Stephen King – The Dark Tower

Susannah. She wrapped it around the bottom of the bone and held it out as far as she

possibly could while still keeping her balance. Roland wasn’t able to run—she would have

surely tumbled out of the harness had he tried doing that—but he maintained a good fast

walking pace, pausing every now and then to pick up a likely-looking arm- or legbone. Oy

soon got the idea and began bringing them to the gunslinger in his mouth. The thing

continued to follow them. Every now and then Susannah caught a glimpse of its

slick-gleaming skin, and even when it drew back beyond the chancy light of her current

torch they would hear those liquid stomping sounds, like a giant in mud-filled boots. She

began to think it was the sound of the thing’s tail. This filled her with a horror that was

unreasoning and private and almost powerful enough to undo her mind.

That it should have a tail!her mind nearly raved.A tail that sounds like it’s filled with water or jelly or half-coagulated blood! Christ! My God! My Christ!

It wasn’t just light keeping it from attacking them, she reckoned, but fear of fire. The thing must have hung back while they were in the part of the passage where the glow-globes still

worked, thinking (if itcould think) that it would wait and take them once they were in the

dark. She had an idea that if it had known they had access to fire, it might simply have

closed some or all of its many eyes and pounced on them where a few of the globes were

out and the light was dimmer. Now it was at least temporarily out of luck, because the

bones made surprisingly good torches (the idea that they were being helped by the

recovering Beam in this regard did not cross her mind). The only question was whether or

not the Sterno would hold out. She was able to conserve now because the bones burned on

their own once they were going—except for a couple of damp ones that she had to cast

aside after lighting her next torches from their guttering tips—but youdid have to get them

going, and she was already deep into the third and last can. She bitterly regretted the one

she’d tossed away when the thing had been closing in on them, but didn’t know what else

she could have done. She also wished Roland would go faster, although she guessed he

now couldn’t have maintained much speed even if she’d been faced around the right way

and holding onto him. Maybe a short burst, but surely no more. She could feel his muscles

trembling under his shirt. He was close to blown out.

Five minutes later, while getting a handful of canned heat to slather on a bony bulb of knee atop a shinbone, her fingers touched the bottom of the Sterno can. From the darkness

behind them came another of those watery stomping sounds. The tail of their friend, her

mind insisted. It was keeping pace. Waiting for them to run out of fuel and for the world to

go dark again. Then it would pounce.

Then it would eat.

Fourteen

They were going to need a fallback position. She became sure of that almost as soon as the

tips of her fingers touched the bottom of the can. Ten minutes and three torches later,

Susannah prepared to tell the gunslinger to stop when—and if—they came to another

especially large ossuary. They could make a bonfire of rags and bones, and once it was

going hot and bright, they’d simply run like hell. When—and if—they heard the thing on

their side of the fire-barrier again, Roland could lighten his load and speed his heels by

leaving her behind. She saw this idea not as self-sacrificing but merely logical—there was

no reason for the monstrous centipede to get both of them if they could avoid it. And she

had no plans to let it take her, as far as that went. Certainly not alive. She had his gun, and she’d use it. Five shots for Sai Centipede; if it kept coming after that, the sixth for herself.

Before she could say any of these things, however, Roland got in three words that stopped

all of hers. “Light,” he panted. “Up ahead.”

She craned around and at first saw nothing, probably because of the torch she’d been

holding out. Then she did: a faint white glow.

“More of those globes?” she asked. “A stretch of them that are still working?”

“Maybe. I don’t think so.”

Five minutes later she realized she could see the floor and walls in the light of her latest

torch. The floor was covered with a fine scrim of dust and pebbles such as could only have

been blown in from outside. Susannah threw her arms up over her head, one hand holding a

blazing bone wrapped in a shirt, and gave a scream of triumph. The thing behind her

answered with a roar of fury and frustration that did her heart good even as it pebbled her

skin with goosebumps.

“Goodbye, honey!” she screamed. “Goodbye, you eye-covered muthafuck!”

It roared again and thrust itself forward. For one moment she saw it plain: a huge round

lump that couldn’t be called a face in spite of the lolling mouth; the segmented body,

scratched and oozing from contact with the rough walls; a quartet of stubby armlike

appendages, two on each side. These ended in snapping pincers. She shrieked and thrust

the torch back at it, and the thing retreated with another deafening roar.

“Did your mother never teach you that it’s wrong to tease the animals?” Roland asked her,

and his tone was so dry she couldn’t tell if he was kidding her or not.

Five minutes after that they were out.

Chapter II:

On Badlands Avenue

One

They exited through a crumbling hillside arch beside a Quonset hut similar in shape but

much smaller than the Arc 16 Experimental Station. The roof of this little building was

covered with rust. There were piles of bones scattered around the front in a rough ring. The

surrounding rocks had been blackened and splintered in places; one boulder the size of the

Queen Anne house where the Breakers had been kept was split in two, revealing an interior

filled with sparkling minerals. The air was cold and they could hear the restless whine of

the wind, but the rocks blocked the worst of it and they turned their faces up to the sharp

blue sky with wordless gratitude.

“There was some kind of battle here, wasn’t there?” she asked.

“Yes, I’d say so. A big one, long ago.” He sounded utterly whipped.

A sign lay facedown on the ground in front of the Quonset’s half-open door. Susannah

insisted that he put her down so she could turn it over and read it. Roland did as she asked and then sat with his back propped against a rock, staring at Castle Discordia, which was

now behind them. Two towers jutted into the blue, one whole and the other shattered off

near what he judged had been the top. He concentrated on getting his breath back. The

ground under him was very cold, and he knew already that their trek through the Badlands

was going to be difficult.

Susannah, meanwhile, had lifted the sign. She held it with one hand and wiped off an

ancient scrum of dirt with the other. The words she uncovered were in English, and gave

her a deep chill:

THIS CHECKPOINT IS CLOSED.

FOR-EVER.

Below it, in red, seeming to glare at her, was the Eye of the King.

Two

There was nothing in the Quonset’s main room but jumbles of equipment that had been

blasted to ruin and more skeletons, none whole. In the adjoining storeroom, however, she

found delightful surprises: shelves and shelves of canned food—more than they could

possibly carry—and also more Sterno. (She did not think Roland would sneer at the idea of

canned heat anymore, and she was right.) She poked her head out of the storeroom’s rear

door almost as an afterthought, not expecting to find anything except maybe a few more

skeletons, and therewas one. The prize was the vehicle in which this loose agglomeration

of bones was resting: a dogcart a bit like the one she’d found herself sitting in atop the

castle, during her palaver with Mia. This one was both smaller and in much better shape.

Instead of wood, the wheels were metal coated with thin rinds of some synthetic stuff.

Pull-handles jutted from the sides, and she realized it wasn’t a dogcart at all, but a kind of rickshaw.

Git ready to pull yo sweetie, graymeat!

This was a typically nasty Detta Walker thought, but it surprised a laugh out of her, all the same.

“What have you found that’s amusing?” Roland called.

“You’ll see,” she called back, straining to keep Detta out of her voice, at least. In this she did not entirely succeed. “You gonna see soon enough, sho.”