Firestarter.pdf

S t e p h e n

KING

FIRESTARTER

Warner Books

'It was a pleasure to burn.'

— Ray Bradbury, FAHRENHEIT 451

A Warner Book

First published in Great Britain in 1980

by Macdonald & Co

Published by Futura Publications in 1981

Reprinted 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984 (twice), 1985,

1986 (twice), 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991 (twice)

This edition published by Warner Books in 1992

Reprinted 1993 (twice), 1994, 1996, 1998 (twice), 2000 (twice)

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All characters in this publication are fictitious

and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any

form or by any means without the prior

written permission of the publisher, nor be

otherwise circulated in any form of binding or

cover other than that in which it is published and

without a similar condition including this

condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library.

ISBN 0 7515 0439 4

Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Warner Books

A Division of

Little, Brown and Company (UK)

Brettenham House

Lancaster Place

London WC2E 7EN

In memory of Shirley Jackson,

who never needed to raise her voice.

The Haunting of Hill House

The Lottery

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

The Sundial

New York/Albany

'Daddy, I'm tired,' the little girl in the red pants and the green blouse said fretfully. 'Can't

you stop?'

'Not yet, honey.'

He was a big, broad-shouldered man in a worn and scuffed corduroy jacket and plain

brown twill slacks. He and the little girl were holding hands and walking up Third

Avenue in New York City, walking fast, almost running. He looked back over his

shoulder and the green car was still there, crawling along slowly in the curbside lane.

'Please, Daddy. Please .'

He looked at her and saw how pale her face was. There were dark circles under her

eyes. He picked her up and sat her in the crook of his arm, but he didn't know how long

he could go on like that. He was tired, too, and Charlie was no lightweight anymore.

It was five-thirty in the afternoon and Third Avenue was clogged. They were crossing

streets in the upper Sixties now, and these cross streets were both darker and less

populated. . . . But that was what he was afraid of.

They bumped into a lady pushing a walker full of groceries. 'Look where you're goin,

whyn't ya?' she said, and was gone, swallowed in the hurrying crowds.

His arm was getting tired, and he switched Charlie to the other one. He snatched

another look behind, and the green car was still there, still pacing them, about half a

block behind. There were two men in the front seat and, he thought, a third in the back.

What do I do now ?

He didn't know the answer to that. He was tired and scared and it was hard to think.

They had caught him at a bad time, and the bastards probably knew it. What he wanted to

do was just sit down on the dirty curbing and cry out his frustration and fear. But that was

no answer. He was the grownup. He would have to think for both of them.

What do we do now ?

No money. That was maybe the biggest problem, after the fact of the men in green car.

You couldn't do anything with no money in New York. People with no money

disappeared in New York; they dropped into the sidewalks, never to be seen again.

He looked back over his shoulder, saw the green car was a little closer, and the sweat

began to run down his back and his arms a little faster. If they knew as much as he

suspected they did — if they knew how little of the push he actually had left — they

might try to take him right here and now. Never mind all the people, either. In New York,

if it's not happening to you, you develop this funny blindness. Have they been charting

me? Andy wondered desperately. If they have, they know, and it's all over but the

shouting. If they had, they knew the pattern. After Andy got some money, the strange

things stopped happening for a while. The things they were interested in.

Keep walking .

Sho, boss. Yassuh, boss. Where?

He had gone into the bank at noon because his radar had been alerted — that funny

hunch that they were getting close again. There was money in the bank, and he and

Charlie could run on it if they had to. And wasn't that funny? Andrew McGee no longer

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