Read Online Desperation by Stephen King - Free Book Online Page A

protective wall. That was good.
    Sure. Unless the desert rat this guy’s looking for is in back of us. Christ Almighty, why couldn’t we have gone to Atlantic City?
    â€œDad?” That was David, his intelligent but slightly peculiar son who had started going to church last fall, after the thing that had happened to his friend Brian. Not Sunday school, not Thursday Night Youth Group, just church. And Sunday afternoons at the parsonage, talking with his new friend, the Rev. Who, by the way, was going to die slowly if he had been sharing anything with David but his thoughts. According to David it was all talk, and after the thing with Brian, Ralph supposed the kid needed someone to talk to. He only wished David had felt able to bring his questions to his mother and father instead of to some holy joe outsider who was married but still might—
    â€œ Dad? Is it all right?”
    â€œYes. Fine.” He didn’t know if it was or not, didn’t really know what they were dealing with here, but that was what you said to your kids, wasn’t it? Yes, fine, all right. He thought that if he were on a plane with David and the engines quit, he’d put his arm around the boy and tell him everything was fine all the way down.
    He opened the door, and it banged against the inside of the cruiser door.
    â€œQuick, come on, let’s see some hustle,” the cop said, looking nervously around.
    Ralph went down the steps with Kirstie sitting in the crook of his left arm. As he stepped down, she dropped her doll.
    â€œMelissa!” she cried. “I dropped Melissa Sweetheart, get her, Daddy!”
    â€œNo, get in the car, get in the car!” the cop shouted. “I’ll get the doll!”
    Ralph slid in, putting his hand on the top of Kirstie’s head and helping her duck. David followed him, then Ellie. The back seat of the car was filled with papers, and the front seat had been warped into a bell-shape by the oversized cop’s weight. The moment Ellie pulled her right leg in, the cop slammed the door shut and went racing around the back of the cruiser.
    â€œ ’Lissa!” Kirstie cried in tones of real agony. “He forgot ’Lissa!”
    Ellie reached for the doorhandle, meaning to lean out and get Melissa Sweetheart—surely no psycho with a rifle could pick her off in the time it would take to grab up a little girl’s doll—then looked back at Ralph. “Where’re the handles?” she asked.
    The driver’s-side door of the cruiser opened, and the cop dropped into it like a bomb. The seat crunched back against Ralph’s knees and he winced, glad that Kirstie’s legs were hanging down between his. Not that Kirstie was still. She wriggled and twisted on his lap, hands held out to her mother.
    â€œMy doll, Mummy, my doll ! Melissa!”
    â€œOfficer—” Ellie began.
    â€œNo time,” the cop said. “Can’t. Tak! ” He U-turned across the road and headed east in a spew of dust. The rear end of the car fishtailed briefly. As it steadied again, it occurred to Ralph how fast this had happened—not ten minutes ago they’d been in their RV, headed down the road. He’d been about to ask David to play Twenty Questions, not because he really wanted to but because he had been bored.
    He sure wasn’t bored now.
    â€œMelissa Sweeeeeeetheart! ” Kirstie screamed, and then began to weep.
    â€œTake it easy, Pie,” David said. It was his pet name for his baby sister. Like so many other things about David, neither of his parents knew what it meant or where it had come from. Ellie thought it was short for sweetie-pie, but when she had asked him one night, David had just shrugged and grinned his appealing, slanted little grin. “Nah, she’s just a pie,” he had said. “Just a pie, that’s all.”
    â€œBut ’Lissa’s in the dirty old dirt, ” Kirstie said, looking at her