moment, just as he ceased hoping that Detta would recognize that his death would almost
cer- tainly strand her in this world forever. He had believed until fifteen minutes ago that
she was bluffing; now he knew better.
Well, it’ll be better than strangling an inch at a time,he thought, but after seeing the
loathsome lobster-things night after night, he really didn’t believe that was true. He hoped
he would be able to die without screaming. He didn’t think this would be possible, but he
intended to try.
“They be comin fo you, honky!” Detta screeched. “Becomin any minute now! Goan be the best dinner those daddies evah had!”
It wasn’t just a bluff, Odetta wasn’t coming back. . . and the gunslinger wasn’t, either. This
last hurt the most, some- how. He had been sure he and the gunslinger had become— well,
partners if not brothers—during their trek up the beach, and Roland would at least make
an effort to stand by him.
But Roland wasn’t coming.
Maybe it isn’t that he doesn’twant to come. Maybe he can’t come. Maybe he’s dead, killed by a security guard in a drugstore—shit, that’d be a laugh, the world’s last gunslinger killed
by a Rent-A-Cop—or maybe run over by a taxi. Maybe he’s dead and the door’s gone.
Maybe that’s why she’s not running a bluff. Maybe there’s no bluff to run.
“Goan be any minute now!” Delta screamed, and then Eddie didn’t have to worry about his retinas anymore, because that last bright slice of light disappeared, leaving only afterglow.
He stared at the waves, the bright afterimage slowly fad- ing from his eyes, and waited for
the first of the lobstrosities to come rolling and tumbling out of the waves.
12
Eddie tried to turn his head to avoid the first one, but he was too slow. It ripped off a
swatch of his face with one claw, splattering his left eye to jelly and revealing the bright
gleam of bone in the twilight as it asked its questions and the Really Bad Woman
laughed . . .
Stop it,Roland commanded himself. Thinking such thoughts is worse than helpless; it is a
distraction. And it need not be. There may still be time.
And there still was—then. As Roland strode down Forty-Ninth street in Jack Mort’s body,
arms swinging, bullshooter’s eyes fixed firmly upon the sign which read DRUGS,
oblivious to the stares he was getting and the way people swerved to avoid him, the sun was
still up in Roland’s world. Its lower rim would not touch the place where sea met sky for
another fifteen minutes or so. If Eddie’s time of agony was to come, it was still ahead.
The gunslinger did not know this for a fact, however; he only knew it was later over there
than here and while the sun should still be up over there, the assumption that time in this world and his own ran at the same speed might be a deadly one . . . especially for Eddie,
who would die the death of unimag- inable horror that his mind nevertheless kept trying to
imagine.
The urge to look back, to see, was almost insurmounta- ble. Yet he dared not. Must not.
The voice of Cort interrupted the run of his thoughts sternly: Control the things you can
control, maggot. Let every- thing else take a flying fuck at you, and if you must go down, go down with your guns blazing.
Yes.
But it was hard.
Veryhard, sometimes.
He would have seen and understood why people were staring at him and then veering
away if he had been a little less savagely fixed on finishing his work in this world as soon
as he could and getting the hell out, but it would have changed nothing. He strode so
rapidly toward the blue sign where, according to the Mortcypedia, he could get the Ke-flex
stuff his body needed, that Mort’s suitcoat flapped out behind him in spite of the heavy lead
weighting in each pocket. The gunbelts buckled across his hips were clearly revealed. He
wore them not as their owners had, straight and neat, but as he wore his own, criss-cross,
low-hung on his hips.
To the shoppers, hoppers, and hawkers on Forty-Ninth, he looked much as he had looked
to Fat Johnny: like a desperado.
Roland reached Katz’s Drug Store and went in.
13
The gunslinger had known magicians, enchanters, and alchemists in his time. Some had
been clever charlatans, some stupid fakes in whom only people more stupid than they were
themselves could believe (but there had never been a shortage of fools in the world, so even
the stupid fakes survived; in fact most actually thrived), and a small few actually able to do
those black things of which men whisper—these few could call demons and the dead,
could kill with a curse or heal with strange potions. One of these men had been a creature
the gunslinger believed to be a demon himself, a creature that pretended to be a man and
called itself Flagg. He had seen him only briefly, and that had been near the end, as chaos
and the final crash approached his land. Hot on his heels had come two young men who
looked desperate and yet grim, men named Dennis and Thomas. These three had crossed
only a tiny part of what had been a confused and confusing time in the gunslinger’s life, but
he would never forget seeing Flagg change a man who had irritated him into a howling dog.
He remembered that well enough. Then there had been the man in black.
And there had been Marten.
Marten who had seduced his mother while his father was away, Marten who had tried to
author Roland’s death but had instead authored his early manhood, Marten who, he
sus- pected, he might meet again before he reached the Tower . . . or at it.
This is only to say that his experience of magic and magicians had led him to expect
something quite different than what he did find in Katz’s Drug Store.
He had anticipated a dim, candle-lit room full of bitter fumes, jars of unknown powders
and liquids and philters, many covered with a thick layer of dust or spun about with a
century’s cobwebs. He had expected a man in a cowl, a man who might be dangerous. He
saw people moving about inside through the transparent plate-glass windows, as casually
as they would in any shop, and believed they must be an illusion.
They weren’t.
So for a moment the gunslinger merely stood inside the door, first amazed, then ironically
amused. Here he was in a world which struck him dumb with fresh wonders seemingly at
every step, a world where carriages flew through the air and paper seemed as cheap as sand.
And the newest wonder was simply that for these people, wonder had run out: here, in a
place of miracles, he saw only dull faces and plodding bodies.
There were thousands of bottles, there were potions, there were philters, but the
Mortcypedia identified most as quack remedies. Here was a salve that was supposed to
restore fallen hair but would not; there a cream which promised to erase unsightly spots on
the hands and arms but lied. Here were cures for things that needed no curing: things to
make your bowels run or stop them up, to make your teeth white and your hair black, things
to make your breath smell better as if you could not do that by chewing alder-bark. No
magic here; only trivialities—although there was astin, and a few other reme- dies which
sounded as if they might be useful. But for the most part, Roland was appalled by the place.
In a place that prom- ised alchemy but dealt more in perfume than potion, was it any
wonder that wonder had run out?
But when he consulted the Mortcypedia again, he discov- ered that the truth of this place
was not just in the things he was looking at. The potions that really worked were kept safely
out of sight. One could only obtain these if you had a sorcerer’s fiat. In this world, such
sorcerers were called DOCKTORS, and they wrote their magic formulae on sheets of
paper which the Mortcypedia called REXES. The gunslinger didn’t know the word. He
supposed he could have consulted further on the matter, but didn’t bother. He knew what he
needed, and a quick look into the Mortcypedia told him where in the store he could get it.
He strode down one of the aisles toward a high counter with the words PRESCRIPTIONS
FILLED over it.
14
The Katz who had opened Katz’s Pharmacy and Soda Fountain (Sundries and Notions for
Misses and Misters) on 49th Street in 1927 was long in his grave, and his only son looked
ready for his own. Although he was only forty-six, he looked twenty years older. He was