was always the same. Whether it was an open field of battle where thousands had died by
cannon, rifle, sword, and halberd or a small room where five or six had shot each other, it
was the same place, always the same place in the end: another deadhouse, stinking of
gunpowder and raw meat.
The wall between the bathroom and the office was gone except for a few struts. Broken
glass twinkled everywhere. Ceiling panels that had been shredded by Tricks Postino’s
gaudy but useless M-16 fireworks display hung down like pieces of peeled skin.
Eddie coughed dryly. Now he could hear other sounds—a babble of excited conversation,
shouted voices outside the bar, and, in the distance, the warble of sirens.
“How many?” the gunslinger asked Eddie. “Can we have gotten all of them?”
“Yes, I think—”
“I got something for you, Eddie,” Kevin Blake said from the hallway. “I thought you might want it, like for a souvenir,you know?” What Balazar had not been able to do to theyounger
Dean brother Kevin had done to the elder. He lobbed Henry Dean’s severed head through
the doorway.
Eddie saw what it was and screamed. He ran toward thedoor, heedless of the splinters of
glass and wood that punchedinto his bare feet, screaming, shooting, firing the last live shell
in the big revolver as he went.
“No, Eddie!” Roland screamed, but Eddie didn’t hear. Hewas beyond hearing.
He hit a dud in the sixth chamber, but by then he wasaware of nothing but the fact that
Henry was dead, Henry, theyhad cut off his head, some miserable son of a bitch had cut
offHenry’s head, and that son of a bitch was going to pay, oh yes,you could count on that.
So he ran toward the door, pulling the trigger again andagain, unaware that nothing was happening, unaware thathis feet were red with blood, and Kevin Blake stepped into the
doorway to meet him, crouched low, a Llama .38 automatic inhis hand. Kevin’s red hair
stood around his head in coils and springs, and Kevin was smiling.
24
He’ll be low,the gunslinger thought, knowing he couldhave to be lucky to hit his target
with this untrustworthy littletoy even if he had guessed right.
When he saw the ruse of Balazar’s soldier was going todraw Eddie out, Roland rose to his
knees and steadied his lefthand on his right fist, grimly ignoring the screech of painmaking
that fist caused. He would have one chance only. Thepain didn’t matter.
Then the man with the red hair stepped into the doorway,smiling, and as always Roland’s
brain was gone; his eye saw,his hand shot, and suddenly the red-head was lying against
thewall of the corridor with his eyes open and a small blue hole inhis forehead. Eddie was
standing over him, screaming andsobbing, dry-firing the big revolver with the sandalwood
gripsagain and again, as if the man with the red hair could never bedead enough.
The gunslinger waited for the deadly crossfire that wouldcut Eddie in half and when it
didn’t come he knew it was truly over. If there had been other soldiers, they had taken to
theirheels.
He got wearily to his feet, reeled, and then walked slowlyover to where Eddie Dean stood.
“Stop it,” he said.
Eddie ignored him and went on dry-firing Roland’s biggun at the dead man.
“Stop it, Eddie, he’s dead. They’re all dead. Your feet arebleeding.”
Eddie ignored him and went on pulling the revolver’strigger. The babble of excited voices
outside was closer. Sowere the sirens.
The gunslinger reached for the gun and pulled on it. Eddie turned on him, and before
Roland was entirely surewhat was happening, Eddie struck him on the side of the head with
his own gun. Roland felt a warm gush of blood andcollapsed against the wall. He struggled
to stay on his feet—they had to get out of here, quick. But he could feel himselfsliding
down the wall in spite of his every effort, and then theworld was gone for a little while in a
drift of grayness.
25
He was out for no more than two minutes, and then hemanaged to get things back into
focus and make it to his feet.Eddie was no longer in the hallway. Roland’s gun lay on
thechest of the dead man with the red hair. The gunslinger bent,fighting off a wave of
dizziness, picked it up, and dropped itinto its holster with an awkward, cross-body
movement.
I want my damned fingers back,he thought tiredly, andsighed.
He tried to walk back into the ruins of the office, but thebest he could manage was an
educated stagger. He stopped, bent, and picked up all of Eddie’s clothes that he could hold
in the crook of his left arm. The howlers had almost arrived.Roland believed the men
winding them were probably militia,a Marshall’s posse, something of that sort . . . but there
wasalways the possibility they might be more of Balazar’s men.
“Eddie,” he croaked. His throat was sore and throbbing again, worse even than the swollen place on the side of hishead where Eddie had struck him with the revolver.
Eddie didn’t notice. Eddie was sitting on the floor withhis brother’s head cradled against
his belly. He was shudderingall over and crying. The gunslinger looked for the door, didn’t
see it, and felt a nasty jolt that was nearly terror. Then heremembered. With both of them
on this side, the only way to create the door was for him to make physical contact
withEddie.
He reached for him but Eddie shrank away, still weeping.”Don’t touch me,” he said.
“Eddie, it’s over. They’re all dead, and your brother’sdead, too.”
“Leave my brother out of this!”Eddie shrieked childishly,and another fit of shuddering
went through him. He cradled the severed head to his chest and rocked it. He lifted
hisstreaming eyes to the gunslinger’s face.
“All the times he took care of me, man,” he said, sobbingso hard the gunslinger could
barely understand him. “All thetimes. Why couldn’t I have taken care of him, just this
once,after all the times he took care of me?”
He took care of you, all right,Roland thought grimly.Look at you, sitting there and shaking
like a man who’s eatenan apple from the fever tree. He took care of you just fine.
“We have to go.”
“Go?” for the first time some vague understanding cameinto Eddie’s face, and it was followed immediately by alarm. “Iain’t going nowhere. Especially not back to that other
place,where those big crabs or whatever they are ate Jack.”
Someone was hammering on the door, yelling to open up.
“Do you want to stay here and explain all these bodies?”the gunslinger asked.
“I don’t care,” Eddie said. “Without Henry, it doesn’tmatter. Nothing does.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter to you,” Roland said, “but thereare others involved, prisoner.”
“Don’t call me that!”Eddie shouted.
•I’ll call you that until you show me you can walk out of the cell you’re in!” Roland shouted back. It hurt his throat to yell, but he yelled just the same. “Throw that rotten piece of meat away and stop puling!”
Eddie looked at him, cheeks wet, eyes wide and frightened.
“THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!”an amplified voicesaid from outside. To Eddie the
voice sounded eerily like thevoice of a game-show host. ” THE S.W.A.T. SQUAD
HAS ARRIVED—I REPEAT: THE S.W.A.T. SQUAD HAS AR- RIVED!”
“What’s on the other side of that door for me?” Eddie askedthe gunslinger quietly. “Go on and tell me. If you can tell me,maybe I’ll come. But if you lie, I’ll know.”
“Probably death,” the gunslinger said. “But before thathappens, I don’t think you’ll be bored. I want you to join meon a quest. Of course, all will probably end in death—deathfor
the four of us in a strange place. But if we should winthrough…”His eyes gleamed. “If we win through, Eddie,you’ll see something beyond all the beliefs of all your dreams.”
“What thing?”
“The Dark Tower.”
“Where is this Tower?”
“Far from the beach where you found me. How far I knownot.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know that, either—except that it may be a kind of…of a bolt. A central linchpin
that holds all of existencetogether. All existence, all time, and all size.”
“You said four. Who are the other two?”
“I know them not, for they have yet to be drawn.”
“As I was drawn. Or as you’d like to draw me.”
“Yes.”
From outside there was a coughing explosion like a mor- tar round. The glass of The
Leaning Tower’s front window blew in. The barroom began to fill with choking clouds
oftear-gas.
“Well?” Roland asked. He could grab Eddie, force the doorway into existence by their
contact, and pummel themboth through. But he had seen Eddie risk his life for him; hehad
seen this hag-ridden man behave with all the dignity of aborn gunslinger in spite of his
addiction and the fact that hehad been forced to fight as naked as the day he was born,
andhe wanted Eddie to decide for himself.