It

  At the same time the statue of Paul Bunyan in front of the City Center exploded. It was as if that long-ago art teacher's threat to blow it up had finally proved to be dead serious after all. The bearded grinning head rose straight up in the air. One leg kicked forward, the other back, as if Paul had attempted some sort of a split so enthusiastic it had resulted in dismemberment. The statue's midsection blew out in a cloud of shrapnel and the head of the plastic axe rose into the rainy sky, disappeared, and then came down again, twirling end over end. It sheared through the roof of the Kissing Bridge, and then its floor.

  And then, at 10:02 A.M., downtown Derry simply collapsed.

  Most of the water from the ruptured Standpipe had crossed Kansas Street and ended up in the Barrens, but tons of it rushed down into the business district by way of Up-Mile Hill. Perhaps that was the straw that broke the camel's back ... or perhaps, as Harold Gardener told his wife, there really was an earthquake. Cracks raced across the surface of Main Street. They were narrow at first... and then they began to gape like hungry mouths and the sound of the Canal floated up, not muffled now but frighteningly loud. Everything began to shake. The neon sign proclaiming OUTLET MOCCASINS in front of Shorty Squires's souvenir shop hit the street and shorted out in three feet of water. A moment or two later, Shorty's building, which stood next to Mr. Paperback, began to descend. Buddy Angstrom was the first to see this phenomenon. He elbowed Alfred Zitner, who looked, gaped, and then elbowed Harold Gardener. Within a space of seconds the sandbagging operation stopped. The men lining both sides of the Canal only stood and stared toward downtown in the pouring rain, their faces stamped with identical expressions of horrified wonder. Squires's Souvenirs and Sundries appeared to have been built on some huge elevator which was now on the way down. It sank into the apparently solid concrete with ponderous stately dignity. When it came to a stop, you could have dropped to your hands and knees on the flooded sidewalk and entered through one of the third-floor windows. Water sprayed up all around the building, and a moment later Shorty himself appeared on the roof, waving his arms madly for rescue. Then he was obliterated as the office-building next door, the one which housed Mr. Paperback at ground level, also sank into the ground. Unfortunately, this one did not go straight down as Shorty's building had done; the Mr. Paperback building developed a marked lean (for a moment, in fact, it bore a strong resemblance to that fucked-up tower in Pisa, the one on the macaroni boxes). As it tilted, bricks began to shower from its top and sides. Shorty was struck by several. Harold Gardener saw him reel backward, hands to his head... and then the top three floors of the Mr. Paperback building slid off as neatly as pancakes from the top of a stack. Shorty disappeared. Someone on the sandbag line screamed, and then everything was lost in the grinding roar of destruction. Men were knocked off their feet or sent wobbling and staggering back from the Canal. Harold Gardener saw the buildings which faced each other across Main Street lean forward, like ladies kibbitzing over a card-game, their heads almost touching. The street itself was sinking, cracking, breaking up. Water splashed and sprayed. And then, one after another, buildings on both sides of the street simply swayed past their centers of gravity and crashed into the street--the Northeast Bank, The Shoeboat, Alvey's Smokes 'n Jokes, Bailley's Lunch, Bandler's Record and Music Barn. Except that by then there was really no street for them to crash into. The street had fallen into the Canal, stretching like taffy at first and then breaking up into bobbing chunks of asphalt. Harold saw the traffic-island at the three-street intersection suddenly drop out of sight, and as water geysered up, he suddenly understood what was going to happen.

  "Gotta get out of here!" he screamed at Al Zitner. "It's gonna backwater! Al! It's 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 gaining. 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 Bewie?"

  "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."

  "How will we do it without Eddie?" Richie murmured.

  "We can do it," Bev said. "Bill, Ben's right. We have to get out."

  "I'm taking her."

  "Of course. But we ought to go now."

  "Which way?"

  "You'll know," Beverly said softly. "You killed It. You'll know, Bill."

  He picked Audra up as he had picked Richie up and went back to the others. The feel of her in his arms was disquieting, creepy; she was like a breathing waxwork.

  "Which way, Bill?" Ben asked.

  "I d-d-don't--"

  (you'll know, you killed It and you'll know)

  "Well, c-come on," Bill said. "Let's see if we can't find out. Beverly, gruh-gruh-hab these." He handed her the matches.

  "What about Eddie?" she asked. "We have to take him out."

  "How c-can w-we?" Bill asked. "It's... B-Beverly, the pluh-hace is f-falling apart."

  "We gotta get him out of here, man," Richie said. "Come on, Ben."

  Between them they managed to hoist up Eddie's body. Beverly lit them back to the fairytale door. Bill took Audra through it, holding her up from the floor as best he could. Richie and Ben carried Eddie through.

  "Put him down," Beverly said. "He can stay here."

  "It's too dark," Richie sobbed. "You know... it's too dark. Eds ... he ..."

  "No, it's okay," Ben said. "Maybe this is where he's supposed to be. I think maybe it is."

  They put him down, and Richie kissed Eddie's cheek. Then he looked blindly up at Ben. "You sure?"

  "Yeah. Come on, Richie."

  Richie got up and turned toward the door. "Fuck you, Bitch!" he cried suddenly, and kicked the door shut with his foot. It made a solid chukking sound as it closed and latched.

  "Why'd you do that?" Beverly asked.

  "I don't know," Richie said, but he knew well enough. He looked back over his shoulder just as the match Beverly was holding went out.

  "Bill--the mark on the door?"

  "What about it?" Bill panted.

  Richie said: "It's gone."

  5

  Derryl10:30 A.M.

  The glass corridor connecting the adult library to the Children's Library suddenly exploded in a single brilliant flare of light. Glass flew out in an umbrella shape, whickering through the straining, whipping trees which dotted the library grounds. Someone could have been severely hurt or even killed by such a deadly fusillade, but there was no one there, either inside or out. The library had not been opened that day at all. The tunnel which had so fascinated Ben Hanscom as a boy would never be replaced; there had been so much costly destruction in Derry that it seemed simpler to leave the two libraries as separate unconnected buildings. In time, no one on the Derry City Council could even remember what that glass umbilicus had been for. Perhaps only Ben himself could really have told them how it was to stand outside in the still cold of a January night, your nose running, the tips of your fingers numb inside your mittens, watching the people pass back and forth inside, walking through winter with their coats off and surrounded by light. He could have told them... but maybe it wasn't the sort of thing you could have gotten up and testified about at a City Council meeting--how you stood out in the cold dark and learned to love the light. All of that's as may be; the facts were just these: the glass corridor blew up for no apparent reason, no one was hurt (which was a blessing, since the final toll taken by that morning's storm--in human terms, at least--was sixty-seven killed and better than three hundred and twenty injured), and it was never rebuilt. After May 31st of 1985, if you wanted to get from the Children's Library to the adult library, you had to walk outside to do it. And if it was cold, or raining, or snowing, you had to put on your coat.

  6

  Out/10:54A.M., May 31st, 1985

  "Wait," Bill gasped. "Give me a chance... rest."

  "Let me help you with her," Richie said again. They had left Eddie back in the Spider's lair, and that was something none of them wanted to talk about. But Eddie was dead and Audra was still alive--at least, technically.

  "I'll do it," Bill said between choked gasps for air.

  "Bullshit. You'll give yourself a fucking heart attack. Let me help you, Big Bill."

  "How's your h-h-head?"

  "Hurts," Richie said. "Don't change the subject."

  Reluctantly, Bill let Richie take her. It could have been worse; Audra was a tall girl whose normal weight was one hundred and forty pounds. But the part she'd been scheduled to play in Attic Room was that of a young woman being held hostage by a borderline psychotic who fancied himself a political terrorist. Because Freddie Firestone had wanted to shoot all of the attic sequences first, Audra had gone on a strict poultry-cottage-cheese-tuna-fish diet and lost twenty pounds. Still, after stumble-staggering along with her in the dark for a quarter of a mile (or a half, or three-quarters of a mile, or who knew), that one hundred and twenty felt more like two hundred.

  "Th-Thanks, m-m-man," he said.

  "Don't mention it. Your turn next, Haystack."

  "Beep-beep, Richie," Ben said, and Bill grinned in spite of himself. It was a tired grin, and it didn't last long, but a little was better than none.

  "Which way, Bill?" Beverly asked. "That water sounds louder than ever. I don't really fancy drowning down here."

  "Straight ahead, then left," Bill said. "Maybe we better try to go a little faster."

  They went on for half an hour, Bill calling the lefts and rights. The sound of the water continued to swell until it seemed to surround them, a scary Dolby stereo effect in the dark. Bill felt his way around a corner, one hand trailing over damp brick, and suddenly water was running over his shoes.
The current was shallow and fast.

  "Give me Audra," he said to Ben, who was panting loudly. "Upstream now." Ben passed her carefully back to Bill, who managed to sling her over his shoulder in a fire-man's carry. If she'd only protest... move... do something. "How's matches, Bev?"

  "Not many. Half a dozen, maybe. Bill ... do you know where you're going?"

  "I think I d-d-do," he said. "Come on."

  They followed him around the corner. The water foamed about Bill's ankles, then it was up to his shins, and then it was thigh-deep. The thunder of the water had deepened to a steady bass roar. The tunnel they were in was shaking steadily. For awhile Bill thought the current was going to become too strong to walk against, but then they passed a feeder-pipe that was pouring a huge jet of water into their tunnet--he marvelled at the white-water force of it--and the current slacked off somewhat, although the water continued to deepen.It--

  I saw the water coming out of that feeder-pipe! Saw it!

  "H-H-Hey!" he shouted. "Can y-y-you guys see a-anything?"

  "It's been getting lighter for the last fifteen minutes or so!" Beverly shouted back. "Where are we, Bill? Do you know?"

  I thought I did, Bill almost said. "No! Come on!"

  He had believed they must be approaching the concrete-channelled section of the Kenduskeag that was called the Canal ... the part that went under downtown and came out in Bassey Park. But there was light down here, light, and surely there could be no light in the Canal under the city. But it brightened steadily just the same.

  Bill was beginning to have serious problems with Audra. It wasn't the current--that had slackened--it was the depth. Pretty soon I'll be floating her, he thought. He could see Ben on his left and Beverly on his right; by turning his head slightly, he could see Richie behind Ben. The footing was getting decidedly odd. The bottom of the tunnel was now heaped and mounded with detritus--bricks, it felt like. And up ahead, something was sticking out of the water like the prow of a ship that is in the process of sinking.