Horrible writing from 'The Tommyknockers,' Part 2

This book needs to be over.  It is SO BAD.  There are less than a hundred pages left and I keep trying to sit down and finish it, but then it gets too bad.  I don't want to give away just how bad, but I will let these two examples speak for themselves:

One of life's great truths is this: when one is about to be struck by a speeding six-hundred-pound Coke machine, one need worry about nothing else.  There was a thudding, crunching sound.  The front of Leandro's skull shattered like a Ming vase hurled onto the floor.  A split second later his spine snapped.  For a moment the machine carried him along, plastered to it like a very large bug plastered to the windshield of a fast-moving car.  His splayed legs dragged on the road, the white line unreeling between them.  The heels of his loafers eroded to smoking rubber nodules.  One fell off.

 If your question is, 'Did a character just get attacked by a giant, moving Coke machine?', then the answer is, 'Yes, this novel is, in fact, that bad.'  Also, the similes.  The terrible, terrible similes.  They fall like a Ming vase hurled onto the floor.

One more, which comes from a scene where Bobbi is describing the nature of the aliens who are possessing the town:

We're builders, not understanders.

If you're curious, SK uses the not-a-word 'understanders' more than once.  I mean, I am all for blaming his addled state for this catastrophe, but I also have to ask, where were his editors?