The Dead Zone (60 page)

“I just love that man,” one of the three said. “I've gotten his autograph three times and I'll get it again today, I'll be bound.”

That was all the talk there was about Greg Stillson. The ladies went on to discuss the impending Old Home Sunday at the Methodist Church.

Johnny, almost directly over the stove, went from very cold to very hot. He had taken advantage of the slack tide between the departure of Stillson's security people and the arrival of the first townsfolk, using it to shed both his jacket and his outer shirt. He kept wiping sweat from his face with a handkerchief, and the linen was streaked with blood as well as sweat. His bad eye was kicking up again, and his vision was constantly blurred and reddish.

The door below opened, there was the hearty tromp-tromp
tromp of men stamping snow from their pacs, and then four men in checked woolen jackets came down the aisle and sat in the front row. One of them launched immediately into a Frenchman joke.

A young woman of about twenty-three arrived with her son, who looked about four. The boy was wearing a blue snowmobile suit with bright yellow markings, and he wanted to know if he could talk into the microphone.

“No, dear,” the woman said, and they went down behind the men. The boy immediately began to kick his feet against the bench in front of him, and one of the men glanced back over his shoulder.

“Matt, stop that,” she said.

Quarter of ten now. The door was opening and closing with a steady regularity. Men and women of all types and occupations and ages were filling up the hall. There was a drifting hum of conversation, and it was edged with an indefinable sense of anticipation. They weren't here to quiz their duly-elected representative; they were waiting for a bona-fide star turn in their small community. Johnny knew that most “meet-your-candidate” and “meet-your-representative” sessions were attended by a handful of die-hards in the nearly empty meeting halls. During the election of 1976 a debate between Maine's Bill Cohen and his challenger, Leighton Cooney, had attracted all of twenty-six people, press aside. The skull-sessions were so much window-dressing, a self-testimonial to wave when election time came around again. Most could have been held in a middling-sized closet. But by 10
A.M
., every seat in the town hall was taken, and there were twenty or thirty standees at the back. Every time the door opened, Johnny's hands tensed down on the rifle. And he was still not positive he could do it, no matter what the stakes.

Five past, ten past. Johnny began to think Stillson had been held up, or was perhaps not coming at all. And the feeling which moved stealthily through him was one of relief.

Then the door opened again and a hearty voice called: “Hey! How ya doin, Jackson, N.H.?”

A startled, pleased murmur. Someone called ecstatically, “Greg! How are you?”

“Well, I'm feeling perky,” Stillson came right back. “How the heck are you?”

A spatter of applause quickly swelled to a roar of approval.

“Hey, all right!” Greg shouted over it. He moved quickly down the aisle, shaking hands, toward the podium.

Johnny watched him through his loophole. Stillson was wearing a heavy rawhide coat with a sheepskin collar, and today the hard hat had been replaced with a woolen ski cap with a bright red tassel. He paused at the head of the aisle and waved at the three or four press in attendance. Flashpaks popped and the applause got its second wind, shaking the rafters.

And Johnny Smith suddenly knew it was now or never.

The feelings he had had about Greg Stillson at the Trimbull rally suddenly swept over him again with a certain and terrible clarity. Inside his aching, tortured head he seemed to hear a dull wooden sound, two things coming together with terrible force at one single moment. It was, perhaps, the sound of destiny. It would be too easy to delay, to let Stillson talk and talk. Too easy to let him get away, to sit up here with his head in his hands, waiting as the crowd thinned out, waiting as the custodian returned to dismantle the sound system and sweep up the litter, all the time kidding himself that there would be next week in another town.

The time was now, indisputably now, and every human being on earth suddenly had a stake in what happened in this backwater meetinghouse.

That thudding sound in his head, like poles of destiny coming together.

Stillson was mounting the steps to the podium. The area behind him was clear. The three men in their open topcoats were lounging against the far wall.

Johnny stood up.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

There were cramps in his legs from sitting so long. His knees popped like dud firecrackers. Time seemed frozen, the applause went on and on even though heads were turning, necks were craning; someone screamed through the applause and still it went on; someone had screamed because there was a man in the gallery and the man was holding a rifle and this was something they had all seen on TV, it was a situation with classic elements that they all recognized. In its own way,
it was as American as
The Wonderful World of Disney.
The politician and the man in a high place with the gun.

Greg Stillson turned toward him, his thick neck craning, wrinkling into creases. The red puff on the top of his ski cap bobbed.

Johnny put the rifle to his shoulder. It seemed to float up there and he felt the thud as it socketed home next to the. joint there. He thought of shooting partridge with his dad as a boy. They had gone deer-hunting but the only time Johnny had ever seen one he had not been able to pull the trigger; the buck fever had gotten him. It was a secret, as shameful as masturbation, and he had never told anyone.

There was another scream. One of the old ladies was clutching her mouth and Johnny saw there was artificial fruit scattered along the wide brim of her black hat. Faces turned up to him, big white zeros. Open mouths, small black zeros. The little boy in the snowmobile suit was pointing. His mother was trying to shield him. Stillson was in the gunsight suddenly and Johnny remembered to flick off the rifle's safety. Across the way the men in the topcoats were reaching inside their jackets and Sonny Elliman, his green eyes blazing, was hollering:
Down! Greg, get DOWN!”

But Stillson stared up into the gallery and for the second time their eyes locked together in a perfect sort of understanding, and Stillson only ducked at the same instant Johnny fired. The rifle's roar was loud, filling the place, and the slug took away nearly one whole corner of the podium, peeling it back to the bare, bright wood. Splinters flew. One of them struck the microphone, and there was another monstrous whine of feedback that suddenly ended in a guttural, low-key buzzing.

Johnny pumped another cartridge into the chamber and fired again. This time the slug punched a hole through the dusty carpeting of the dais.

The crowd had started to move, panicky as cattle. They all drove into the center aisle. The people who had been standing at the rear escaped easily, but then a bottleneck of cursing, screaming men and women formed in the double doorway.

There were popping noises from the other side of the hall, and suddenly part of the gallery railing splintered up in front of Johnny's eyes. Something screamed past his ear a second later. Then an invisible finger gave the collar of his shirt a flick. All three of them across the way were holding handguns,
and because Johnny was up in the gallery, their field of fire was crystal clear—but Johnny doubted if they would have bothered overmuch about innocent bystanders anyway.

One of the trio of old women grabbed Moochie's arm. She was sobbing, trying to ask something. He flung her away and steadied his gun in both hands. There was a stink of gunpowder in the hall now. It had been about twenty seconds since Johnny had stood up.

“Down! Down, Greg!”

Stillson was still standing at the edge of the dais, crouching slightly, looking up. Johnny brought the rifle down, and for an instant Stillson was dead-bang in front sight. Then a pistol-slug grooved his neck, knocking him backward, and his own shot went wild into the air. The window across the way dissolved in a tinkling rain of glass. Thin screams drifted up from below. Blood poured down and across his shoulder and chest.

Oh, you're doing a great job of killing him,
he thought hysterically, and pushed back to the railing again. He levered another cartridge into the breech and threw it to his shoulder again. Now Stillson was on the move. He darted down the steps to floor-level and then glanced up at Johnny again.

Another bullet whizzed by his temple.
I'm bleeding like a stuck pig,
he thought.
Come on. Come on and get this over.

The bottleneck at the entryway broke, and now people began to pour out. A puff of smoke rose from the barrel of one of the pistols across the way, there was a bang, and the invisible finger that had flicked his collar a few seconds ago now drew a line of fire across the side of Johnny's head. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except taking Stillson. He brought the rifle down again.

Make this one count—

Stillson moved with good speed for such a big man. The dark-haired young woman Johnny had noticed earlier was about halfway up the center aisle, holding her crying son in her arms, still trying to shield him with her body. And what Stillson did then so dumbfounded Johnny that he almost dropped the rifle altogether. He snatched the boy from his mother's arms, whirled toward the gallery, holding the boy's body in front of him. It was no longer Greg Stillson in the front sight but a small squirming figure in

(the filter blue filter yellow stripes tiger stripes)

a dark blue snowmobile suit with bright yellow piping.

Johnny's mouth dropped open. It was Stillson, all right. The tiger.
But he was behind the filter now.

What does it mean?
Johnny screamed, but no sound passed his lips.

The mother screamed shrilly then; but Johnny had heard it all somewhere before.
“Matt! Give him to me! MATT! GIVE HIM TO ME, YOU BASTARD!”

Johnny's head was swelling blackly, expanding like a bladder. Everything was starting to fade. The only brightness left was centered around the notched gunsight, the gunsight now laid directly over the chest of that blue snowmobile suit.

Do it, oh for Christ's sake you have to do it he'll get away—

And now—perhaps it was only his blurring eyesight that made it seem so—the blue snowmobile suit began to spread, its color washing out to the light robin's-egg color of the vision, the dark yellow stretching, striping, until everything began to be lost in it.

(behind the filter, yes, he's behind the filter, but what does it mean? does it mean it's safe or just that he's beyond my reach? what does it)

Warm fire flashed somewhere below and was gone. Some dim part of Johnny's mind registered it as a flash-pak.

Stillson shoved the woman away and backed toward the door, eyes squeezed into calculating pirate's slits. He held the squirming boy firmly by the neck and the crotch.

Can't. Oh dear God forgive me, I can't.

Two more bullets struck him then, one high in the chest, driving him back against the wall and bouncing him off it, the second into the left side of his midsection, spinning him around into the gallery railing. He was dimly aware that he had lost the rifle. It struck the gallery floor and discharged point-blank into the wall. Then his upper thighs crashed into the balustrade and he was falling. The town hall turned over twice before his eyes and then there was a splintering crash as he struck two of the benches, breaking his back and both legs.

He opened his mouth to scream, but what came out was a great gush of blood. He lay in the splintered remains of the benches he had struck and thought:
It's over. I punked out. Blew it.

Hands were on him, not gentle. They were turning him over. Elliman, Moochie, and the other guy were there. Elliman was the one who had turned him over.

Stillson came, shoving Moochie aside.

“Never mind this guy,” he said harshly. “Find the son of a bitch that took that picture. Smash his camera.”

Moochie and the other guy left. Somewhere close by the woman with the dark hair was crying out: “ . . .
behind a kid, hiding behind a kid and I'll tell everybody . . .”

“Shut her up, Sonny,” Stillson said.

“Sure,” Sonny said, and left Stillson's side.

Stillson got down on his knees above Johnny. “Do we know each other, Fella? No sense lying. You've had the course.”

Johnny whispered, “We knew each other.”

“It was that Trimbull rally, wasn't it?”

Johnny nodded.

Stillson got up abruptly, and with the last bit of his strength Johnny reached out and grasped his ankle. It was only for a second; Stillson pulled free easily. But it was long enough.

Everything had changed.

People were drawing near him now, but he saw only feet and legs no faces. It didn't matter.
Everything had changed.

He began to cry a little. Touching Stillson this time had been like touching a blank. Dead battery. Fallen tree. Empty house. Bare bookshelves. Wine bottles ready for candles.

Fading. Going away. The feet and legs around him were becoming misty and indistinct. He heard their voices, the excited gabble of speculation, but not the words. Only the sound of the words, and even that was fading, blurring into a high, sweet humming sound.

He looked over his shoulder and there was the corridor he had emerged from so long ago. He had come out of that corridor and into this bright placental place. Only then his mother had been alive and his father had been there, calling him by hame, until he broke through to them. Now it was only time to go back. Now it was right to go back.