Desperation   ::   Кинг Стивен

Awing battered down on Johnny’s head. It was like the buzzard in the parking lot all over again. Back to the future, he thought, let go of the talon in favor of the wing, and yanked.

The bird came toward him, squalling its ugly, ear-splitting cry, and Ralph came with it, pulled by the talon still buried in his cheek, temple, and orbit of his left eye. Johnny thought Ralph was either unconscious or already dead. He hoped he was already dead.

David crawled out from under, face dazed, his shirt soaked with his father’s blood. In a moment he would seize the flashlight and plunge deeper into the mine, if they weren’t quick.

“Steve!” Johnny shouted, reaching blindly over his head and encircling the eagle’s back.

It plunged and twisted in his hold like the spine of a bucking bronco. “Steve, finish it!

Finish it!”

Steve drove the stock of the rifle into the bird’s gullet, tilting its shadowy head toward the ceiling. At that moment Mary darted forward. She seized the eagle’s neck and wrung it with bitter efficiency. There was a muffled crack, and suddenly the talon buried in Ralph’s face relaxed. David’s father fell to the floor of the mine, his forehead striking a ribcage and powdering it to dust.

David turned, saw his father lying motionless and face-down. His eyes cleared. He even nodded, as if to say Pretty much what I expected, then bent to pick up the flashlight. It was only when Johnny grabbed him around the waist that his calm broke and he began to struggle.

“Let go!” he screamed. “it’s my job! MiNE!”

“No, David,” Johnny said, holding on for dear life. “It’s not.” He tightened his grip across David’s chest with his left hand, wincing as the boy’s heels printed fresh pain on his shins, and let his right hand slide down to the boy’s hip. From there it moved with a good pickpocket’s unob-trusive speed. Johnny took from David what he had been instructed to take… and left something, too.

“He can’t take them all and then not let me finish! He can’t do that! He can’t!”

Johnny winced as one of David’s feet connected with his left kneecap. “Steve!”

Steve was staring with horrified fascination at the eagle, which was still twitching and slowly fanning one wing. Its talons were red.

“Steve, goddammit!”

He looked up, as if startled out of a dream. Cynthia was kneeling beside Ralph, feeling for a pulse and crying loudly.

“Steve, come here!” Johnny shouted. “Help me!”

Steve came over and grabbed David, who began to struggle even harder.