They stepped out of the doorway in perfect tandem, gun-slingers Roland would have
recognized at once as adversaries much more dangerous than the first two. They were
younger, for one thing; and although he didn’t know it, some unknown dispatcher had
labeled him extremely dangerous, and to Andy Staunton and Norris Weaver, that made him
the equi- valent of a rogue tiger. Ifhe doesn’t stop the second I tell him to, he’s dead, Andy thought.
“Hold it!”he screamed, dropping into a crouch with his gun held out before him in both
hands. Beside him, Weaver had done the same. “Police! Get your hands on your he—”
That was as far as he got before the guy ran for the IRT stairway. He moved with a sudden
speed that was uncanny. Nevertheless, Andy Staunton was wired, all his dials turned up to
the max. He swivelled on his heels, feeling a cloak of emotionless coldness drop over
him—Roland would have known this, too. He had felt it many times in similar situations.
Andy led the running figure slightly, then squeezed the trigger of his .38. He saw the man
in the blue suit spin around, trying to keep his feet. Then he fell to the pavement, as
commu- ters who, only seconds ago, had been concentrating on nothing but surviving
another trip home on the subway, screamed and scattered like quail. They had discovered
there was more to survive than the uptown train this afternoon.
“Holy fuck, partner,” Norris Wheaton breathed, “you blew him away.”
“I know,” Andy said. His voice didn’t falter. The gunslinger would have admired it. “Let’s go see who he was.”
11
I’m dead!Jack Mort was screaming. I’m dead, you’ve gotten me killed, I’m dead, I’m—
No,the gunslinger responded. Through slitted eyes he saw the cops approaching, guns still
out. Younger and faster than the ones who had been parked near the gun-shop. Faster. And
at least one of them was a hell of a shot. Mort—and Roland along with him— should have
been dead, dying, or seriously wounded. Andy Staunton had shot to kill, and his bullet had
drilled through the left lapel of Mort’s suit-coat. It had likewise punched through the pocket
of Mort’s Arrow shirt—but that was as far as it went. The life of both men, the one inside
and the one outside, were saved by Mort’s lighter.
Mort didn’t smoke, but his boss—whose job Mort had confidently expected to have
himself by this time next year— did. Accordingly, Mort had bought a two hundred dollar
silver lighter at Dunhill’s. He did not light every cigarette Mr. Framingham stuck in his gob when the two of them were together— that would have made him look too much like an
ass-kisser. Just once in awhile . . . and usually when someone even higher up was present,
someone who could appreciate a.) Jack Mort’s quiet courtesy, and b.) Jack Mort’s good
taste.
Do-Bees covered all the bases.
This time covering the bases saved his life and Roland’s. Staunton’s bullet smashed the
silver lighter instead of Mort’s heart (which was generic; Mort’s passion for brand
names— good brand names—stopped mercifully at the skin).
He was hurt just the same, of course. When you were hit by a heavy-caliber slug, there was
no such thing as a free ride. The lighter was driven against his chest hard enough to create a
hollow. It flattened and then smashed apart, digging shallow grooves in Mort’s skin; one
sliver of shrapnel sliced Mort’s left nipple almost in two. The hot slug also ignited the
lighter’s fluid-soaked batting. Nevertheless, the gunslinger lay still as they approached. The
one who had not shot him was telling people to stay back, just stay back, goddammit.
I’m on fire!Mort shrieked. I’m on fire, put it out! Put it out! PUT IT OWWWWWW—
The gunslinger lay still, listening to the grit of the gun-slingers’ shoes on the pavement,
ignoring Mort’s shrieks, try- ing to ignore the coal suddenly glowing against his chest and the smell of frying flesh.
A foot slid beneath his ribcage, and when it lifted, the gunslinger allowed himself to roll bonelessly onto his back. Jack Mort’s eyes were open. His face was slack. In spite of the
shattered, burning remains of the lighter, there was no sign of the man screaming inside.
“God,” someone muttered, “did you shoot him with a tracer, man?”
Smoke was rising from the hole in the lapel of Mort’s coat in a neat little stream. It was
escaping around the edge of the lapel in more untidy blotches. The cops could smell
burning flesh as the wadding in the smashed lighter, soaked with Ronson lighter fluid,
really began to blaze.
Andy Staunton, who had performed faultlessly thus far, now made his only mistake, one
for which Cort would have sent him home with a fat ear in spite of his earlier admirable
performance, telling him one mistake was all it took, took to get a man killed most of the
time. Staunton had been able to shoot the guy—a thing no cop really knows if he can do
until he’s faced with a situation where he must find out—but the idea that his bullet had
somehow set the guy on fire filled him with unreasoning horror. So he bent forward to put it out without thinking, and the gunslinger’s feet smashed into his belly before he had time to
do more than register the blaze of awareness in eyes he would have sworn were dead.
Staunton went flailing back into his partner. His pistolflew from his hand. Wheaton held
onto his own, but by the time he had gotten clear of Staunton, he heard a shot and his gun
was magically gone. The hand it had been in felt numb, as if it had been struck with a very
large hammer.
The guy in the blue suit got up, looked at them for a moment and said, “You’re good.
Better than the others. So let me advise you. Don’t follow. This is almost over. I don’t want
to have to kill you.”
Then he whirled and ran for the subway stairs.
12
The stairs were choked with people who had reversed their downward course when the
yelling and shooting started, obsessed with that morbid and somehow unique New Yorkers’
curiosity to see how bad, how many, how much blood spilled on the dirty concrete. Yet
somehow they still found a way to shrink back from the man in the blue suit who came
plunging down the stairs. It wasn’t much wonder. He was holding a gun, and another was
strapped around his waist.
Also, he appeared to be on fire.
13
Roland ignored Mort’s increasing shrieks of pain as his shirt, undershirt, and jacket began
to burn more briskly, as the silver of the lighter began to melt and run down his midsection
to his belly in burning tracks.
He could smell dirty moving air, could hear the roar of an oncoming train.
This was almost the time; the moment had almost come around, the moment when he
would draw the three or lose it all. For the second time he seemed to feel worlds tremble
and reel about his head.
He reached the platform level and tossed the .38 aside. He unbuckled Jack Mort’s pants
and pushed them casually down, revealing a pair of white underdrawers like a whore’s
panties. He had no time to reflect on this oddity. If he did not move fast, he could stop
worrying about burning alive; the bullets he had purchased would get hot enough to go off
and this body wouldsimply explode.
The gunslinger stuffed the boxes of bullets into the underdrawers, took out the bottle of
Keflex, and did the same with it. Now the underdrawers bulged grotesquely. He stripped
off the flaming suit-jacket, but made no effort to take off the flaming shirt.
He could hear the train roaring toward the platform, could see its light. He had no way of
knowing it was a train which kept the same route as the one which had run over Odetta, but
all the same he did know. In matters of the Tower, fate became a thing as merciful as the
lighter which had saved his life and as painful as the fire the miracle had ignited. Like the wheels of the oncoming train, it followed a course both logical and crushingly brutal, a
course against which only steel and sweetness could stand.
He picked up Mort’s pants and began to run again, barely aware of the people scattering
out of his way. As more air fed the fire, first his shirt collar and then his hair began to burn.
The heavy boxes in Mort’s underdrawers slammed against his balls again and again,
mashing them; excruciating pain rose into his gut. He jumped the turnstile, a man who was
becoming a meteor. Put me out! Mort screamed. Put me out before I burn up!
You ought to burn,the gunslinger thought grimly. What’s going to happen to you is more