Bobby snapped a shot and missed. The Garand went off with a giant thunderclap and jagged glass sprayed Bobby Terry's face. He screamed, sure he was dead. Then he saw that the left half of the windshield was gone and understood that he was still in the running.
The Judge was ponderously correcting his aim, swiveling the Garand perhaps two degrees on his knee. Bobby Terry, his nerves entirely shot now, fired three times in rapid succession. The first bullet spanged a hole through the side of the Scout's cab. The second struck the Judge above the right eye. A .45 is a large gun, and at close range it does large, unpleasant things. This bullet took off most of the top of the Judge's skull and hurled it back into the Scout. His head tilted back radically, and Bobby Terry's third bullet struck the Judge a quarter of an inch below his lower lip, exploding his teeth into his mouth, where he aspirated them with his final breath. His chin and jawbone disintegrated. His finger squeezed the Garand's trigger in a dying convulsion, but the bullet went wild into the white, rainy sky.
Silence descended.
Rain drummed on the roofs of the Scout and the Willys. On the slickers of the two dead men. It was the only sound until the crow took off from the telephone wire with a raucous caw. That startled Bobby Terry out of his daze. He got slowly down from the passenger seat, still clutching the smoking .45.
"I did it," he said confidentially to the rain. "Killed his ass. You better believe it. Shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. Fuckin-A right. Ole Bobby Terry just killed him as dead as you'd want."
But with dawning horror, he realized that it wasn't the Judge's ass he'd killed after all.
The Judge had died leaning back into the Scout. Now Bobby Terry grabbed the lapels of his slicker and yanked him forward; staring at what remained of the Judge's features. There was really nothing left but his nose. To tell the truth, that wasn't in such hot shape, either.
It could have been anyone.
And in a dream of terror, Bobby Terry again heard Flagg saying: I want to send him back undamaged.
Holy God, this could be anyone. It was as if he had set out to deliberately do just the opposite of what the Walkin Dude had ordered. Two direct hits in the face. Even the teeth were gone.
Rain, drumming, drumming.
It was over here. That was all. He didn't dare go east, and he didn't dare stay in the West. He would either wind up riding a telephone pole bareback or... or something worse.
Were there worse things?
With that grinning freak in charge, Bobby Terry had no doubt there were. So what was the answer?
Running his hands through his hair, still looking down at the ruined face of the Judge, he tried to think.
South. That was the answer. South. No border guards anymore. South of Mexico, and if that wasn't far enough, get on down to Guatemala, Panama, maybe f**king Brazil. Opt out of the whole mess. No more East, no more West, just Bobby Terry, safe and as far away from the Walkin Dude as his old boogie shoes could carry h -
A new sound in the rainy afternoon.
Bobby Terry's head jerked up.
The rain, yes, making its steel drum sound on the cabs of the two vehicles, and the grumbling of two idling motors, and -
A strange clocking sound, like rundown bootheels hammering swiftly along the secondary road macadam.
"No," Bobby Terry whispered.
He began to turn around.
The clocking sound was speeding up. A fast walk, a trot, a jog, run, sprint, and Bobby Terry got all the way around, too late, he was coming, Flagg was coming like some terrible horror monster out of the scariest picture ever made. The dark man's cheeks were flushed with jolly color, his eyes were twinkling with happy good fellowship, and a great hungry voracious grin stretched his lips over huge tombstone teeth, shark teeth, and his hands were held out in front of him, and there were shiny black crowfeathers fluttering from his hair.
No, Bobby Terry tried to say, but nothing came out.
"HEY, BOBBY TERRY, YOU SCROOOOWED IT UP! " the dark man bellowed, and fell upon the hapless Bobby Terry.
There were worse things than crucifixion.
There were teeth.
BOOK III THE STAND Chapter 62
Dayna Jurgens lay naked in the huge double bed, listening to the steady hiss of water coming from the shower, and looked up at her reflection in the big circular ceiling mirror, which was the exact shape and size of the bed it reflected. She thought that the female body always looks its best when it is flat on its back, stretched out, the tummy pulled flat, the br**sts naturally upright without the vertical drag of gravity to pull them down. It was nine-thirty in the morning, September 8. The Judge had been dead about eighteen hours, Bobby Terry considerably less - unfortunately for him.
The shower ran on and on.
There's a man with a cleanliness compulsion, she thought. I wonder what happened to him that makes him want to shower for half an hour at a stretch?