, and surely Mr. Gaunt would give it to him.

Also, he had a certain thieving Sheriff to find.

“Payback's a bitch,” Ace muttered, and ran up Main Street toward Needful Things.

Frank Jewett was standing on the courthouse steps when he finally saw the man he had been looking for. Frank had been there for some time now, and none of the things going on in Castle Rock tonight had meant much to him. Not the screams and shouts from the direction of Castle Hill, not Danforth Keeton and some elderly Hell's Angel running down the courthouse steps about five minutes ago, not the explosions, not the most recent rattle of gunshots, this time from right around the corner in the parking lot next to the Sheriff's Office. Frank had other fish to fry and other lemons to squeeze. Frank had a personal APB out on his excellent old “friend,” George T. Nelson.

And boy-howdy! At last! There was George T. Nelson himself, in the flesh, strolling by on the sidewalk below the courthouse steps! Except for the automatic pistol jammed into the waistband of George T. Nelson's Sans-A-Belt polyester slacks (and the fact that it was still raining like hell), the man might have been on his way to a picnic.

Just strolling along in the rain was Monsieur George T. Motherfucking Nelson, just breezing along with the Christing breeze, and what had the note in Frank's office said? Oh yes:
Remember, $2,000 at my house by 7:15 at the latest or you will wish you were born without a dick.
Frank glanced at his watch, saw it was closer to eight o'clock than to 7:15, and decided that didn't matter much.

He raised George T. Nelson's Spanish Llama and
pointed it at the head of the son of a bitching shop teacher who had caused all his trouble.

“NELSON
!” he screamed. “
GEORGE NELSON! TURN AROUND AND LOOK AT ME, YOU PRICK!”

George T. Nelson wheeled around. His hand dropped toward the butt of his automatic, then fell away when he saw he was covered. He placed his hands on his hips instead and peered up the courthouse steps at Frank Jewett, who stood there with rain dripping from his nose, his chin, and the muzzle of his stolen gun.

“You going to shoot me?” George T. Nelson asked.

“You bet I am!” Frank snarled.

“Just shoot me down like a dog, huh?”

“Why not? It's what you deserve!”

To Frank's amazement, George T. Nelson was smiling and nodding. “Ayup,” he said, “and that's what I'd expect from a chickenshit bastard who'd break into a friend's house and kill a defenseless little birdie.
Exactly
what I'd expect. So go ahead, you yellowbelly four-eyes fuck. Shoot me and get it over with.”

Thunder bellowed overhead, but Frank didn't hear it. The bank blew up ten seconds later and he barely heard
that.
He was too busy struggling with his fury . . . and his amazement. Amazement at the gall, the bold, bare-ass
gall
of Monsieur George T. Motherfucker Nelson.

At last Frank managed to break the lock on his tongue. “Killed your bird, right! Shit on that stupid picture of your mom, right again! And what did
you
do? What did
you
do, George, besides make sure that I'll lose my job and never teach again? God, I'll be lucky not to end up in jail!” He saw the total injustice of this in a sudden black flash of comprehension; it was like rubbing vinegar into a raw scrape. “Why didn't you just come and
ask
me for money, if you needed it? Why didn't you just come and ask?
We could have worked something out, you dumb bastard!”

“I don't know what you're talking about!” George T. Nelson shouted back. “All I know is that you're brave enough to kill teeny-tiny parakeets but you don't have balls enough to take me on in a fair fight!”

“Don't know what . . .
don't know what I'm talking about?”
Frank sputtered. The muzzle of the Llama wavered
wildly back and forth. He could not believe the gall of the man below him on the sidewalk; simply could not
believe
it. the Llama wavered wildly back and forth. To be standing there with one foot on the pavement and the other practically in eternity and to simply
go on lying . . .

“No! I don't! Not the slightest idea!”

In the extremity of his rage, Frank Jewett regressed to the childhood response to such outrageous, baldface denial: “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

“Coward!” George T. Nelson smartly returned. “Baby-coward! Parakeet-killer!”

“Blackmailer!”

“Loony! Put the gun away, loony! Fight me fair!”

Frank grinned down at him.
“Fair?
Fight you
fair?
What do you know about
fair?”

George T. Nelson held up his empty hands and waggled the fingers at Frank. “More than you, it looks like.”

Frank opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. He was temporarily silenced by George T. Nelson's empty hands.

“Go on,” George T. Nelson said. “Put it away. Let's do it like they do in the Westerns, George. If you've got the sack for it, that is. Fastest man wins.”

Frank thought: Well, why not? Just why the hell not?

He hadn't much else to live for, one way or the other, and if he did nothing else, he could show his old “friend” he wasn't a coward.

“Okay,” he said, and shoved the Llama into the waistband of his own pants. He held his hands out in front of him, hovering just above the butt of the gun. “How do you want to do it, Georgie-Porgie?”

George T. Nelson was grinning. “You start down the steps,” he said. “I start up. Next time the thunder goes overhead—”

“All right,” Frank said. “Fine. Let's do it.”

He started down the stairs. And George T. Nelson started up.

Polly had just spotted the green awning of Needful Things up ahead when the funeral parlor and the barber shop went up. The glare of light and the roar of sound were enormous. She saw debris burst out of the heart of the explosion like asteroids in a science fiction movie and ducked instinctively. It was well that she did; several chunks of wood and the stainless-steel lever from the side of Chair #2—Henry Gendron's chair—smashed through the windshield of her Toyota. The lever made a weird, hungry humming sound as it flew through the car and exited by way of the rear window. Broken glass whispered through the air in a widening shotgun cloud.

The Toyota, with no driver to steer it, bumped up over the curb, struck a fire hydrant, and stalled.

Polly sat up, blinking, and stared out through the hole in the windshield. She saw someone coming out of Needful Things and heading toward one of the three cars parked in front of the store. In the bright light of the fire across the street, she recognized Alan easily.

“Alan!”
She yelled it, but Alan didn't turn. He moved with single-minded purpose, like a robot.

Polly shoved open the door of her car and ran toward him, screaming his name over and over. From down the street came the rapid rattle of gunfire. Alan did not turn in that direction, nor did he look at the conflagration which, only moments ago, had been the funeral parlor and the barber shop. He seemed to be locked entirely on his own interior course of action, and Polly suddenly realized that she was too late. Leland Gaunt had gotten to him. He had bought something after all, and if she didn't make it to his car before he embarked on whatever wild-goose chase it was that Gaunt was sending him on, he would simply leave . . . and God only knew what might happen then.

She ran faster.

“Help me,” Norris said to Seaton Thomas, and slung an arm around Seat's neck. He staggered to his feet.

“I think I winged him,” Seaton said. He was puffing, but his color had come back.

“Good,” Norris said. His shoulder hurt like fire . . . and the pain seemed to be sinking deeper into his flesh all the time, as if seeking his heart. “Now just help me.”

“You'll be all right,” Seaton said. In his distress over Norris, Seat had forgotten his fear that he was, in his words, coming down with a heart attack. “Soon as I get you inside—”

“No,” Norris gasped. “Cruiser.”

“What?”

Norris turned his head and glared at Thomas with frantic, pain-filled eyes. “Get me in my cruiser! I have to go to Needful Things!”

Yes. The moment the words were out of his mouth, everything seemed to fall into place. Needful Things was where he had bought the Bazun fishing rod. It was the direction in which the man who had shot him had gone running. Needful Things was the place where everything had started; Needful Things was where it all must end.

Galaxia blew up, flooding Main Street with fresh glare. A Double Dragon machine rose out of the ruins, turned over twice, and landed upside down in the street with a crunch.

“Norris, you been shot—”

“Of course I've been shot!”
Norris screamed. Bloody froth flew from his lips.
“Now get me in the cruiser!”

“It's a bad idea, Norris—”

“No it's not,” Norris said grimly. He turned his head and spat blood. “It's the
only
idea. Now come on. Help me.”

Seat Thomas began to walk him toward Unit 2.

If Alan hadn't glanced into his rearview mirror before backing out into the street, he would have run Polly down, completing the evening by crushing the woman he loved under the rear wheels of his old station wagon. He did not recognize her; she was only a shape behind his car, a woman-shape outlined against the cauldron of flames on the other side of the street. He jammed on the brakes, and a moment later she was hammering at his window.

Ignoring her, Alan began to back up again. He had no time for the town's problems tonight; he had his own. Let them slaughter each other like stupid animals, if that was what they wanted to do. He was going to Mechanic Falls. He was going to get the man who had killed his wife and son in revenge for a piddling four years in the Shank.

Polly grabbed his doorhandle and was half-pulled, half-dragged, out into the debris-strewn street. She punched down on the button below the handle, her hand shrieking with pain, and the door flew open with her clinging desperately to it and her feet dragging as Alan made his reverse turn. The nose of the station wagon was pointing down Main Street. In his grief and fury, Alan had totally forgotten that there was no bridge to cross down that way anymore.

“Alan!”
she screamed.
“Alan, stop!”

It got through. Somehow it got through in spite of the rain, the thunder, the wind, and the heavy, hungry crackle of the fire. In spite of his compulsion.

He looked at her, and Polly's heart broke at the expression in his eyes. Alan wore the look of a man floating in the gut of a nightmare. “Polly?” he asked distantly.

“Alan, you have to stop!”

She wanted to let go of the doorhandle—her hands were agony—but she was afraid that if she did, he would simply drive away and leave her there in the middle of Main Street.

No . . . she
knew
he would.

“Polly, I have to go. I'm sorry you're mad at me—that you think I did something—but we'll sort it out. Only I have to g—”

“I'm not mad at you anymore, Alan. I know it wasn't you. It was
him,
playing us off against each other, like he has just about everyone else in Castle Rock. Because that's what he does. Do you understand, Alan? Are you hearing me?
Because that is what he does!
Now stop! Turn off the goddamned engine and
listen to me!”

“I have to go, Polly,” he said. His own voice seemed to be coming to him from far away. On the radio, perhaps. “But I'll be ba—”

“No you
won't!”
she cried. Suddenly she was furious with him—furious at
all
of them, all the greedy, frightened, angry, acquisitive people in this town, herself included. “No you won't, because if you leave now,
there won't be a goddam thing to come back
TO
!”

The video-game parlor blew up. Debris stormed around Alan's car, parked in the middle of Main Street. Alan's talented right hand stole over, picked up the Tastee-Munch can, as if for comfort, and held it on his lap.

Polly took no notice of the explosion; she stared at Alan with her dark, pain-filled eyes.

“Polly—”

“
Look!”
she shouted suddenly, and tore open the front of her blouse. Rainwater struck the swells of her breasts and gleamed in the hollow of her throat. “Look, I took it off—the charm! It's gone! Now take yours off, Alan!
If you're a man, take yours off!”

He was having trouble understanding her from the depths of whatever nightmare it was which held him, the nightmare Mr. Gaunt had spun around him like a poisonous cocoon . . . and in a sudden flash of insight she understood what that nightmare was. What it
must
be.