Stephen King – The Waste Lands

split open. There’s a doll inside the bag. It’s wrapped in a red towel. I’ll see this from the

street. From where I’ll be lying in the street with my blood soaking into my pants and

spreading around me in a pool.

Behind the fat woman was a tall man in a gray nailhead worsted suit. He was carrying a

briefcase.

He’s the one who vomits on his shoes. He’s the one who drops his briefcase and throws up

on his shoes. What’s happening to me?

Yet his feet carried him numbly forward toward the intersection, where people were

crossing in a brisk, steady stream. Somewhere behind him, closing in, was a killer priest.

He knew this, just as he knew that the priest’s hands would in a moment be outstretched to

push . . . but he could not look around. It was like being locked in a nightmare where things

simply had to take their course.

Fifty-three seconds left now. Ahead of him, the pretzel vendor was opening a hatch in the

side of his cart.

He’s going to take out a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, Jake thought. Not a can but a bottle. He’ll

shake it up and drink it all at once.

The pretzel vendor brought out a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, shook it vigor- ously, and spun off the

cap.

Forty seconds left.

Now the light will change.

White WALK went out. Red DONT WALK began to flash rapidly on and off. And

somewhere, less than half a block away, a big blue Cadillac was now rolling toward the

intersection of Fifth and Forty-third. Jake knew this, just as he knew the driver was a fat

man wearing a hat almost the exact same blue shade as his car.

I’m going to die!

He wanted to scream this aloud to the people walking heedlessly all around him, but his jaws were locked shut. His feet swept him serenely onward toward the intersection. The

DONT WALK sign stopped flashing and shone out its solid red warning. The pretzel

vendor tossed his empty Yoo-Hoo bottle into the wire trash basket on the corner. The fat

lady stood on the corner across the street from Jake, holding her shopping bag by the

handles. The man in the nailhead suit was directly behind her. Now there were eighteen

seconds left.

Time for the toy truck to go by, Jake thought.

Ahead of him a van with a picture of a happy jumping-jack and the words TOOKER’S

WHOLESALE TOYS printed on the side swept through the intersection, jolting up and

down in the potholes. Behind him, Jake knew, the man in the black robe was beginning to

move faster, closing the gap, now reaching out with his long hands. Yet he could not look

around, as you couldn’t look around in dreams when something awful was gaining on you.

Run! And if you can’t run, sit down and grab hold of a No Parking sign! Don’t just let it

happen!

But he was powerless to stop it from happening. Ahead, on the edge of the curb, was a

young woman in a white sweater and a black skirt. To her left was a young Chicano guy

with a boombox. A Donna Summer disco tune was just ending. The next song, Jake knew,

would be “Dr. Love,” by Kiss.

They’re going to move apart—

Even as the thought came, the woman moved a step to her right. The Chicano guy moved

a step to his left, creating a gap between them. Jake’s traitor feet swept him into the gap.

Nine seconds now.

Down the street, bright May sunshine twinkled on a Cadillac hood ornament. It was, Jake

knew, a 1976 Sedan de Ville. Six seconds. The Caddy was speeding up. The light was

getting ready to change and the man driving the de Ville, the fat man in the blue hat with

the feather stuck jauntily in the brim, meant to scat through the intersection before it could.

Three seconds. Behind Jake, the man in black was lunging forward. On the young man’s

boombox, “Love to Love You, Baby” ended and “Dr. Love” began.

Two.

The Cadillac changed to the lane nearest Jake’s side of the street and charged down on the

intersection, its killer grille snarling.

One.

Jake’s breath stopped in his throat.

None.

“Uh!” Jake cried as the hands struck him firmly in the back, pushing him, pushing him into the street, pushing him out of his life—

Except there were no hands.

He reeled forward nevertheless, hands flailing at the air, his mouth a dark O of dismay.

The Chicano guy with the boombox reached out, grabbed Jake’s arm, and hauled him

backward. “Look out, little hero,” he said. “That traffic turn you into bratwurst.”

The Cadillac floated by. Jake caught a glimpse of the fat man in the blue hat peering out

through the windshield, and then it was gone.

That was when it happened; that was when he split down the middle and became two boys.

One lay dying in the street. The other stood here on the corner, watching in dumb, stricken

amazement as DONT WALK turned to WALK again and people began to cross around

him just as if nothing had happened … as, indeed, nothing had.

I’m alive! half of his mind rejoiced, screaming with relief.

Dead! the other half screamed back. Dead in the street! They’re all gathering around me,

and the man in black who pushed me is saying, “I am a priest. Let me through.”

Waves of faintness rushed through him and turned his thoughts to billowing parachute silk.

He saw the fat lady approaching, and as she passed, Jake looked into her bag. He saw the

bright blue eyes of a doll peeping above the edge of a red towel, just as he had known he

would. Then she was gone. The pretzel vendor was not yelling Oh my God, he’s kilt; he

was continuing to set up for the day’s business while he whistled the Donna Summer tune

that had been playing on the Chicano guy’s radio.

Jake turned around, looking wildly for the priest who was not a priest. He wasn’t there.

Jake moaned.

Snap out of it! What’s wrong with you?

He didn’t know. He only knew he was supposed to be lying in the street right now, getting

ready to die while the fat woman screamed and the guy in the nailhead worsted suit threw

up and the man in black pushed through the gathering crowd.

And in part of his mind, that did seem to be happening.

The faintness began to return. Jake suddenly dropped his lunch sack to the pavement and

slapped himself across the face as hard as he could. A woman on her way to work gave him

a queer look. Jake ignored her. He left his lunch lying on the sidewalk and plunged into the

intersection, also ignoring the red DONT WALK light, which had begun to stutter on and off again. It didn’t matter now. Death had approached . . . and then passed by without a

second glance. It hadn’t been meant to happen that way, and on the deepest level of his

exis- tence he knew that, but it had.

Maybe now he would live forever.

The thought made him feel like screaming all over again.

6

His HEAD HAD CLEARED a little by the time he got to school, and his mind had gone to

work trying to convince him that nothing was wrong, really nothing at all. Maybe

something a little weird had happened, some sort of psychic flash, a momentary peek into

one possible future, but so what? No big deal, right? The idea was actually sort of

cool—the kind of thing they were always printing in the weird supermarket newspapers

Greta Shaw liked to read when she was sure Jake’s mother wasn’t around—papers like the

National Enquirer and Inside View. Except, of course, in those papers the psychic flash

was always a kind of tactical nuclear strike—a woman who dreamed of a plane crash and

changed her reservations, or a guy who dreamed his brother was being held prisoner in a

Chinese fortune cookie factory and it turned out to be true. When your psychic flash

consisted of knowing that a Kiss song was going to play next on the radio, that a fat lady

had a doll wrapped in a red towel in her Bloomingdale’s bag, and that a pretzel vendor was

going to drink a bottle of Yoo-Hoo instead of a can, how big a deal could it be?

Forget it, he advised himself. It’s over.

A great idea, except by period three he knew it wasn’t over; it was just beginning. He sat in

pre-algebra, watching Mr. Knopf solving simple equations on the board, and realized with

dawning horror that a whole new set of memories was surfacing in his mind. It was like

watching strange objects float slowly toward the surface of a muddy lake.