“Come on.” The gunslinger got slowly to his feet. He swayed for a moment, saw Eddie
looking at him, and smiled. “I’ll be all right.”
“For how long?”
“As long as I have to be,” the gunslinger answered, and the serenity in his voice chilled Eddie’s heart.
12
That night the gunslinger used his last sure live cartridge to make their kill. He would start
systematically testing the ones he believed to be duds tomorrow night, but he believed it
was pretty much as Eddie had said: They were down to beating the damned things to death.
It was like the other nights: the fire, the cooking, the shelling, the eating—eating which
was now slow and unenthusiastic. We’re just gassing up, Eddie thought. They offered food to Detta, who screamed and laughed and cursed and asked how long they was goan take her
for a fool, and then she began throwing her body wildly from one side to the other, never
minding how her bonds grew steadily tighter, only trying to upset the chair to one side or
the other so they would have to pick her up again before they could eat.
Just before she could manage the trick, Eddie grabbed her and Roland braced the wheels
on either sides with rocks.
“I’ll loosen the ropes a bit if you’ll be still,” Roland told her.
“Suck shit out my ass, mahfah!”
“I don’t understand if that means yes or no.”
She looked at him, eyes narrowed, suspecting some bur- ied barb of satire in that calm
voice (Eddie also wondered, but couldn’t tell if there was or not), and after a moment she
saidsulkily, “I be still. Too damn hungry to kick up much dickens. You boys goan give me
some real food or you jes goan starve me to death? Dat yo plan? You too chickenshit to
choke me and I ain’t nev’ goan eat no poison, so dat must be you plan. Starve me out. Well, we see, sho. We goan see. Sho we are.”
She offered them her bone-chilling sickle of a grin again.
Not long after she fell asleep.
Eddie touched the side of Roland’s face. Roland glanced at him but did not pull away from
the touch.
“I’m all right.”
“Yeah, you’re Jim-dandy. Well, I tell you what, Jim, we didn’t get along very far today.”
“I know.” There was also the matter of having used the last live shell, but that was
knowledge Eddie could do without, at least tonight. Eddie wasn’t sick, but he was
exhausted. Too exhausted for more bad news.
No, he’s not sick, not yet, but if he goes too long without rest, gets tired enough,
he’llget sick.
In a way, Eddie already was; both of them were. Cold-sores had developed at the corners
of Eddie’s mouth, and there was scaly patches on his skin. The gunslinger could feel his
teeth loosening up in their sockets, and the flesh between his toes had begun to crack open
and bleed, as had that between his remaining fingers. They were eating, but they were
eating the same thing, day in and day out. They could go on that way for a time, but in the
end they would die as surely as if they had starved.
What we have is Shipmate’s Disease on dry land,Roland thought. Simple as that. How
funny. We need fruit. We need greens.
Eddie nodded toward the Lady. “She’s going to go right on making it tough.”
“Unless the other one inside her comes back.”
“That would be nice, but we can’t count on it,” Eddie said. He took a piece of blackened claw and began to scrawl aimless patterns in the dirt. “Any idea how far the next door
might be?”
Roland shook his head.
“I only ask because if the distance between Number Two and Number Three is the same as
the distance between Number One and Number Two, we could be in deep shit.”
“We’re in deep shit right now.”
“Neck deep,” Eddie agreed moodily. “I just keep wonder- ing how long I can tread water.”
Roland clapped him on the shoulder, a gesture of affec- tion so rare it made Eddie blink.
“There’s one thing that Lady doesn’t know,” he said.
“Oh? What’s that?”
“We Honk Mahfahs can tread water a long time.”
Eddie laughed at that, laughed hard, smothering his laughter against his arm so he
wouldn’t wake Delta up. He’d had enough of her for one day, please and thank you.
The gunslinger looked at him, smiling. “I’m going to turn in,” he said. “Be—”
“—on my guard. Yeah. I will.”
13
Screaming was next.
Eddie fell asleep the moment his head touched the bunched bundle of his shirt, and it
seemed only five minutes later when Delta began screaming.
He was awake at once, ready for anything, some King Lobster arisen from the deep to take
revenge for its slain children or a horror down from the hills. It seemed he was awake at
once, anyway, but the gunslinger was already on his feet, a gun in his left hand.
When she saw they were both awake, Delta promptly quit screaming.
“Jes thought I’d see if you boys on yo toes,” she said. “Might be woofs. Looks likely enough country for ’em. Wanted to make sho if I saw me a woof creepin up, I could get you
on yo feet in time.” But there was no fear in her eyes; they glinted with mean amusement.
“Christ,” Eddie said groggily. The moon was up but barely risen; they had been asleep less than two hours.
The gunslinger bolstered his gun.
“Don’t do it again,” he said to the Lady in the wheelchair.
“What you goan do if I do? Rape me?”
“If we were going to rape you, you would be one well-raped woman by now,” the
gunslinger said evenly. “Don’t do it again.”
He lay down again, pulling his blanket over him.
Christ, dear Christ,Eddie thought, what a mess this is, what a fucking . . . and that was as far as the thought went before trailing off into exhausted sleep again and then she was
splintering the air with fresh shrieks, shrieking like a firebell, and Eddie was up again, his
body flaming with adrenaline, hands clenched, and then she was laughing, her voice hoarse
and raspy.
Eddie glanced up and saw the moon had advanced less than ten degrees since she had
awakened them the first time.
She means to keep on doing it,he thought wearily. She means to stay awake and watch us,
and when she’s sure we’re getting down into deep sleep, that place where you recharge,
she’s going to open her mouth and start bellowing again. She’ll do it and do it and do it
until she doesn’t have any voice left to bellow with.
Her laughter stopped abruptly. Roland was advancing on her, a dark shape in the
moonlight.
“You jes stay away from me, graymeat,” Delta said, but there was a quiver of nerves in her voice. “You ain’t goan do nothing to me.”
Roland stood before her and for a moment Eddie was sure, completely sure, that the
gunslinger had reached the end of his patience and would simply swat her like a fly. Instead,
astoundingly, he dropped to one knee before her like a suitor about to propose marriage.
“Listen,” he said, and Eddie could scarcely credit the silky quality of Roland’s voice. He could see much the same deep surprise on Delta’s face, only there fear was joined to it.
“Listen to me, Odetta.”
“Who you callin O-Detta? Dat ain my name.”
“Shut up, bitch,” the gunslinger said in a growl, and then, reverting to that same silken voice: “If you hear me, and if you can control her at all—”
“Why you talkin at me dat way? Why you talkin like you was talkin to somebody else?
You quit dat honky jive! You jes quit it now, you hear me?”
“—keep her shut up. I can gag her, but I don’t want to do that. A hard gag is a dangerous
business. People choke.”
“YOU QUIT IT YOU HONKY BULLSHIT VOO- DOO MAHFAH!”
“Odetta.” His voice was a whisper, like the onset of rain.
She fell silent, staring at him with huge eyes. Eddie had never in his life seen such hate and
fear combined in human eyes.
“I don’t think this bitch would care if she did die on a hard gag. She wants to die, but maybe even more, she wants you to die. But you haven’t died, not so far, and I don’t think Delta is brand-new in your life. She feels too at home in you, so maybe you can hear what I’m
saying, and maybe you can keep some control over her even if you can’t come out yet.
“Don’t let her wake us up a third time, Odetta.
“I don’t want to gag her.
“But if I have to, I will.”
He got up, left without looking back, rolled himself into his blanket again, and promptly