Had all of that really been only five and a half hours ago?īut maybe there was a tickle left. They had all disappeared into thin air, and that was when he knew they really meant to bring the hammer down this time. And wasn’t that funny? Andrew McGee no longer had an account at the Chemical Allied Bank of New York, not personal checking, not business checking, not savings. There was money in the bank, and he and Charlie could run on it if they had to. He had gone into the bank at noon because his radar had been alerted-that funny hunch that they were getting close again. After Andy got some money, the strange things stopped happening for a while. If they have, they know, and it’s all over but the shouting. Have they been charting me? Andy wondered desperately. In New York, if it’s not happening to you, you develop this funny blindness. 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.

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. People with no money disappeared in New York they dropped into the sidewalks, never to be seen again. You couldn’t do anything with no money in New York. That was maybe the biggest problem, after the fact of the men in the green car. What he wanted to do was just sit down on the dirty curbing and cry out his frustration and fear. They had caught him at a bad time, and the bastards probably knew it. He was tired and scared and it was hard to think. There were two men in the front seat and, he thought, a third in the back.

He snatched another look behind, and the green car was still there, still pacing them, about half a block behind. His arm was getting tired, and he switched Charlie to the other one. “Look where you’re goin, whyn’t ya?” she said, and was gone, swallowed in the hurrying crowds. They bumped into a lady pushing a walker full of groceries. They were crossing streets in the upper Sixties now, and these cross streets were both darker and less populated. It was five-thirty in the afternoon and Third Avenue was clogged. He was tired, too, and Charlie was no lightweight anymore. 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 looked at her and saw how pale her face was. He looked back over his shoulder and the green car was still there, crawling along slowly in the curbside lane. He and the little girl were holding hands and walking up Third Avenue in New York City, walking fast, almost running. He was a big, broad-shouldered man in a worn and scuffed corduroy jacket and plain brown twill slacks. “Daddy, I’m tired,” the little girl in the red pants and the green blouse said fretfully.

Firestarter by Stephen King