Salem's Lot

22

The gun went flying.

The woman in the ragged yellow dressing gown did not scream but began to make a high whining noise in her throat, almost keening. She scrambled after it like a crab, and the man who was behind her, looking bewildered and frightened, also darted after it. When he saw that she would get to it first, he kicked it across the lobby rug.

‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘Hey, help!’

Ann Norton looked over her shoulder and hissed at him, her faced pulled into a cheated scrawl of hate, and then scrambled after the gun again. The orderly had come back, on the run. He looked at the scene with blank amazement for a moment, and then picked up the gun that lay almost at his feet.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. ‘This thing is load-’

She attacked him. Her hands, hooked into claws, pin-wheeled across his face, dragging red stripes across the surprised orderly’s forehead and right cheek. He held the gun up out of her reach. Still keening, she clawed for it.

The bewildered man came up from behind and grabbed her. He would say later that it was like grabbing a bag of snakes. The body beneath the dressing gown was hot and repulsive, every muscle twitching and writhing.

As she struggled to get free, the orderly popped her one flush on the jaw. Her eyes rolled up to the whites and she collapsed.

The orderly and the bewildered man looked at each other.

The nurse at the reception desk was screaming. Her hands were clapped to her mouth, giving the screams a unique foghorn effect.

‘What kind of a hospital do you people run here, anyhow?’ the bewildered man asked.

‘Christ if I know,’ the orderly said. ‘What the hell happened?’

‘I was just coming in to visit my sister. She had a baby. And this kid walks up to me and says a woman just went in with a gun. And-’

‘What kid?’

The bewildered man who had come to visit his sister looked around. The lobby was filling with people, but all of them were above drinking age.

‘I don’t see him now. But he was here. That gun loaded?’

‘It sure is,’ the orderly said.

‘What kind of a hospital do you people run here, anyhow?’ the bewildered man asked again.