Needful Things

“Standstill!” he bawled. They stopped and exchanged another glance. “Move back together!”

They only stood there in the pouring rain, hands dangling, looking at him.

“I’m arresting them on an illegal-weapons charge to start with!”

Norris yelled furiously to Trooper Joe Price. “Now get your thumb out of your butt and give me a help!”

This shocked Price into action. He tried to take his own revolver out of its holster, discovered the safety strap was still on, and began fumbling with it. He was still fumbling when the barber shop and the funeral home blew up.

Buster, Norris, and Trooper Price all looked upstreet. Ace did not. He had been waiting for just this golden moment. He pulled the automatic from his belt with the speed of a Western quick-draw artist and fired. The bullet took Norris high in the left shoulder, clipping his lung and smashing his collarbone. Norris had taken a step away from the brick wall when he noticed the two men drifting apart; now he was driven back against it. Ace fired again, chipping a crater in the brick an inch from Norris’s ear. The ricochet made a sound like a very large, very angry insect.

“oh Christ!” Trooper Price screamed, and began to labor more enthusiastically to free the safety strap over the butt of his gun.

“Burn that guy, Dad!” Ace yelled. He was gri

Trooper Price at long last managed to unsnap the strap over his gun. He was pulling it free when a bullet from the automatic Keeton held took his head off from the eyebrows on up. Price was hammered out of his boots and thrown against the brick wall of the alley.

Norris raised his own gun once more. It seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. Still holding it in both hands, he aimed at Keeton.

Buster was a clearer target than his friend. More important, Buster had just killed a cop, and that shit most definitely did not go down in Castle Rock. They were hicks, maybe, but not barbarians.

Norris pulled the trigger at the same moment Ace tried to shoot him again.

The recoil of his revolver sent Norris flying backward. Ace’s bullet buzzed through empty air where his head had been half a second before. Buster Keeton also went flying backward, hands clapped to his belly. Blood poured through his fingers.

Norris lay against the brick wall near Trooper Price, panting harshly, one hand pressed against his wounded shoulder. Christ, this has been a really lousy day, he thought.

Ace levelled the automatic at him, then thought better of itat least for the time being. He went to Buster instead and dropped on one knee beside him. North of them, the bank went up in a roar of fire and pulverized granite. Ace didn’t even look in that direction. He moved old Dad’s hands to get a better look at the wound. He was sorry this had happened. He had been getting to like old Dad pretty well.

Buster screamed. “Oh, it hurts! Oh, it hurrrrts!”

Ace just bet it did. Old Dad had taken a.45 slug just above his belly-button. The entrance hole was the size of a headbolt. Ace didn’t have to roll him over to know the exit hole would be the size of a coffee cup, probably with chunks of old Dad’s spine sticking out of it like bloody candy-canes.

“It hurrrts! HURRRRRRTS!” Buster screamed up into the rain.

“Yeah.” Ace put the muzzle of the automatic against Buster’s temple. “Tough luck, Dad. I’m going to give you some painkiller.”

He pulled the trigger three times. Buster’s body jumped and was still.

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.

6

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 ru

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.