Stephen King - The Tommyknockers

Then, for one second, Gard saw his Bobbi for the last time.

He thought perhaps Bobbi was trying to smile.

Then the screaming began again. She screamed and tried to beat out the flames that were turning her torso to tallow, and that screaming was too much, far too much, too loud, far too loud; it was unbearable. For them both, he thought. He bent, found the triple-damned pistol on the floor, and picked it up. He needed to use both of his thumbs to get it cocked. The pain in his ankle was bad-he knew that-but for the moment it was lost to him, buried under Bobbi's shrieking agony. He pointed Hillman's pistol at her head.

Work you goddam thing, oh please, please work

But if it worked and he missed? There mightn't be another cartridge in the mag.

His motherfucking hands wouldn't stop shaking.

He fell to his knees like a man struck with a sudden violent need to pray. He crawled toward Bobbi, who lay shrieking and writhing and burning on the floor. He could smell her; could see black shards of plastic from the radio's case bubbling their way into her flesh. He almost overbalanced and fell on top of her. Then he pressed the. 45 against the side of her neck and pulled the trigger.

Another click.

Bobbi, screaming and screaming. Screaming inside his head.

He tried to pull the slide back again. Almost got it. Then it slipped. Snick.

Please God, oh please let me be her friend this one last time!

This time he got the slide all the way back. He tried the trigger again. This time the gun went off.

The scream suddenly became a loud buzz in Gardener's head. He knew he was listening to the mental sound of mortal disconnect. He turned his head upward. A bright stripe of sunlight from the unzipped roof fell across his face, bisecting it. Gardener shrieked.

Suddenly the buzzing stopped and there was silence.

Bobbi Anderson-or whatever she had become-was as dead as the pile of autumn-leaf corpses in the control room of the ship, as dead as the galley slaves which had been the ship's drive.

She was dead and Gardener would have gladly died then, too… but it still wasn't over.

Not yet.

Kyle Archinbourg was having a Pepsi at Cooder's when the screams began in his head. The bottle dropped from his hand and shattered on the floor as his hands jerked up to his temples. Dave Rutledge, dozing outside Cooder's in a chair which he had caned himself, was tilted back against the building and dreaming weird dreams in alien colors. His eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright as if someone had touched him with a live wire, scrawny tendons standing out on his throat. His chair slid from under him, and when his head hit the wooden wall of the market, his neck shattered like glass. He was dead before he hit the asphalt. Hazel McCready was making herself a cup of tea. When the screams began, her hands jerked. The one holding the teapot spilled boiling water across the back of the one holding the cup, scalding it badly. She hurled the teapot across the room, screaming in pain and fear. Ashley Ruvall, riding his bike past the town hall, fell over into the street and lay there stunned. Dick Allison and Newt Berringer were playing cribbage at Newt's house, a pretty goddam stupid thing to be doing since each knew what the other held in his hand, but Newt didn't have a Parcheesi board, and besides, they were only passing time, waiting for the telephone to ring, waiting for Bobbi to tell them the drunk was dead and the next phase of the work could begin. Newt was dealing, and he sprayed cards all over the table and floor. Dick bolted to his feet, eyes wild, hair standing on end, and lurched for the door. He ran into the wall three feet to the right of it instead and went sprawling. Doc Warwick was in his study, going over his old diaries. The scream hit him like a wall of cinderblocks being trundled along a set of tracks at brisk speed. His body dumped adrenalin into his heart in lethal quantities, and it blew like a tire. Ad McKeen was in his pickup truck, headed over to Newt's. He ran off the road and into Pooch Bailey's abandoned Hot Dog House. His face hit the steering wheel. He was momentarily stunned, but no more. He had been going slow. He looked around, dazed and terrified. Wendy Fannin was coming up from the cellar with two jars of peach preserves. Since her “becoming” had started, she ate little else. In the last four weeks she had eaten over ninety jars of peach preserves all by herself. She wailed and threw these two into the air like a spastic juggler. They came down, struck the stairs, shattered. Peaches and sticky juice ran and dripped. Bobbi, she thought numbly, Bobbi Anderson's burning up! Nancy Voss was standing blankly at the back window and thinking about Joe. She missed Joe, missed him a lot. She supposed that the “becoming” would eventually wipe that longing out -every day it seemed more and more distant-but although it hurt to miss Joe, she didn't want that hurt to stop. It made no sense, but there it was. Then the shrieks began in her head and she jerked forward so suddenly that she broke three of the windowpanes with her forehead.

Bobbi's screams blanketed Haven like an air-raid siren. Everything and everyone came to a complete stop… and then the changed people of Haven drifted into the streets of the village. Their looks were all one look: dismay, pain, and horror at first… then anger.

They knew who had caused those shrieks of agony.

While they went on, no other mental voice could be heard, and the only thing anyone could do was listen to them.

Then came the buzzing death-rattle, and a silence so complete it could only be death.

A few moments later there was the low pulse of Dick Allison's mind. It was emotionally shaken but clear enough in its command.

Her farm. Everyone. Stop him before he can do anything else.

Hazel's voice picked the thought up, strengthening it-the effect was like a second voice joining a first to make a duet.

Bobbi's farm. Go there. Everybody.

The beat of Kyle's mental voice made it a trio. The radius of the voice began to spread as it gained strength.

Everyone. Stop him

Adley's voice. Newt Berringer's voice.

–before he can do anything else.

Those Gardener thought of as the Shed People had welded their voices into one voice of command, clear and beyond denial… not that anyone in Haven even thought of denying it.

Stop him before he can do anything to the ship. Stop him before he can do anything to the ship.

Rosalie Skehan left her kitchen sink without bothering to turn off the water running over the cod she had been freshening for supper. She joined her husband, who had been in the back yard chopping wood and who had barely missed amputating several of his toes when Bobbi's screams began. Without a word they went to their car, got in, and started for Bobbi's farm, four miles away. Turning out of their driveway, they nearly struck Elt Barker, who had taken off from his gas station on his old Harley. Freeman Moss was wheeling his pulp-truck. He felt a vague regret-he had sort of liked Gardener. He had what Freeman's pop had called “sand'-but that wouldn't stop him from tearing the bastard's gizzard out. Andy Bozeman was driving his Oldsmobile Delta 88, his wife sitting beside him with her hands folded neatly on her purse. In it was a molecule-exciter which could raise the spot heat of anything two inches in diameter roughly one thousand degrees in fifteen seconds. She was hoping to boil Gardener like a lobster. Just let me get within five feet she kept thinking. Just five feet, that's all I ask. Beyond that distance, the gadget became unreliable. She knew she could have improved its effectiveness up to half a mile, and now wished she had done so, but if Andy didn't have at least six fresh shirts in the closet, he was like a bear. Bozeman himself wore a frozen sneer of rage, lips skinned back from his few remaining teeth in a dry, spitless grin. I'll whitewash your fence when I get hold of you, fuckface, he thought and pushed the Olds up to ninety, passing a line of slower-moving cars, all headed for Bobbi's place. They all picked up the Command Voice, which was now a hammering litany: STOP HIM BEFORE HE CAN DO ANYTHING TO THE SHIP, STOP HIM BEFORE HE CAN DO ANYTHING TO THE SHIP, STOP HIM, STOP HIM, STOP HIM!