Stephen King – The Dark Tower

“Come on, boss!” Finli o’ Tego almost pleaded. “We have to make sure the Breakers are

okay—”

“Smoke!” Jakli cried, fluttering his dark (and utterly useless) wings. “Smoke from Damli

House, smoke from Feveral, too!”

Pimli ignored him. He pulled the Peacemaker from the docker’s clutch, wondering briefly

what premonition had caused him to put it on. He had no idea, but he was glad for the

weight of the gun in his hand. Behind him, Tassa was yelling—Tammy was, too—but

Pimli ignored the pair of them. His heart was beating furiously, but he was calm again.

Finli was right. The Breakers were the important thing right now. Making sure they didn’t

lose a third of their trained psychics in some sort of electrical fire or half-assed act of

sabotage. He nodded at his Security Chief and they began to run toward Damli House with

Jakli squawking and flapping along behind them like a refugee from a Warner Bros.

cartoon. Somewhere up there, Gaskie was hollering. And then Pimli o’ New Jersey heard a

sound that chilled him to the bone, a rapidchow-chow-chow sound. Gunfire! If some clown

was shooting at his Breakers, that clown’s head would finish the day on a high pole, by the

gods. That the guards rather than the Breakers might be under attack had at that point still

not crossed his mind, nor that of the slightly wilier Finli, either. Too much was happening

too fast.

Eleven

At the south end of the Devar compound, the syncopated honking sound was almost loud

enough to split eardrums. “Christ!” Eddie said, and couldn’t hear himself.

In the south watchtowers, the guards were turned away from them, looking north. Eddie

couldn’t see any smoke yet. Perhaps the guards could from their higher vantage-points.

Roland grabbed Jake’s shoulder, then pointed at theSOO LINE boxcar. Jake nodded and

scrambled beneath it with Oy at his heels. Roland held both hands out to Eddie—Stay

where youare!—and then followed. On the other side of the boxcar the boy and the

gunslinger stood up, side by side. They would have been clearly visible to the sentries, had

the attention of those worthies not been distracted by the smoke detectors and fire alarms

inside the compound.

Suddenly the entire front of the Pleasantville Hardware Company descended into a slot in

the ground. A robot fire engine, all bright red paint and gleaming chrome, came bolting out

of the hitherto concealed garage. A line of red lights pulsed down the center of its

elongated body, and an amplified voice bellowed,“STAND CLEAR! THIS IS

FIRE-RESPONSE TEAM BRAVO! STAND CLEAR! MAKE WAY FOR

FIRE-RESPONSE TEAM BRAVO! ”

There must be no gunfire from this part of the Devar, not yet. The south end of the

compound must seem safe to the increasingly frightened inmates of Algul Siento: don’t

worry, folks, here’s your port in today’s unexpected shitstorm.

The gunslinger dipped a ’Riza from Jake’s dwindling supply and nodded for the boy to

take another. Roland pointed to the guard in the righthand tower, then once more at Jake.

The boy nodded, cocked his arm across his chest, and waited for Roland to give him the go.

Twelve

Once you hear the horn that signals the change of shifts,Roland had told Susannah,take it

to them. Do as much damage as you can, but don’t let them see they’re only facing a single

person, for your father’s sake!

As if he needed to tell her that.

She could have taken the three watchtower guards while the horn was still blaring, but

something made her wait. A few seconds later, she was glad she had. The rear door of the

Queen Anne burst open so violently it tore off its upper hinge. Breakers piled out, clawing

at those ahead of them in their panic (these are the would-be destroyers of the universe,she

thought,these sheep ), and among them she saw half a dozen of the freakboys with animal

heads and at least four of those creepy humanoids with the masks on.

Susannah took the guard in the west tower first, and had shifted her aim to the pair in the

east tower before the first casualty in the Battle of Algul Siento had fallen over the railing and tumbled to the ground with his brains dribbling out of his hair and down his cheeks.

The Coyote machine-pistol, switched to the middle setting, fired in low-pitched bursts of

three:Chow! Chow! Chow!

The taheen and the low man in the east tower spun widdershins to each other, like figures

in a dance. The taheen crumpled on the catwalk that skirted the top of the watchtower; the

low man was driven into the rail, flipped over it with his bootheels in the sky, then

plummeted head-first to the ground. She heard the crack his neck made when it broke.

A couple of the milling Breakers spotted this unfortunate fellow’s descent and screamed.

“Put up your hands!” That was Dinky, she recognized his voice. “Put up your hands if

you’re a Breaker!”

No one questioned the idea; in these circumstances, anyone who sounded like he knew

what was going on was in unquestioned charge. Some of the Breakers—but not all, not

yet—put their hands up. It made no difference to Susannah. She didn’t need raised hands to

tell the difference between the sheep and the goats. A kind of haunted clarity had fallen

over her vision.

She flicked the fire-control switch fromBURST toSINGLE SHOT and began to pick off the guards who’d come up from The Study with the Breakers.Taheen…can-toi, get him…a

hume but don’t shoot her, she’s a Breaker even though she doesn’t have her hands

up…don’t ask me how I know but I do…

Susannah squeezed the Coyote’s trigger and the head of the hume next to the woman in the

bright red slacks exploded in a mist of blood and bone. The Breakers screamed like

children, staring around with their eyes bulging and their hands up. And now Susannah

heard Dinky again, only this time not his physical voice. It was his mental voice she heard,

and it was much louder:

(GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP, YOU WON’T BE HURT)

Which was her cue to break cover and start moving. She’d gotten eight of the Crimson

King’s bad boys, counting the three in the towers—not that it was much of an

accomplishment, given their panic—and she saw no more, at least for the time being.

Susannah twisted the hand-throttle and scooted the SCT toward one of the other

abandoned sheds. The gadget’s pickup was so lively that she almost tumbled off the

bicycle-style seat. Trying not to laugh (and laughing anyway), she shouted at the top of her

lungs, in her best Detta Walker vulture-screech:

“Git outta here, muthafuckahs! Git south! Hands up so we know you fum the bad boys!

Everyone doan have their hands up goan get a bullet in the haid! Y’all trus’ me on it!”

In through the door of the next shed, scraping a balloon tire of the SCT on the jamb, but

not quite hard enough to tip it over. Praise God, for she never would have had enough

strength to right it on her own. In here, one of the “lazers” was set on a snap-down tripod.

She pushed the toggle-switch markedON and was wondering if she needed to do

something else with theINTERVAL switch when the weapon’s muzzle emitted a blinding

stream of reddish-purple light that arrowed into the compound above the triple run of fence

and made a hole in the top story of Damli House. To Susannah it looked as big as a hole

made by a point-blank artillery shell.

This is good,she thought.I gotta get the other ones going.

But she wondered if there would be time. Already other Breakers were picking up on

Dinky’s suggestion, rebroadcasting it and boosting it in the process:

(GO SOUTH! HANDS UP! WON’T BE HURT!)

She flicked the Coyote’s fire-switch toFULL AUTO and raked it across the upper level of

the nearest dorm to emphasize the point. Bullets whined and ricocheted. Glass broke.

Breakers screamed and began to stampede around the side of Damli House with their hands

up. Susannah saw Ted come around the same side. He was hard to miss, because he was

going against the current. He and Dinky embraced briefly, then raised their hands and joined the southward flow of Breakers, who would soon lose their status as VIPs and

become just one more bunch of refugees struggling to survive in a dark and poisoned land.

She’d gotten eight, but it wasn’t enough. The hunger was upon her, that dry hunger. Her

eyes saw everything. They pulsed and ached in her head, and they saw everything. She

hoped that other taheen, low men, or hume guards would come around the side of Damli

House.

She wanted more.

Thirteen

Sheemie Ruiz lived in Corbett Hall, which happened to be the dormitory Susannah, all

unknowing, had raked with at least a hundred bullets. Had he been on his bed, he almost