The Talisman by Stephen King
"TEAR THEM UP!" Jack Sawyer/Jason DeLoessian bellowed, and opened fire on the left.
8
There was a rough parade ground on Jack's side, a long log building on Richard's. The log building looked like the bunk-house in a Roy Rogers movie, but Richard guessed that it was a barracks. In fact, this whole place looked more familiar to Richard than anything he had seen so far in this weird world Jack had taken him into. He had seen places like it on the TV news. CIA-supported rebels training for takeovers of South and Central American countries trained in places like this. Only, the training camps were usually in Florida, and those weren't cubanos pouring out of the barracks--Richard didn't know what they were.
Some of them looked a bit like medieval paintings of devils and satyrs. Some looked like degenerate human beings--cave-people, almost. And one of the things lurching into the early-morning sunlight had scaly skin and nictitating eyelids . . . it looked to Richard Sloat like an alligator that was somehow walking upright. As he looked, the thing lifted its snout and uttered that cry he and Jack had heard earlier: Grooo-OOOOO! He just had time to see that most of these hellish creatures looked totally bewildered, and then Jack's Uzi split the world with thunder.
On Jack's side, roughly two dozen Wolfs had been doing callies on the parade ground. Like the guardhouse Wolf, most wore green fatigue pants, boots with cut-off toes, and bandoleer belts. Like the guard, they looked stupid, flatheaded, and essentially evil.
They had paused in the middle of a spastic set of jumping jacks to watch the train come roaring in, the gate and the unfortunate fellow who had been running laps at the wrong place and time plastered to the front. At Jack's cry they began to move, but by then they were too late.
Most of Morgan's carefully culled Wolf Brigade, hand-picked over a period of five years for their strength and brutality, their fear of and loyalty to Morgan, were wiped out in one spitting, raking burst of the machine-gun in Jack's hands. They went stumbling and reeling backward, chests blown open, heads bleeding. There were growls of bewildered anger and howls of pain . . . but not many. Most of them simply died.
Jack popped the clip, grabbed another one, slammed it in. On the left side of the parade ground, four of the Wolfs had escaped; in the center two more had dropped below the line of fire. Both of these had been wounded but now both were coming at him, long-nailed toes digging divots in the packed dust, faces sprouting hair, eyes flaring. As they ran at the engine, Jack saw fangs grow out of their mouths and push through fresh, wiry hair growing from their chins.
He pulled the trigger on the Uzi, now holding the hot barrel down only with an effort; the heavy recoil was trying to force the muzzle up. Both of the attacking Wolfs were thrown back so violently that they flipped through the air head-over-heels like acrobats. The other four Wolfs did not pause; they headed for the place where the gate had been two minutes before.
The assorted creatures which had spilled out of the bunk-house-style barracks building seemed to be finally getting the idea that, although the newcomers were driving Morgan's train, they were a good deal less than friendly. There was no concentrated charge, but they began to move forward in a muttering clot. Richard laid the Uzi's barrel on the chest-high side of the engine cab and opened fire. The slugs tore them open, drove them backward. Two of the things which looked like goats dropped to hands and knees--or hooves--and scurried back inside. Richard saw three others spin and drop under the force of the slugs. A joy so savage that it made him feel faint swept through him.
Bullets also tore open the whitish-green belly of the alligator-thing, and a blackish fluid--ichor, not blood--began to pour out of it. It fell backward, but its tail seemed to cushion it. It sprang back up and leaped at Richard's side of the train. It uttered its rough, powerful cry again . . . and this time it seemed to Richard that there was something hideously feminine in that cry.
He pulled the trigger of the Uzi. Nothing happened. The clip was spent.
The alligator-thing ran with slow, clumsy, thudding determination. Its eyes sparkled with murderous fury . . . and intelligence. The vestiges of breasts bounced on its scaly chest.
He bent, groped, without taking his eyes off the were-alligator, and found one of the grenades.
Seabrook Island, Richard thought dreamily. Jack calls this place the Territories, but it's really Seabrook Island, and there is no need to be afraid, really no need; this is all a dream and if that thing's scaly claws settle around my neck I will surely wake up, and even if it's not all a dream, Jack will save me somehow--I know he will, I know it, because over here Jack is some kind of a god.
He pulled the pin on the grenade, restrained the strong urge he felt to simply chuck it in a panicky frenzy, and lobbed it gently, underhand. "Jack, get down!"
Jack dropped below the level of the engine cab's sides at once, without looking. Richard did, too, but not before he had seen an incredible, blackly comic thing: the alligator-creature had caught the grenade . . . and was trying to eat it.
The explosion was not the dull crump Richard had expected but a loud, braying roar that drilled into his ears, hurting them badly. He heard a splash, as if someone had thrown a bucket of water against his side of the train.
He looked up and saw that the engine, boxcar and flatcar were covered with hot guts, black blood, and shreds of the alligator-creature's flesh. The entire front of the barracks building had been blown away. Much of the splintered rubble was bloody. In the midst of it he saw a hairy foot in a boot with a cut-off toe.
The jackstraw blowdown of logs was thrown aside as he watched, and two of the goatlike creatures began to pull themselves out. Richard bent, found a fresh clip, and slammed it into his gun. It was getting hot, just as Jack had said it would.
Whoopee! Richard thought faintly, and opened fire again.
9
When Jack popped up after the grenade explosion, he saw that the four Wolfs who had escaped his first two fusillades were just running through the hole where the gate had been. They were howling with terror. They were running side by side, and Jack had a clear shot at them. He raised the Uzi--then lowered it again, knowing he would see them later, probably at the black hotel, knowing he was a fool . . . but, fool or not, he was unable to just let them have it in the back.
Now a high, womanish shrieking began from behind the barracks. "Get out there! Get out there, I say! Move! Move!" There was the whistling crack of a whip.
Jack knew that sound, and he knew that voice. He had been wrapped up in a strait-jacket when he had last heard it. Jack would have known that voice anywhere.
--If his retarded friend shows up, shoot him.
Well, you managed that, but maybe now it's payback time--and maybe, from the way your voice sounds, you know it.
"Get them, what's the matter with you cowards? Get them, do I have to show you how to do everything? Follow us, follow us!"
Three creatures came from behind what remained of the barracks, and only one of them was clearly human--Osmond. He carried his whip in one hand, a Sten gun in the other. He wore a red cloak and black boots and white silk pants with wide, flowing legs. They were splattered with fresh blood. To his left was a shaggy goat-creature wearing jeans and Westernstyle boots. This creature and Jack looked at each other and shared a moment of complete recognition. It was the dreadful barroom cowboy from the Oatley Tap. It was Randolph Scott. It was Elroy. It grinned at Jack; its long tongue snaked out and lapped its wide upper lip.
"Get him!" Osmond screamed at Elroy.
Jack tried to lift the Uzi, but it suddenly seemed very heavy in his arms. Osmond was bad, the reappearance of Elroy was worse, but the thing between the two of them was a nightmare. It was the Territories version of Reuel Gardener, of course; the son of Osmond, the son of Sunlight. And it did indeed look a bit like a child--a child as drawn by a bright kindergarten student with a cruel turn of mind.
It was curdy-white and skinny; one of its arms ended in a wormy tentacle that somehow reminded Jack of Osmond's whip.
Some of it's radiation sickness . . . Jason, I think Osmond's boy might have gotten a little too close to one of those fireballs . . . but the rest of it . . . Jason . . . Jesus . . . what was its mother? In the name of all the worlds, WHAT WAS ITS MOTHER?
"Get the Pretender!" Osmond was shrieking. "Save Morgan's son but get the Pretender! Get the false Jason! Get out here, you cowards! They're out of bullets!"
Roars, bellows. In a moment, Jack knew, a fresh contingent of Wolfs, supported by Assorted Geeks and Freaks, was going to appear from the back end of the long barracks, where they would have been shielded from the explosion, where they had probably been cowering with their heads down, and where they would have remained . . . except for Osmond.
"Should have stayed off the road, little chicken," Elroy grunted, and ran at the train. His tail was swishing through the air. Reuel Gardener--or whatever Reuel was in this world--made a thick mewling sound and attempted to follow. Osmond reached out and hauled him back; his fingers, Jack saw, appeared to slide right into the monster-boy's slatlike, repulsive neck.
Then he raised the Uzi and fired an entire clip, point-blank, into Elroy's face. It tore the goat-thing's entire head off, and yet Elroy, headless, continued to climb for a moment, and one of his hands, the fingers melted together in two clumps to make a parody of a cloven hoof, pawed blindly for Jack's head before it tumbled backward.
Jack stared at it, stunned--he had dreamed that final night-marish confrontation at the Oatley Tap over and over again, trying to stumble away from the monster through what seemed to be a dark jungle filled with bedsprings and broken glass. Now here was that creature, and he had somehow killed it. It was hard to get his mind around the fact. It was as if he had killed childhood's bogeyman.
Richard was screaming--and his machine-gun roared, nearly deafening Jack.
"It's Reuel! Oh Jack oh my God oh Jason it's Reuel, it's Reuel--"
The Uzi in Richard's hands coughed out another short burst before falling silent, its clip spent. Reuel shook free of his father. He lurched and hopped toward the train, mewling. His upper lip curled back, revealing long teeth that looked false and flimsy, like the wax teeth children don at Halloween.
Richard's final burst took him in the chest and neck, punching holes in the brown kilt-cum-jumper he wore, ripping open flesh in long, ragged furrows. Sluggish rills of dark blood flowed from these wounds, but no more. Reuel might once have been human--Jack supposed it was just possible. If so, he was not human now; the bullets did not even slow him down. The thing which leaped clumsily over Elroy's body was a demon. It smelled like a wet toadstool.
Something was growing warm against Jack's leg. Just warm at first . . . then hot. What was it? Felt like he had a teakettle in his pocket. But he didn't have time to think. Things were unfolding in front of him. In Technicolor.
Richard dropped his Uzi and staggered back, clapping his hands to his face. His horrified eyes stared out at the Reuel-thing through the bars of his fingers.
"Don't let him get me, Jack! Don't let him get meeeee. . . ."
Reuel bubbled and mewled. His hands slapped against the side of the engine and the sound was like large fins slapping down on thick mud.
Jack saw there were indeed thick, yellowish webs between the fingers.
"Come back!" Osmond was yelling at his son, and the fear in his voice was unmistakable. "Come back, he's bad, he'll hurt you, all boys are bad, it's axiomatic, come back, come back!"
Reuel burbled and grunted enthusiastically. He pulled himself up and Richard screamed insanely, backing into the far corner of the cab.
"DON'T LET HIM GET MEEEEEEE--"
More Wolfs, more strange freaks charging around the corner. One of them, a creature with curly ram's horns jutting from the sides of its head and wearing only a pair of patched L'il Abner britches, fell down and was trampled by the others.
Heat against Jack's leg in a circle.
Reuel, now throwing one reedy leg over the side of the cab. It was slobbering, reaching for him, and the leg was writhing, it wasn't a leg at all, it was a tentacle. Jack raised the Uzi and fired.
Half of the Reuel-thing's face sheered away like pudding. A flood of worms began to fall out of what was left.
Reuel was still coming.
Reaching for him with those webbed fingers.
Richard's shrieks, Osmond's shrieks merging, melting together into one.
Heat like a branding iron against his leg and suddenly he knew what it was, even as Reuel's hands squashed down on his shoulders he knew--it was the coin Captain Farren had given him, the coin Anders had refused to take.
He drove his hand into his pocket. The coin was like a chunk of ore in his hand--he made a fist around it, and felt power ram through him in big volts. Reuel felt it, too. His triumphant slobberings and grunts became mewlings of fear. He tried to back away, his one remaining eye rolling wildly.
Jack brought the coin out. It glowed red-hot in his hand. He felt the heat clearly--but it was not burning him.
The profile of the Queen glowed like the sun.
"In her name, you filthy, aborted thing!" Jack shouted. "Get you off the skin of this world!" He opened his fist and slammed his hand into Reuel's forehead.
Reuel and his father shrieked in harmony--Osmond a tenor-verging-on-soprano, Reuel a buzzing, insectile bass. The coin slid into Reuel's forehead like the tip of a hot poker into a tub of butter. A vile dark fluid, the color of overbrewed tea, ran out of Reuel's head and over Jack's wrist. The fluid was hot. There were tiny worms in it. They twisted and writhed on Jack's skin. He felt them biting. Nevertheless, he pressed the first two fingers of his right hand harder, driving the coin farther into the monster's head.
"Get you off the skin of this world, vileness! In the name of the Queen and in the name of her son, get you off the skin of this world!"
It shrieked and wailed; Osmond shrieked and wailed with it. The reinforcements had stopped and were milling behind Osmond, their faces full of superstitious terror. To them Jack seemed to have grown; he seemed to be giving off a bright light.
Reuel jerked. Uttered one more bubbling screech. The black stuff running out of his head turned yellow. A final worm, long and thickly white, wriggled out of the hole the coin had made. It fell to the floor of the engine compartment. Jack stepped on it. It broke open under his heel and splattered. Reuel fell in a wet heap.
Now such a screaming wail of grief and fury arose in the dusty stockade yard that Jack thought his skull might actually split open with it. Richard had curled into a fetal ball with his arms wrapped around his head.
Osmond was wailing. He had dropped his whip and the machine-pistol.
"Oh, filthy!" he cried, shaking his fists at Jack. "Look what you've done! Oh, you filthy, bad boy! I hate you, hate you forever and beyond forever! Oh, filthy Pretender! I'll kill you! Morgan will kill you! Oh my darling only son! FILTHY! MORGAN WILL KILL YOU FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE! MORGAN--"
The others took up the cry in a whispering voice, reminding Jack of the boys in the Sunlight Home: can you gimme hallelujah. And then they fell silent, because there was the other sound.
Jack was tumbled back instantly to the pleasant afternoon he had spent with Wolf, the two of them sitting by the stream, watching the herd graze and drink as Wolf talked about his family. It had been pleasant enough . . . pleasant enough, that is, until Morgan came.
And now Morgan was coming again--not flipping over but bludgeoning his way through, raping his way in.
"Morgan! It's--"
"--Morgan, Lord--"
"Lord of Orris--"
"Morgan . . . Morgan . . . Morgan . . ."
The ripping sound grew louder and louder. The Wolfs were abasing themselves in the dust. Osmond danced a shuffling jig, his black boots trampling the steel-tipped rawhide thongs woven into his whip.
"Bad boy! Filthy boy! Now you'll pay! Morgan's coming! Morg
The air about twenty feet to Osmond's right began to blur and shimmer, like the air over a burning incinerator.
Jack looked around, saw Richard curled up in the litter of machine-guns and ammunition and grenades like a very small boy who has fallen asleep while playing war. Only Richard wasn't asleep, he knew, and this was no game, and if Richard saw his father stepping through a hole between the worlds, he feared, Richard would go insane.
Jack sprawled beside his friend and wrapped his arms tightly around him. That ripping-bedsheet sound grew louder, and suddenly he heard Morgan's voice bellow in terrible rage:
"What is the train doing here NOW, you fools?"
He heard Osmond wail, "The filthy Pretender has killed my son!"
"Here we go, Richie," Jack muttered, and tightened his grip around Richard's wasted upper body. "Time to jump ship."
He closed his eyes, concentrated . . . and there was that brief moment of spinning vertigo as the two of them flipped.
37
Richard Remembers
1
There was a sensation of rolling sideways and down, as if there were a short ramp between the two worlds. Dimly, fading, at last wavering into nothingness, Jack heard Osmond screaming, "Bad! All boys! Axiomatic! All boys! Filthy! Filthy!"
For a moment they were in thin air. Richard cried out. Then Jack thudded to the ground on one shoulder. Richard's head bounced against his chest. Jack did not open his eyes but only lay there on the ground hugging Richard, listening, smelling.
Silence. Not utter and complete, but large--its size counterpointed by two or three singing birds.
The smell was cool and salty. A good smell . . . but not as good as the world could smell in the Territories. Even here--wherever here was--Jack could smell a faint underodor, like the smell of old oil ground into the concrete floors of gas-station garage bays. It was the smell of too many people running too many motors, and it had polluted the entire atmosphere. His nose had been sensitized to it and he could smell it even here, in a place where he could hear no cars.