'This is for my dog, you bastard!' Mike cried, unaware that he had begun to cry. He threw one of the chunks of coal overhand. It flew in a hard direct line. It struck Henry's forehead with a loud bonk! and then rebounded into the air. Henry stumbled to his knees. His hands went to his head. Blood seeped through his fingers at once, like a magician's surprise.
The others skidded to a stop, their faces stamped with identical expressions of disbelief. Henry uttered a high scream of pain and got to his feet again, still holding his head. Mike threw another chunk of coal. Henry ducked. He began to walk toward Mike, and when Mike threw a third chunk of coal, Henry removed one hand from his gashed forehead and batted the chunk of coal almost casually aside. He was grinning.
'Oh, you're gonna get such a surprise,' he said. 'Such a - OH MY GAWD!' Henry tried to say more, but only inarticulate gargling noises emerged from his mouth.
Mike had pegged another chunk of coal and this one had struck Henry square in the throat. Henry buckled to his knees again. Peter Gordon gaped. Moose Sadler's brow was furrowed, as if he were trying to figure out a difficult math problem.
'What are you guys waiting for?' Henry managed. Blood seeped between his fingers. His voice sounded rusty and foreign. 'Get him! Get the little cocksucker!'
Mike didn't wait to see if they would obey or not. He dropped his shirt and leaped at the fence. He began to pull himself up toward the top and then he felt rough hands grab his foot. He looked down and saw Henry Bowers's contorted face, smeared by blood and coal. Mike yanked his foot up. His sneaker came off in Henry's hand. He pistoned his bare foot down into Henry's face and heard something crunch. Henry screamed again and staggered backward, now holding his spouting nose.
Another hand - Belch Huggins's - snagged briefly in the cuff of Mike's leans, but he was able to pull free. He threw one leg over the top of the fence, and then something struck him with blinding force on the side of his face. Warmth trickled down his cheek. Something else struck his hip, his forearm, his upper thigh. They were throwing his own ammunition at him.
He hung briefly by his hands and then dropped, rolling over twice. The scrubby ground sloped downward here, and perhaps that saved Mike Hanlon's eyesight or even his life; Henry had approached the fence again and now looped one of his four M-80s over the top of the fence. It went off with a terrific CRRRACK! that echoed and blew a wide bare patch in the grass.
Mike, his ears ringing, went head-over-heels and staggered to his feet. He was now in high grass, on the edge of the Barrens. He wiped a hand down his right cheek and it came away bloody. The blood did not particularly worry him; he had not expected to come out of this unscathed.
Henry tossed a cherry-bomb, but Mike saw this one coming and moved away easily.
'Let's get him!' Henry roared, and began to climb the fence.
'Jeez, Henry, I don't know - ' This had gone too far for Peter Gordon, who had never encountered a situation that had turned so suddenly savage. Things were not supposed to get bloody - at least not for your team - when the odds were comfortably slugged in your favor.
'You better know,' Henry said, looking back at Peter from halfway up the fence. He hung there like a bloated poisonous spider in human shape. His baleful eyes stared at Peter; blood rimmed them on either side. Mike's downward kick had broken his nose, although Henry would not be aware of the fact for some time yet. 'You better know, or I'll come after you, you fucking jerk.'
The others began to climb the fence, Peter and Victor with some reluctance, Belch and Moose as vacantly eager as before.
Mike waited to see no more. He turned and ran into the scrub. Henry bellowed after him: 'I'll find you, nigger! I'll find you!'
8
The Losers had reached the far side of the gravel-pit, which was little more than a huge weedy pockmark in the earth now, three years after the last load of gravel had been taken out of it. They were all gathered around Stan, looking appreciatively at his package of Black Cats, when the first explosion came. Eddie jumped - he was still goofed up over the piranha fish he thought he had seen (he wasn't sure what real piranha fish looked like, but he was pretty sure they didn't look like oversized goldfish with teeth).
'Merrow down easy, Eddie-san,' Richie said, doing his Chinese Coolie Voice. 'Iss just other kids shooting off fireclackers.'
'That s-s-sucks the r-r-root, Rih-Rih-Richie,' Bill remarked. The others laughed.
'I keep trying, Big Bill,' Richie said. 'I feel like, if I get good enough, someday I'll earn your love.' He made dainty kissing gestures at the air. Bill shot him the finger. Ben and Eddie stood side by side, grinning.
'Oh I'm so young and you're so old,' Stan Uris piped up suddenly, doing an eerily accurate Paul Anka imitation, 'this my darling I've been told - '
'He can sayng!' Richie screeched in his Pickaninny Voice. 'Lawks-a-mussy, thisyere boy can sayng!' And then, in the MovieTone Announcer's Voice: 'Want you to sign right here, boy, on this dotted line.' Richie slung an arm around Stan's shoulders and favored him with a gigantic gleaming smile. 'We're going to grow your hair out, boy. Going to give you a git-tar. Going to - '
Bill popped Richie twice on the arm, quickly and lightly. They were all excited at the prospect of shooting off firecrackers.
'Open them up, Stan,' Beverly said. 'I've got some matches.'
They gathered around again as Stan carefully opened the package of firecrackers. There were exotic Chinese letters on the black label and a sober caution in English that got Richie giggling again. 'Do not hold in hand after fuse is lit,' this warning read.
'Good thing they told me,' Richie said. 'I always used to hold them after I lit them. I thought that's how you got rid of your frockin hangnails.'
Working slowly, almost reverently, Stan removed the red cellophane and laid the block of cardboard tubes, blue and red and green, on the palm of his hand. Their fuses had been braided together in a Chinese pigtail.
'I'll unwind the - ' Stan began, and then there was a much louder explosion. The echo rolled slowly across the Barrens. A cloud of gulls rose from the eastern side of the dump, squalling and crying. They all jumped this time. Stan dropped the firecrackers and had to pick them up.
Was that dynamite?' Beverly asked nervously. She was looking at Bill, whose head was up, his eyes wide. She thought he had never looked so handsome - but there was something too alert, too strung-up, in the attitude of his head. He was like a deer scenting fire in the air.
'That was an M-80, I think,' Ben said quietly. 'Last Fourth of July I was in the park and there were these high-school kids that had a couple. They put one of them in a steel trash-can. It made a noise like that.'
'Did it blow a hole in the can, Haystack?' Richie asked.
'No, but it bulged out the side. Looked like there was some little guy inside who just stroked it one. They ran away.'
The big one was closer,' Eddie said. He also glanced at Bill.
'Do you guys want to shoot these off or not?' Stan asked. He had unbraided about a dozen of the firecrackers and had put the rest neatly back in the waxed paper for later.
'Sure,' Richie said.
'P-P-Put them a-a-away.'
They looked at Bill questioningly, a little scared - it was his abrupt tone more than what he had said.
'P-P-Puh-hut them a-a-a-away,' Bill repeated, his face contorting with the effort he was making to get the words out. Spit flew from his lips. 'S-S-Suh-homething's g-g-gonna h-h-happen.'
Eddie licked his lips, Richie shoved his glasses up the sweaty slope of his nose with his thumb, and Ben moved closer to Beverly without even thinking about it.