Stephen King – The Dark Tower

This creature’s name seemed to be Jey, or possibly Gee. That was seven, all armed with

what looked like automatic pistols in docker’s clutches. Scowther’s swung carelessly out

from beneath his white coat each time he bent down. Susannah had already marked that

one as hers.

There were also three pallid, watchful humanoid things standing beyond Mia. These,

buried in dark blue auras, were vampires, Susannah was quite sure. Probably of the sort

Callahan had called Type Threes. (The Pere had once referred to them as pilot sharks.) That

made ten. Two of the vampires carried bahs, the third some sort of electrical sword now

turned down to no more than a guttering core of light. If she managed to get Scowther’s

gun (whenyou get it, sweetie, she amended—she’d readThe Power of Positive Thinking

and still believed every word the Rev. Peale had written), she would turn it on the man with

the electric sword first. God might know how much damage such a weapon could inflict,

but Susannah Dean didn’t want to find out.

Also present was a nurse with the head of a great brown rat. The pulsing red eye in the

center of her forehead made Susannah believe that most of the other lowfolken were

wearing humanizing masks, probably so they wouldn’t scare the game while out and about

on the sidewalks of New York. They might not all look like rats underneath, but she was

pretty sure that none of them looked like Robert Goulet. The rathead nurse was the only

one present who wore no weapon that Susannah could see.

Eleven in all. Eleven in this vast and mostly deserted infirmary that wasn’t, she felt quite

sure, under the borough of Manhattan. And if she was going to settle their hash, it would

have to be while they were occupied with Mia’s baby—her preciouschap .

“It’s coming, doctor!” the nurse cried in nervous ecstasy.

It was. Susannah’s counting stopped as the worst pain yet rolled over her. Over both of them. Burying them. They screamed in tandem. Scowther was commanding Mia topush,

topush NOW!

Susannah closed her eyes and also bore down, for it was her baby, too…or had been. As

she felt the pain flow out of her like water whirlpooling its way down a dark drain, she

experienced the deepest sorrow she had ever known. For it was Mia the baby was flowing

into; the last few lines of the living message Susannah’s body had somehow been made to

transmit. It was ending. Whatever happened next, this part was ending, and Susannah Dean

let out a cry of mingled relief and regret; a cry that was itself like a song.

And then, before the horror began—something so terrible she would remember each detail

as if in the glare of a brilliant light until the day of her entry into the clearing—she felt a small hot hand grip her wrist. Susannah turned her head, rolling the unpleasant weight of

the helmet with it. She could hear herself gasping. Her eyes met Mia’s. Mia opened her lips

and spoke a single word. Susannah couldn’t hear it over Scowther’s roaring (he was

bending now, peering between Mia’s legs and holding the forceps up and against his brow).

Yet shedid hear it, and understood that Mia was trying to fulfill her promise.

I’d free you, if chance allows,her kidnapper had said, and the word Susannah now heard in

her mind and saw on the laboring woman’s lips waschassit .

Susannah, do you hear me?

I hear you very well,Susannah said.

And you understand our compact?

Aye. I’ll help you get away from these with your chap, if I can. And…

Kill us if you can’t!the voice finished fiercely. It had never been so loud. That was partly

the work of the connecting cable, Susannah felt sure.Say it, Susannah, daughter of Dan!

I’ll kill you both if you—

She stopped there. Mia seemed satisfied, however, and that was well, because Susannah

couldn’t have gone on if both their lives had depended on it. Her eye had happened on the

ceiling of this enormous room, over the aisles of beds halfway down. And there she saw

Eddie and Roland. They were hazy, floating in and out of the ceiling, looking down at her

like phantom fish.

Another pain, but this one not as severe. She could feel her thighs hardening, pushing, but

that seemed far away. Not important. What mattered was whether or not she was really

seeing what she thought she was seeing. Could it be that her over-stressed mind, wishing

for rescue, had created this hallucination to comfort her?

She could almost believe it.Would have, very likely, had they not both been naked, and surrounded by an odd collection of floating junk: a matchbook, a peanut, ashes, a penny.

And a floormat, by God! A car floormat with FORD printed on it.

“Doctor, I can see the hea—”

A breathless squawk as Dr. Scowther, no gentleman he, elbowed Nurse Ratty

unceremoniously aside and bent even closer to the juncture of Mia’s thighs. As if he meant

to pull her chap out with his teeth, perhaps. The hawk-thing, Jey or Gee, was speaking to

the one called Haber in an excited, buzzing dialect.

They’re really there,Susannah thought.The floormat proves it . She wasn’t surehow the

floormat proved it, only that it did. And she mouthed the word Mia had given her:chassit .

It was a password. It would open at least one door and perhaps many. To wonder if Mia had

told the truth never even crossed Susannah’s mind. They were tied together, not just by the

cable and the helmets, but by the more primitive (and far more powerful) act of childbirth.

No, Mia hadn’t lied.

“Push, you gods-damned lazy bitch!” Scowther almost howled, and Roland and Eddie

suddenly disappeared through the ceiling for good, as if blown away by the force of the

man’s breath. For all Susannah knew, they had been.

She turned on her side, feeling her hair stuck to her head in clumps, aware that her body

was pouring out sweat in what could have been gallons. She pulled herself a little closer to

Mia; a little closer to Scowther; a little closer to the crosshatched butt of Scowther’s

dangling automatic.

“Be still, sissa, hear me I beg,” said one of the low men, and touched Susannah’s arm. The

hand was cold and flabby, covered with fat rings. The caress made her skin crawl. “This

will be over in a minute and then all the worlds change. When this one joins the Breakers in

Thunderclap—”

“Shut up, Straw!” Haber snapped, and pushed Susannah’s would-be comforter backward.

Then he turned eagerly to the delivery again.

Mia arched her back, groaning. The rathead nurse put her hands on Mia’s hips and pushed

them gently back down to the bed. “Nawthee, nawthee, push ’ith thy belly.”

“Eat shit, you bitch!” Mia screamed, and while Susannah felt a faint tug of her pain, that

was all. The connection between them was fading.

Summoning her own concentration, Susannah cried into the well of her own mind.Hey!

Hey Positronics lady! You still there?

“The link…is down,” said the pleasant female voice. As before, it spoke in the middle of

Susannah’s head, but unlike before, it seemed dim, no more dangerous than a voice on the

radio that comes from far away due to some atmospheric flaw. “Repeat: the link…is down.

We hope you’ll remember North Central Positronics for all your mental enhancement

needs. And Sombra Corporation! A leader in mind-to-mind communication since the ten

thousands!”

There was a tooth-rattlingBEE-EEEEP far down in Susannah’s mind, and then the link

was gone. It wasn’t just the absence of the horridly pleasant female voice; it waseverything .

She felt as if she’d been let out of some painful body-compressing trap.

Mia screamed again, and Susannah let out a cry of her own. Part of this was not wanting

Sayre and his mates to know the link between her and Mia had been broken; part was

genuine sorrow. She had lost a woman who had become, in a way, her true sister.

Susannah! Suze, are you there?

She started up on her elbows at this new voice, for a moment almost forgetting the woman

beside her. That had been—

Jake? Is it you, honey? It is, isn’t it? Can you hear me?

YES!he cried.Finally! God,who’ve you been talking to? Keep yelling so I can home in on

y —

The voice broke off, but not before she heard a ghostly rattle of distant gunfire. Jake

shooting at someone? She thought not. She thought someone was shooting athim .

Two

“Now!” Scowther shouted. “Now,Mia! Push! For your life! Give it all you have!PUSH! ”

Susannah tried to roll closer to the other woman—Oh, I’m concerned and wanting comfort,

see how concerned I am, concern and wanting comfort is all it is—but the one called Straw

pulled her back. The segmented steel cable swung and stretched out between them. “Keep