“Go on, Audrey,” Cynthia said. “Only maybe you could, you know, drop back from R to PG-13.” She lifted her chin in David’s direction. Audrey looked at her vaguely for a moment, not seeming to understand. Then she gathered herself and continued.
“I was kneeling there by the delivery guy, trying to think what I should do next-stay with him or run and call someone-when there were more screams and gun shots up onCotton Street . Glass broke. There was a sputtering sound-wood-and then a big clanging, banging sound-metal. The cruiser started to rev again. It seems like that’s all I’ve heard for two days, that cruiser revving He peeled out, and then I could hear him coming my way I only had a second to think, but I don’t guess I would have done anything different even if I’d had longer. I ran. I wanted to get back to my car and drive away, but I didn’t think there was time. I didn’t think there was even time to get back around the corner and out of sight. So I went into the grocery store. Worrell’s. Wendy Worrell was lying dead by the cash register. Her dad-he’s the butcher as well as the owner-was sitting in the little office area, shot in the head. His shirt was off. He must have been just changing into his whites when it happened.”
“Hugh starts work early,” Billingsley said. “Lots earlier than the rest of his family.”
“Oh, but Entragian keeps coming back and checking,” Audrey said. Her voice was light, conversational, hysterical. “That’s what makes him so dangerous. He keeps coming back and checking. He’s crazy and
he has no mercy, but he’s also methodical.”
“He’s one sick puppy, though,” Johnny said. “When he brought me into town, he was on the verge of bleeding out, and that was six hours ago. If whatever’s happening to him hasn’t slowed down He shrugged.
“Don’t let him trick you,” she almost whispered.
Johnny understood what she was suggesting, knew from what he had seen with his own eyes that it was impossible, knew also that telling her so would be a waste of breath.
“Go on,” Steve said. “What then?”
“I tried to use the phone in Mr. Worrell’s office. It was dead. I stayed in the back of the store for about a half an hour. The cruiser went by twice during that time, once onMain Street , then around the back, probably onMesquite , or Cotton again. There were more gunshots. I went upstairs to where the Worrells live, thinking maybe the phone up there would still be live. It wasn’t. Neither was Mrs. Worrell or the boy. Mert, I think his name was. She was in the kitchen with her head in the sink and her throat cut. He was still in bed. The blood was everywhere. I stood in his doorway, looking in at his posters of rock musicians and basketball players, and outside I could hear the cruiser going by again, fast, accelerating.
“I went down the back way, but I didn’t dare open the back door once I got there. I kept imagining him crouched down below the porch, waiting for me. I mean, I’d just heard him go by, but I still kept imagining him waiting for me.
“I decided the best thing I could do was wait for dark. Then I could drive away. Maybe. You couldn’t be sure. Because he was just so unpredictable. He wasn’t always onMain Street and you couldn’t always hear him and you’d start thinking well, maybe he’s gone, headed for the hills, and then he’d be back, like a damn rabbit coming out of a magician’s hat.
“But I couldn’t stay in the store. The sound of the flies was driving me crazy, for one thing, and it was hot. I don’t usually mind the heat, you can’t mind it if you live _ in centralNevada , but I kept thinking I smelled them. So I – waited until I heard him shooting somewhere over by the town garage-that’s on Dumont Street, about as far east as you can go before you run out of town-and then I left Stepping out of
the market and back onto the sidewalk was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life Like being a soldier and stepping out into no-man’s-land At first I couldn’t move at all; I just froze right where I was. I remember thinking that I had to walk, I couldn’t run because I’d panic if I did, but I had to walk.
Except I couldn’t. Couldn’t. It was like being paralyzed.
Then I heard him coming back. It was weird. As if he sensed me sensed someone, anyway, moving around while his back was turned. Like he was playing a new kind of kid s game, one where you got to murder the losers instead of just sending them back to the Prisoner’s Base, or some thing. The engine …
it’s so loud when it starts to rev. So powerful. So loud. Even when I’m not hearing it. I m imagining I hear it. You know? It sounds kind of like a catamount getting f. . . like a wildcat in heat. That’s what I heard coming toward me, and still I couldn’t move I could only stand there and listen to it getting closer I thought about the Tastykake man, how he was shivering like the jay I shot when I was a kid, and that finally got me going. I went into the laundrymat and threw myself down on the floor just as he went by. I heard more screaming north of town, but I don’t know what that was about, because I couldn’t look up.
I couldn’t get up I must have lain there on that floor for almost twenty mm utes, that’s how bad I was. I can say I was way beyond scared by then, but I can’t make you understand how weird it gets in your bead when you’re that way. I lay there on the floor, looking at dust-balls and mashed-up cigarette butts and thinking how you could tell this was a laundrymat even down at the level I was, because of the smell and because all of the butts had lipstick on them. I lay there and I couldn’t have moved even if I’d heard him coming up the sidewalk. I would have lain there until he put the barrel of his gun on the side of my head and-”
“Don’t,” Mary said, wincing. “Don’t talk about it.”
“But I can’t stop thinking about it!” she shouted, and something about that jagged on Johnny Marinville’s ear as nothing else she’d said had. She made a visible effort to get herself under control, then went on.
“What got me past that was the sound of people outside. I got up on my knees and crawled over to the door. I saw four people across the street, by the Owl’s. Two were Mexican-the Escolla boy who works on the crusher up at the mine, and his girlfriend. I don’t know her name, but she’s got a blonde streak in her hair-natural, I’m almost sure-and she’s awfully pretty. Was awfully pretty. There was another woman, quite heavy, I’d never seen her before. The man with her I’ve seen playing pooi with you in Bud’s, Tom. Flip somebody.”
“Flip Moran? You saw the Flipper?”
She nodded. “They were working their way up the other side of the street, trying cars, looking for keys.
I thought about mine, and how we could all go together. I started to get up. They were passing that little alley over there, the one between the storefront where the Italian restaurant used to be and The Broken Drum, and Entragian came roaring right out of the alley in his cruiser. Like he’d been waiting for them.
Probably he was waiting for them. He hit them all, but I think your friend Flip was the only one killed outright. The others just went skidding off to one side, like bowling-pins when you miss a good hit. They
kind of grabbed each other to keep from falling down. Then they ran. The Escolla boy had his arm around his girlfriend. She was crying and holding her arm against her breasts. It was broken. You could see it was, it looked like it had an extra joint in it above the elbow. The other woman had blood pouring down her face. When she heard Entragian coming after them-that big, powerful engine- she spun around and held her hands up like she was a crossing guard or something. He was driving with his right hand and leaning out the window like a locomotive engineer. He shot her twice before he hit her with the car and ran her under. That was the first really good look I got at him, the first time I knew for sure who I was dealing with.”