From A Buick 8 by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King [King, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2003-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

The first thing he remembered on the other side of that cigarette-burn in the surface of his memory was Tony saying, “Go on, now, you hear? You guys go on back upstairs. Everything here is under control.” And, close to his left ear, Curt was murmuring another version of the same thing, telling Sandy he was all right, totally cool, fi’-by-fi’.

Five-by-five: that was what lured Sandy back from his brief vacation in the land of hysteria. But if everything was five-by, why was Curt breathing so fast? And why was the hand on Sandy’s arm so cold? Even through the rubber membrane of the glove (which he had so far neglected to take off), Curt’s hand was cold.

“I threw up,” Sandy said, and felt the dull heat hit his cheeks as the blood rose there. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so ashamed and demoralized. “Christ Jesus, I threw up all over myself.”

“Yeah,” Curt said, “you hurled like a hero. Don’t worry about it.”

Sandy took a breath and then grimaced as his stomach knotted and almost betrayed him again. They were in the corridor, but even out here that cabbagey reek was almost overpowering. At the same time he realized exactly where in the hallway he was: standing in front of the rickrack cabinet from which he had scrounged the extension cord. The cabinet’s door was open. Sandy wasn’t sure, but he had an idea he’d fled down here from the supply room, perhaps with the idea of crawling into the cabinet, pulling the door shut behind him, and just curling up in the dark. This struck him funny and he voiced a single shrill chuckle.

“There, that’s better,” Curt said, sounding as pleased as a mother whose child has just managed to tinkle in the potty for the first time. He gave Sandy a pat and looked shocked when Sandy shrank away from his touch.

“Not you,” Sandy said. “That mung . . . that goo—”

He couldn’t finish; his throat had locked up. He pointed at Curt’s hand, instead. The slime which had come out of the bat-thing’s pregnant dead uterus was smeared all over Curt’s gloves, and some of it was now on Sandy’s arm as well. Curt’s mask, pulled down so it hung against his neck, was also streaked and stained. There was a black crust like a scab on his cheek.

At the other end of the hall, past the open supply room door, Tony stood at the foot of the stairs, talking to four or five gawking, nervous State Troopers. He was making shooing gestures, trying to get them to go back up, but they weren’t quite ready to do that.

Sandy walked back down the hall as far as the supply room door, stopping where they could all get a good look at him. “I’m okay, fellas—I’m okay, you’re okay, everybody’s okay. Go upstairs and chill out. After we get squared away, you can all look at the video.”

“Will we want to?” Orville Garrett asked.

“Probably not,” Sandy said.

The Troopers went upstairs.

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