End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3) - Stephen King Page 0,148
door opens. Cold air rushes in, making the fire do an excited shimmy.
‘I missed him!’ Holly shouts, agonized. ‘Stupid and useless! Stupid and useless!’ She drops the Victory and slaps herself across the face.
Hodges catches her hand before she can do it again, and kneels beside her. ‘No, you got him at least once, maybe twice. You’re the reason we’re still alive.’
But for how long? Brady held onto that goddam grease gun, he may have an extra clip or two, and Hodges knows he wasn’t lying about the SCAR 17S’s ability to demolish concrete blocks. He has seen a similar assault rifle, the HK 416, do exactly that, at a private shooting facility in the wilds of Victory County. He went there with Pete, and on the way back they joked about how the HK should be standard police issue.
‘What do we do?’ Holly asks. ‘What do we do now?’
Hodges picks up the .38 and rolls the barrel. Two rounds left, and the .38 is only good at short range, anyway. Holly has a concussion at the very least, and he’s almost incapacitated. The bitter truth is this: they had a chance, and Brady got away.
He hugs her and says, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Maybe we should hide.’
‘I don’t think that would work,’ he says, but doesn’t say why and is relieved when she doesn’t ask. It’s because there’s still a little of Brady left inside of him. It probably won’t last long, but for the time being, at least, Hodges suspects it’s as good as a homing beacon.
32
Brady staggers through shin-deep snow, eyes wide with disbelief, Babineau’s sixty-three-year-old heart banging away in his chest. There’s a metallic taste on his tongue, his shoulder is burning, and the thought running through his head on a constant loop is That bitch, that bitch, that dirty sneaking bitch, why didn’t I kill her while I had the chance?
The Zappit is gone, too. Good old Zappit Zero, and it’s the only one he brought. Without it, he has no way to reach the minds of those with active Zappits. He stands panting in front of Heads and Skins, coatless in the rising wind and driving snow. The keys to Z-Boy’s car are in his pocket, along with another clip for the Scar, but what good are the keys? That shitbox wouldn’t make it halfway up the first hill before it got stuck.
I have to take them, he thinks, and not just because they owe me. The SUV Hodges drove down here is the only way out of here, and either he or the bitch probably has the keys. It’s possible they left them in the vehicle, but that’s a chance I can’t afford to take.
Besides, it would mean leaving them alive.
He knows what he has to do, and switches the fire control to FULL AUTO. He socks the butt of the Scar against his good shoulder, and starts shooting, raking the barrel from left to right but concentrating on the great room, where he left them.
Gunfire lights up the night, turning the fast-falling snow into a series of flash photographs. The sound of the overlapping reports is deafening. Windows explode inward. Clapboards rise from the façade like bats. The front door, left half-open in his escape, flies all the way back, rebounds, and is driven back again. Babineau’s face is twisted in an expression of joyful hate that is all Brady Hartsfield, and he doesn’t hear the growl of an approaching engine or the clatter of steel treads from behind him.
33
‘Down!’ Hodges shouts. ‘Holly, down!’
He doesn’t wait to see if she’ll obey on her own, just lands on top of her and covers her body with his. Above them, the living room is a storm of flying splinters, broken glass, and chips of rock from the chimney. An elk’s head falls off the wall and lands on the hearth. One glass eye has been shattered by a Winchester slug, and it looks like it’s winking at them. Holly screams. Half a dozen bottles on the buffet explode, releasing the stench of bourbon and gin. A slug strikes a burning log in the fireplace, busting it in two and sending up a storm of sparks.
Please let him have just the one clip, Hodges thinks. And if he aims low, let him hit me instead of Holly. Only a .308 Winchester slug that hits him will go through them both, and he knows it.
The gunfire stops. Is he reloading, or is he out? Live or Memorex?