tore open his five-hundred-dollar sport jacket. At the same instant the gunslinger drew
left-handed, and his draw was as it had always been, sick or well, wide awake or still half
asleep: faster than a streak of blue summer lightning.
I’m beat,Andolini thought, full of sick wonder. Christ, he’s faster than anybody I ever saw!
I’m beat, holy Mary Mother of God, he’s gonna blow me away, he’s g—
The man in the ragged shirt pulled the trigger of the revolver in his left hand and Jack
Andolini thought—really thought—he was dead before he realized there had been only a
dull click instead of a report.
Misfire.
Smiling, Andolini rose to his knees and raised his own gun.
“I don’t know who you are, but you can kiss your ass good-bye, you fucking spook,” he
said.
13
Eddie sat up, shivering, his naked body pocked with goosebumps. He saw Roland draw,
heard the dry snap that should have been a bang, saw Andolini come up on his knees, heard
him say something, and before he really knew what he was doing his hand had found a
ragged chunk of rock. He pulled it out of the grainy earth and threw it as hard as he could.
It struck Andolini high on the back of the head and bounced away. Blood sprayed from a
ragged hanging flap in Jack Andolini’s scalp. Andolini fired, but the bullet that surely
would have killed the gunslinger otherwise went wild.
14
Not really wild,the gunslinger could have told Eddie. When you feel the wind of the slug on
your cheek, you can’t really call it wild.
He thumbed the hammer of his gun back and pulled the trigger again as he recoiled from
Andolini’s shot. This time the bullet in the chamber fired—the dry, authoritative crack
echoed up and down the beach. Gulls asleep on rocks high above the lobstrosities awoke
and flew upward in screaming, startled packs.
The gunslinger’s bullet would have stopped Andolini for good in spite of his own
involuntary recoil, but by then Andolini was also in motion, falling sideways, dazed by the
blow on the head. The crack of the gunslinger’s revolver seemed distant, but the searing
poker it plunged into his left arm, shattering the elbow, was real enough. It brought him out
of his daze and he rose to his feet, one arm hanging broken and useless, the gun wavering
wildly about in his other hand, looking for a target.
It was Eddie he saw first, Eddie the junkie, Eddie who had somehow brought him to this
crazy place. Eddie was standing there as naked as the day he had been born, shivering in
the chilly wind, clutching himself with both arms. Well, he might die here, but he would at
least have the pleasure of taking Eddie Fucking Dean with him.
Andolini brought his gun up. The little Cobra now seemed to weigh about twenty pounds,
but he managed.
15
This better not be another misfire,Roland thought grimly, and thumbed the hammer back again. Below the din of the gulls, he heard the smooth oiled click as the chamber revolved.
16
It was no misfire.
17
The gunslinger hadn’t aimed at Andolini’s head but at the gun in Andolini’s hand. He didn’t
know if they still needed this man, but they might; he was important to Balazar, and
because Balazar had proved to be every bit as dangerous as Roland had thought he might
be, the best course was the safest one.
His shot was good, and that was no surprise; what hap- pened .o Andolini’s gun and hence
to Andolini was. Roland had seen it happen, but only twice in all the years he had seen men
file guns at each other.
Bad luck for you, fellow,the gunslinger thought as Ando- lini wandered off toward the
beach, screaming. Blood poured down his shirt and pants. The hand which had been
holding the Colt Cobra was missing below the middle of the palm. The gun was a senseless
piece of twisted metal lying on the sand.
Eddie stared at him, stunned. No one would ever mis- judge Jack Andolini’s caveman face
again, because now he had no face; where it had been there was now nothing but a churned
mess of raw flesh and the black screaming hole of his mouth
“My God, what happened?”
“My bullet must have struck the cylinder of his gun at the second he pulled the trigger,” the gunslinger said. He spoke as dryly as a professor giving a police academy ballistics lecture.
“The result was an explosion that tore the back off his gun. I think one or two of the other cartridges may have exploded as well.”
“Shoot him,” Eddie said. He was shivering harder than ever, and now it wasn’t just the
combination of night air, sea breeze, and naked body that was causing it. “Kill him. Put him out of his misery, for God’s s—”
“Too late,” the gunslinger said with a cold indifference that chilled Eddie’s flesh all the way in to the bone.
And Eddie turned away just too late to avoid seeing the lobstrosities swarm over
Andolini’s feet, tearing off his Gucci loafers. . . with the feet still inside them, of course.
Screaming, waving his arms spasmodically before him, Andolini fell for- ward. The
lobstrosities swarmed greedily over him, question- ing him anxiously all the while they
were eating him alive: Dad-a-chack? Did-a-chick? Dum-a-chum? Dod-a-chock?
“Jesus,” Eddie moaned. “What do we do now?”
“Now you get exactly as much of the
(devil-powderthe gunslinger said; cocaine Eddie heard)
as you promised the man Balazar,” Roland said, “no more and no less. And we go back.”
He looked levelly at Eddie. “Only this time I have to go back with you. As myself.”
“Jesus Christ,” Eddie said. “Can you do that?” And at once answered his own question.
“Sure you can. But why?”
“Because you can’t handle this alone,” Roland said. “Come here.”
Eddie looked back at the squirming hump of clawed creatures on the beach. He had never
liked Jack Andolini, but he felt his stomach roll over just the same.
“Come here,” Roland said impatiently. “We’ve little time, and I have little liking for what I must do now. It’s something I’ve never done before. Never thought I would do.” His lips twisted bitterly. “I’m getting used to doing things like that.”
Eddie approached the scrawny figure slowly, on legs that felt more and more like rubber.
His bare skin was white and glimmering in the alien dark. Just who are you, Roland? he
thought. What are you? And that heat I feel baking off you—is it just fever? Or some kind of
madness? I think it might be both.
God, he needed a fix. More: he deserved a fix.
“Never done what before?” he asked. “What are you talk- ing about?”
“Take this,” Roland said, and gestured at the ancient revolver slung low on his right hip.
Did not point; there was no finger to point with, only a bulky, rag-wrapped bundle. “It’s no good to me. Not now, perhaps never again.”
“I. . .” Eddie swallowed. “I don’t want to touch it.”
“I don’t want you to either,” the gunslinger said with curious gentleness, “but I’m afraid neither of us has a choice. There’s going to be shooting.”
“There is?”
“Yes.” The gunslinger looked serenely at Eddie. “Quite a lot of it, I think.”
18
Balazar had become more and more uneasy. Too long. They had been in there too long and
it was too quiet. Dis- tantly, maybe on the next block, he could hear people shout- ing at
each other and then a couple of rattling reports that were probably firecrackers . . . but when
you were in the sort of business Balazar was in, firecrackers weren’t the first thing you
thought of.
A scream. Was that a scream?
Never mind. Whatever’s happening on the next block has nothing to do with you. You’re
turning into an old woman.
All the same, the signs were bad. Very bad.
“Jack?” he yelled at the closed bathroom door.
There was no answer.
Balazar opened the left front drawer of his desk and took out the gun. This was no Colt
Cobra, cozy enough to fit in a clamshell holster; it was a .357 Magnum.
” ‘Cimi!” he shouted. “I want you!”
He slammed the drawer. The tower of cards fell with a soft, sighing thump. Balazar didn’t
even notice.
‘Cimi Dretto, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, filled the doorway. He saw that Da
Boss had pulled his gun out of the drawer, and ‘Cimi immediately pulled his own from
beneath a plaid jacket so loud it could have caused flash-burns on anyone who made the
mistake of looking at it too long.
“I want Claudio and Tricks,” he said. “Get them quick. The kid is up to something.”
“We got a problem,” ‘Cimi said.
Balazar’s eyes flicked from the bathroom door to ‘Cimi. “Oh, I got plenty of those