Stephen King – The Waste Lands

added: “Or maybe the Grays are doing it on purpose—did you ever think of that? They live

in the other part of the city, don’t they? And under it, as well? They’ve always wanted you

out. Maybe they’ve just hit on a really efficient way of getting you guys to do their work for

them.”

The bloody woman was standing next to an elderly gent wearing what looked like the

world’s oldest bowler hat and a pair of frayed khaki shorts. Now he stepped forward and

spoke to her with a patina of good manners that turned his underlying contempt into a

dagger with razor-sharp edges. “You are quite wrong, Madam Gunslinger. There are a

great many machines under Lud, and there are ghosts in all of them— demonous spirits

which bear only ill will to mortal men and women. These demon-ghosts are very capable of

raising the dead . . . and in Lud, there are a great many dead to raise.”

“Listen,” Eddie said. “Have you ever seen one of these zombies with your own eyes, Jeeves? Have any of you?”

Jeeves curled his lip and said nothing—but that lip-curl really said it all. What else could

one expect, it asked, from outlanders who used guns as a substitute for understanding?

Eddie decided it would be best to close off the whole line of discus- sion. He had never

been cut out for missionary work, anyway. He wag- gled the Ruger at the bloodstained

woman. “You and your friend there— the one who looks like an English butler on his day

off—are going to take us to the railroad station. After that, we can all say goodbye, and I’ll

tell you the truth: that’s going to make my fuckin day.”

“Railroad station?” the guy who looked like Jeeves the Butler asked. “What is a railroad station?”

“Take us to the cradle,” Susannah said. “Take us to Blaine.”

This finally rattled Jeeves; an expression of shocked horror replaced the world-weary

contempt with which he had thus far treated them. “You can’t go there!” he cried. “The cradle is forbidden ground, and Blaine is the most dangerous of all Lud’s ghosts!”

Forbidden ground? Eddie thought. Great. If it’s the truth, at least we’ll be able to stop

worrying about you assholes. It was also nice to hear that there still was a Blaine … or that

these people thought there was, anyway.

The others were staring at Eddie and Susannah with expressions of uncomprehending

amazement; it was as if the interlopers had suggested to a bunch of born-again Christians

that they hunt up the Ark of the Covenant and turn it into a pay toilet.

Eddie raised the Ruger until the center of Jeeves’s forehead lay in the sight. “We’re going,”

he said, “and if you don’t want to join your ancestors right here and now, I suggest you stop pissing and moaning and take us there.”

Jeeves and the bloodstained woman exchanged an uncertain glance, but when the man in

the bowler hat looked back at Eddie and Susannah, his face was firm and set. “Shoot us if

you like,” he said. “We’d sooner die here than there.”

“You folks are a bunch of sick motherfuckers with dying on the brain!” Susannah cried at them. “Nobody has to die! Just take us where we want to go, for the love of God!”

The woman said somberly, “But it is death to enter Blaine’s cradle, mum, so it is. For

Blaine sleeps, and he who disturbs his rest must pay a high price.”

“Come on, beautiful,” Eddie snapped. “You can’t smell the coffee with your head up your ass.”

“I don’t know what that means,” she said with an odd and perplexing dignity.

“It means you can take us to the cradle and risk the Wrath of Blaine, or you can stand your ground here and experience the Wrath of Eddie. It doesn’t have to be a nice clean head-shot,

you know. I can take you a piece at a time, and I’m feeling just mean enough to do it. I’m

having a very bad day in your city—the music sucks, everybody has a bad case of b.o., and

the first guy we saw threw a grenade at us and kidnapped our friend. So what do you say?”

“Why would you go to Blaine in any case?” one of the others asked. “He stirs no more from his berth in the cradle—not for years now. He has even stopped speaking in his many

voices and laughing.”

Speaking in his many voices and laughing? Eddie thought. He looked at Susannah. She looked back and shrugged.

“Ardis was the last to go nigh Blaine,” the bloodstained woman said.

Jeeves nodded somberly. “Ardis always was a fool when he were in drink. Blaine asked

him some question. I heard it, hut it made no sense to me—something about the mother of

ravens, I think—and when Ardis couldn’t answer what was asked, Blaine slew him with

blue fire.”

“Electricity?” Eddie asked.

Jeeves and the bloodstained woman both nodded. “Ay,” the woman said. “Electricity, so it were called in the old days, so it were.”

“You don’t have to go in with us,” Susannah proposed suddenly. “Just get us within sight of the place. We’ll go the rest of the way on our own.”

The woman looked at her mistrustfully, and then Jeeves pulled her head close to his lips

and mumbled in her ear for a while. The other Pubes stood behind them in a ragged line,

looking at Eddie and Susannah with the dazed eyes of people who have survived a bad

air-raid.

At last the woman looked around. “Ay,” she said. “We’ll take you nigh the cradle, and then it’s good riddance to bad swill.”

“My idea exactly,” Eddie said. “You and Jeeves. The rest of you, scatter.” He swept them with his eyes. “But remember this—one spear thrown from ambush, one arrow, one brick,

and these two die.” This threat came out sounding so weak and pointless that Eddie wished

he hadn’t made it. How could they possibly care for these two, or for any of the individual

members of their clan, when they dusted two or more of them each and every day? Well, he

thought, watching the others trot off without so much as a backward glance, it was too late

to worry about that now.

“Come on,” the woman said. “I want to be done with you.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” Eddie replied.

But before she and Jeeves led them away, the woman did something which made Eddie

repent a little of his hard thoughts: knelt, brushed back the hair of the man in the kilt, and

placed a kiss on his dirty cheek. “Goodbye, Winston,” she said. “Wait for me where the trees clear and the water’s sweet. I’ll come to ye, ay, as sure as dawn makes shadows run

west.”

“I didn’t want to kill him,” Susannah said. “I want you to know that. But I wanted to die

even less.”

“Ay.” The face that turned toward Susannah was stem and tearless. “But if ye mean to enter Blaine’s cradle, ye’ll die anyway. And the chances are that ye’ll die envying poor old

Winston. He’s cruel, is Blaine. The crudest of all demons in this cruel, cruel place.”

“Come on, Maud,” Jeeves said, and helped her up.

“Ay. Let’s finish with them.” She surveyed Susannah and Eddie again, her eyes stem but somehow confused, as well. “Gods curse my eyes that they should ever have happened on

you two in the first place.

And gods curse the guns ye carry, as well, for they were always the springhead of our

troubles.”

And with that attitude, Susannah thought, your troubles are going to last at least a thousand

years, sugar.

Maud set a rapid pace along The Street of the Turtle. Jeeves trotted beside her. Eddie, who

was pushing Susannah in the wheelchair, was soon panting and struggling to keep up. The

palatial buildings which lined their way spread out until they resembled ivy-covered

country houses on huge, run-to-riot lawns, and Eddie realized they had entered what had

once been a very ritzy neighborhood indeed. Ahead of them, one building loomed above all

others. It was a deceptively simple square construction of white stone blocks, its

overhanging roof supported by many pillars. Eddie thought again of the gladiator movies

he’d so enjoyed as a kid. Susannah, educated in more formal schools, was reminded of the

Par- thenon. Both saw and marvelled at the gorgeously sculpted bestiary— Bear and Turtle,

Fish and Rat, Horse and Dog—which ringed the top of the building in two-by-two parade,

and understood it was the place they had come to find.

That uneasy sensation that they were being watched by many eyes— eyes filled equally

with hate and wonder—never left them. Thunder boomed as they came in sight of the

monorail track; like the storm, the track came sweeping in from the south, joined The