Stephen King – The Dark Tower

certainly would have been killed. Instead he was on his knees, at the foot of it, praying for the safety of his friends. He didn’t even look up when the window blew in but simply

redoubled his supplications. He could hear Dinky’s thoughts

(GO SOUTH)

pounding in his head, then heard other thought-streams join it,

(WITH YOUR HANDS UP)

making a river. And thenTed’s voice was there, not just joining the others but amping

them up, turning what had been a river

(YOU WON’T BE HURT)

into an ocean. Without realizing it, Sheemie changed his prayer.Our Father andP’teck my

pals becamego south with your hands up, you won’t be hurt . He didn’t even stop this when

the propane tanks behind the Damli House cafeteria blew up with a shattering roar.

Fourteen

Gangli Tristum (that’sDoctor Gangli to you, say thankya) was in many ways the most

feared man in Damli House. He was a can-toi who had—perversely—taken a taheen name

instead of a human one, and he ran the infirmary on the third floor of the west wing with an

iron fist. And on roller skates.

Things on the ward were fairly relaxed when Gangli was in his office doing paperwork, or

off on his rounds (which usually meant visiting Breakers with the sniffles in their dorms),

but when he came out, the whole place—nurses and orderlies as well as patients—fell

respectfully (and nervously) silent. A newcomer might laugh the first time he saw the squat,

dark-complected, heavily jowled man-thing gliding slowly down the center aisle between the beds, arms folded over the stethoscope which lay on his chest, the tails of his white coat wafting out behind him (one Breaker had once commented, “He looks like John Irving

after a bad facelift”). Such a one who wascaught laughing would never laugh again,

however. Dr. Gangli had a sharp tongue, indeed, and no one made fun of his roller skates

with impunity.

Now, instead of gliding on them, he went flying up and down the aisles, the steel wheels

(for his skating gear far predated rollerblades) rumbling on the hardwood. “All the papers!”

he shouted. “Do you hear me?…If I lose one file in this fucking mess,one gods-damned file,

I’ll have someone’s eyes with my afternoon tea!”

The patients were already gone, of course; he’d had them out of their beds and down the

stairs at the first bray of the smoke detector, at the first whiff of smoke. A number of

orderlies—gutless wonders, and he knew who each of them was, oh yes, and a complete

report would be made when the time came—had fled with the sickfolk, but five had stayed,

including his personal assistant, Jack London. Gangli was proud of them, although one

could not have told it from his hectoring voice as he skated up and down, up and down, in

the thickening smoke.

“Get the papers, d’ye hear? You better, by all the gods that ever walked or crawled!You

better! ”

A red glare shot in through the window. Some sort of weapon, for it blew in the glass wall

that separated his office from the ward and set his favorite easy-chair a-smolder.

Gangli ducked and skated under the laser beam, never slowing.

“Gan-a-damn!” cried one of the orderlies. He was a hume, extraordinarily ugly, his eyes

bulging from his pale face. “What in the hell was th—”

“Never mind!” Gangli bawled. “Never mind what it was, you pissface clown! Get the

papers!Get my motherfucking papers! ”

From somewhere in front—the Mall?—came the hideous approaching clang-and-yowl of

some rescue vehicle. “STAND CLEAR!” Gangli heard. “THIS IS FIRE-RESPONSE

TEAM BRAVO!”

Gangli had never heard of such a thing as Fire-Response Team Bravo, but there was so

much they didn’t know about this place. Why, he could barely use a third of the equipment

in his own surgical suite! Never mind, the thing that mattered right now—

Before he could finish his thought, the gas-pods behind the kitchen blew up. There was a

tremendous roar—seemingly from directly beneath them—and Gangli Tristum was

thrown into the air, the metal wheels on his roller skates spinning. The others were thrown

as well, and suddenly the smoky air was full of flying papers. Looking at them, knowing

that the papers would burn and he would be lucky not to burn with them, a clear thought came to Dr. Gangli: the end had come early.

Fifteen

Roland heard the telepathic command

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

begin to beat in his mind. It was time. He nodded at Jake and the Orizas flew. Their eerie

whistling wasn’t loud in the general cacophony, yet one of the guards must have heard

something coming, because he was beginning to pivot when the plate’s sharpened edge

took his head off and tumbled it backward into the compound, the eyelashes fluttering in

bewildered surprise. The headless body took two steps and then collapsed with its arms

over the rail, blood pouring from the neck in a gaudy stream. The other guard was already

down.

Eddie rolled effortlessly beneath theSOO LINE boxcar and bounced to his feet on the

compound side. Two more automated fire engines had come bolting out of the station

hitherto hidden by the hardware store façade. They were wheelless, seeming to run on

cushions of compressed air. Somewhere toward the north end of the campus (for so Eddie’s

mind persisted in identifying the Devar-Toi), something exploded. Good. Lovely.

Roland and Jake took fresh plates from the dwindling supply and used them to cut through

the three runs of fence. The high-voltage one parted with a bitter, sizzling crack and a brief blink of blue fire. Then they were in. Moving quickly and without speaking, they ran past

the now-unguarded towers with Oy trailing closely at Jake’s heels. Here was an alley

running between Henry Graham’s Drug Store & Soda Fountain and the Pleasantville Book

Store.

At the head of the alley, they looked out and saw that Main Street was currently empty,

although a tangy electric smell (a subway-station smell, Eddie thought) from the last two

fire engines still hung in the air, making the overall stench even worse. In the distance,

fire-sirens whooped and smoke detectors brayed. Here in Pleasantville, Eddie couldn’t

help but think of the Main Street in Disneyland: no litter in the gutters, no rude graffiti on the walls, not even any dust on the plate-glass windows. This was where homesick

Breakers came when they needed a little whiff of America, he supposed, but didn’t any of

them want anything better, anything morerealistic, than this plastic-fantastic still life?

Maybe it looked more inviting with folks on the sidewalks and in the stores, but that was

hard to believe. Hard forhim to believe, at least. Maybe it was only a city boy’s

chauvinism.

Across from them were Pleasantville Shoes, Gay Paree Fashions, Hair Today, and the

Gem Theater (COME IN IT’S KOOL INSIDEsaid the banner hanging from the bottom of

the marquee). Roland raised a hand, motioning Eddie and Jake across to that side of the

street. It was there, if all went as he hoped (it almost never did), that they would set their

ambush. They crossed in a crouch, Oy still scurrying at Jake’s heel. So far everything seemed to be working like a charm, and that made the gunslinger nervous, indeed.

Sixteen

Any battle-seasoned general will tell you that, even in a small-scale engagement (as this

one was), there always comes a point where coherence breaks down, and narrative flow,

and any real sense of how things are going. These matters are re-created by historians later

on. The need to re-create the myth of coherence may be one of the reasons why history

exists in the first place.

Never mind. We have reached that point, the one where the Battle of Algul Siento took on

a life of its own, and all I can do now is point here and there and hope you can bring your

own order out of the general chaos.

Seventeen

Trampas, the eczema-plagued low man who inadvertently let Ted in on so much, rushed to

the stream of Breakers who were fleeing from Damli House and grabbed one, a scrawny

ex-carpenter with a receding hairline named Birdie McCann.

“Birdie, what is it?” Trampas shouted. He was currently wearing his thinking-cap, which

meant he could not share in the telepathic pulse all around him. “What’s happening, do you

kn—”

“Shooting!” Birdie yelled, pulling free. “Shooting!They’re out there!” He pointed vaguely

behind him.

“Who? How m—”

“Watch out you idiots it’s not slowing down!”yelled Gaskie o’ Tego, from somewhere

behind Trampas and McCann.

Trampas looked up and was horrified to see the lead fire engine come roaring and swaying

along the center of the Mall, red lights flashing, two stainless-steel robot firemen now

clinging to the back. Pimli, Finli, and Jakli leaped aside. So did Tassa the houseboy. But

Tammy Kelly lay facedown on the grass in a spreading soup of blood. She had been