CHAPTER 33
At twenty-two minutes of nine by the clock over the sheriff's office doorway, the lights went off. Nick Andros had been reading a paperback he had taken from the rack in the drugstore, a gothic novel about a frightened governess who thought the lonely estate where she was supposed to be teaching the handsome master's sons was haunted. Although he wasn't even halfway through the book, Nick already knew the ghost was really the handsome master's wife, who was probably locked up in the attic, and crazy as a loon. When the lights went out he felt his heart lurch in his chest and a voice whispered to him from deep in his mind, from the place where the nightmares which now haunted him every time he fell asleep lay in wait: He's coming for you... he's out there now, on the highways of the night... the highways in hiding... the dark man... He dropped the paperback on the desk and went out into the street. The last of the daylight hadn't gone out of the sky yet, but twilight was nearly over. All the streetlights were dark. The fluorescents in the drugstore, which had burned night and day, were also gone. The subdued thrum of the junction boxes atop the power poles was also gone; this was something Nick verified by putting his hand on one and feeling nothing but wood. The vibration, which was to him a kind of hearing, had ceased. There were candles in the office supply cabinet, a whole box of them, but the thought of candles did not comfort Nick very much. The fact of the lights going out had hit him very hard and now he stood looking to the west, silently begging the light not to desert him and leave him in this dark graveyard. But the light did go. Nick could no longer even pretend there was a little light left in the sky by ten past nine, and he went back to the office and fumbled his way to the cabinet where the candles were. He was feeling around on one of the shelves for the right box when the door behind him burst open and Ray Booth staggered inside, his face black and puffy, his LSU ring still glistening on his finger. He had been laid up in the woods close to town ever since the night of June twenty-second, a week ago. By the morning of the twenty-fourth he had been feeling sick, and at last, this evening, hunger and fear for his life had driven him down to town, where he had seen no one at all but the goddam mutie freak who had gotten him into this fix in the first place. The mutie had been crossing the town square just as big as Billy-be-damned, walking . as if he owned the town where Ray had lived most of his life, the sheriffs pistol holstered at his right hip and secured to his thigh with a gunslinger's tiedown. Maybe he thought he did own the town. Ray suspected he was going to die of whatever had taken everyone else off, but first he was going to show the goddam freak that he didn't own jack-shit. Nick's back was turned, and he had no idea he was no longer alone in Sheriff Baker's office until the hands closed around his neck and locked there. The box he had just picked up fell out of his hands, wax candles breaking and rolling everywhere on the floor. He was half-strangled before he got over his first terror and he felt sudden certainty that the black creature from his dreams had come to life: some fiend from the basement of hell was behind him, and had wrapped its scaled claws around his neck as soon as the power had failed. Then, convulsively, instinctively, he put his own hands over the hands that were throttling him and tried to pull them free. Hot breath blew against his right ear, making a windtunnel there which he could feel but not hear. He caught one clogged and rasping breath before the hands clamped tight again. The two of them swayed in the black like dark dancers. Ray Booth could feel his strength ebbing as the kid struggled. His head was pounding. If he didn't finish the mutie quick, he would never finish him at all. He throttled the scrawny kid's neck with all the force left in his hands. Nick felt the world going away. The pain in his throat, which had been sharp at first, was now numb and far offcoast pleasant. He stamped his booted heel down hard on one of Booth's feet, and leaned his weight back against the big man at the same time. Booth was forced back a step. one of his feet came down on a candle. It rolled away under him and he crashed to the floor with Nick back-to on top of him. His hands were finally jarred loose.
© Составление и оформление -el` Poison-, 2002.
135 Nick rolled away, breathing in harsh rasps. Everything seemed far off and floating, except for the pain in his throat, which had returned in slow, thudding bursts. He could taste slick blood in the back of his throat. The large humped shape of whoever it was who had jumped him was lurching to its feet. Nick remembered the and clawed for it. It was there, but it wouldn't come . It was stuck in the holster somehow. He pulled at it mightily now crazed with panic. It went off. The slug fur' rowed the side of his leg and embedded itself in the floor. The shape fell on him like dead fate. Nick's breath exploded out of him, and then large white hands were groping at his face, the thumbs gouging at his eyes. Nick saw a purple gleam on one of those hands in the faint moonlight and his surprised mouth formed the word "Booth!" in the darkness. His right hand continued to pull at the gun. He had barely felt the hot sizzle of pain along the length of his thigh. One of Ray Booth's thumbs jammed into Nick's right eye. Exquisite pain flared and sparkled in his head. He jerked the gun free at last. Booth's thumb, workcallused and hard, turned briskly clock and counterclock, grinding Nick's eyeball. Nick uttered an amorphous scream which was little more than a violent susurrus of air and jammed the gun into Booth's flabby side. He pulled the trigger and the gun made a muffled whump! which Nick felt as a violent recoil that went nowhere but up his arm; the gunsight had snagged in Booth's shirt. Nick saw a muzzle-flash, and a moment later smelled powder and Booth's charring shirt. Ray Booth stiffened, then slumped on top of him. Sobbing with pain and terror, Nick heaved against the weight on top of him and Booth's body half fell, half slithered off him. Nick crawled out from underneath, one hand clapped over his wounded eye. He lay on the floor for a long time, his throat on fire. His head felt as if giant, merciless calipers had been screwed into his temples. At last he felt around, found a candle, and lit it with the desk lighter. By its weak yellow glow he could see Ray Booth lying facedown on the floor. He looked like a dead whale cast up on a beach. The gun had made a blackened circle on the side of his shirt the size of a flapjack. There was a great deal of blood. Booth's shadow stretched away to the far wall in the candle's uncertain flicker, huge and unshaped. Moaning, Nick stumbled into the small bathroom, his hand still clapped over his eye, and then looked into the mirror. He saw blood seeping out from between his fingers and took his hand away reluctantly. He wasn't sure, but he thought he might now be one-eyed as well as deaf and dumb. He walked back into the office and kicked Ray Booth's limp body. You fixed me, he told the dead man. First my teeth and now my eye. Are you happy? You would have taken both eyes if you could have done it, wouldn't you? Taken my eyes and left me deaf, dumb, and blind in a world of the dead. How do you like this, home-boy? He kicked Booth again, and the feel of his foot sinking into that dead meat made him feel ill. After a little bit he retreated to the bunk and sat on it and put his head in his hands. Outside, the dark held hard. Outside, all the lights of the world were going out.