Stephen King – The Waste Lands

of his exploding egg, we could have stood him off. But then Jake fell and he got too close.

I imagine he thinks our real reason for bringing a boy in the first place was to pay for safe

conduct through the city. Damn! Damn the luck!” Roland struck his fist against his leg.

“Well, let’s go get him!”

Roland shook his head. “This is where we split up. We can’t take Susannah where the

bastard’s gone, and we can’t leave her alone.”

“But—”

“Listen and don’t argue—not if you want to save Jake. The longer we stand here, the colder

his trail gets. Cold trails are hard to follow. You’ve got your own job to do. If there’s

another Blaine, and I am sure Jake believes there is, then you and Susannah must find it.

There must be a station, or what was once called a cradle in the far lands. Do you

understand?”

For once, blessedly, Eddie didn’t argue. “Yeah. We’ll find it. What then?”

“Fire a shot every half hour or so. When I get Jake, I’ll come.”

“Shots may attract other people as well,” Susannah said. Eddie had helped her out of the sling and she was seated in her chair again.

Roland surveyed them coldly. “Handle them.”

“Okay.” Eddie stuck out his hand and Roland took it briefly. “Find him, Roland.”

“Oh, I’ll find him. Just pray to your gods that I find him soon enough. And remember the

faces of your fathers, both of you.”

Susannah nodded. “We’ll try.”

Roland turned and ran light-footed down the ramp. When he was out of sight, Eddie

looked at Susannah and was not very surprised to see she was crying. He felt like crying

himself. Half an hour ago they had been a tight little band of friends. Their comfortable

fellowship had been smashed to bits in the space of just a few minutes—Jake abducted,

Roland gone after him. Even Oy had run away. Eddie had never felt so lonely in his life.

“I have a feeling we’re never going to see either of them again,” Susannah said.

“Of course we will!” Eddie said roughly, but he knew what she meant, because he felt the same way. The premonition that their quest was all over before it was fairly begun lay

heavy on his heart. “In a fight with Attila the Hun, I’d give you three-to-two odds on Roland the Barbar- ian. Come on, Suze—we’ve got a train to catch.”

“But where?” she asked forlornly.

“I don’t know. Maybe we should just find the nearest wise old elf and ask him, huh?”

“What are you talking about, Edward Dean?”

“Nothing,” he said, and because that was so goddam true he thought he might burst into tears, he grasped the handles of her wheelchair and began to push it down the cracked and

glass-littered ramp that led into the city of Lud.

16

JAKE QUICKLY DESCENDED INTO a foggy world where the only landmarks were

pain: his throbbing hand, the place on his upper arm where Gasher’s fingers dug in like

steel pegs, his burning lungs. Before they had gone far, these pains were first joined and

then overmatched by a deep, burning stitch in his left side. He wondered if Roland was

following after them yet. He also wondered how long Oy would be able to live in this world

which was so unlike the plains and forest which were all he had known until now. Then

Gasher clouted him across the face, bloodying his nose, and thought was lost in a red wash

of pain.

“Come on, yer little bastard! Move yer sweet cheeks!”

“Running … as fast as I can,” Jake gasped, and just managed to dodge a thick shard of glass which jutted like a long transparent tooth from the wall of junk to his left.

“You better not be, because I’ll knock yer cold and drag yer along by the hair o’ yer head if y’are! Now hup, you little barstard!”

Jake somehow forced himself to run faster. He’d gone into the alley with the idea that they

must shortly re-emerge onto the avenue, but he now reluctantly realized that wasn’t going

to happen. This was more than an alley; it was a camouflaged and fortified road leading

ever deeper into the country of the Grays. The tall, tottery walls which pressed in on them

had been built from an exotic array of materials: cars which had been partially or

completely flattened by the chunks of granite and steel placed on top of them; marble

pillars; unknown factory machines which were dull red with rust wherever they weren’t

still black with grease; a chrome-and-crystal fish as big as a private plane with one cryptic

word of the High Speech—DELIGHT—carefully incised into its scaly gleaming side;

crisscrossing chains, each link as big as Jake’s head, wrapped around mad

jumbles of furniture that appeared to balance above them as precariously as circus

elephants do on their tiny steel platforms.

They came to a place where this lunatic path branched, and Gasher chose the left fork without hesitation. A little further along, three more alleyways, these so narrow they were

almost tunnels, spoked off in various directions. This time Gasher chose the right-hand

branching. The new path, which seemed to be formed by banks of rotting boxes and huge

blocks of old paper—paper that might once have been books or maga- zines—was too

narrow for them to run in side by side. Gasher shoved Jake into the lead and began beating

him relentlessly on the back to make him go faster. This is how a steer must feel when it’s

driven down the chute to the slaughtering pen, Jake thought, and vowed that if he got out of

this alive, he would never eat steak again.

“Run, my sweet little boycunt! Run!”

Jake soon lost all track of the twistings and turnings they made, and as Gasher drove him

deeper and deeper into this jumble of torn steel, broken furniture, and castoff machinery, he

began to give up hope of rescue. Not even Roland would be able to find him now. If the

gunslinger tried, he would become lost himself, and wander the choked paths of this

nightmare world until he died.

Now they were going downhill, and the walls of tightly packed paper had given way to

ramparts of filing cabinets, jumbles of adding machines, and piles of computer gear. It was

like running through some nightmarish Radio Shack warehouse. For almost a full minute

the wall flowing past on Jake’s left appeared to be constructed solely of either TV sets or

carelessly stacked video display terminals. They stared at him like the glazed eyes of dead

men. And as the pavement beneath their feet contin- ued to descend, Jake realized that they

were in a tunnel. The strip of cloudy sky overhead narrowed to a band, the band narrowed

to a ribbon, and the ribbon became a thread. They were in a gloomy netherworld, scurrying

like rats through a gigantic trash-midden.

What if it all comes down on us? Jake wondered, but in his current state of aching

exhaustion, this possibility did not frighten him much. If the roof fell in, he would at least

be able to rest.

Gasher drove him as a farmer would a mule, striking his left shoulder to indicate a left turn

and his right to indicate a right turn. When the course was straight on, he thumped Jake on

the back of the head. Jake tried to dodge a jutting pipe and didn’t quite succeed. It whacked

into one hip and sent him flailing across the narrow passage toward a snarl of glass and

jagged boards. Gasher caught him and shoved him forward again. “Run, you clumsy squint!

Can’t you run? If it wasn’t for the Tick-Tock Man, I’d bugger you right here and cut yer

throat while I did it, ay, so I would!”

Jake ran in a red daze where there was only pain and the frequent thud of Gusher’s fists

coming down on his shoulders or the hack of his head. At last, when he was sure he could

run no longer, Gasher grabbed him by the neck and yanked him to a stop so fiercely that

Jake crashed into him with a strangled squawk.

“Here’s a tricky little bit!” Gasher panted jovially. “Look straight ahead and you’ll see two wires what cross in an X low to the ground. Do yer see em?”

At first Jake didn’t. It was very gloomy here; heaps of huge copper kettles were piled up to

the left, and to the right were stacks of steel tanks that looked like scuba-diving gear. Jake

thought he could turn these latter into an avalanche with one strong breath. He swiped his

forearm across his eyes, brushing away tangles of hair, and tried not to think about how

he’d look with about sixteen tons of those tanks piled on top of him. He squinted in the