Stephen King - End of Watch

‘Okay,’ Jerome says at last. ‘I hate it, but okay.’

Hodges gets up, hand to his side to hold in the pain. ‘Then let’s snag that SUV. The storm’s coming, and I’d like to get as far up I-47 as possible before we meet it.’

Jerome is leaning against the hood of his Wrangler when they come out of the rental office with the keys to an all-wheel drive Expedition. He hugs Holly and whispers in her ear. ‘Last chance. Take me along.’

She shakes her head against his chest.

He lets her go and turns to Hodges, who’s wearing an old fedora, the brim already white with snow. Hodges puts out a hand. ‘Under other circumstances I’d go with the hug, but right now hugs hurt.’

Jerome settles for a strong grip. There are tears in his eyes. ‘Be careful, man. Stay in touch. And bring back the Hollyberry.’

‘I intend to do that,’ Hodges says.

Jerome watches them get into the Expedition, Bill climbing behind the wheel with obvious discomfort. Jerome knows they’re right – of the three of them, he’s the least expendable. That doesn’t mean he likes it, or feels less like a little kid being sent home to Mommy. He would go after them, he thinks, except for the thing Holly said in that deserted hotel lobby. If anything happens to us, there’s only you .

Jerome gets into his Jeep and heads home. As he merges onto the Crosstown, a strong premonition comes to him: he’s never going to see either one of his friends again. He tries to tell himself that’s superstitious bullshit, but he can’t quite make it work.

By the time Hodges and Holly leave the Crosstown for I-47 North, the snow is no longer just kidding around. Driving into it reminds Hodges of a science fiction movie he saw with Holly – the moment when the Starship Enterprise goes into hyperdrive, or whatever they call it. The speed limit signs are flashing SNOW ALERT and 40 MPH, but he pegs the speedometer at sixty and will hold it there as long as he can, which might be for thirty miles. Perhaps only twenty. A few cars in the travel lane honk at him to slow down, and passing the lumbering eighteen-wheelers, each one dragging a rooster-tail fog of snow behind it, is an exercise in controlled fear.

It’s almost half an hour before Holly breaks the silence. ‘You brought the guns, didn’t you? That’s what’s in the drawstring bag.’

‘Yeah.’

She unbuckles her seatbelt (which makes him nervous) and fishes the bag out of the back seat. ‘Are they loaded?’

‘The Glock is. The .38 you’ll have to load yourself. That one’s yours.’

‘I don’t know how.’

Hodges offered to take her to the shooting range with him once, start the process of getting her qualified to carry concealed, and she refused vehemently. He never offered again, believing she would never need to carry a gun. Believing he would never put her in that position.

‘You’ll figure it out. It’s not hard.’

She examines the Victory, keeping her hands well away from the trigger and the muzzle well away from her face. After a few seconds she succeeds in rolling the barrel.

‘Okay, now the bullets.’

There are two boxes of Winchester .38s – 130-grain, full metal jacket. She opens one, looks at the shells sticking up like mini-warheads, and grimaces. ‘Oough.’

‘Can you do it?’ He’s passing another truck, the Expedition enveloped in snowfog. There are still strips of bare pavement in the travel lane, but this passing lane is now snow-covered, and the truck on their right seems to go on forever. ‘If you can’t, that’s okay.’

‘You don’t mean can I load it,’ she says, sounding angry. ‘I see how to do that, a kid could do it.’

Sometimes they do, Hodges thinks.

‘What you mean is can I shoot him.’

‘It probably won’t come to that, but if it did, could you?’

‘Yes,’ Holly says, and loads the Victory’s six chambers. She pushes the cylinder back into place gingerly, lips turned down and eyes squinted into slits, as if afraid the gun will explode in her hand. ‘Now where’s the safety switch?’

‘There isn’t any. Not on revolvers. The hammer’s down, and that’s all the safety that you need. Put it in your purse. The ammo, too.’

She does as he says, then places the bag between her feet.

‘And stop biting your lips, you’re going to make them bleed.’

‘I’ll try, but this is a very stressful situation, Bill.’

‘I know.’ They’re back in the travel lane again. The mile markers seem to float past with excruciating slowness, and the pain in his side is a hot jellyfish with long tentacles that now seem to reach everywhere, even up into his throat. Once, twenty years ago, he was shot in the leg by a thief cornered in a vacant lot. That pain had been like this, but eventually it had gone away. He doesn’t think this one ever will. The drugs may mute it for awhile, but probably not for long.

‘What if we find this place and he’s not there, Bill? Have you thought about that? Have you?’

He has, and has no idea what the next step would be in that case. ‘Let’s not worry about it unless we have to.’

His phone rings. It’s in his coat pocket, and he hands it to Holly without looking away from the road ahead.

‘Hello, this is Holly.’ She listens, then mouths Miss Pretty Gray Eyes to Hodges. ‘Uh-huh… yes… okay, I understand… no, he can’t, his hands are full right now, but I’ll tell him.’ She listens some more, then says, ‘I could tell you, Izzy, but you wouldn’t believe me.’

She closes his phone with a snap and slips it back into his pocket.

‘Suicides?’ Hodges asks.

‘Three so far, counting the boy who shot himself in front of his father.’

‘Zappits?’

‘At two of the three locations. Responders at the third one haven’t had a chance to look. They were trying to save the kid, but it was too late. He hung himself. Izzy sounds half out of her mind. She wanted to know everything.’

‘If anything happens to us, Jerome will tell Pete, and Pete will tell her. I think she’s almost ready to listen.’

‘We have to stop him before he kills more.’

He’s probably killing more right now, Hodges thinks. ‘We will.’

The miles roll by. Hodges is forced to reduce his speed to fifty, and when he feels the Expedition do a loose little shimmy in the slipstream of a Walmart double box, he drops to forty-five. It’s past three o’clock and the light is starting to drain from this snowy day when Holly speaks again.

‘Thank you.’

He turns his head briefly, looking a question at her.

‘For not making me beg to come along.’

‘I’m only doing what your therapist would want,’ Hodges says. ‘Getting you a bunch of closure.’

‘Is that a joke? I can never tell when you’re joking. You have an extremely dry sense of humor, Bill.’

‘No joke. This is our business, Holly. Nobody else’s.’

A green sign looms out of the white murk.

‘SR-79,’ Holly says. ‘That’s our exit.’

‘Thank God,’ Hodges says. ‘I hate turnpike driving even when the sun’s out.’

Thurston’s Garage is fifteen miles east along the state highway, according to Holly’s iPad, but it takes them half an hour to get there. The Expedition handles the snow-covered road easily, but now the wind is picking up – it will be blowing at gale force by eight o’clock, according to the radio – and when it gusts, throwing sheets of snow across the road, Hodges eases down to fifteen miles an hour until he can see again.

As he turns in at the big yellow Shell sign, Holly’s phone rings. ‘Handle that,’ he says. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’