Stephen King - The Tommyknockers

Gard stood over Bobbi's corpse, half-mad with pain and grief and shock… and abruptly his jaws snapped open in another wide, tendon-stretching yawn. He reeled to the sink, trying to hop but doing a bad job of it because of the load of dope he'd taken on. Each time he came down on the bad ankle, it felt as if there was a metal claw inside him, relentlessly digging. The dryness in his throat was much worse now. His limbs felt heavy. His thoughts were losing their former acuteness; they seemed to be… spreading, like broken egg yolks. As he reached the sink he yawned again and deliberately took a step on the shattered ankle. The pain slashed through the fog like a sharply honed meat cleaver.

He barely cracked the tap marked H and got a glass of warm-almost hot-water. Fumbled in the overhead cabinet, knocking a box of cereal and a bottle of maple syrup onto the floor. His hand closed around the carton of salt with the picture of the little girl in the front. When it rains it pours, he thought soupily. That is very true. He fumbled at the pour-spout for what seemed like at least a year and then spilled enough salt into the glass to turn the water cloudy. Stirred it with a finger. Chugged it. The taste was like drowning.

He retched, bringing up the salt water dyed blue. He saw undissolved chunks of blue pills in the vomitus, as well. Some looked more or less intact. How many did she get me to take?

Then he threw up again… again… again. It was an encore performance of the projectile vomiting in the woods-some overworked circuit in his brain persistently triggering the gag reflex, a deadly hiccuping that could kill.

At last it slowed, then stopped.

Pills in the sink. Bluish water in the sink.

Blood in the sink. A lot.

He staggered backward, came down on the bad ankle, screamed, fell on the floor. He found himself looking into one of Bobbi's glazed eyes across the lumpy terrain of the linoleum, and closed his own. Immediately his mind began to drift away… but in that blackness there were voices. No-many voices blended into one. He recognized it. It was the voice of the Shed People.

They were coming for him, as he supposed he had always known they would… in time.

Stop him… stop him… stop him!

Get moving or they won't have to stop you. They'll shoot you or disintegrate you or whatever they want to do to you while you're snoozing on the floor.

He got to his knees, then managed to get to his feet with the help of the counter. He thought there was a box of No-Doz pills in the bathroom cabinet, but doubted if his stomach would hold them down after the latest insult he had dealt it. Under other circumstances it might have been worth the experiment, but Gardiner was afraid that if the projectile vomiting started again, it might not stop.

Just keep moving. If it gets really bad, take a few steps on that ankle. That'll sharpen you up in a hurry.

Would it? He didn't know. All he knew was he had to move fast right now and wasn't sure he would be able to move for long at all.

He hop-staggered to the kitchen door and looked back one final time. Bobbi, who had rescued Gardener from his demons time after time, was little more than a hulk now. Her shirt was still smoking. In the end he hadn't been able to save her from hers. Just put her out of their reach.

Shot your best friend. Good fucking deal, uh?

He put the back of his hand against his mouth. His stomach grunted. He shut his eyes and forced the vomiting down before it could start.

He turned, opened them again, and started across the living room. The idea was to look for something solid, hop to it, and then hold onto it. His mind kept wanting to be that silver Puffer balloon it became just before he was carried away by the big black twister. He fought it as well as he could and marked things and hopped to them. If there was a God, and if He was

good, perhaps they all would bear his weight and he would make it across this seemingly endless room like Moses and his troops had the desert.

He knew that the Shed People would arrive soon. He knew that if he was still here when they did, his goose wasn't just cooked; it was nuked. They were afraid he might do something to the ship. Well, yes. Now that you mentioned it, that was part of what he had in mind, and he knew he would be safest there.

He also knew he couldn't go there. Not yet.

He had business in the shed first.

He made it out onto the porch where he and Bobbi had sat up late on so many summer evenings, Peter asleep on the boards between them. Just sitting here, drinking beers, the Red Sox playing their nightly nine at Fenway, or Comiskey Park, or some damn place, but playing mostly inside Bobbi's radio; tiny baseball men dodging between tubes and circuits. Sitting here with cans of beer in a bucket of cold well water. Talking about life, death, God, politics, love, literature. Maybe even once or twice about the possibility of life on other planets. Gardener seemed to remember such a conversation or two, but perhaps that was only his tired mind goofing with him. They had been happy here. It seemed a very long time ago.

It was Peter his tired mind fixed on. Peter was really the first goal, the first piece of furniture he had to hop to. This wasn't exactly true-the attempted rescue of David Brown had to come prior to ending Peter's torment, but David Brown did not offer him the emotional pulse-point he required; he had never seen David Brown in his life. Peter was different.

“Good old Peter,” he remarked to the still hot afternoon (was it yet afternoon? By God it was). He reached the porch steps and then disaster struck. His balance suddenly deserted him. His weight came down on the bad ankle. This time he could almost see the splintered ends of the bones digging into each other. Gardener uttered a high, mewling shriek-not the scream of a woman but of a very young girl in desperate trouble. He grabbed for the porch railing as he collapsed sideways.

During her frantic early July, Bobbi had fixed the railing between the kitchen and the cellar, but had never bothered with the one between the porch and the dooryard. It had been rickety for years, and when Gard put his weight on it, both of the rotted uprights snapped. Ancient wood-dust puffed out into the summer sunlight… along with the heads of a few startled termites. Gard pitched sideways off the porch, yelling miserably, and fell into the dooryard with a solid meat thump. He tried to get up, then wondered why he was trying. The world was swaying in front of his eyes. He saw first two mailboxes, then three. He decided to forget the whole thing and go to sleep. He closed his eyes.

In this long, strange and painful dream he was having, Ev Hillman felt/saw Gardener fall, and heard Gardener's thought

(forget the whole thing go to sleep)

clearly. Then the dream began to break up and that seemed good; it was hard to dream. It made him hurt all over, made him ache. And it hurt to combat the green light. If sunlight was too bright

(he remembered it a little sunlight)

you could close your eyes but the green light was inside, always inside-a third eye that saw and a green light that burned. There were other minds here.

One belonged to THE WOMAN “ the other to THE LESS-MIND which had once been Peter. Now THE LESS-MIND Could only howl. It howled sometimes for BOBBI to come and let it free from the green light but mostly it only howled as it burned in the torment of the draining. THE WOMAN also screamed for release, but sometimes her thoughts cycled into appalling images of hate that Ev could barely stand. So: yes. Better

(better)

to go to sleep

(easier)

and let it all go but there was David.

David was dying. Already his thoughts-which Ev had received clearly at first-were falling into a deepening spiral that would end first in unconsciousness and then, swiftly, in death.