Stephen King – The Waste Lands

eighty wheels, and six died on the way. Half fell to harriers bound for the war in the city;

the other half died either of disease or devilgrass.

“When they finally arrived, they found the castle deserted but for the rooks and black-birds.

The walls had been broken; weeds o’ergrew the Court o’ State. There had been a great

slaughter on the fields to the west; it were white with bones and red with rusty armor, so my

da’s gran’da said, and the voices of demons cried out like the east wind from the jawbones

o’ those who’d fallen there. The village beyond the castle had been burned to the ground

and a thousand or more skulls were posted along the walls of the keep. Our folk left their

bounty o’ hides without the shattered barbican gate—for none would venture inside that

place of ghosts and moaning voices—and began the homeward way again. Ten more fell

on that journey, so that of the six-and-twenty who left only ten returned, my great-gran’da

one of them . . . but he picked up a ring- worm on his neck and bosom that never left until

the day he died. It were the radiation sickness, or so they said. After that, gunslinger, none

left the town. We were on our own.”

They grew used to the depredations of the harriers, Si continued in his cracked but

melodious voice. Watches were posted; when bands of riders were seen

approaching—almost always moving southeast along the Great Road and the path of the

Beam, going to the war which raged endlessly in Lud—the townspeople hid in a large

shelter they had dug beneath the church. Casual damages to the town were not repaired, lest

they make those roving bands curious. Most were beyond curiosity; they only rode through at a gallop, bows or battle-axes slung over their shoul- ders, bound for the killing-zones.

“What war is it that you speak of?” Roland asked.

“Yes,” Eddie said, “and what about that drumming sound?”

The twins again exchanged a quick, almost superstitious glance.

“We know not of the god-drums,” Si told them. “Ary word or watch. The war of the city, now …”

The war had originally been the harriers and outlaws against a loose confederation of

artisans and “manufactories” who lived in the city. The residents had decided to fight instead of allowing the harriers to loot them, burn their shops, and then turn the survivors

out into the Big Empty, where they would almost certainly die. And for some years they

had successfully defended Lud against the vicious but badly organized groups of raiders

which tried to storm across the bridge or invade by boat and barge.

“The city-folk used the old weapons,” one of the twins said, “and though their numbers were small, the harriers could not stand against such things with their bows and maces and

battle-axes.”

“Do you mean the city-people used guns?” Eddie asked.

One of the albinos nodded. “Ay, guns, but not just guns. There were things that hurled the

firebangs over a mile or more. Explosions like dynamite, only more powerful. The

outlaws—who are now the Grays, as you must ken—could do nothing but lay siege beyond

the river, and that was what they did.”

Lud became, in effect, the last fortress-refuge of the latter world. The brightest and most

able travelled there from the surrounding coun- tryside by ones and twos. When it came to

intelligence tests, sneaking through the tangled encampments and front lines of the

besiegers was the newcomers’ final exam. Most came unarmed across the no-man’s-land of

the bridge, and those who made it that far were let through. Some were found wanting and

sent packing again, of course, but those who had a trade or a skill (or brains enough to learn

one) were allowed to stay. Farming skills were particularly prized; according to the stories,

every large park in Lud had been turned into a vegetable garden. With the countryside cut

off, it was grow food in the city or starve amid the glass towers and metal alleys. The Great

Old Ones were gone, their machines were a mystery, and the silent wonders which

remained were inedible.

Little by little, the character of the war began to change. The bal- ance of power had shifted

to the besieging Grays—so called because they were, on average, much older than the

city-dwellers. Those latter were also growing older, of course. They were still known as

Pubes, but in most cases their puberty was long behind them. And they eventually either

forgot how the old weapons worked or used them up.

“Probably both,” Roland grunted.

Some ninety years ago—within the lifetimes of Si and Aunt Talitha— a final band of

outlaws had appeared, one so large that the outriders had gone galloping through River

Crossing at dawn and the drogues did not pass until almost sundown. It was the last army

these parts had ever seen, and it was led by a warrior prince named David Quick—the same

fellow who supposedly later fell to his death from the sky. He had orga- nized the

raggle-taggle remnants of the outlaw bands which still hung about the city, killing anyone

who showed opposition to his plans. Quick’s army of Grays used neither boat nor bridge to

attempt entry into the city, but instead built a pontoon bridge twelve miles below it and

attacked on the flank.

“Since then the war has guttered like a chimney-fire,” Aunt Talitha finished. “We hear reports every now and then from someone who has managed to leave, ay, so we do. These

come a little more often now, for the bridge, they say, is undefended and I think the fire is

almost out. Within the city, the Pubes and Grays squabble over the remaining spoils, only I

reckon that the descendents of the harriers who followed Quick over the pontoon bridge are

the real Pubes now, although they are still called Grays. The descendents of the original

city-dwellers must now be almost as old as we are, although there are still some younkers

who go to be among them, drawn by the old stories and the lure of the knowl- edge which

may still remain there.

“These two sides still keep up their old enmity, gunslinger, and both would desire this

young man you call Eddie. If the dark-skinned woman is fertile, they would not kill her

even though her legs are short-ended; they would keep her to bear children, for children are

fewer now, and although the old sicknesses are passing, some are still born strange.”

At this, Susannah stirred, seemed about to say something, then only drank the last of her

coffee and settled back into her former listening position.

“But if they would desire the young man and woman, gunslinger, I think they would lust

for the boy.”

Jake bent and began to stroke Oy’s fur again. Roland saw his face and knew what he was

thinking: it was the passage under the mountains all over again, just another version of the

Slow Mutants.

“You they’d just as soon kill,” Aunt Talitha said, “for you are a gunslinger, a man out of his own time and place, neither fish nor fowl, and no use to either side. But a boy can be taken,

used, schooled to remember some things and to forget all the others. They’ve all forgotten

whatever it was they had to fight about in the first place; the world has moved on since then.

Now they just fight to the sound of them awful drumbeats, some few still young, most of

them old enough for the rocking chair, like us here, all of them stupid grots who only live to

kill and kill to live.” She paused. “Now that you’ve heard us old cullies to the end, are ye

sure it would not be best to go around, and leave them to their business?”

Before Roland could reply, Jake spoke up in a clear, firm voice. “Tell what you know

about Blaine the Mono,” he said. “Tell about Blaine and Engineer Bob.”

11

“ENGINEER WHO?” EDDIE ASKED, but Jake only went on looking at the old people.

“Track lies over yonder,” Si answered at last. He pointed toward the river. “One track only, set up high on a colyum of man-made stone, such as the Old Ones used to make their streets

and walls.”

“A monorail!” Susannah exclaimed. “Blaine the Monorail!”

“Blaine is a pain,” Jake muttered.

Roland glanced at him but said nothing.

“Does this train run now?” Eddie asked Si.

Si shook his head slowly. His face was troubled and uneasy. “No, young sir—but in my

lifetime and Auntie’s, it did. When we were green and the war of the city still went forrad

briskly. We’d hear it before we saw it—a low humming noise, a sound like ye sometimes

hear when a bad summer storm’s on the way—one that’s full of lightning.”

“Ay,” Aunt Talitha said. Her face was lost and dreaming.