The Regulators (richard bachman) Read online

  Peter Jackson, seated in the La-Z-Boy in front of the TV, didn’t reply. He was grinning broadly. Moving shadows played across his face, occasionally making the grin look like a silent scream, but it was a grin, all right.

  “He should have some, all right, Paw,” Tak said, now in the almost-adolescent voice of Johnny Crawford, who had played Lucas’s son. “They’re the good ones. Cool Ranch. Come on, Mr Jackson, over the teeth and over the gums, look out guts, “cause here they come.”

  The boy held chips out in one grimy hand and waved them up and down in front of Peter Jackson’s face. Peter took no notice. He stared at the TV, through the TV, with eyes that bulged out of his head like those of some exotic deep-dwelling fish that has undergone explosive decompression. And he grinned.

  “Don’t appear he’s hongry, Paw.”

  “I think he is, son. Hongry as hell. You’re hongry, ain’t you, Pete? Just need a little help, that’s all. So take the damn chips!”

  There was a kind of humming in the room. A line of static appeared briefly on the TV, where Rory Calhoun was now trying to kiss Karen Steele. She slapped his face and knocked off his hat. That wiped away his leering, teasing grin. Folks-even womenfolks-didn’t knock off Jeb Murdock’s hat with impunity.

  Peter slowly raised the chips. He bypassed his relentlessly grinning mouth and began poking them against his nose instead, crumbling them, catching some of the smaller pieces in his nostrils. His unnaturally bulging eyes never left the TV.

  “Little too high, Mr Jackson.” Now it was the earnest voice of Hoss Cartwright. Hoss had been one of Seth’s favorites before Tak came to stay inside him, and so now he was one of Tak’s favorites, too. They rolled that way, like a wheel. “Let’s try again, what do you say?”

  The hand went down slowly and jerkily, like a freight elevator. This time the chips went into Peter’s mouth, and he began to chew mechanically. Tak smiled at him with Seth’s mouth. It hoped-in its strange way it did have emotions, although none of them was precisely human-that Peter was enjoying the Doritos, because they were going to be his last meal. It had sucked a great deal of life-force out of Peter, first replenishing the gaudy amounts of energy it had expended this afternoon, then taking in more. Getting ready for the next step.

  Getting ready for the night.

  Peter chewed and chewed, Dorito fragments spilling out of his grin and tumbling down the front of his tee-shirt, the one with happy old Mr Smiley-Smile on the front. His eyeballs, bulging so far out of their sockets that they seemed to be lying on his cheeks, quivered with the motion of his jaw. The left one had split like a squeezed grape when Tak invaded his mind and stole most of it-the useful part-but he could still see a little out of the right one. Enough so he’d be able to do the next part mostly on his own. Once, that was, his motor was running again.

  “Peter? I say, Peter, can you hear me, old boy?” Tak now spoke in the clipped British tones of Andrew Case, Peter’s department head. Like all of Tak’s imitations, it was quite good. Not as good as its Western movie and TV show imitations (at which it had had much more practice), but still not bad.

  And the voice of authority did wonders, it had found, even for the terminally brain-damaged. A vague flicker of life came into Peter’s face. He turned and saw Andrew Case in a spiffy houndstooth jacket instead of Seth Garin in a pair of MotoKops Underoos decorated with reddish-orange blobs of Chef Boyardee sauce.

  “I’ll want you to go across the street now, old boy. Into the woods, eh? But you needn’t toddle all the way to grandmother’s house. Just to the path. Do you know the path in the woods?”

  Peter shook his head. His protruding eyeballs trembled above the stretched clown rictus of his lips.

  “No matter, you’ll find it. Hard to miss, old top. When you get to the fork, you can sit down with your… friend.”

  “My friend,” Peter said. Not quite a question.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Peter had never actually met the man he would be joining at the fork in the path and never actually would, not really, but there was no sense in telling Peter these things. He didn’t have mind enough left to understand them, for one thing. He was shortly going to be dead, for another. As dead as Herb Wyler. As dead as the man with the shopping-cart, the one Peter would shortly be meeting in the woods.

  “My friend,” Peter said a second time. A little surer now.

  “Yep.” The British department head was gone; Tak returned to John Payne doing his Gary Cooper thing. “Best be crawling, pard.”

  “Down the path to the fork.”

  “Reckon so.”

  Peter rose to his feet like an old clockwork toy with rust in its gears. His eyeballs jiggled in the silver dreamlight from the TV.

  “Best be crawling. And when I get to the fork, I can sit down with my friend.”

  “Yessir, that’s the deal.” Now it was the half-leering, half-laughing voice of Rory Calhoun. “He’s quite the boy, your friend. You could say he got this whole thing started. Lit the fuse, anyway. You git on, now, pard. Happy trails to you, until we meet again.”

  Peter walked through the arch, not glancing with his one dying eye at Audrey, who was slumped over sideways in one of the living-room chairs with her eyes half-open. She appeared to be in a daze or perhaps even a state of coma. She was breathing slowly and regularly. Her legs, long and pretty (the first things about her to attract Herb back in the days when she had still been Audrey Garin), were stretched out before her, and Peter almost stumbled over them in his sleepwalk to the front door. When he opened the door and the red light of the declining day fell on his grin, it looked more like a scream than ever.

  Halfway down the walk with that red light falling like strained blood through the rising pillar of smoke from the Hobart place, the Rory Calhoun voice filled his head, ripping at it like a razor blade: Close the door behind you, partner, was you born in a barn?

  Peter made a drunken about-face, came back and did as he was told. The door was smooth and intact, the only one on the block not riddled with bullet-holes. He did another about-face (almost falling off the stoop in the process) and then set sail through the red light toward his own house, where he would walk up the driveway, past the breezeway, and into the backyard. From there he would climb over the low wire fence and enter the greenbelt. Find the path. Find the fork. Find his friend. Sit down with his friend.

  He stepped over the sprawled body of his wife, then paused as a wild cry rose in the hot, smoky air: Wh-Wh-Whooo… As far gone as he was, that cry brought a scatter of gooseflesh to his arms. What was a coyote doing in Ohio? In a suburb of Colum-

  Best be crawling, pard. Git along, little dogie.

  Pain, even more excruciating than before. He moaned through the frozen curve of his grin. Fresh blood oozed from his ruptured eye and trickled down his cheek.

  He started forward again, and when the cry returned-this time joined by a second, a third, and finally a fourth-he didn’t react. He thought only of the path, the fork, the friend. Tak made one final check of the man’s mind (it did not take long, as there was not much mind left in Peter to check) and then withdrew.

  Now there was only it and the woman. It supposed it knew why it had let her live, like the bird that is reputed to live in the very jaws of the crocodile, the bird safe from the croc’s teeth because it cleans among them, but Tak would not save her much longer. In many ways the boy had been an inspired host-perhaps the only host in which it could have lived and grown so much-but there was this one ironic drawback: what Tak could conceive and desire, the boy’s body could not carry out. It could dress the woman and dye her hair, it could strip her naked, it could make her pinch her own nipples and do all sorts of other puerile things if it desired. It did not desire. What it desired was to couple with her, and that it could not do. Under certain circumstances it felt that it might have been able to manage some sort of joining in spite of its host’s immaturity… but Seth himself was still inside, and on the occasions it had really
tried, Seth had prevented it. Tak could have challenged the boy and almost certainly prevailed, but it was perhaps wiser not to do so. It had not emerged from its black place under the Nevada dust, after all the millennia of imprisonment, to have sex with a woman who was much younger than Tak itself and much older than its host body.

  And what had it come for?

  Well… to have fun. And…

  To watch television, a voice far back in its mind whispered. To watch television, to eat SpaghettiOs, and to make. To build.

  “You want to try me, Sheriff?” Rory Calhoun asked, and Tak’s eyes drifted back to the TV.

  Some of the others might be moving into the woods. It could have made sure of this one way or another if it had really desired, but it did not. Let them go into the woods if they wanted. They would not like what they found. And where could they go? Back, that was all. Back to the houses. In a very real sense, there was nowhere else. Meantime, it would save its energy.

  Just relax and watch the movie. Soon enough it would be time to bring on the night.

  Why don’t we just stand down, think things over?” John Payne asked, and Seth and Tak came together again, as the Westerns-this one in particular-had always brought them together. Tak bent forward, eyes never leaving the screen, and picked up a bowl filled with a congealed mixture of Franco-American spaghetti and hamburger. It began to eat, eyes glued to the TV screen, oblivious of the chunks of meat that tumbled down its naked chest from time to time, coming to rest in its lap. Soon the final shootout would begin yet again-KAPOW and KA-BAM all the way home-and Tak let itself float into the story and the silvery black-and-white images, drinking in the atmosphere of violence, as ripe and electric as an impending thunderstorm. As it watched, entranced, Seth Garin separated himself from Tak and moved away from it with the stealth of Jack creeping past the sleeping giant. He glanced at the TV and wasn’t surprised to find that, whatever Tak might believe, he no longer liked The Regulators very much. Then he turned away, found one of the secret passages he had made for himself during Tak’s reign, and disappeared quietly into it. Deeper into his own mind he went, the passage taking him ever downward. He walked at first, then began to jog. He didn’t understand much more of this world than he did the one outside, but now it was the only world he had.

  From The Regulators, screenplay by Craig Goodis and Quentin Woolrich

  EXT. MAIN STREET DAY

  SHERIFF STREETER watches DEPUTY LAINE yank CANDY to his feet. Behind them, in the adobe which houses Lushan’s Chinese Laundry, a number of Chinese workers watch from the doorway, where they are huddled.

  CANDY

  What’re you chinkies lookin” at?!

  They don’t recoil this time.

  CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN You! Clothes needee washee now, sure, sure!

  The other CHINESE laugh. Even STREETER smiles a little. CANDY looks dazed. Can’t believe STREETER has beaten him in a fair fight, can’t believe these “Chink-Chink-China Boys” are laughing at him, can’t believe any of this is happening.

  STREETER

  Best get on inside, boys.

  The LAUNDRYMEN go back inside, but look out the windows.

  STREETER (to LAINE) Make sure he gets his hat, Josh. Wouldn’t want him to have to go to jail without his hat.

  Grinning, LAINE picks up CANDY’s pinned-back Johnny Reb cavalry hat, which fell off CANDY’s head when STREETER knocked him over the hitching rail. Now, grinning more broadly than ever, DEPUTY LAINE slams it down on the defeated thug’s head. There is a puff of dust.

  LAINE Come on, Cap'n. I done saved you the nicest tent in the bivouac. Wait'11 you see it.

  SCENE CONTINUES

  He shoves the dazed and defeated CANDY toward the jail. SHERIFF STREETER is watching them go with a grin, and does not at first see the batwing doors of The Lady Day Saloon open as MAJOR MURDOCK pushes out on to the sidewalk. For once, MURDOCK’s trademark grin is gone.

  MURDOCK You think puttin” Candy in jail’s gonna solve your problems, Sheriff?

  STREETER turns toward him. MURDOCK pulls his mud-splattered cavalry duster back, freeing the butt of his army-issue Colt.

  STREETER (smiles) Could be I just arrested my first ghost. Where are the rest of your regulators hold up? Desatoya Canyon? Skate Rock? You ready to tell me yet?

  MURDOCK

  You’re crazy as a snakebit varmit!

  STREETER That so? Well, we’ll see. I’m guessing there won’t be any ghosts riding tonight without Captain Candell to hand out the sheets.

  Still smiling, STREETER turns toward the jail again.

  MURDOCK Suppose I told you the regulators were a lot closer than Desatoya Mountain or Skate Rock? Suppose I told you they were right outside of town, just waitin” for the first gunshot? How would you like that, you damn Yankee?

  STREETER

  I think I’d like it just fine.

  He looks up, raises his fingers to his mouth, and WHISTLES.

  SCENE CONTINUES

  EXT. MAIN STREET ROOFTOPS, STREET POV

  MEN start appearing from behind every sign, chimney, and false front. Formerly terrified TOWNSMEN, now looking grim and carrying rifles. They’re on the Chinese laundry, the Owl County Store, Worrell’s Mercantile, even Craven’s Undertaking Parlor. Among them we see PREACHER YEOMAN and LAWYER BRADLEY. YEOMAN, no longer concerned that the regulators are a supernatural visitation meant to punish the town for its sins, raises one hand to the SHERIFF in a salute.

  RESUME MAIN STREET, WITH STREETER AND MURDOCK

  STREETER returns YEOMAN’s salute with a flick of his hand, then turns back to MURDOCK, who looks furious and confused. A dangerous combination!

  STREETER Yep, bring “em on, if that’s your pleasure.

  MURDOCK’s face tightens. He drops his hand until it hovers just above the butt of his Colt. Neither of them sees LAURA push her way out of the saloon from behind MURDOCK. She’s wearing one of her spangly outfits and carrying her

  DERRINGER.

  MURDOCK

  You want to try me, Sheriff?

  STREETER Why don’t we just stand down? Think this thing over?

  But he knows it’s too late, he’s pushed MURDOCK too far. STREETER drops his own hand to just above the butt of his gun.

  MURDOCK

  Time for talking’s done, Sheriff.

  SCENE CONTINUES

  STREETER Well now, if that’s the way you want it.

  MURDOCK You could have stood aside and nobody would have got hurt.

  STREETER That’s not the way we do things around here. We-(sees LAURA)

  STREETER

  Laura, no!

  While he’s distracted, MURDOCK GOES FOR HIS GUN. LAURA darts between the two men, pointing the DERRINGER at MURDOCK. She pulls the trigger, but there’s only a CLICK. MISFIRE! A split second later, MURDOCK fires his cavalry Colt, and the bullet meant for STREETER hits LAURA instead. She CRUMPLES.

  EXT. ROOFTOPS

  The TOWNSMEN raise their guns to fire.

  RESUME MAIN STREET IN FRONT OF THE SALOON

  MURDOCK sees what’s about to happen and dives back through the batwings and into the relative safety of The Lady Day. STREETER chases him with a couple of shots, then runs to LAURA and kneels beside her.

  RESUME ROOFTOPS

  FLIP MORAN, the hostler, lets go with a round. A couple of others follow suit, but only a couple, luckily.

  RESUME MAIN STREET IN FRONT OF THE SALOON

  A BULLET WHINES off one of the batwing doors, knocking a splinter out.

  STREETER

  Don’t shoot, he’s gone!

  RESUME ROOFTOPS SCENE CONTINUES

  The men lower their guns. FLIP MORAN looks confused and ashamed of himself.

  EXT. STREETER AND LAURA, CLOSE

  The SHERIFF’s hard shell is temporarily gone-smashed. He looks down at the DYING DANCEHALL GIRL and realizes he loves her!

  STREETER

  Laura!

  LAURA (coughing) Gun misfired… you always said… nev
er trust a… a hideout gun…

  She breaks down coughing. STREETER Don’t talk. I’ll send Joe Prudum for the doc-LAURA (coughing) Too… too late. Just hold me! STREETER does. She looks up at him CURIOUSLY. LAURA Why, Sheriff!… are you crying? EXT. REAR OF THE LADY DAY MURDOCK comes bursting out. SERGEANT MATHIS is still there, holding the horses.

  SARGE

  What happened? I heard shootin'!

  MURDOCK (swings up on his horse) Never mind. It’s time to get the boys.

  SARGE

  You mean-?!

  Suddenly MURDOCK’s insanity breaks free. His eyes BLAZE. SCENE CONTINUES His lips pull back in a snarl that looks almost like a GRIN. It is the grin of a cornered ANIMAL! MURDOCK We’re gonna wipe this town off the map!

  They wheel their horses away to join the rest of the regulators.

  Chapter Nine

  1

  There was no need for Steve and Collie to hop the fence at the far end of Doc’s yard; there was a gate, although they had to tear out a fair amount of well-entrenched ivy befor e they could use it. They exchanged words only twice before reaching the path. The first time it was Steve who spoke. He looked around at the trees-scrubby, weedy-looking things, for the most part, now mysterious with the rustle of rainwater dripping off the leaves-and then asked: “Are these poplars?”

  Collie, who had been working his way around a particularly vicious clump of thornbushes, looked back at him. “Say what?”