Junior's chest came into view, then his neck, then his head. Rusty took one look at the mouth, which was dragged down on the left in a frozen leer, and at the left eye, which was weeping blood, and thought: Very far gone. A wonder he's still on his feet and a pity he didn't wait just a little longer. A little longer and he wouldn't have been capable of crossing the street.
Faintly, in another world, he heard a bullhorn-amplified voice from the Town Hall: 'DO NOT RUN! DO NOT PANIC! THE DANGER IS OVER! THIS IS OFFICER HENRY MORRISON, AND I REPEAT: THE DANGER IS OVER!'
Junior slipped, but by then he was on the last stair. Instead of falling and breaking his neck, he only went to one knee. He rested that way for a few moments, looking like a prizefighter waiting for the mandatory eight-count to rise and resume the bout. To Rusty everything seemed clear, near, and very dear. The precious world, suddenly grown thin and insubstantial, was now only a single gauze wrapping between him and whatever came next. If anything.
Go all the way down, he thought at Junior. Fall on your face. Pass out, you motherfucker.
But Junior laboriously rose to his feet, gazed at the gun in his hand as if he had never seen such a thing before, then looked down the corridor to the cell at the end, where Barbie stood with his hands wrapped around the bars, looking back.
'Baaarbie,' Junior said in a crooning whisper, and started forward. Rusty stepped backward, thinking that perhaps Junior would miss him on his way by. And perhaps kill himself after finishing with Barbie. He knew these were craven thoughts, but he also knew they were practical thoughts. He could do nothing for Barbie, but he might be able to survive himself.
And it could have worked, had he been in one of the cells on the left side of the corridor, because that was Junior's blind side. But he had been put in one on the right, and Junior saw him move. He stopped and peered in at Rusty, his half-frozen face simultaneously bewildered and sly.
'Fusty,' he said. 'Is that your name? Or is it Berrick? I can't remember.'
Rusty wanted to beg for his life, but his tongue was pasted to the roof of his mouth. And what good would begging do? The young man was already raising the gun. Junior was going to kill him. No power on earth would stop him.
Rusty s mind, in its last extremity, sought an escape many other minds had found in their last moments of consciousness - before the switch was pulled, before the trap opened, before the pistol pressed against the temple spat fire. This is a dream, he thought. All of it. Tlie Dome, the craziness in Dinsmore's field, the food riot; this young man, too. When he pulls the trigger the dream will end and Fit wake up in my own bed, on a cool and crisp fall morning. Fll turn to Linda and say, 'Wliat a nightmare I had, you won't believe it.'
'Close your eyes, Fusty^'Junior said. 'It'll be better that way.'
28
Jackie Wettington's first thought upon entering the PD lobby was Oh my dear God, there's blood everywhere.
Stacey Moggin lay against the wall below the community outreach bulletin board with her cloud of blond hair spread around her and her empty eyes staring up at the ceiling. Another cop - she couldn't make out which one - was sprawled on his face in front of the overturned reception desk, his legs spread out to either side in an impossibly deep split. Beyond him, in the ready room, a third cop lay dead on his side. That one had to be Wardlaw, one of the new kids on the block. He was too big to be anyone else. The sign over the coffee-station table was spattered with the kid's blood and brains.
It now read C FEE AND DOARE OT FREE.
There was a faint clacking sound from behind her. She whirled, unaware that she had raised her gun until she saw Rommie Burpee in the front sight. Rommie didn't even notice her; he was staring at the bodies of the three dead cops. The clack had been his Dick Cheney mask. He had taken it off and dropped it on the floor.
'Christ, what happened here?' he asked. 'Is this - '
Before he could finish, a shout came from downstairs in the Coop: 'Hey, f**kface! I got you, didn't I? I got you good!'
And then, incredibly, laughter. It was high-pitched and maniacal. For a moment Jackie and Rommie could only stare at each other, unable to move.
Then Rommie said, 'I t'ink dat's Barbara.'
29
Ernie Calvert sat behind the wheel of the phone company van, which was idling at a curb stenciled POLICE BUSINESS 10 MINS ONLY. He had locked all the doors, afraid of being carjacked by one or more of the panic-stricken people fleeing down Main Street from the Town Hall. He was holding the rifle Rommie had stowed behind the driver's seat, although he wasn't sure he could shoot anybody who tried to break in; he knew these people, had for years sold them their groceries. Terror had rendered their faces strange but not unrecognizable.
He saw Henry Morrison coursing back and forth on the Town Hall lawn, looking like a hunting dog searching for scent. He was shouting into his bullhorn and trying to bring a little order out of the chaos. Someone knocked him over and Henry got right back up, God bless him.
And now here were others: Georgie Frederick, Marty Arsenault, the Searles kid (recognizable by the bandage he was still wearing on his head), both Bowie brothers, Roger Killian, and a couple of the other newbies. Freddy Denton was marching down the Hall's broad front steps with his gun drawn. Ernie didn't see Randolph, although anyone who didn't know better would have expected the Chief of Police to be in charge of the pacification detail, which was itself teetering on the edge of chaos.
Ernie did know better. Peter Randolph had always been an ineffectual bluster-bug, and his absence at this particular Snafu Circus did not surprise Ernie in the least. Or concern him. What did concern him was that no one was coming out of the Police Department, and there had been more gunshots. These were muffled, as if they'd originated downstairs where the prisoners were kept.