Stephen King – The Waste Lands

to him and leaning on the gunslinger’s shoulder. And sitting on the step right behind them,

looking up with his bright eyes was Oy.

“Roland! Jake!” Eddie shouted. He leaped up, waving his hands over his head, and came down dancing on the edge of the slot. If he had been wearing a hat, he would have thrown it

in the air.

They looked up and waved. Jake was grinning, Eddie saw, and even old long tall and ugly

looked as if he might break down and crack a smile before long. Wonders, Eddie thought,

would never cease. His heart suddenly felt too big for his chest and he danced faster,

waving his arms and whooping, afraid that if he didn’t keep moving, his joy and relief

might actually cause him to burst. Until this moment he had not realized how positive his

heart had become that they would never see Roland and Jake again.

“Hey, guys! All RIGHT! Far fucking out! Get your asses up here!”

“Eddie, help me!

He turned. Susannah was trying to struggle out of her chair, but a fold of the deerskin

trousers she was wearing had gotten caught in the brake mechanism. She was laughing and

weeping at the same time, her dark eyes blazing with happiness. Eddie lifted her from the

chair so violently that it crashed over on its side. He danced her around in a circle. She

clung to his neck with one hand and waved strenuously with the other.

“Roland! Jake! Get on up here! Shuck your butts, you hear me?”

When they reached the top, Eddie embraced Roland, pounding him on the back while

Susannah covered Jake’s upturned, laughing face with kisses. Oy ran around in tight figure

eights, barking shrilly.

“Sugar!” Susannah said. “You all right?”

“Yes,” Jake said. He was still grinning, but tears stood in his eyes. “And glad to be here.

You’ll never know how glad.”

“I can guess, sugar. You c’n bet on that.” She turned to look at Roland. “What’d they do to him? His face look like somebody run over it with a bulldozer.”

“That was mostly Gasher,” Roland said. “He won’t be bothering Jake again. Or anyone else.”

“What about you, big boy? You all right?”

Roland nodded, looking about. “So this is the Cradle.”

“Yes,” Eddie said. He was peering into the slot. “What’s down there?”

“Machines and madness.”

“Loquacious as ever, I see.” Eddie looked at Roland, smiling. “Do you know how happy I am to see you, man? Do you have any idea?”

“Yes—I think I do.” Roland smiled then, thinking of how people changed. There had been a time, and not so long ago, when Eddie had been on the edge of cutting his throat with the

gunslinger’s own knife.

The engines below them started up again. The escalator came to a stop. The slot in the

floor began to slide closed once more. Jake went to Susannah’s overturned chair, and as he

was righting it, he caught sight of the smooth pink shape beyond the iron bars. His breath

stopped, and the dream he had had after leaving River Crossing returned full force: the vast

pink bullet shape slicing across the empty lands of western Mis- souri toward him and Oy.

Two big triangular windows glittering high up in the blank face of that oncoming monster,

windows like eyes . . . and now his dream was becoming reality, just as he had known it

eventually would.

It’s just an awful choo-choo train, and its name is Blaine the Pain.

Eddie walked over and slung an arm around Jake’s shoulders. “Well, there it is,

champ—just as advertised. What do you think of it?”

“Not too much, actually.” This was an understatement of colossal size, but Jake was too drained to do any better.

“Me, either,” Eddie said. “It talks. And it likes riddles.”

Jake nodded.

Roland had Susannah planted on one hip, and together they were examining the control

box with its diamond-pattern of raised number-pads. Jake and Eddie joined them. Eddie

found he had to keep looking down at Jake in order to verify that it wasn’t just his

imagination or wishful thinking; the boy was really here.

“What now?” he asked Roland.

Roland slipped his finger lightly over the numbered buttons which made up the diamond

shape and shook his head. He didn’t know.

“Because I think the mono’s engines are cycling faster,” Eddie said. “I mean, it’s hard to tell for sure with that alarm blatting, but I think it is … and it’s a robot, after all. What if it, like, leaves without us?”

“Blaine!” Susannah shouted. “Blaine, are you—”

“LISTEN CLOSELY, MY FRIENDS,” Blaine’s voice boomed. “THERE ARE LARGE

STOCKPILES OF CHEMICAL AND BIO- LOGICAL WARFARE CANNISTERS

UNDER THE CITY. I HAVE STARTED A SEQUENCE WHICH WILL CAUSE AN

EXPLOSION AND RELEASE THIS GAS. THIS EXPLOSION WILL OCCUR IN

TWELVE MINUTES.”

The voice fell silent for a moment, and then the voice of Little Blaine, almost buried by the

steady, pulsing whoop of the alarm, came to them: “. . . / was afraid of something like

this . . . you must hurry …”

Eddie ignored Little Blaine, who wasn’t telling him a damned thing he didn’t already know.

Of course they had to hurry, but that fact was running a distant second at the moment.

Something much larger occu- pied most of his mind. “Why?” he asked. “Why in God’s name would you do that?”

“I SHOULD THINK IT OBVIOUS. I CAN’T NUKE THE CITY WITHOUT

DESTROYING MYSELF, AS WELL. AND HOW COULD I TAKE YOU WHERE YOU

WANT TO GO IF I WERE DESTROYED?”

“But there are still thousands of people in the city,” Eddie said. “You’ll kill them.”

“YES,” Blaine said calmly. “SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE

CROCODILE, DON’T FORGET TO WRITE.”

“Why?” Susannah shouted. “Why, goddam you?”

“BECAUSE THEY BORE ME. YOU FOUR, HOWEVER, I FIND RATHER

INTERESTING. OF COURSE, HOW LONG I CONTINUE TO FIND YOU

INTERESTING WILL DEPEND ON HOW GOOD YOUR RIDDLES ARE. AND

SPEAKING OF RIDDLES, HADN’T YOU BETTER GET TO WORK SOLVING MINE?

YOU HAVE EXACTLY ELEVEN MINUTES AND TWENTY SECONDS BEFORE

THE CANNISTERS RUPTURE.”

“Stop it!” Jake yelled over the blatting siren. “It isn’t just the city— gas like that could float anywhere! It could even kill the old people in River Crossing!”

“TOUGH TITTY, SAID THE KITTY,” Blaine responded unfeel- ingly. “ALTHOUGH I

BELIEVE THEY CAN COUNT ON MEASUR- ING OUT THEIR LIVES IN

COFFEE-SPOONS FOR A FEW MORE YEARS; THE AUTUMN STORMS HAVE

BEGUN, AND THE PRE- VAILING WINDS WILL CARRY THE GASES AWAY

FROM THEM. THE SITUATION OF YOU FOUR IS, HOWEVER, VERY

DIFFER- ENT. YOU BETTERPUT ON YOUR THINKING CAPS, OR IT’S SEE YOU

LATER ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE CROCODILE, DON’T FORGET TO

WRITE.” The voice paused. “ONE PIECE OF ADDI- TIONAL INPUT: THIS GAS IS

NOT PAINLESS.”

“Take it back!” Jake said. “We’ll still tell you riddles, won’t we, Roland? We’ll tell all the riddles you want! Just take it back!”

Blaine began to laugh. He laughed for a long time, pealing shrieks of electronic mirth into the wide empty space of the Cradle, where it mingled with the monotonous, drilling beat of

the alarm.

“Stop it!” Susannah shouted. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”

Blaine did. A moment later the alarm cut off in mid-blat. The ensu- ing silence—broken

only by the pounding rain—was deafening.

Now the voice issuing from the speaker was very soft, thoughtful, and utterly without

mercy. “YOU NOW HAVE TEN MINUTES,” Blaine said. “LET’S SEE JUST HOW

INTERESTING YOU REALLY ARE.”

40

“ANDREW.”

There is no Andrew here, stranger, he thought. Andrew is long gone; Andrew is no more,

as I shall soon be no more.

“Andrew!” the voice insisted.

It came from far away. It came from outside the cider-press that had once been his head.

Once there had been a boy named Andrew, and his father had taken that boy to a park on

the far western side of Lud, a park where there had been apple trees and a rusty tin shack

that looked like hell and smelled like heaven. In answer to his question, Andrew’s father

had told him it was called the cider house. Then he gave Andrew a pat on the head, told him

not to be afraid, and led him through the blanket-covered doorway.

There had been more apples—baskets and baskets of them—stacked against the walls

inside, and there had also been a scrawny old man named Dewlap, whose muscles writhed

beneath his white skin like worms and whose job was to feed the apples, basket by basket,

to the loose-jointed, clanking machine which stood in the middle of the room. What came

out of the pipe jutting from the far end of the machine was sweet cider. Another man (he no

longer remembered what this one’s name might have been) stood there, his job to fill jug

after jug with the cider. A third man stood behind him, and his job was to clout the jug-filler