Stephen King – The Waste Lands

“You scared it away!” Jake accused.

“Jeez, I’m sorry,” Eddie said. He ran a hand through his sleep-corkscrewed hair. “If I’d known it was one of your close personal friends, Jake, I would have dragged out the

goddam coffee-cake.”

Roland clapped Jake briefly on the shoulder. “It’ll be back.”

“Are you sure?”

“If something doesn’t kill it, yes. We fed it, didn’t we?”

Before Jake could reply, the sound of the drums began again. This was the third morning

they had heard them, and twice the sound had come to them as afternoon slipped down

toward evening: a faint, toneless thudding from the direction of the city. The sound was

clearer this morn- ing, if no more comprehensible. Jake hated it. It was as if, somewhere out

in that thick and featureless blanket of morning mist, the heart of some big animal was

beating.

“You still don’t have any idea what that is, Roland?” Susannah asked. She had slipped on her shift, tied back her hair, and was now folding the blankets beneath which she and Eddie

had slept.

“No. But I’m sure vve’ll find out.”

“How reassuring,” Eddie said sourly.

Roland got to his feet. “Come on. Let’s not waste the day.”

2

THE FOG BEGAN TO unravel after they had been on the road for an hour or so. They

took turns pushing Susannah’s chair, and it jolted unhappily along, for the road was now

mined with large, rough cobblestones. By midmorning the day was fair, hot, and cloudless;

the city skyline stood out clearly on the southeastern horizon. To Jake it didn’t look much

different from the skyline of New York, although he thought these build- ings might not be

as high. If the place had fallen apart, as most things in Roland’s world apparently had, you

certainly couldn’t tell it from here. Like Eddie, Jake had begun to entertain the unspoken

hope that they might find help there … or at least a good hot meal.

To their left, thirty or forty miles away, they could see the broad sweep of the Send River.

Birds circled above it in large flocks. Every now and then one would fold its wings and

drop like a stone, probably on a fishing expedition. The road and the river were moving slowly toward one another, although the junction point could not yet be seen.

They could see more buildings ahead. Most looked like farms, and all appeared deserted.

Some of them had fallen down, but these wrecks seemed to be the work of time rather than

violence, furthering Eddie’s and Jake’s hopes of what they might find in the city—hopes

each had kept strictly within himself, lest the others scoff. Small herds of shaggy beasts

grazed their way across the plains. They kept well away from the road except to cross, and

this they did quickly, at a gallop, like packs of small children afraid of traffic. They looked

like bison to Jake . . . except he saw several which had two heads. He mentioned this to the

gunslinger and Roland nodded.

“Muties.”

“Like under the mountains?” Jake heard the fear in his own voice and knew the gunslinger must, also, but he was helpless to keep it out. He remembered that endless nightmare

journey on the handcart very well.

“I think that here the mutant strains are being bred out. The things we found under the

mountains were still getting worse.”

“What about up there?” Jake pointed toward the city. “Will there be mutants there, or—”

He found it was as close as he could come to voicing his hope.

Roland shrugged. “I don’t know, Jake. I’d tell you if I did.”

They were passing an empty building—almost surely a farmhouse— that had been

partially burnt. But that amid have been lighting, Jake thought, and wondered which it was

he was trying to do—explain to himself or fool himself.

Roland, perhaps reading his mind, put an arm around Jake’s shoul- ders. “No use even

trying to guess, Jake,” he said. “Whatever happened here happened long ago.” He pointed.

“That over there was probably a corral. Now it’s just a few sticks poking out of the grass.”

“The world has moved on, right?”

Roland nodded.

“What about the people? Did they go to the city, do you think?”

“Some may have,” Roland said. “Some are still around.”

“What?” Susannah jerked around to look at him, startled.

Roland nodded. “We’ve been watched the last couple of days. There aren’t a lot of folk

denning in these old buildings, but there are some. There’ll be more as we get closer to

civilization.” He paused. “Or what used to be civilization.”

“How do you know they’re there?” Jake asked.

“Smelled them. Seen a few gardens hidden behind banks of weeds grown purposely to

hide the crops. And at least one working windmill way back in a grove of trees. Mostly,

though, it’s just a feeling . . . like shade on your face instead of sunshine. It’ll come to you three in time, I imagine.”

“Do you think they’re dangerous?” Susannah asked. They were approaching a large,

ramshackle building that might once have been a storage shed or an abandoned country

market, and she eyed it uneasily, her hand dropping to the butt of the gun she wore on her

chest.

“Will a strange dog bite?” the gunslinger countered.

“What’s that mean?” Eddie asked. “I hate it when you start up with your Zen Buddhist shit, Roland.”

“It means I don’t know,” Roland said. “Who is this man Zen Bud- dhist? Is he wise like me?”

Eddie looked at Roland for a long, long time before deciding the gunslinger was making

one of his rare jokes. “Ah, get outta here,” he said. He saw one corner of Roland’s mouth twitch before he turned away. As Eddie started to push Susannah’s chair again, something

else caught his eye. “Hey, Jake!” he called. “I think you made a friend!”

Jake looked around, and a big grin overspread his face. Forty yards to the rear, the scrawny

billy-bumbler was limping industriously after them, sniffing at the weeds which grew

between the crumbling cobbles of the Great Road.

3

SOME HOURS LATER ROLAND called a halt and told them to be ready.

“For what?” Eddie asked.

Roland glanced at him. “Anything.”

It was perhaps three o’clock in the afternoon. They were standing at a point where the

Great Road crested a long, rolling drumlin which ran diagonally across the plain like a

wrinkle in the world’s biggest bed- spread. Below and beyond, the road ran through the first

real town they had seen. It looked deserted, but Eddie had not forgotten the conversa- tion that morning. Roland’s question—Will a strange dog bite?—no longer seemed quite so

Zenny.

“Jake?”

“What?”

Eddie nodded to the butt of the Ruger, which protruded from the waistband of Jake’s

bluejeans—the extra pair he had tucked into his pack before leaving home. “Do you want

me to carry that?”

Jake glanced at Roland. The gunslinger only shrugged, as if to say It’s your choice.

“Okay.” Jake handed it over. He unshouldered his pack, rummaged through it, and brought out the loaded clip. He could remember reaching behind the hanging files in one of his

father’s desk drawers to get it, but all that seemed to have occurred a long, long time ago.

These days, thinking about his life in New York and his career as a student at Piper was like

looking into the wrong end of a telescope.

Eddie took the clip, examined it, rammed it home, checked the safety, then stuck the Ruger

in his own belt.

“Listen closely and heed me well,” Roland said. “If there are people, they’ll likely be old and much more frightened of us than we are of them. The younger folk will be long gone.

It’s unlikely that those left will have firearms—in fact, ours may be the first guns many of

them have ever seen, except maybe for a picture or two in the old books. Make no

threatening gestures. And the childhood rule is a good one: speak only when spoken to.”

“What about bows and arrows?” Susannah asked.

“Yes, they may have those. Spears and clubs, as well.”

“Don’t forget rocks,” Eddie said bleakly, looking down at the cluster of wooden buildings.

The place looked like a ghost-town, but who knew for sure? “And if they’re hard up for

rocks, there’s always the cobbles from the road.”

“Yes, there’s always something,” Roland agreed. “But we’ll start no trouble ourselves—is that clear?”

They nodded.

“Maybe it would be easier to detour around.” Susannah said.

Roland nodded, eyes never leaving the simple geography ahead. Another road crossed the

Great Road at the center of the town, making the dilapidated buildings look like a target

centered in the telescopic sight of a high-powered rifle. “It would, but we won’t.

Detouring’s a bad habit that’s easy to get into. It’s always better to go straight on, unless