The Waste Lands (Page 116)
“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.
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 direction Gasher was pointing. Yes, he could make out—barely—two thin, silvery lines that looked like guitar or banjo strings. They came down from opposite sides of the passageway and crossed about two feet above the pavement. “Crawl under, dear heart. And be ever so careful, for if you so much as twang one of those wires, harf the steel and cement puke in the city’ll come down on your dear little head. Mine, too, although I doubt if that’d disturb you much, would it? Now crawl!”