The Waste Lands (Page 113)

THE NEWCOMER’S PANTS WERE patched green velvet, and as he stood on the edge of the hole in the bridge, he looked like a buccaneer at the end of his days of plunder: sick, ragged, and still dangerous. “Suppose I choose not to?” Roland asked. “Suppose I choose to simply put a bullet through your scrofulous head?”

“Then I’ll get to hell just enough ahead of ye to hold the door,” the man in the yellow scarf said, and chuckled chummily. He wiggled the hand he held in the air. “It’s all the same jolly fakement to me, one way or t’other.” Roland guessed that was the truth. The man looked as if he might have a year to live at most . . . and the last few months of that year would probably be very unpleasant. The oozing sores on his face had nothing to do with radiation; unless Roland was badly deceived, this man was in the late stages of what the doctors called mandrus and everyone else called whore’s blossoms. Facing a dangerous man was always a bad busi-ness, but at least one could calculate the odds in such an encounter. When you were facing the dead, however, everything changed.

“Do yer know what I’ve got here, my dear ones?” the pirate asked. “Do yer ken whatcher old friend Gasher just happens to have laid his hands on? It’s a grenado, something pretty the Old Folks left behind, and I’ve already tipped its cap—for to wear one’s cap before the introductin’ is complete would be wery bad manners, so it would!”

He cackled happily for a moment, and then his face grew still and grave once more. All humor left it, as if a switch had been turned some-where in his degenerating brains.

“My finger is all that’s holdin the pin now, dearie. If you shoot me, there’s going to be a wery big bang. You and the cunt-monkey on yer back will be vaporized. The squint, too, I reckon. The young buck stand-ing behind you and pointing that toy pistol in my face might live, but only until he hits the water . . . and hit it he would, because this bridge has been hangin by a thread these last forty year, and all it’d take to finish it is one little push. So do ye want to put away your iron, or shall we all toddle off to hell on the same handcart?”

Roland briefly considered trying to shoot the object Gasher called a grenado out of his hand, saw how tightly the man was gripping it, and bolstered his gun. “Ah, good!” Gasher cried, cheerful once more. “I knew ye was a trig cove, just lookin at yer! Oh yes! So I did!”

“What do you want?” Roland asked, although he thought he already knew this, too. Gasher raised his free hand and pointed a dirty finger at Jake. “The squint. Gimme the squint and the rest of you go free.” “Go f**k yourself,” Susannah said at once. “Why not?” the pirate cackled. “Gimme a chunk of mirror and I’ll rip it right off and stick it right in—why not, for all the good it’s a-doin me these days? Why, I can’t even run water through it without it burns me all the way to the top of my gullywash!” His eyes, which were a strange calm shade of gray, never left Roland’s face. “What do you say, my good old mate?” “What happens to the rest of us if I hand over the boy?” “Why, you go on yer way without no trouble from us!” the man in the yellow headscarf returned promptly. “You have the Tick-Tock Man’s word on that. It comes from his lips to my lips to your ears, so it does, and Tick-Tock’s a trig cove, too, what don’t break his word once it’s been given. I can’t say ary word nor watch about any Pubies you might run into, but you’ll have no trouble with the Tick-Tock Man’s Grays.”

“What the f**k are you saying, Roland?” Eddie roared. “You’re not really thinking about doing it, are you?”

Roland didn’t look down at Jake, and his lips didn’t move as he murmured: “I’ll keep my promise.”

“Yes—I know you will.” Then Jake raised his voice and said: “Put the gun away, Eddie. I’ll decide.”

“Jake, you’re out of your mind!”

The pirate cackled cheerily. “Not at all, cully! You’re the one who’s lost his mind if you disbelieve me. At the wery least, he’ll be safe from the drums with us, won’t he? And just think—if I didn’t mean what I say, I would have told you to toss your guns overside first thing! Easiest thing in the world! But did I? Nay!”

Susannah had heard the exchange between Jake and Roland. She had also had a chance to realize how bleak their options were as things now stood. “Put it away, Eddie.”

“How do we know you won’t toss the grenade at us once you have the lad?” Eddie called.

“I’ll shoot it out of the air if he tries,” Roland said. “I can do it, and he knows I can do it.”

“Mayhap I do. You’ve got a cosy look about you, indeed ye do.” “If he’s telling the truth,” Roland went on, “he’d be burned even if I missed his toy, because the bridge would collapse and we’d all go down together.” “Wery clever, my dear old son!” Gasher said. “You are a cosy one, ain’t you?” He cawed laughter, then grew serious and confiding. “The talking’s done, old mate of mine. Decide. Will you give me the boy, or do we all march to the end of the path together?”

Before Roland could say a word, Jake had slipped past him on the support rod. He still held Oy curled in his right arm. He held his bloody left hand stiffly out in front of him.

“Jake, no!” Eddie shouted desperately.

“I’ll come for you,” Roland said in the same low voice. “I know,” Jake repeated. The wind gusted again. The bridge swayed and groaned. The Send was now speckled with whitecaps, and water boiled whitely around the wreck of the blue mono jutting from the river on the upstream side. “Ay, my cully!” Gasher crooned. His lips spread wide, revealing a few remaining teeth that jutted from his white gums like decayed tomb-stones. “Ay, my fine young squint! Just keep coming.”