Mike knew that Henry was gaining and the others were close on his heels. He tried to push himself faster. He was badly scared now, keeping panic at bay only by a grim effort of will. He had turned his ankle more seriously crossing the tracks than he had thought at first, and now he was limp-skipping along. The crackle and crash of Henry's go-for-broke progress behind him called up unpleasant images of being chased by a killer dog or a rogue bear.

The path opened out just ahead, and Mike more fell than ran into the gravel-pit. He rolled to the bottom, got to his feet, and was halfway across before he realized that there were kids there, six of them. They were spread out in a straight line and there was a funny look on their faces. It wasn't until later, when he'd had a chance to sort out his thoughts, that he realized what was so odd about that look: it was as if they had been expecting him.

"Help," Mike managed as he limped toward them. He spoke instinctively to the tall boy with the red hair. "Kids... big kids-"

That was when Henry burst into the gravel-pit. He saw the six of them and came to a skidding halt. For a moment his face was marked with uncertainty and he looked back over his shoulder. He saw his troops, and when Henry looked back at the Losers (Mike was now standing beside and slightly behind Bill Denbrough, panting rapidly), he was grinning.

"I know you, kid," he said, speaking to Bill. He glanced at Richie. "I know you, too. Where's your glasses, four-eyes?" And before Richie could reply, Henry saw Ben. "Well, son of a bitch! The Jew and the fatboy are here too! That your girlfriend, fatboy?"

Ben jumped a little, as if goosed.

Just then Peter Gordon pulled up beside Henry. Victor arrived and stood on Henry's other side; Belch and Moose Sadler arrived last. They flanked Peter and Victor, and now the two opposing groups stood facing each other in neat, almost formal lines.

Panting heavily as he spoke and still sounding more than a little like a human bull, Henry said, "I got bones to pick with a lot of you, but I can let that go for today. I want that nigger. So you little shits buzz off."

"Right!" Belch said smartly.

"He killed my dog!" Mike cried out, his voice shrill and breaking. "He said so!"

"You come on over here right now," Henry said, "and maybe I won't kill you."

Mike trembled but did not move.

Speaking softly and clearly, Bill said: "The B-Barrens are ours. You k-k-kids get out of h-here."

Henry's eyes widened. It was as if he'd been slapped unexpectedly.

"Who's gonna make me?" he asked. "You, horsefoot?"

"Uh-Uh-Us," Bill said. "We're through t-t-taking your shit, B-B-Bowers. Get ow-ow-out."

"You stuttering freak," Henry said. He lowered his head and charged.

Bill had a handful of rocks; all of them had a handful except Mike and Beverly, who was only holding one. Bill began to throw at Henry, not hurrying his throws, but chucking hard and with fair accuracy. The first rock missed; the second struck Henry on the shoulder. If the third had missed, Henry might have closed with Bill and wrestled him to the ground, but it didn't miss; it struck Henry's lowered head.

Henry cried out in surprised pain, looked up... and was hit four more times: a little billet-doux from Richie Tozier on the chest, one from Eddie that ricocheted off his shoulder-blade, one from Stan Uris that struck his shin, and Beverly's one rock, which hit him in the belly.

He looked at them unbelievingly, and suddenly the air was full of whizzing missiles. Henry fell back, that same bewildered, pained expression on his face. "Come on, you guys!" he shouted. "Help me!"

"Ch-ch-charge them," Bill said in a low voice, and not waiting to see if they would or not, he ran forward.

They came with him, firing rocks not only at Henry now but at all the others. The big boys were grubbing on the ground for ammunition of their own, but before they could gather much, they had been peppered. Peter Gordon screamed as a rock thrown by Ben glanced off his cheekbone and drew blood. He backed up a few steps, paused, threw a hesitant rock or two back... and then fled. He had had enough; things were not done this way on West Broadway.

Henry grabbed up a handful of rocks in a savage sweeping gesture. Most of them, fortunately for the Losers, were pebbles. He threw one of the larger ones at Beverly and it cut her arm. She cried out.

Bellowing, Ben ran for Henry Bowers, who looked around in time to see him coming but not in time to sidestep. Henry was off-balance; Ben was one hundred and fifty trying for one-sixty; the result was no contest. Henry did not go sprawling but flying. He landed on his back and skidded. Ben ran toward him again and was only vaguely aware of a warm, blooming pain in his ear as Belch Huggins nailed him with a rock roughly the size of a golf ball.

Henry was getting groggily to his knees as Ben reached him and kicked him hard, his sneakered foot connecting solidly with Henry's left hip. Henry rolled over heavily on his back. His eyes blazed up at Ben.

"You ain't supposed to throw rocks at girls!" Ben shouted. He could not remember ever in his life feeling so outraged. "You aint-"

Then he saw a flame in Henry's hand as Henry popped the wooden match alight. He touched it to the thick fuse of the M-80, which he then threw at Ben's face. Acting with no thought at all, Ben struck the ashcan with the palm of his hand, swinging at it as one would swing a racket at a badminton birdie. The M-80 went back down. Henry saw it coming. His eyes widened and then he rolled away, screaming. The ashcan exploded a split-second later, blackening the back of Henry's shirt and tearing some of it away.

A moment later Ben was hit by Moose Sadler and driven to his knees. His teeth clicked together over his tongue, drawing blood. He blinked around, dazed. Moose was coming toward him, but before he could reach the place where Ben was kneeling, Bill came up behind him and began pelting the big kid with rocks. Moose wheeled around, bellowing.

"You hit me from behind, yellowbelly!" Moose screamed. "You fuckin dirtyfighter!"

He gathered himself to charge, but Richie joined Bill and also began to fire rocks at Moose. Richie was unimpressed with Moose's rhetoric on the subject of what might or might not constitute yellowbelly behavior; he had seen the five of them chasing one scared kid, and he didn't think that exactly put them up there with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. One of Richie's missiles split the skin above Moose's left eyebrow. Moose howled.

Eddie and Stan Uris moved up to join Bill and Richie. Beverly moved in with them, her arm bleeding but her eyes wildly alight. Rocks flew. Belch Huggins screamed as one of them clipped his crazy bone. He began to dance lumbersomely, rubbing his elbow. Henry got to his feet, the back of his shirt hanging in rags, the skin beneath almost miraculously unmarked. Before he could turn around, Ben Hanscom bounced a rock off the back of his head and drove him to his knees again.

It was Victor Criss who did the most damage to the Losers that day, partly because he was a pretty fair fastball pitcher, but mostly-paradoxically-because he was the least emotionally involved. More and more he didn't want to be here. People could get seriously hurt in rockfights; a kid could get his skull split, a mouthful of broken teeth, could even lose an eye. But since he was in it, he was in it. He intended to dish out some trouble.

That coolness had allowed him to take an extra thirty seconds and pick up a handful of good-sized rocks. He threw one at Eddie as the Losers re-formed their rough skirmish line, and it struck Eddie on the chin. He fell down, crying, the blood already starting to flow. Ben turned toward him but Eddie was already getting up again, the blood gruesomely bright against his pallid skin, his eyes slitted.

Victor threw at Richie and the rock thudded off Richie's chest. Richie threw

back but Vie ducked it easily and threw one sidearm at Bill Denbrough. Bill

snapped his head back, but not quite quickly enough; the rock cut his cheek

wide open.

Bill turned toward Victor. Their eyes locked, and Victor saw something in the stuttering kid's gaze that scared the hell out of him. Absurdly, the words I take it back! trembled behind his lips... except that was nothing you said to a little kid. Not if you didn't want your buddies to start ranking you to the dogs and back.

Bill started to walk toward Victor now, and Victor began to walk toward Bill. At the same moment, as if by some telepathic signal, they began to throw rocks at each other, still closing the distance. The righting flagged around them as the others turned to watch; even Henry turned his head.

Victor ducked and bobbed, but Bill made no such effort. Victor's rocks slammed him in the chest, the shoulder, the stomach. One clipped by his ear. Apparently unshaken by any of this, Bill threw one rock after another, pegging them with murderous force. The third one struck Victor's knee with a brittle chipping sound and Victor uttered a stifled groan. He was out of ammunition. Bill had one rock left. It was smooth and white, shot with quartz, roughly the size and shape of a duck's egg. To Victor Criss it looked very hard. Bill was less than five feet away from him.

"Y-Y-You g-get ow-out of h-h-here now," he said, "or I'm g-going to spuh-puh-lit your h-head o-o-open. I m-mean ih-ih-it."

Looking into his eyes, Victor saw that he really did. Without another word, he turned and headed back the way Peter Gordon had gone.

Belch and Moose Sadler were looking around uncertainly. Blood trickled from the corner of the Sadler boy's mouth, and blood from a scalp-wound was sheeting down the side of Belch's face.

Henry's mouth worked but no sound came out. Bill turned toward Henry. "G-G-Get out," he said.

"What if I won't?" Henry was trying to sound tough, but Bill could now see a different thing in Henry's eyes. He was scared, and he would go. It should have made Bill feel good-triumphant, even-but he only felt tired.

"I-If you w-won't," Bill said, "w-w-we're g-going to muh-move i-in on y-you. I think the s-s-six of u-us can p-put you in the huh-huh-hospital."

"Seven," Mike Hanlon said, and joined them. He had a softball-sized rock in each hand. "Just try me, Bowers. I'd love to."

"You fucking NIGGER!" Henry's voice broke and wavered on the edge of tears. That voice took the last of the fight out of Belch and Moose; they backed away, their remaining rocks dropping from relaxing hands. Belch looked around as if wondering exactly where he might be.

"Get out of our place," Beverly said.

"Shut up, you cunt," Henry said. "You-" Four rocks flew at once, hitting Henry in four different places He screamed and scrambled backward over the weed-raddled ground, the tatters of his shirt flapping around him. He looked from the grim, old-young faces of the little kids to the frantic ones of Belch and Moose. There was no help there; no help at all. Moose turned away, embarrassed.

Henry got to his feet, sobbing and snuffling through his broken nose. "I'll kill you all," he said, and suddenly ran for the path. A moment later he was gone.

"G-G-Go on," Bill said, speaking to Belch. "Get ow-out. And d-don't c-c-come down h-here anymore. The B-B-Barrens are ow-ow-ours.

"You're gonna wish you didn't cross Henry, kid," Belch said. "Come on, Moose."

They started away, heads down, not looking back.

The seven of them stood in a loose semicircle, all of them bleeding somewhere. The apocalyptic rockfight had lasted less than four minutes, but Bill felt as if he had fought his way through all of World War II, both theaters, without so much as a single time-out.

The silence was broken by Eddie Kaspbrak's whooping, whining struggle for air. Ben went toward him, felt the three Twinkies and four Ding-Dongs he had eaten on his way down to the Barrens begin to struggle and churn in his stomach, and ran past Eddie and into the bushes, where he was sick as privately and quietly as he could be.

It was Richie and Bev who went to Eddie. Beverly put an arm around the thin boy's waist while Richie dug his aspirator out of his pocket. "Bite on this, Eddie," he said, and Eddie took a hitching, gasping breath as Richie pulled the trigger.

"Thanks," Eddie managed at last.

Ben came back out of the bushes, blushing, wiping a hand over his mouth. Beverly went over to him and took both of his hands in hers.

"Thanks for sticking up for me," she said.

Ben nodded, looking at his dirty sneakers. "Any time, keed," he said.

One by one they turned to look at Mike, Mike with his dark skin. They looked at him carefully, cautiously, thoughtfully. Mike had felt such curiosity before-there had not been a time in his life when he had not felt it-and he looked back candidly enough.

Bill looked from Mike to Richie. Richie met his eyes. And Bill seemed almost to hear the click-some final part fitting neatly into a machine of unknown intent. He felt ice-chips scatter up his back. We're all together now, he thought, and the idea was so strong, so right, that for a moment he thought he might have spoken it aloud. But of course there was no need to speak it aloud; he could see it in Richie's eyes, in Ben's, in Eddie's, in Beverly's, in Stan's.

We're all together now, he thought again. Oh God help us. Now it really starts. Please God, help us.

"What's your name, kid?" Beverly asked.

"Mike Hanlon."

"You want to shoot off some firecrackers?" Stan asked, and Mike's grin was answer enough.

Chapter 14 THE ALBUM

1

As it turns out, Bill isn't the only one; they all bring booze.

Bill has bourbon, Beverly has vodka and a carton of orange juice, Richie a sixpack, Ben Hanscom a bottle of Wild Turkey. Mike has a sixpack in the little refrigerator in the staff lounge.

Eddie Kaspbrak comes in last, holding a small brown bag.

"What you got there, Eddie?" Richie asks. "Za-Rex or Kool-Aid?"

Smiling nervously, Eddie removes first a bottle of gin and then a bottle of prune juice.

In the thunderstruck silence which follows, Richie says quietly: "somebody call for the men in the white coats. Eddie Kaspbrak's finally gone over the top."

"Gin-and-prune juice happens to be very healthy," Eddie replies defensively... and then they're all laughing wildly, the sound of their mirth echoing and re-echoing in the silent library, rolling up and down the glassed-in hall between the adult library and the Children's Library.

"You go head-on," Ben says, wiping his streaming eyes. "You go head-on, Eddie. I bet it really moves the mail, too."

Smiling, Eddie fills a paper cup three-quarters full of prune juice and then soberly adds two capfuls of gin.

"Oh Eddie, I do love you," Beverly says, and Eddie looks up, startled but smiling. She gazes up and down the table. "I love all of you."