Стивен Кинг - Desperation

The snake opened its mouth and hissed. Its tongue danced.

And more of them. Snakes on the floor under the table, crawling over the dead man’s shoes. Snakes beyond them, in the kitchen-she could see a huge one, a diamond-back, slithering along the Formica counter beneath the microwave.

The ones on the floor were coming for them, and coming fast.

Run! she shrieked at herself, and found she couldn’t move-it was as if her shoes had been glued to the floor. She hated snakes above all creatures; they revolted her in some fundamental sense far below her ability to articulate or understand. And this house was full of them, there could be more behind them, between them and the door—Steve grabbed her and yanked her backward. When he saw she was unable to run, he picked her up and ran with her in his arms, pelting down the hallway and out into the night, carrying her over the threshold and into the dark like a bridegroom in reverse.

“Steve, did you see-”

The door on her side of the truck was still open. He threw her inside, slammed her door, then ran around to his side and got in. He looked through the windshield at the rectangle of light falling through the open door of the ranch-house, then at her. His eyes were huge above the bandanna.

“Sure I saw,” he said. “Every snake in the mother-fucking universe, and all of them coming at us.”

“I couldn’t run… snakes, they scare me so bad m sorry.”

“My fault for getting us in there in the first place.” He put the truck in reverse and backed jerkily out of the 21 driveway, swinging around so the truck—s nose was pointed east, toward the fallen bikes, the flattened piece of fence, and the dancing blinker-light. “We’re getting the fuck back to Highway 50 so fast it’ll make your head spin.” He stared at her with horrified perplexity. “They were there, weren’t they. I mean, I didn’t just hallucinate em-they were there.”

“Yes. Now just go, Steve, drive.”

He did, going faster now but still not fast enough to be dangerous. She admired his control, especially since he was so obviously rocked back on his heels. At the 21 blinker he turned left and headed north, back the way they had come.

“Try the radio,” he said as the hideous little town at last began to fall behind them. “Find some tunes. Just no achy-breaky heart. I draw the line at that.”

“Okay.”

She bent forward toward the dash, glancing into the rearview mirror mounted outside her window as she did. For just a moment she thought she saw a wink of light back there, swinging in an arc. It could have been a flash-light, it could have been some peculiar reflection kicked across the glass by the dancing blinker, or it could have been just her imagination. She preferred to believe that last one. In any case it was gone now, smothered in flying dust. She thought briefly about mentioning it to Steve and decided not to. She didn’t think he’d want to go back and investigate, she thought he was every bit as freaked out as she was at this point, but it was wise never to underesti-mate a man’s capacity to play John Wayne.

But if there are people back there—She gave her head a small, decisive shake. No. She wasn’t falling for that. Maybe there were people alive back there, doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs, but there was also something very bad back there. The best thing they could do for any survivors who might remain in Desperation was to get help.

Besides, I didn’t really see anything. I’m almost sure I didn’t.

She turned on the radio, got a barrage of static all the way across the dial when she pushed the SEEK button, turned it off again.

“Forget it, Steve. Even the local shitkicking station is-”

“What the fuck.” he asked in a high, screamy voice that was completely unlike his usual one. “What the blue fuck.”

“I don’t see-” she began, and then she did. Something ahead of them, some huge shape looming in the flying dust. It had big yellow eyes. She put her hands to her mouth, but they weren’t quite in time to catch her scream. Steve hit the brakes with both feet.

Cynthia, who hadn’t fastened her seatbelt, was thrown against the dashboard, just managing to get her forearms up in time to spare her head a bump.

“Christ almighty,” Steve said. His voice sounded a little more normal. “How the hell did that get in the road.”

“What is it.” she asked, and knew even before the question was out of her mouth. No Jurassic Park mon-strosity (her first thought, God help her), and no oversized piece of mining equipment. No big yellow eyes, either. What she’d mistaken for eyes had been the reflection of their own headlights in a sheet of window-glass. A pic-ture-window, to be exact. It was a trailer. In the road. Blocking the road.

Cynthia looked to her left and saw that the stake fence between the road and the trailer park had been knocked over. Three of the trailers-the biggest ones-were gone; she could tell where they had been by the cement-block foundations upon which they had sat.

Those trailers were now drawn across the road, the biggest in front, the others behind it like a secondary wall put up in case the main line of defense is breached. One of these latter two was the rusty Airstream on which the Rattlesnake Trailer Park’s satellite dish had been mounted. The dish itself now lay upended at the edge of the park like a vast black hubcap. It had taken down some lady’s clothesline when it fell. Pants and shirts flapped from it.

“Go around,” she said.

“I can’t on this side of the road-the dropoff’s too steep. The trailer park side’s pretty steep, too, but-”

“You can do it,” she said, fighting back the quiver in her voice. “And you owe me. I went in that house with you-”

“Okay, okay.” He reached for the transmission lever, probably meaning to drop it into the lowest gear, and then his hand froze in midair. He cocked his head. She heard it a second later and her first panicky thought was (they ’re here oh Jesus they got in the truck somehow) of snakes. But this wasn’t the same. This was a harsh whining sound, almost like a piece of paper caught in a fan, or—Something came falling out of the dancing air above them, something that looked like a big black stone. It hit the windshield hard enough to make a bullet-snarl of opacity at the point of impact and send long, silvery cracks shooting out in either direction. Blood-it looked black in this light-splatted across the glass like an inkblot. There was a nasty crack-crunch as the kamikaze accordioned in on itself, and for a moment she saw one of its merciless, dying eyes peering in at her. She screamed again, this time making no attempt to muffle it with her hands.

There was another hard thud, this one from over their heads. She looked up and saw the roof of the cab was dented down. “Steve, get us out of here!” she cried.

He turned on the wipers, and one of them pushed the squashed buzzard down onto the outside air vents. It lay there in a lump like some bizarre tumor with a beak. The other wiper smeared blood and feathers across the glass in a fan. Sand immediately started to stick in this mess. Steve goosed the washer-fluid switch. The windshield cleared a little near the top, but the bottom part was hope-less; the hulk of the dead bird made it impossible for the wiper-blades to do their job.

“Steve,” she said. She heard his name coming out of her mouth but couldn’t feel it; her lips were numb. And her midsection felt entirely gone. No liver, no lights, just an empty place filled with its own whistling windstorm. “Under the trailer. Coming out from under that trailer. See them.”

She pointed. He saw. The sand had drifted crosswise along the tar in east-west lines that looked like clutching fingers. Later, if the wind kept up at this pitch, those dunelets would fatten to arms, but now they were just fin-gers. Emerging from beneath the trailer, strutting like the vanguard of an advancing army, was a battalion of scorpions. She couldn’t tell how many-how could she, when she was still finding it difficult to believe she was seeing them at all. Less than a hundred, probably, but still dozens of them.