IT [en]

    'Gotta get out of here!' he screamed at Al Zitner. 'It's gonna backwater! Al! Its gonna backwater!'

    Al Zitner gave no sign that he had heard. His was the face of a sleepwalker, or perhaps of a man who has been deeply hypnotized. He stood in his soaked red-and-blue-checked sportcoat, in his open-collared Lacoste shirt with the little alligator on the left boob, in his blue socks with the crossed white golf-clubs knitted into their sides, in his brown L. L. Bean's boat shoes with the rubber soles. He was watching perhaps a million dollars of his own personal investments sinking into the street, three or four millions of his friends' investments - the guys he played poker with, the guys he golfed with, the guys he skied with at his time-sharing condo in Rangely. Suddenly his home town, Derry, Maine, for Christ's sake, looked bizarrely like that fucked-up city where the wogs pushed people around in those long skinny canoes. Water roiled and boiled between the buildings that were still standing. Canal Street ended in a jagged black diving board over the edge of a churning lake. It was really no wonder Zitner hadn't heard Harold. Others, however, had come to the same conclusion Gardener had come to - you couldn't drop that much shit into a raging body of water without causing a lot of trouble. Some dropped the sandbags they had been holding and took to their heels. Harold Gardener was one of these, and so he lived. Others were not so lucky and were still somewhere in the general area as the Canal, its throat now choked with tons of asphalt, concrete, brick, plaster, glass, and about four million dollars' worth of assorted merchandise, backsurged and poured over its concrete sleeve, carrying away men and sandbags impartially. Harold kept thinking it meant to have him; no matter how fast he ran the water kept gaming. He finally escaped by clawing his way up a steep embankment covered with shrubbery. He looked back once and saw a man he believed to be Roger Lernerd, the head loan officer at Harold's credit union, trying to start his car in the parking-lot of the Canal Mini-Mall. Even over the roar of the water and the bellowing wind, Harold could hear the K-car's little sewing-machine engine cranking and cranking and cranking as smooth black water ran rocker-panel high on both sides of it. Then, with a deep thundering cry, the Kenduskeag poured out of its banks and swept both the Canal Mini-Mall and Roger Lernerd's bright red K-car away. Harold began climbing again, grabbing onto branches, roots, anything that looked solid enough to take his weight. Higher ground, that was the ticket. As Andrew Keene might have said, Harold Gardener was really into the concept of higher ground that morning. Behind him he could hear downtown Derry continuing to collapse. The sound was like artillery fire.

 

 

4

Bill

 

'Beverly!' he shouted. His back and arms were one solid throbbing ache. Richie now seemed to weigh at least five hundred pounds. Put him down, then, his mind whispered. He's dead, you know damn well he is, so why don't you just put him down?

    But he wouldn't, couldn't, do that.

    'Beverly!' he shouted again. 'Ben! Anyone!'

    He thought: This is where It threw me - and Richie - except It threw us farther - so much farther. What was that like? I'm losing it, forgetting . . .

    'Bill?' It was Ben's voice, shaky and exhausted, somewhere fairly close. 'Where are you?'

    'Over here, man. I've got Richie. He got . . . he's hurt.'

    'Keep talking.' Ben was closer now. 'Keep talking, Bill.'

    'We killed It,' Bill said, walking toward where Ben's voice had come from. 'We killed the bitch. And if Richie's dead - '

    'Dead?' Ben called, alarmed. He was very close now . . . and then his hand groped out of the dark and pawed lightly at Bill's nose. 'What do you mean, dead?'

    'I . . . he . . . ' They were supporting Richie together now. 'I can't see him,' Bill said. 'That's the thing. I cuh-cuh-han't suh-suh-see him!'

    'Richie!' Ben shouted, and shook him. 'Richie, come on! Come on, goddammit!' Ben's voice was blurring now, becoming shaky. 'RICHIE WILL YOU WAKE THE FUCK UP?'

    And in the dark, Richie said in a sleepy, irritable, just-coming-out-of-it voice: 'All rye, Haystack. All rye. We doan need no stinkin batches . . . '

    'Richie!' Bill screamed. 'Richie, are you all right?'

    'Bitch threw me,' Richie muttered in that same tired, just-coming-out-of-sleep voice. 'I hit something hard. That's all . . . all I remember. Where's Bevvie?'

    'Back this way,' Ben said. Quickly, he told them about the eggs. 'I stamped over a hundred. I think I got all of them.'

    'I pray to God you did,' Richie said. He was starting to sound better. 'Put me down, Big Bill. I can walk . . . Is the water louder?'

    'Yes,' Bill said. The three of them were holding hands in the dark. 'How's your head?'

    'Hurts like hell. What happened after I got knocked out?'

    Bill told them as much as he could bring himself to tell.

    'And It's dead,' Richie marvelled. 'Are you sure, Bill?'

    'Yes,' Bill said. 'This time I'm really shuh-hure.'

    'Thank God,' Richie said. 'Hold onto me, Bill, I gotta barf.'

    Bill did, and when Richie was done they walked on. Every now and then his foot struck something brittle that rolled off into the darkness. Parts of the Spider's eggs that Ben had tromped to pieces, he supposed, and shivered. It was good to know they were going in the right direction, but he was still glad he couldn't see the remains.

    'Beverly!' Ben shouted. 'Beverly!'

    'Here - '

    Her cry was faint, almost lost in the steady rumble of the water. They moved forward in the dark, calling to her steadily, zeroing in.

    When they finally reached her, Bill asked if she had any matches left. She put half a pack in his hand. He lit one and saw their faces spring into ghostly being - Ben with his arm around Richie, who was standing slumped, blood running from his right temple, Beverly with Eddie's head in her lap. Then he turned the other way. Audra was lying crumpled on the flagstones, her legs asprawl, her head turned away. The webbing had mostly melted off her.

    The match burned his fingers and he let it drop. In the darkness he misjudged the distance, tripped over her, and nearly went sprawling.

    'Audra! Audra, can you h-h-hear m-me?'

    He got an arm under her back and sat her up. He slipped a hand under the sheaf of her hair and pressed his fingers against the side of her neck. Her pulse was there: a slow, steady beat.

    He lit another match, and as it flared he saw her pupils contract. But that was an involuntary function; the fix of her gaze did not change, even when he brought the match close enough to her face to redden her skin. She was alive, but unresponsive. Hell, it was worse than that and he knew it. She was catatonic.

    The second match burned his fingers. He shook it out.

    'Bill, I don't like the sound of that water,' Ben said. 'I think we ought to get out of here.'