Stephen King – The Waste Lands

“Lookit what you did!” Tilly screamed.

“Do I have to do everything around here myself?” Tick-Tock shouted, more exasperated

than angry, it seemed, and rose to his feet. Gasher retreated from him, weaving the bloody

knife back and forth in front of his face in mystic patterns. He kept his other hand planted

firmly on top of his head.

“Draw back,” he panted. “I loves you like a brother, Ticky, but if you don’t draw back, I’ll hide this blade in your guts—so I will.”

“You? Not likely,” the Tick-Tock Man said with a laugh. He removed his own knife from

its scabbard and held it delicately by the bone hilt. All eyes were on the two of them. Jake

took two quick steps to the podium with its little cluster of buttons and reached for the one

he thought the Tick-Took man had pushed.

Gasher was backing along the curved wall, the tubes of light painting his mandrus-riddled

face in a succession of sick colors: bile-green, fever-red, jaundice-yellow. Now it was the

Tick-Tock Man standing below the ventilator grille where Oy was watching.

“Put it down, Gasher,” Tick-Tock said in a reasonable tone of voice. “You brought the boy as I asked; if anyone else gets pricked over this, it’ll be Hoots, not you. Just show me—”

Jake saw Oy crouching to spring and understood two things: what the humbler meant to do

and who had put him up to it.

“Oy, no!” he screamed.

All of them turned to look at him. At that moment Oy leaped, hitting the flimsy ventilator

grille and knocking it free. The Tick-Tock Man wheeled toward die sound, and Oy fell

onto his upturned face, biting and slashing.

32

ROLAND HEARD IT FAINTLY even through the twin doors—Oy, no!—and his heart

sank. He waited for the valve-wheel to turn, but it did not. He closed his eyes and sent with

all his might: The door, Jake! Open the door!

He sensed no response, and the pictures were gone. His communica- tion line with Jake, flimsy to begin with, had now been severed.

33

THE TICK-TOCK MAN blundered backward, cursing and screaming and grabbing at the

writhing, biting, digging thing on his face. He felt Oy’s claws punch into his left eye,

popping it, and a horrible red pain sank into his head like a flaming torch thrown down a

deep well. At that point, rage overwhelmed pain. He seized Oy, tore him off his face, and

held him over his head, meaning to twist him like a rag.

“No!” Jake wailed. He forgot about the button which unlocked the doors and seized the

gun hanging from the back of the chair.

Tilly shrieked. The others scattered. Jake levelled the old German machine-gun at the

Tick-Tock Man. Oy, upside down in those huge, strong hands and bent almost to the

snapping point, writhed madly and slashed his teeth into the air. He shrieked in agony—a

horribly human sound.

“Leave him alone, you bastard!” Jake screamed, and pressed the trigger.

He had enough presence of mind left to aim low. The roar of the Schmeisser .40 was

ear-splitting in the enclosed space, although it fired only five or six rounds. One of the

lighted tubes popped in a burst of cold orange fire. A hole appeared an inch above the left

knee of the Tick-Tock Man’s tight-fitting trousers, and a dark red stain began to spread at

once. Tick-Tock’s mouth opened in a shocked O of surprise, an expression which said more

clearly than words could have done that, for all his intelligence, Tick-Tock had expected to

live a long, happy life where he shot people but was never shot himself. Shot at, perhaps,

but actually hit? That surprised expression said that just wasn’t supposed to be in the cards.

Welcome to the real world, you fuck, Jake thought.

Tick-Tock dropped Oy to the iron grillework floor to grab at his wounded leg. Copperhead

lunged at Jake, got an arm around his throat, and then Oy was on him, barking shrilly and

chewing at Copperhead’s ankle through the black silk pants. Copperhead screamed and

danced away, shaking Oy back and forth at the end of his leg. Oy clung like a limpet. Jake

turned to see the Tick-Tock Man crawling toward him. He had retrieved his knife and the

blade was now clamped between his teeth.

“Goodbye, Ticky,” Jake said, and pressed the Schmeisser’s trigger again. Nothing

happened. Jake didn’t know if it was empty or jammed, and this was hardly the time to

speculate. He took two steps backward before finding further retreat blocked by the big

chair which had served the Tick-Tock Man as a throne. Before he could slip around, putting the chair between them, Tick-Tock had grabbed his ankle. His other hand went to

the hilt of his knife. The ruins of his left eye lay on his cheek like a glob of mint jelly; the right eye glared up at Jake with insane hatred.

Jake tried to pull away from the clutching hand and went sprawling on the Tick-Tock

man’s throne. His eye fell on a pocket which had been sewn into the right-hand arm-rest.

Jutting from the elasticized top was the cracked pearl handle of a revolver.

“Oh, cully, how you’ll suffer!” the Tick-Tock Man whispered ecstati- cally. The O of

surprise had been replaced by a wide, trembling grin. “Oh how you’ll suffer! And how

happy I’ll be to … What—?”

The grin slackened and the surprised O began to reappear as Jake pointed the cheesy

nickel-plated revolver at him and thumbed back the hammer. The grip on Jake’s ankle

tightened until it seemed to him that the bones there must snap.

“You dasn’t!” Tick-Tock said in a screamy whisper.

“Yes I do,” Jake said grimly, and pulled the trigger of the Tick-Tock Man’s runout gun.

There was a Hat crack, much less dramatic than the Schmeisser’s Teutonic roar. A small

black hole appeared high up on the right side of Tick-Tock’s forehead. The Tick-Tock Man

went on staring up at Jake, disbelief in his remaining eye.

Jake tried to make himself shoot him again and couldn’t do it.

Suddenly a flap of the Tick-Tock Man’s scalp peeled away like old wallpaper and dropped

on his right cheek. Roland would have known what this meant; Jake, however, was now

almost beyond coherent thought. A dark, panicky horror was spinning across his mind like

a tornado funnel. He cringed back in the big chair as the hand on his ankle fell away and the

Tick-Tock Man collapsed forward on his face.

The door. He had to open the door and let the gunslinger in.

Focusing on that and nothing but, Jake let the pearl-handled revolver clatter to the iron

grating and pushed himself out of the chair. He was reaching again for the button he

thought he had seen Tick-Tock push when a pair of hands settled around his throat and

dragged him back- ward, away from the podium.

“I said I’d kill you for it, my narsty little pal,” a voice whispered in his ear, “and the Gasherman always keeps his promises.”

Jake flailed behind him with both hands and found nothing but thin air. Gasher’s fingers

sank into his throat, choking relentlessly. The world started to turn gray in front of his eyes.

Gray quickly deepened to purple, and purple to black.

34

A PUMP STARTED UP, and the valve-wheel in the center of the hatch spun rapidly.

Gods be thanked! Roland thought. He seized the wheel with his right hand almost before it

had stopped moving and yanked it open. The other door was ajar; from beyond it came the

sounds of men fighting and Oy’s bark, now shrill with pain and fury.

Roland kicked the door open with his boot and saw Gasher throttling Jake. Oy had left

Copperhead and was now trying to make Gasher let go of Jake, but Gasher’s boot was

doing double duty: protecting its owner from the bumbler’s teeth, and protecting Oy from

the virulent infection which ran in Gasher’s blood. Brandon stabbed Oy in the flank again

in an effort to make him stop worrying Gasher’s ankle, but Oy paid no heed. Jake hung

from his captor’s dirty hands like a puppet whose strings have been cut. His face was

bluish-white, his swollen lips a delicate shade of lavender.

Gasher looked up. “You,” he snarled.

“Me,” Roland agreed. He fired once and tin; left side of Gasher’s head disintegrated. The man went flying backward, bloodstained yellow scarf unravelling, and landed on top of the

Tick-Tock Man. His feet drummed spastically on the iron grillework for a moment and

then fell still.

The gunslinger shot Brandon twice, fanning the hammer of his revolver with the flat of his

right hand. Brandon, who had been bent over Oy for another stroke, spun around, struck

the wall, and slid slowly down it, clutching at one of the tubes. Green swamplight spilled

out from between his loosening fingers.