Stephen King - Needful Things

Ace got to his feet, meaning to finish the goddam Deputy-if there was anything left to finish-when a gun roared and a bullet whined through the windy air less than a foot over his head. Ace ’de the Slier’if’s looked up and saw another cop standing just outsi Office door to the parking lot. This one looked older than God.

He was shooting at Ace with one hand while the other pressed against his chest above his heart.

Seat Thomas’s second try plowed into the earth right next to Ace, splashing muddy water on the toes of his engineer boots. The old buzzard couldn’t shoot for shit, but Ace suddenly realized he had to get the hell out of here, anyway. They had put enough dynamite in the courthouse to blow the whole building sky-high, they had set the timer for five minutes, and here he was, all but leaning against it while fucking Methuselah took potshots at him.

Let the dynamite take care of both of them.

It was time to go see Mr. Gaunt.

Ace got up and ran into the street. The old Deputy fired again, but this one wasn’t even close. Ace ran behind the yellow newsvan, but made no attempt to get into it. The Chevrolet Celebrity was parked at Needful Things. it would do excellently as a getaway carBut first he intended to find Mr. Gaunt and get paid off. Surely he had something coming, and surely Mr. Gaunt would give it to himAlso, he had a certain thieving Sheriff to find"Payback’s a bitch,” Ace muttered, and ran up Main Street toward Needful Things.

Frank jewett was standing on the courthouse steps when he finally saw the man he had been looking for. Frank had been there for some time now, and none of the things going on in Castle Rock tonight had meant much to him. Not the screams and shouts from the direction of Castle Hill, not Danforth Keeton and some elderly Hell’s Angel running down the courthouse steps about five minutes ago, not the explosions, not the most recent rattle of gunshots, this time from right around the corner in the parking lot next to the Sheriff’s Office. Frank had other fish to fry and other lemons to squeeze. Frank had a personal APB out on his excellent old “friend,” George T. Nelson.

And boy-howdy! At last! There was George T. Nelson himself, in the flesh, strolling by on the sidewalk below the courthouse steps!

Except for the automatic pistol jammed into the waistband of George T. Nelson’s Sans-A-Belt polyester slacks (and the fact that it was still raining like hell), the man might have been on his way to a picnic. just strolling along in the rain was Monsieur George T.

Motherfucking Nelson, just breezing along with the Christina breeze, and what had the note in Frank’s office said? Oh yes:

Remember, $2, 000 at my house by 7:15 at the latest or you will wish you were born without a dick. Frank glanced at his watch, saw it was closer to eight o’clock than to 7:15, and decided that didn’t matter much.

He raised George T. Nelson’s Spanish Llama and pointed it at the head of the son of a bitching shop teacher who had caused all his trouble. it NELSON!” he screamed. “GEORGE NELSON! TURN AROUND AND LOOK AT ME, YOU PRICK!”

George T. Nelson wheeled around. His hand dropped toward the butt of his automatic, then fell away when he saw he was covered.

He placed his hands on his hips instead and peered up the courthouse steps at Frank Jewett, who stood there with rain dripping from his nose, his chin, and the muzzle of his stolen gun.

“You going to shoot me?” George T. Nelson asked.

“You bet I am!” Frank snarled.

“Just shoot me down like a dog, huh?”

“Why not? It’s what you deserve!”

To Frank’s amazement, George T. Nelson was smiling and nodding.

“Ayup,” he said, “and that’s what I’d expect from a chickenshit bastard who’d break into a friend’s house and kill a defenseless little birdie.

Exactly what I’d expect. So go ahead, you yellowbelly foureyes fuck.

Shoot me and get it over with.”

Thunder bellowed overhead, but Frank didn’t hear it. The bank blew up ten seconds later and he barely heard that. He was too busy struggling with his fury… and his amazement. Amazement at the gall, the bold, bare-ass gall of Monsieur George T. Motherfucker Nelson.

At last Frank managed to break the lock on his tongue. “Killed your bird, right! Shit on that stupid picture of your mom, right again! And what did you do? What did you do, George, besides make sure that I’ll lose my job and never teach again? God, I’ll be lucky not to end up in jail!” He saw the total injustice of this in a sudden black flash of comprehension; it was like rubbing vinegar into a raw scrape. “Why didn’t you just come and ask me for money, if you needed it? Why didn’t you just come and ask? We could have worked something out, you dumb bastard!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” George T. Nelson shouted back. “All I know is that you’re brave enough to kill teenytiny parakeets but you don’t have balls enough to take me on in a fair fight!”

“Don’t know what… don’t know what I’m talking about?” Frank sputtered. The muzzle of the Llama wavered wildly back and forth.

He could not believe the gall of the man below him on the sidewalk; simply could not believe it. To be standing there with one foot on the pavement and the other practically in eternity and to simply go on lying…

“No! I don’t! Not the slightest idea!”

In the extremity of his rage, Frank jewett regressed to the childhood response to such outrageous, boldface denial: “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

“Coward!” George T. Nelson smartly returned. “Baby-coward!

Parakeet-killer!”

“Blackmailer!”

“Loony! Put the gun away, loony! Fight me fair!”

Frank grinned down at him. “Fair? Fight you fair? What do you know about fair?”

George T. Nelson held up his empty hands and waggled the fingers at Frank. “More than you, it looks like.”

Frank opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. He was temporarily silenced by George T. Nelson’s empty hands.

“Go on,” George T. Nelson said. “Put it away. Let’s do it like they do in the Westerns, George. If you’ve got the sack for it, that is. Fastest man wins.”

Frank thought: Well, why not? just why the hell not?

He hadn’t much else to live for, one way or the other, and if he did nothing else, he could show his old “friend” he wasn’t a coward.

“Okay,” he said, and shoved the Llama into the waistband of his own pants. He held his hands out in front of him, hovering just I above the butt of the gun. “How do you want to do it, GeorgiePorgie?”

George T. Nelson was grinning. “You start down the steps,” he said. “I start up. Next time the thunder goes overhead-”

“All right,” Frank said. “Fine. Let’s do it.”

He started down the stairs. And George T. Nelson started up.

Polly had just spotted the green awning of Needful Things up ahead when the funeral parlor and the barber shop went up. The glare of light and the roar of sound were enormous. She saw debris burst out of the heart of the explosion like asteroids in a science fiction movie and ducked instinctively. It was well that she did; several chunks of wood and the stainless-steel lever from the side of Chair #2-Henry Gendron’s chair-smashed through the windshield of her Toyota. The lever made a weird, hungry humming sound as it flew through the car and exited by way of the rear window. Broken glass whispered through the air in a widening shotgun cloud.

The Toyota, with no driver to steer it, bumped up over the curb, struck a fire hydrant, and stalled.

Polly sat up, blinking, and stared out through the hole in the windshield. She saw someone coming out of Needful Things and heading toward one of the three cars parked in front of the store.