'You f**king queers.'
He grabbed the dazed Wolf by the front of his checked shirt and pulled him out. Wolf's pants caught on the steel hood over the toilet-paper dispenser and pulled the whole works off the wall. It went flying. The toilet-paper roll broke free and went unspooling across the floor. Warwick sent Wolf crashing into the sinks, which were just the right height to catch him in the privates. Wolf fell to the floor, holding himself.
Warwick turned to Jack, and Sonny Singer appeared at the stall door. He reached in and grabbed Jack by the front of his shirt.
'All right, you fag - ' Sonny began, and that was as far as he got. Ever since he and Wolf had been dragooned into this place, Sonny Singer had been in Jack's face. Sonny Singer with his sly dark face that wanted to look just like Sunlight Gardener's face (and as soon as it could). Sonny Singer who had coined the charming endearment snotface. Sonny Singer whose idea it had undoubtedly been to piss in their beds.
Jack pistoned his right fist out, not swinging wildly in the Heck Bast style but driving strong and smooth from the elbow. His fist connected with Sonny's nose. There was an audible crunch. Jack felt a moment of satisfaction so perfect it was sublime.
'There,' Jack cried. He pulled his foot out of the john. A great grin suffused his face, and he shot a thought at Wolf just as hard as he could:
We ain't doing that bad, Wolf - you broke one bastard's hand, and I broke one bastard's nose.
Sonny stumbled backward, screaming, blood spouting through his fingers.
Jack came out of the stall, his fists held up in front of him in a pretty fair imitation of John L. Sullivan. 'I told you to watch out for me, Sonny. Now I'm gonna teach you to say hallelujah.'
'Heck!' Sonny screamed. 'Andy! Casey! Somebody!'
'Sonny, you sound scared,' Jack said. 'I don't know why - '
And then something - something that felt like a full hod of bricks - fell on the back of his neck, driving him forward into one of the mirrors over the sinks. If it had been glass, it would have broken and cut Jack badly. But all the mirrors here were polished steel. There were to be no suicides in the Sunlight Home.
Jack was able to get one arm up and cushion the blow a little, but he still felt woozy as he turned around and saw Heck Bast grinning at him. Heck Bast had hit him with the cast on his right hand.
As he looked at Heck, an enormous, sickening realization suddenly dawned on Jack. It was you!
'That hurt like hell,' Heck said, holding his plastered right hand in his left, 'but it was worth it, snotface.' He started forward.
It was you! It was you standing over Ferd in that other world, whipping him to death. It was you, you were the gargoyle, it was your Twinner!
A rage so hot it was like shame swept through Jack. As Heck came in range, Jack leaned back against the sink, grasped its edge tightly in both hands, and shot both of his feet out. They caught Heck Bast squarely in the chest and sent him reeling back into the open stall. The shoe that had come back to Indiana planted in a toilet-bowl left a clear wet print on Heck's white turtleneck sweater. Heck sat down in the toilet with a splash, looking stunned. His cast clunked on porcelain.
Others were bursting in now. Wolf was trying to get up. His hair hung in his face. Sonny was advancing on him, one hand still clapped over his squirting nose, obviously meaning to kick Wolf back down.
'Yeah, you go ahead and touch him, Sonny,' Jack said softly, and Sonny cringed away.
Jack caught one of Wolf's arms and helped him up. He saw as if in a dream that Wolf had come back hairier than ever. It's putting him under too much stress, all of this. It's bringing on his Change and Christ this is never going to end, never . . . never
He and Wolf backed away from the others - Warwick, Casey, Pedersen, Peabody, Singer - and toward the rear of the bathroom. Heck was coming out of the stall Jack had kicked him into, and Jack saw something else. They had flipped from the fourth stall down the line. Heck Bast was coming out of the fifth. They had moved just far enough in that other world to come back into a different stall.
'They was buggering each other in there!' Sonny cried, his words muffled and nasal. 'The retard and the pretty boy! Warwick and me caught em with their dicks out!'
Jack's bu**ocks touched cold tile. Nowhere else to run. He let go of Wolf, who slumped, dazed and pitiful, and put up his fists.
'Come on,' he said. 'Who's first?'
'You gonna take us all on?' Pedersen asked.
'If I have to, I will,' Jack said. 'What are you going to do, put me in traction for Jesus? Come on!'