Stephen King – The Dark Tower

footage.

“That’s one of em, cullies!” Lamla yelled in a voice that became unfortunately ovine when

it was raised.“Pour it on! Pour it on for the love of your fathers! ”

Half this crew probably never had such a thing,Flaherty thought morosely. Then came the

clearly audible shatter-sound of breaking glass and the dragon froze in place with billows

of flame issuing from its mouth and nostrils, as well as from the gills on the sides of its

armored throat.

Encouraged, the sharpshooters began firing faster, and a few moments later the clearing

and the frozen dragon both disappeared. Where they had been was only more tiled hallway,

with the tracks of those who had recently passed this way marking the dust. On either side

were the shattered projector portals.

“All right!” Flaherty yelled after giving Lamla an approving nod. “Now we’re going after

the kid, and we’re going to double-time it, and we’re going to catch him, and we’re going

to bring him back with his head on a stick! Are you with me?”

They roared savage agreement, none louder than Lamla, whose eyes glowed the same

baleful yellow-orange as the dragon’s breath.

“Good, then!” Flaherty set off, roaring a tune any Marine drill-corps would have

recognized:“We don’t care how far you run—”

“WE DON’T CARE HOW FAR YOU RUN!” they bawled back as they trotted four

abreast through the place where Jake’s jungle had been. Their feet crunched in the

shattered glass.

“We’ll bring you back before we’re done!”

“WE’LL BRING YOU BACK BEFORE WE’RE DONE!”

“You can run to Cain or Lud—”

“YOU CAN RUN TO CAIN OR LUD!”

“We’ll eat your balls and drink your blood!”

They called it in return, and Flaherty picked up the pace yet a little more.

Eleven

Jake heard them coming again, come-come-commala. Heard them promising to eat his

balls and drink his blood.

Brag, brag, brag,he thought, but tried to run faster, anyway. He was alarmed to find he

couldn’t. Doing the mindswap with Oy had tired him out quite a little b—

No.

Roland had taught him that self-deception was nothing but pride in disguise, an indulgence

to be denied. Jake had done his best to heed this advice, and as a result admitted that “being tired” no longer described his situation. The stitch in his side had grown fangs that had

sunk deep into his armpit. He knew he had gained on his pursuers; he also knew from the

shouted cadence-chant that they were making up the distance they’d lost. Soon they would

be shooting at him and Oy again, and while men didn’t shoot for shit while they were

running, someone could always get lucky.

Now he saw something up ahead, blocking the corridor. A door. As he approached it, Jake

allowed himself to wonder what he’d do if Susannah wasn’t on the other side. Or if she was

there but didn’t know how to help him.

Well, he and Oy would make a stand, that was all. No cover, no way to reenact

Thermopylae Pass this time, but he’d throw plates and take heads until they brought him

down.

If he needed to, that was.

Maybe he would not.

Jake pounded toward the door, his breath now hot in his throat—close to burning—and

thought,It’s just as well. I couldn’t have run much further, anyway .

Oy got there first. He put his front paws on the ghostwood and looked up as if reading the

words stamped into the door and the message flashing below them. Then he looked back at

Jake, who came panting up with one hand pressed against his armpit and the remaining

Orizas clanging loudly back and forth in their bag.

NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.

New York/Fedic

Maximum Security

VERBAL ENTRY CODE REQUIRED

#9 FINAL DEFAULT

He tried the doorknob, but that was only a formality. When the chilly metal refused to turn

in his grip, he didn’t bother trying again but hammered the heels of both hands against the

wood, instead. “Susannah!” he shouted. “If you’re there, let me in!”

Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chinhe heard his father say, and his mother, much more

gravely, as if she knew storytelling was serious business:I heard a fly buzz…when I died.

From behind the door there was nothing. From behind Jake, the chanting voices of the

Crimson King’s posse swept closer.

“Susannah!” he bawled, and when there was no answer this time he turned, put his back to

the door (hadn’t he always known it would end just this way, with his back to a locked

door?), and seized an Oriza in each hand. Oy stood between his feet, and now his fur was

bushed out, now the velvety-soft skin of his muzzle wrinkled back to show his teeth.

Jake crossed his arms, assuming “the load.”

“Come on then, you bastards,” he said. “For Gilead and the Eld. For Roland, son of Steven.

For me and Oy.”

At first he was too fiercely concentrated on dying well, of taking at least one of them with him (the fellow who’d told him theFaddah wasdinnah would be his personal preference)

and more if he could, to realize the voice he was hearing had come from the other side of

the door rather than from his own mind.

“Jake! Is it really you, sugarpie?”

His eyes widened. Oh please let it not be a trick. If it was, Jake reckoned that he would

never be played another.

“Susannah, they’re coming! Do you know how—”

“Yes!Should still bechassit, do you hear me? If Nigel’s right, the word should still becha

—”

Jake didn’t give her a chance to finish saying it again. Now he could see them sweeping

toward him, running full-out. Some waving guns and already shooting into the air.

“Chassit!” he yelled.“Chassit for the Tower!Open! Open, you son of a bitch! ”

Behind his pressing back the door between New York and Fedic clicked open. At the head

of the charging posse, Flaherty saw it happen, uttered the bitterest curse in his lexicon, and fired a single bullet. He was a good shot, and all the force of his not inconsiderable will

went with that particular slug, guiding it. No doubt it would have punched through Jake’s

forehead above the left eye, entering his brain and ending his life, had not a strong,

brown-fingered hand seized Jake by the collar at that very moment and yanked him

backward through the shrill elevator-shaft whistle that sounds endlessly between the levels

of the Dark Tower. The bullet buzzed by his head instead of entering it.

Oy came with him, barking his friend’s name shrilly—Ake-Ake, Ake-Ake!—and the door

slammed shut behind them. Flaherty reached it twenty seconds later and hammered on it

until his fists bled (when Lamla tried to restrain him, Flaherty thrust him back with such

ferocity that the taheen went a-sprawl), but there was nothing he could do. Hammering did

not work; cursing did not work; nothing worked.

At the very last minute, the boy and the bumbler had eluded them. For yet a little while

longer the core of Roland’s ka-tet remained unbroken.

Chapter VI:

On Turtleback Lane

One

See this, I do beg ya, and see it very well, for it’s one of the most beautiful places that still remain in America.

I’d show you a homely dirt lane running along a heavily wooded switchback ridge in

western Maine, its north and south ends spilling onto Route 7 about two miles apart. Just

west of this ridge, like a jeweler’s setting, is a deep green dimple in the landscape. At the bottom of it—the stone in the setting—is Kezar Lake. Like all mountain lakes, it may

change its aspect half a dozen times in the course of a single day, for here the weather is

beyond prankish; you could call it half-mad and be perfectly accurate. The locals will be

happy to tell you about ice-cream snow flurries that came to this part of the world once in

late August (that would be 1948) and once spang on the Glorious Fourth (1959). They’ll be

even more delighted to tell you about the tornado that came blasting across the lake’s

frozen surface in January of 1971, sucking up snow and creating a whirling mini-blizzard

that crackled with thunder in its middle. Hard to believe such crazy-jane weather, but you

could go and see Gary Barker, if you don’t believe me; he’s got the pictures to prove it.

Today the lake at the bottom of the dimple is blacker than homemade sin, not just reflecting the thunderheads massing overhead but amplifying their mood. Every now and

then a splinter of silver streaks across that obsidian looking-glass as lightning stabs out of the clouds overhead. The sound of thunder rolls through the congested sky west to east,

like the wheels of some great stone bucka rolling down an alley in the sky. The pines and

oaks and birches are still and all the world holds its breath. All shadows have disappeared.