The plant - By Stephen King Page 0,78

after that. Carlos tries to give him another spray for good measure, but this time when he triggers the button there's nothing but an impotent phut sound and a little gasp of something like steam. No matter. Time to get while the getting is good. Carlos staggers for the office doorway, his blood-sodden pants sticking to his legs. He is already thinking, in a hysterical and unformed way, about emergency rooms and assumed names.

The General is blind and the General is deaf, but his nose hasn't swelled entirely shut and he catches that dark, peaty odor which Frank DeFelice noticed in the elevator. He straightens up and lashes out at the center of the smell. The Army-Navy hunting knife goes into Carlos's chest up to the hilt, skewering the Mad Florist's heart like a piece of beef on a shish kabob. If he had been at Cony Island with Sandra and Dina, Iron-Guts undoubtedly would have won a teddy bear.

Carlos takes two shuffling steps backward, tearing the knife out of the General's grip. He looks down at it unbelievingly and utters a single incoherent word. It sounds like Iggala (not that the General can hear it), but it's probably Abbalah. He tries to pull the knife free and cannot. His legs fold up and he drops to his knees. He is still pulling feebly at the hilt when he falls forward, pushing the tip of the blade all the way out through the back of his jacket. His heart gives a final spasm around the knife that has outraged it and then quits. Carlos feels a sensation of flying as the stained and filthy piece of laundry which is his soul finally flies off the line of his life and into whatever world there comes next.

11:33 A. M.

Iron-Guts can't see, but he knows when his enemy dies - he feels the passage of the son of a bitch's soul, and good goddam riddance. He staggers in the doorway, lost in a world of black space and streaming white dots like galaxies.

"Now what?" he croaks.

The first thing is to get away from the gas the Designated Spic shot into his face. Hecksler backs into the hall, breathing as shallowly as possible, and then a voice speaks to him.

This way, Tony, it says calmly. Turn portside. I'm going to lead you out.

"Doug?" Hecksler croaks.

Yep. It's me, General MacArthur says. You're not exactly looking squared away, Tony, but you're still standing at the end of the fight, and that's the important thing. Turn portside, now. Walk forty paces, and that's gonna take you to the elevator.

Iron-Guts has lost his usually formidable sense of direction, but with that voice to guide him, he doesn't need it. He turns portside, which happens to be directly away from the reception area and the elevator. Blind, now facing toward the ivy-choked far end of the hallway, he begins to walk, trailing one hand along the wall. At first he thinks the soft touch slithering around his shoulders are Dougout Doug's guiding hands... but how can they be so thin? How can there be so many fingers? And what is that bitter smell?

Then Zenith is winding itself around his neck, shutting off his air, yanking him forward into its cannibal embrace. Hecksler tries to scream. Leaf-decked branches, slender but horribly strong, leap eagerly into his mouth. One wraps around the leathery meat of his tongue and yanks it out. Others thrust their way down his elderly gullet, anxious to sample the digestive stew of the General's last meal (two doughnuts, a cup of black coffee, and half a roll of antacids). Zenith loops bracelets of ivy around his arms and thighs. It fashions a new belt around his waist. It picks his pockets, spilling out a mostly nonsensical strew of litter: receipts, memoranda to himself, a guitar pick, twenty or thirty dollars in assorted change and currency, one of the S&H stamp-books in which he wrote his dispatches.

Anthony "Iron-Guts" Hecksler is pulled briskly into the jungle which now infests the rear of the fifth floor with his clothes shredding and his pockets turned out, feeding the plant the blood of insanity, bringing it to full life and consciousness, and here he passes out of our tale forever.

From John Kenton's diary

April 4, 1981

It's 10:45 P. M., and I'm sitting here waiting for the phone to ring. I remember, not so long ago, sitting in this same chair and waiting for Ruth to call, thinking that nothing could be worse