Stephen King – The Dark Tower

Finally they came into an echoing rotunda with doors marching all around its mighty

circumference. The marble tiles on the floor were laid in a black-and-white checkerboard

pattern Susannah remembered from certain troubled dreams in which Mia had fed her chap.

Above, high and high, constellations of electric stars winked in a blue firmament that was

now showing plenty of cracks. This place reminded her of the Cradle of Lud, and even

more strongly of Grand Central Station. Somewhere in the walls, air-conditioners or

-exchangers ran rustily. The smell in the air was weirdly familiar, and after a short struggle, Susannah identified it: Comet Cleanser. They sponsoredThe Price Is Right, which she

sometimes watched on TV if she happened to be home in the morning.“I’m Don Pardo,

now please welcome your host, Mr. Bill Cullen! ” Susannah felt a moment of vertigo and

closed her eyes.

Bill Cullen is dead. Don Pardo is dead. Martin Luther King is dead, shot down in Memphis.

Rule Discordia!

O Christ, thosevoices, would they never stop?

She opened her eyes and saw doors markedSHANGHAI/FEDIC andBOMBAY/FEDIC

and one markedDALLAS (NOVEMBER 1963)/FEDIC. Others were written in runes that

meant nothing to her. At last Nigel stopped in front of one she recognized.

NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.

New York/Fedic

Maximum Security

All of this Susannah recognized from the other side, but below VERBAL ENTRY CODE

REQUIRED was this message, flashing ominous red:

#9 FINAL DEFAULT

Seven

“What would you like to do next, madam?” Nigel asked.

“Set me down, sugarpie.”

She had time to wonder what her response would be if Nigel declined to do so, but he

didn’t even hesitate. She walk-hopped-scuttled to the door in her old way and put her hands

on it. Beneath them she felt a texture that was neither wood nor metal. She thought she

could hear a very faint hum. She considered tryingchassit —her version of Ali Baba’sOpen,

sesame —and didn’t bother. There wasn’t even a doorknob. One-way meant one-way, she

reckoned; no kidding around.

(JAKE!)

She sent it with all her might.

No answer. Not even that faint

(wimeweh)

nonsense word. She waited a moment longer, then turned around and sat with her back

propped against the door. She dropped the extra ammo clips between her spread knees and

then held the Walther PPK up in her right hand. A good weapon to have with your back to

a locked door, she reckoned; she liked the weight of it. Once upon a time, she and others

had been trained in a protest technique called passive resistance. Lie down on the

lunchroom floor, cover your soft middle and softer privates. Do not respond to those who

strike you and revile you and curse your parents. Sing in your chains like the sea. What

would her old friends make of what she had become?

Susannah said: “You know what? I don’t give shit one. Passive resistance is also dead.”

“Madam?”

“Nothing, Nigel.”

“Madam, may I ask—”

“What I’m doing?”

“Exactly, madam.”

“Waiting on a friend, Chumley. Just waiting on a friend.”

She thought that DNK 45932 would remind her that his name was Nigel, but he didn’t.

Instead, he asked how long she would wait for her friend. Susannah told him until hell

froze over. This elicited a long silence. Finally Nigel asked: “May I go, then, madam?”

“How will you see?”

“I have switched to infrared. It is less satisfying than three-X macrovision, but it will

suffice to get me to the repair bays.”

“Is there anyone in the repair bays who can fix you?” Susannah asked with mild curiosity.

She pushed the button that dropped the clip out of the Walther’s butt, then rammed it back

in, taking a certain elemental pleasure in the oily, metallicSNACK! sound it made.

“I’m sure I can’t say, madam,” Nigel replied, “although the probability of such a thing is

very low, certainly less than one per cent. If no one comes, then I, like you, will wait.”

She nodded, suddenly tired and very sure that this was where the grand quest ended—here,

leaning against this door. But you didn’t give up, did you? Giving up was for cowards, not

gunslingers.

“May ya do fine, Nigel—thanks for the piggyback. Long days and pleasant nights. Hope

you get your eyes back. Sorry I shot em out, but I was in a bit of a tight and didn’t know

whose side you were on.”

“And good wishes to you, madam.”

Susannah nodded. Nigel clumped off and then she was alone, leaning against the door to

New York. Waiting for Jake. Listening for Jake.

All she heard was the rusty, dying wheeze of the machinery in the walls.

Chapter V:

In the Jungle,

the Mighty Jungle

One

The threat that the low men and the vampires might kill Oy was the only thing that kept

Jake from dying with the Pere. There was no agonizing over the decision; Jake yelled

(OY, TO ME!)

with all the mental force he could muster, and Oy ran swiftly at his heel. Jake passed low

men who stood mesmerized by the turtle and straight-armed a door markedEMPLOYEES

ONLY . From the dim orange-red glow of the restaurant he and Oy entered a zone of

brilliant white light and charred, pungent cookery. Steam billowed against his face, hot and

wet,

(the jungle)

perhaps setting the stage for what followed,

(the mighty jungle)

perhaps not. His vision cleared as his pupils shrank and he saw he was in the Dixie Pig’s

kitchen. Not for the first time, either. Once, not too long before the coming of the Wolves

to Calla Bryn Sturgis, Jake had followed Susannah (only then she’d have been Mia) into a

dream where she’d been searching some vast and deserted kitchen for food.This kitchen,

only now the place was bustling with life. A huge pig sizzled on an iron spit over an open

fire, the flames leaping up through a food-caked iron grate at every drop of grease. To

either side were gigantic copper-hooded stoves upon which pots nearly as tall as Jake

himself fumed. Stirring one of these was a gray-skinned creature so hideous that Jake’s

eyes hardly knew how to look at it. Tusks rose from either side of its gray, heavy-lipped

mouth. Dewlapped cheeks hung in great warty swags of flesh. The fact that the creature

was wearing foodstained cook’s whites and a puffy popcorn chef’s toque somehow

finished the nightmare, sealed it beneath a coat of varnish. Beyond this apparition, nearly

lost in the steam, two other creatures dressed in whites were washing dishes side by side at

a double sink. Both wore neckerchiefs. One was human, a boy of perhaps seventeen. The

other appeared to be some sort of monster housecat on legs.

“Vai, vai, los mostros pubes, tre cannits en founs!” the tusked chef screeched at the

washerboys. It hadn’t noticed Jake. One of them—the cat—did. It laid back its ears and

hissed. Without thinking, Jake threw the Oriza he’d been holding in his right hand. It sang

across the steamy air and sliced through the cat-thing’s neck as smoothly as a knife through

a cake of lard. The head toppled into the sink with a sudsy splash, the green eyes still

blazing.

“San fai, can dit los!” cried the chef. He seemed either unaware of what had happened or was unable to grasp it. He turned to Jake. The eyes beneath his sloping, crenellated

forehead were a bleary blue-gray, the eyes of a sentient being. Seen head-on, Jake realized

what it was: some kind of freakish, intelligent warthog. Which meant it was cooking its

own kind. That seemed perfectly fitting in the Dixie Pig.

“Can foh pube ain-tet can fah! She-so pan! Vai!” This was addressed to Jake. And then,

just to make the lunacy complete: “And eef you won’d scrub,don’d even stard! ”

The other washboy, the human one, was screaming some sort of warning, but the chef paid

no attention. The chef seemed to believe that Jake, having killed one of his helpers, was

now duty- and honor-bound to take the dead cat’s place.

Jake flung the other plate and it sheared through the warthog’s neck, putting an end to its

blabber. Perhaps a gallon of blood flew onto the stovetop to the thing’s right, sizzling and

sending up a horrible charred smell. The warthog’s head slewed to the left on its neck and

then tilted backward, but didn’t come off. The being—it was easily seven feet tall—took

two stagger-steps to its left and embraced the sizzling pig turning on its spit. The head tore loose a little further, now lying on Chef Warthog’s right shoulder, one eye glaring up at the steam-wreathed fluorescent lights. The heat sealed the cook’s hands to the roast and they

began to melt. Then the thing fell forward into the open flames and its tunic caught fire.

Jake whirled from this in time to see the other potboy advancing on him with a butcher

knife in one hand and a cleaver in the other. Jake grabbed another ’Riza from the bag but