The Regulators by Stephen King Page B

tightening his back and buttocks against a potentially lethal hit even while his mind was informing him that one, at least, was thunder. The next one wasn’t. It was another whiplash KA-POW , and he felt something slap a groove in the air past his right ear.
    First time shot at, he thought. Nine years as a cop before they stuck it to me and broke it off—four beat, four plainclothes, one IA—and never shot at until now.
    Another report. One of Billingsley’s living-room windows blew in, billowing the white curtains like ghost-arms. Guns going off behind him like artillery now, just bam-bam-bam-bam, and he felt another hot load go hustling by, this one to the left of his hand, and a black hole appeared in the siding below the broken window. To Collie the hole looked like a big startled eye. The next one hummed by his hip. He couldn’t believe he wasn’t dead, just couldn’t believe it. He could smell burning cedar shingles and had time to think about October afternoons spent in the backyard with his dad, burning leaves in smouldery aromatic piles.
    He had been running for hours, he felt like a goddam ceramic duck in a goddam shooting gallery, and he hadn’t even reached Peter Jackson yet, what the fuck was going on here?
    It’s been five seconds since the shooting started, the colder side of his mind informed him. Maybe only three.
    The hippie guy was still yanking Peter’s wrist, and now the girl, Cynthia, muckled on above the hippie guy’s grip. But Peter was actively resisting them, Collie saw. Peter wanted to stay with his wife, who had chosen a divinely bad time to arrive back home.
    Still picking up speed (and he could boogie pretty good when he really wanted to), Collie bent and hooked a hand under the kneeling man’s left armpit on the way by. Just call me the mail train, he thought. Peter thrashed backward, trying to stop the three of themfrom pulling him from his wife. Collie’s hand began to slip. Oh fuck, he thought. Fuck us all. Sideways.
    There was another shriek from behind him, at the Carvers’. In the corner of his eye he saw the pink van, now past them and speeding up, accelerating down the hill toward Hyacinth Street.
    â€œMary!” Peter screamed. “She’s hurt!”
    â€œI got her, Pete, don’t worry, I got her!” Old Doc screamed cheerfully, and although he had no one—was, in fact, running past Mary’s sprawled body without so much as a glance down at it—Peter nodded, looking relieved. It was the tone, Collie thought. That crazily cheerful tone of voice.
    The hippie guy was actually helping now instead of just trying to. He had Peter by the belt, for one thing, and that was working better. “Help out, fella,” the hippie guy told Peter. “Just a little.”
    Peter ignored him. He stared at Collie with huge, glazed eyes. “He’s getting her, right? Old Doc. He’s helping her.”
    â€œThat’s right!” Collie shouted. He tried for Doc’s tone of good cheer—a kind of sprinting bedside manner—and heard only terror. The pink van was gone but the black one was still there, rolling slowly, almost stopped. There were figures—too bright, almost fluorescent—in the turret. “Billingsley—”
    Marielle Soderson bashed past him on the left, almost knocking Collie flat in her sprint toward Old Doc’s front door. Gary blew by on the right, hitting the store-girl with his shoulder and knocking her to one knee. She cried out in pain, mouth pulling down in a bow-shapeas something—probably her ankle—twisted. Gary did not so much as spare her a glance; his eyes were on the prize. The girl was up again in a flash. The pain-grimace was still on her face but she was holding gamely to Peter’s arm, still trying to help out. Collie was gaining an appreciation for her, schizo tu-tone hair or not.
    Onward sprinted the Sodersons. It had taken them a