Stephen King – The Dark Tower

checking bodies at the eastern end of the killzone, saw Roland on the far sidewalk,

speaking with Dinky and Ted as he knotted a makeshift bandage around the latter’s arm.

The two former Breakers were listening carefully, and although both of them looked

dubious, they were nodding their heads.

Eddie returned his attention to the dying taheen. “You’re at the end of the path, my friend,”

he said. “Plugged in the pump, it looks like to me. Do you have something you want to say

before you step into the clearing?”

Finli nodded.

“Say it, then, chum. But I’d keep it short if you want to get it all out.”

“Thee and thine are a pack of yellowback dogs,” Finli managed. He probablywas shot in

the heart—so it felt, anyway—but he would say this; it needed to be said, and he willed his

damaged heart to beat until it was out. Then he’d die and welcome the dark. “Piss-stinking

yellowback dogs, killing men from ambush. That’s what I’d say.”

Eddie smiled humorlessly. “And what about yellowback dogs who’d use children to kill

the whole world from ambush, my friend? The wholeuniverse ?”

The Weasel blinked at that, as if he’d expected no such reply. Perhaps any reply at all. “I

had…my orders.”

“I have no doubt of that,” Eddie said. “And followed them to the end. Enjoy hell or Na’ar

or whatever you call it.” He put the barrel of his gun against Finli’s temple and pulled the

trigger. The Wease jerked a single time and was still. Grimacing, Eddie got to his feet.

He caught movement from the corner of his eye as he did so and saw another one—the

boss of the show—had struggled up onto one elbow. His gun, the Peacemaker .40 that had

once executed a rapist, was leveled. Eddie’s reflexes were quick, but there was no time to

use them. The Peacemaker roared a single time, fire licking from the end of its barrel, and

blood flew from Eddie Dean’s brow. A lock of hair flipped on the back of his head as the

slug exited. He slapped his hand to the hole that had appeared over his right eye, like a man who has remembered something of vital importance just a little too late.

Roland whirled on the rundown heels of his boots, pulling his own gun in a dip too quick

to see. Jake and Susannah also turned. Susannah saw her husband standing in the street

with the heel of his hand pressed to his brow.

“Eddie?Sugar? ”

Pimli was struggling to cock the Peacemaker again, his upper lip curled back from his

teeth in a doglike snarl of effort. Roland shot him in the throat and Algul Siento’s Master

snap-rolled to his left, the still-uncocked pistol flying out of his hand and clattering to a stop beside the body of his friend the Weasel. It finished almost at Eddie’s feet.

“Eddie!” Susannah screamed, and began a loping crawl toward him, thrusting herself on

her hands.He’s not hurt bad, she told herself,not hurt bad, dear God don’t let my man be

hurt bad —

Then she saw the blood running from beneath his pressing hand, pattering down into the

street, and knew itwas bad.

“Suze?” he asked. His voice was perfectly clear. “Suzie, where are you? I can’t see.”

He took one step, a second, a third…and then fell facedown in the street, just as Gran-pere

Jaffords had known he would, aye, from the first moment he’d laid eyes on him. For the

boy was a gunslinger, say true, and it was the only end that one such as he could expect.

Chapter XII:

The Tet Breaks

One

That night found Jake Chambers sitting disconsolately outside the Clover Tavern at the

east end of Main Street in Pleasantville. The bodies of the guards had been carted away by

a robot maintenance crew, and that was at least something of a relief. Oy had been in the

boy’s lap for an hour or more. Ordinarily he would never have stayed so close for so long,

but he seemed to understand that Jake needed him. On several occasions, Jake wept into

the bumbler’s fur.

For most of that endless day Jake found himself thinking in two different voices. This had

happened to him before, but not for years; not since the time when, as a very young child,

he suspected he might have suffered some sort of weird, below-the-parental-radar

breakdown.

Eddie’s dying,said the first voice (the one that used to assure him there were monsters in

his closet, and soon they would emerge to eat him alive).He’s in a room in Corbett Hall and

Susannah’s with him and he won’t shut up, but he’s dying.

No,denied the second voice (the one that used to assure him—feebly—that there were no

such things as monsters).No, that can’t be. Eddie’s… Eddie!And besides, he’s ka-tet. He

might die when we reach the Dark Tower, we might alldie when we get there, but not now,

not here, that’s crazy.

Eddie’s dying,replied the first voice. It was implacable.He’s got a hole in his head almost

big enough to stick your fist in, and he’s dying.

To this the second voice could offer only more denials, each weaker than the last.

Not even the knowledge that they had likely saved the Beam (Sheemie certainly seemed to

think they had; he’d crisscrossed the weirdly silent campus of the Devar-Toi, shouting the

news—BEAM SAYS ALL MAY BE WELL! BEAM SAYS THANKYA!—at the top of

his lungs) could make Jake feel better. The loss of Eddie was too great a price to pay even

for such an outcome. And the breaking of the tet was an even greater price. Every time Jake

thought of it, he felt sick to his stomach and sent up inarticulate prayers to God, to Gan, to the Man Jesus, to any or all of them to do a miracle and save Eddie’s life.

He even prayed to the writer.

Save my friend’s life and we’ll save yours,he prayed to Stephen King, a man he had never

seen.Save Eddie and we won’t let that van hit you. I swear it .

Then again he’d think of Susannah screaming Eddie’s name, of trying to turn him over,

and Roland wrapping his arms around her and sayingYou mustn’t do that, Susannah, you

mustn’t disturb him, and how she’d fought him, her face crazy, her facechanging as

different personalities seemed to inhabit it for a moment or two and then flee.I have to help him! she’d sob in the Susannah-voice Jake knew, and then in another, harsher voice she’d

shoutLet me go, mahfah! Let me do mah voodoo on him, make mah houngun, he goan git

up an walk, you see! Sho! And Roland holding her through all of it, holding her and

rocking her while Eddie lay in the street, but not dead, it would have been better, almost, if he’d been dead (even if being dead meant the end of talking about miracles, the end of

hope), but Jake could see his dusty fingers twitching and could hear him muttering

incoherently, like a man who talks in his sleep.

Then Ted had come, and Dinky just behind him, and two or three of the other Breakers

trailing along hesitantly behind them. Ted had gotten on his knees beside the struggling,

screaming woman and motioned for Dinky to get kneebound on the other side of her. Ted

had taken one of her hands, then nodded for Dink to take the other. And something had

flowed out of them—something deep and soothing. It wasn’t meant for Jake, no, not at all,

but he caught some of it, anyway, and felt his wildly galloping heart slow. He looked into

Ted Brautigan’s face and saw that Ted’s eyes were doing their trick, the pupils swelling

and shrinking, swelling and shrinking.

Susannah’s cries faltered, subsiding to little hurt groans. She looked down at Eddie, and

when she bent her head her eyes had spilled tears onto the back of Eddie’s shirt, making

dark places, like raindrops. That was when Sheemie appeared from one of the alleys,

shouting glad hosannahs to all who would hear him—“BEAM SAYS NOT TOO LATE!

BEAM SAYS JUST IN TIME, BEAM SAYS THANKYA AND WE MUST LET HIM

HEAL!”—and limping badly on one foot (none of them thought anything of it then or even

noticed it). Dinky murmured to the growing crowd of Breakers looking at the mortally

wounded gunslinger, and several went to Sheemie and got him to quiet down. From the

main part of the Devar-Toi the alarms continued, but the follow-up fire engines were

actually getting the three worst fires (those in Damli House, Warden’s House, and Feveral Hall) under control.

What Jake remembered next was Ted’s fingers—unbelievably gentle fingers—spreading

the hair on the back of Eddie’s head and exposing a large hole filled with a dark jelly of

blood. There were little white flecks in it. Jake had wanted to believe those flecks were bits of bone. Better than thinking they might be flecks of Eddie’s brain.