Stephen King - The Tommyknockers

She's dead, son. If you're going to get the boy, it has to be now. I don't know how long I can provide the power. And I can't be divided, with half of myself looking out for them and half running the transformer.

He stared out at Gardener, and Gard felt deep pity… and admiration for the old bastard's brute courage. Could he have done half as much, gone half as far, if their positions had been reversed? He doubted it.

You're in a lot of pain, aren't you?

I ain't exactly feeling in the pink, son, if that's what you mean. But I'll get through it… if you get going, that is.

Get going. Yes. He had dilly-dallied too long, far too long.

His mouth popped open in another wrenching yawn, and then he stepped toward the equipment in and around that orange crate-what the old man called the transformer.

PROGRAM?

the keyless computer screen beckoned.

Hillman could have told Gardener what to do, but Gardener didn't need to be told. He knew. He also remembered the nosebleed and the blast of sound he'd taken as a result of his single experiment with Moss's levitation gadget. This made that thing look like a box of Lincoln Logs. Still, he had gone quite a ways down the path to “becoming” himself since then, like it or not. He would just have to hope it was enou

Oh shit, son, hold the phone, we got company

Then a louder voice overrode Hillman's, a voice Gard vaguely recognized but could not put a name to.

(BACK OFF BACK OFF HOLD ON ALL OF YOU)

Just 1 think just one or maybe two

That was the old man's exhausted mental voice again. Gardener felt his concentration go out to the whirligig in the dooryard. In the shed, the light began to grow bright once more, and the killing pulses began.

Dick Allison and Newt Berringer were still two miles from Bobbi's place when Freeman Moss's mental shrieks began. Moments before, they had swerved past Elt Barker. Now Dick looked up into the rearview mirror and saw Elt's Harley swerve across the road and go leaping through the air. For a moment Elt looked like Evel Knievel, white hair or no. Then he separated from the bike and landed in the scrub.

Newt hit the brakes with both feet and his truck screamed to a stop in the middle of the road. He looked at Dick with large eyes that were both frightened and furious.

Son of a bitch has got a gadget!

Yeah. Fire. Some kind of

Abruptly Dick raised his mental voice to a shout. Newt picked it up, amplified it. From Kyle Archinbourg's Cadillac, Kyle and Hazel McCready joined in.

(BACK OFF BACK OFF HOLD ON ALL OF YOU)

They stopped, holding their positions. They were not great takers of orders as a rule, these Tommyknockers, but Moss's hideous screams, fading now, were great persuaders. All stopped, that was, except for a blue Oldsmobile Delta 88 with a bumper-sticker on the back reading REALTORS SELL IT BY THE ACRE.

When the command came to back off and hold position, Andy Bozeman was already in sight of the Anderson place. His hate had grown exponentially-Gardener lying bleeding and dead was all he could think of. He came slewing into Bobbi's driveway in a wild power turn. The Olds's rear end broke free when Bozeman stamped the brake; the big car nearly tipped over.

I'll whitewash your fence, you fucking asshole-I'll give you a dead rat and a string to swing it on, oh you bastard.

His wife pulled the molecule-exciter out of her purse. It looked like a Buck Rogers blaster which had been created by a fairly bright lunatic. Its frame had once been part of a garden tool marketed under the trade name of Weed Eater. She leaned out the car window and pulled the trigger utterly at random. The east end of Bobbi's farmhouse exploded into a caldron of fire. Ida Bozeman grinned a cheerful, reptilian grin.

As the Bozemans began to get out of the Olds, the whirligig started to spin. A moment later the green parasol of flame began to form. Ida Bozeman tried to aim what she called her “molecule disco” at it, but too late. If her first shot had hit the whirligig instead of the house, everything might have been different… but it didn't.

The two of them went up like firetrees. A moment later the Olds exploded with three payments still due on it.

Now, with the screams of Freeman Moss just beginning to fade from their minds, the screams of Andy and Ida Bozeman took their place. Newt and Dick waited them out, grimacing.

At last they faded.

Ahead, Dick Allison could see other vehicles parked on both sides of Route 9, and in the middle. Frank Spruce was leaning out of the cab of his big tanker truck, looking toward Newt and Dick urgently. He/they sensed the others-all the others -on this road, on other roads; some were standing in the fields they had been cutting across. All of them waiting for something-some decision.

Dick turned toward Newt.

Fire.

Yes. Fire.

Can we put it out?

There was a short mental silence as Newt thought about it; Dick could sense him wanting to simply push it aside and go on to where Gardener was. What Dick wanted wasn't complicated: he wanted to rip out Jim Gardener's gizzard. But that wasn't the answer and they both knew it-all the Shed People, even Adley, knew it. The stakes were higher now. And Dick was confident Jim Gardener was going to lose his gizzard anyway, in one fashion or another.

Crossing the Tommyknockers was a bad idea. It made them mad. This was a truth many races on other worlds had found out long before today's festivities in Haven.

He and Newt both looked out toward the tree-bordered field where Elt Barker had crashed. The grasses and the plumes of the trees were blowing-not hard, but clearly blowing in a wind which blew from east to west. Not even enough breeze to qualify as a cap o'wind. but Dick thought it showed signs of brisking.

Yes we can put out the fire, Newt replied at last.

Stop the fire and the drunk too? Can we be sure of that?

Another long, thinking pause, and then Newt came to the answer that Dick had already suspected.

I don't know if we can do both. I know one or the other but I don't know if we can do both.

Then we'll let the fire burn for now we'll let it burn yes all right

The ship will be all right the ship will not be hurt and the wind the way the wind's blowing

They looked at each other, grinning, as their thoughts came together in a moment of utter, chiming harmony-one voice, one mind.

The fire will be between him and the ship. He won't be able to get to the ship!

On the roads and in the fields, the people listening in on this party-line all relaxed slightly. He won't be able to get to the ship.

Is he still in the shed?

Yes.

Newt turned his puzzled, troubled face to Dick.

What the fuck's he doing in there? Does he have something making something? Something to hurt the ship?

There was a pause; and then Dick's voice, not just to Newt Berringer but to all the Shed People, clear and imperative:

NET YOUR MINDS. NET YOUR MINDS WITH OURS. ALL WHO CAN NET YOUR MINDS WITH OURS AND LISTEN. LISTEN FOR GARDENER. LISTEN.

They listened. In the hot summer silence of the early afternoon, they listened. Two or three ridges over, the first smudges of smoke rose into the sky.

Gardener felt them listening. There was a horrid crawling sensation over the surfaces of his brain. It was ridiculous, but it was happening. He thought: Now I know how a streetlight must feel with a lot of moths fluttering around it.

The old man moved in his tank, trying to catch Gardener's eye. He missed his eye but caught his mind. Gardener looked up.

Never mind, son-they want to know what you're up to, but forget them. Won't hurt if they find out. Might even help. Slow “em down. Relieve their minds. They don't care about David, only about their goddam ship. Go on, son! Go on!