Stephen King - End of Watch

‘ Down! ’ Hodges shouts. ‘ Holly, down! ’

He doesn’t wait to see if she’ll obey on her own, just lands on top of her and covers her body with his. Above them, the living room is a storm of flying splinters, broken glass, and chips of rock from the chimney. An elk’s head falls off the wall and lands on the hearth. One glass eye has been shattered by a Winchester slug, and it looks like it’s winking at them. Holly screams. Half a dozen bottles on the buffet explode, releasing the stench of bourbon and gin. A slug strikes a burning log in the fireplace, busting it in two and sending up a storm of sparks.

Please let him have just the one clip, Hodges thinks. And if he aims low, let him hit me instead of Holly. Only a .308 Winchester slug that hits him will go through them both, and he knows it.

The gunfire stops. Is he reloading, or is he out? Live or Memorex?

‘Bill, get off me, I can’t breathe.’

‘Better not,’ he says. ‘I—’

‘What’s that? What’s that sound?’ And then, answering her own question, ‘Someone’s coming!’

Now that his ears are clearing a little, Hodges can hear it, too. At first he thinks it must be Thurston’s grandson, on one of the snowmobiles the old man mentioned, and about to be slaughtered for trying to play Good Samaritan. But maybe not. The approaching engine sounds too heavy for a snowmobile.

Bright yellow-white light floods in through the shattered windows like the spotlights from a police helicopter. Only this is no helicopter.

Brady is ramming his extra clip home when he finally registers the growl-and-clank of the approaching vehicle. He whirls, wounded shoulder throbbing like an infected tooth, just as a huge silhouette appears at the end of the camp road. The headlamps dazzle him. His shadow leaps out long on the sparkling snow as the whatever-it-is comes rolling toward the shot-up house, throwing gouts of snow behind its clanking treads. And it’s not just coming at the house. It’s coming at him .

He depresses the trigger and the Scar resumes its thunder. Now he can see it’s some kind of snow machine with a bright orange cabin sitting high above the churning treads. The windshield explodes just as someone dives for safety from the open driver’s side door.

The monstrosity keeps coming. Brady tries to run, and Babineau’s expensive loafers slip. He flails, staring at those oncoming headlights, and goes down on his back. The orange invader rises above him. He sees a steel tread whirring toward him. He tries to push it away, as he sometimes pushed objects in his room – the blinds, the bedclothes, the door to the bathroom – but it’s like trying to beat off a charging lion with a toothbrush. He raises a hand and draws in breath to scream. Before he can, the left tread of the Tucker Sno-Cat rolls over his midsection and chews it open.

Holly has zero doubt concerning the identity of their rescuer, and doesn’t hesitate. She runs through the bullet-pocked foyer and out the front door, crying his name over and over. Jerome looks as if he’s been dusted in powdered sugar when he picks himself up. She’s sobbing and laughing as she throws herself into his arms.

‘How did you know? How did you know to come?’

‘I didn’t,’ he says. ‘It was Barbara. When I called to say I was coming home, she told me I had to go after you or Brady would kill you… only she called him the Voice. She was half crazy.’

Hodges is making his way toward the two of them at a slow stagger, but he’s close enough to overhear this, and remembers that Barbara told Holly some of that suicide-voice was still inside her. Like a trail of slime, she said. Hodges knows what she was talking about, because he’s got some of that disgusting thought-shot in his own head, at least for the time being. Maybe Barbara had just enough of a connection to know that Brady was lying in wait.

Or hell, maybe it was pure woman’s intuition. Hodges actually believes in such a thing. He’s old-school.

‘Jerome,’ he says. The word comes out in a dusty croak. ‘My man.’ His knees unlock. He’s going down.

Jerome frees himself from Holly’s deathgrip and puts an arm around Hodges before he can. ‘Are you all right? I mean… I know you’re not all right, but are you shot?’

‘No.’ Hodges puts his own arm around Holly. ‘And I should have known you’d come. Neither one of you minds worth a tinker’s damn.’

‘Couldn’t break up the band before the final reunion concert, could we?’ Jerome says. ‘Let’s get you in the—’

There comes an animal sound from their left, a guttural groan that struggles to be words and can’t make it.

Hodges is more exhausted than ever in his life, but he walks toward that groan anyway. Because… Well, because.

What was the word he used with Holly, on their way out here? Closure, wasn’t it?

Brady’s hijacked body has been laid open to the backbone. His guts are spread out around him like the wings of a red dragon. Pools of steaming blood are sinking into the snow. But his eyes are open and aware, and all at once Hodges can feel those fingers again. This time they’re not just probing lazily. This time they’re frantic, scrabbling for purchase. Hodges ejects them as easily as that floor-mopping orderly once pushed this man’s presence out of his mind.

He spits Brady out like a watermelon seed.

‘Help me,’ Brady whispers. ‘You have to help me.’

‘I think you’re way beyond help,’ Hodges says. ‘You were run down, Brady. Run down by an extremely heavy vehicle. Now you know what that feels like. Don’t you?’

‘Hurts,’ Brady whispers.

‘Yes,’ Hodges says. ‘I imagine it does.’

‘If you can’t help me, shoot me.’

Hodges holds out his hand, and Holly puts the Victory .38 into it like a nurse handing a doctor a scalpel. He rolls the cylinder and dumps out one of the two remaining bullets. Then he closes the gun up again. Although he hurts everywhere now, hurts like hell, Hodges kneels down and puts his father’s gun in Brady’s hand.

‘You do it,’ he says. ‘It’s what you always wanted.’

Jerome stands by, ready in case Brady should decide to use that final round on Hodges instead. But he doesn’t. Brady tries to point the gun at his head. He can’t. His arm twitches, but won’t rise. He groans again. Blood pours over his lower lip and seeps out from between Felix Babineau’s capped teeth. It would almost be possible to feel sorry for him, Hodges thinks, if you didn’t know what he did at City Center, what he tried to do at the Mingo Auditorium, and the suicide machine he’s set in motion today. That machine will slow down and stop now that its prime operative is finished, but it will swallow up a few more sad young people before it does. Hodges is pretty sure of that. Suicide may not be painless, but it is catching.

You could feel sorry for him if he wasn’t a monster, Hodges thinks.

Holly kneels, lifts Brady’s hand, and puts the muzzle of the gun against his temple. ‘Now, Mr Hartsfield,’ she says. ‘You have to do the rest yourself. And may God have mercy on your soul.’

‘I hope not,’ Jerome says. In the glare of the Sno-Cat’s headlights, his face is a stone.

For a long moment the only sounds are the rumble of the snow machine’s big engine and the rising wind of winter storm Eugenie.

Holly says, ‘Oh God. His finger’s not even on the trigger. One of you needs to help me, I don’t think I can—’

Then, a gunshot.

‘Brady’s last trick,’ Jerome says. ‘Jesus.’

There’s no way Hodges can make it back to the Expedition, but Jerome is able to muscle him into the cab of the Sno-Cat. Holly sits beside him on the outside. Jerome climbs behind the wheel and throws it into gear. Although he backs up and then circles wide around the remains of Babineau’s body, he tells Holly not to look until they’re at least up the first hill. ‘We’re leaving blood-tracks.’