The Waste Lands (Page 19)

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Eddie shrugged and favored Roland with a thin smile. “Doubt away, then—be my guest. And how are you this morning, Roland?” “The same,” Roland said. His faded blue eyes still conned Eddie’s face. “Stop it,” Susannah said. Her voice was brisk, but Eddie caught an undertone of nervousness. “Both of you. I got better things to do than watch you two dance around and kick each other’s shins like a couple of little kids playin Two for Flinching. Specially this morning, with that dead bear trying to yell down the whole world.”

The gunslinger nodded, but kept his eyes on Eddie. “All right . . . but are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me, Eddie?” He thought about it then—really thought about telling. What he had seen in the fire, what he had seen in his dream. He decided against it. Perhaps it was only the memory of the rose in the fire, and the roses which had blanketed that dream-field in such fabulous profusion. Me knew he could not tell these things as his eyes had seen them and his heart had felt them; he could only cheapen them. And, at least for the time being, he wanted to ponder these things alone.

But remember, he told himself again . . . except the voice in his mind didn’t sound much like his own. It seemed deeper, older—the voice of a stranger. Remember the rose . . . and the shape of the key. “I will,” he murmured.

“You will what?” Roland asked.

“Tell,” Eddie said. “If anything comes up that seems, you know, really important, I’ll tell you. Both of you. Right now there isn’t. So if we’re going somewhere, Shane, old buddy, let’s saddle up.” “Shane? Who is this Shane?”

“I’ll tell you that some other time, too. Meantime, let’s go.” They packed the gear they had brought with them from the old campsite and headed back, Susannah riding in her wheelchair again. Eddie had an idea she wouldn’t be riding in it for long.

ONCE, BEFORE EDDIE HAD become too interested in the subject of heroin to be interested in much else, he and a couple of friends had driven over to New Jersey to see a couple of speed-metal groups— Anthrax and Megadeth—in concert at the Meadowlands. He believed that Anthrax had been slightly louder than the repeating announcement coming from the fallen bear, but he wasn’t a hundred per cent sure. Roland stopped them while they were still half a mile from the clearing in the woods and tore six small scaps of cloth from his old shirt. They stuffed them in their ears and then went on. Even the cloth didn’t do much to deaden the steady blast of sound.

“THIS DEVICE IS SHUTTING DOWN!” the bear blared as they stepped into the clearing again. It lay as it had lain, at the foot of the tree Eddie had climbed, a fallen Colossus with its legs apart and its knees in the air, like a furry female giant who had died trying to give birth. “SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES! THERE IS NO DANGER—” Yes, there is, Eddie thought, picking up the scattered hides which had not been shredded in either the bear’s attack or its flailing death-throes. Plenty of danger. To my f**king ears. He picked up Roland’s gunbelt and silently handed it over. The chunk of wood he had been working on lay nearby; he grabbed it and tucked it into the pocket in the hack of Susannah’s wheelchair as the gunslinger slowly buckled the wide leather belt around his waist and cinched the rawhide tiedown.

“—IN SHUTDOWN PHASE, ONE SUBNUCLEAR CELL OPERATING AT ONE PER CENT CAPACITY. THESE CELLS—“

Susannah followed Eddie, holding in her lap a carry-all bag she had sewn herself. As Eddie handed her the hides, she stuffed them into the bag. When all of them were stored away, Roland tapped Eddie on the arm and handed him a shoulderpack. What it contained mostly was deer-meat, heavily salted from a natural lick Roland had found about three miles up the little creek. The gunslinger had already donned a similar pack. His purse—restocked and once again bulging with all sorts of odds and ends—hung from his other shoulder. A strange, home-made harness with a seat of stitched deerskin dan-gled from a nearby branch. Roland plucked it off, studied it for a moment, and then draped it over his back and knotted the straps below his chest. Susannah made a sour face at diis, and Roland saw it. He did not try to speak—this close to the bear, he couldn’t have made himself heard even by shouting at the top of his voice—but he shrugged sympatheti-cally and spread his hands: You know well need it. She shrugged back. / know . . . but that doesn’t mean I like it. The gunslinger pointed across the clearing. A pair of leaning, splin-tered spruce trees marked the place where Shardik, who had once been known as Mir in these parts, had entered the clearing.

Eddie leaned toward Susannah, made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, then raised his eyebrows interrogatively. Okay? She nodded, then pressed the heels of her palms against her ears. Okay—but let’s get out of here before I go deaf.

The three of them moved across the clearing, Eddie pushing Susan-nah, who held the bag of hides in her lap. The pocket in the back of her wheelchair was stuffed with other items; die piece of wood with the slingshot still mostly hidden inside it was only one of them.

From behind them the bear continued to roar out its final communi-cation to the world, telling them shutdown would be complete in forty minutes. Eddie couldn’t wait. The broken spruces leaned in toward each other, forming a rude gate, and Eddie thought: This is where the quest for Roland’s Dark Tower really begins, at least for us.

He thought of his dream again—the spiraling windows issuing their unfurling flags of darkness, flags which spread over the field of roses like a stain—and as they passed beneath the leaning trees, a deep shudder gripped him.

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