The Waste Lands (Page 83)

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“The world has moved on, right?”

Roland nodded.

“What about the people? Did they go to the city, do you think?” “Some may have,” Roland said. “Some are still around.” “What?” Susannah jerked around to look at him, startled. Roland nodded. “We’ve been watched the last couple of days. There aren’t a lot of folk denning in these old buildings, but there are some. There’ll be more as we get closer to civilization.” He paused. “Or what used to be civilization.” “How do you know they’re there?” Jake asked. “Smelled them. Seen a few gardens hidden behind banks of weeds grown purposely to hide the crops. And at least one working windmill way back in a grove of trees. Mostly, though, it’s just a feeling . . . like shade on your face instead of sunshine. It’ll come to you three in time, I imagine.” “Do you think they’re dangerous?” Susannah asked. They were approaching a large, ramshackle building that might once have been a storage shed or an abandoned country market, and she eyed it uneasily, her hand dropping to the butt of the gun she wore on her chest.

“Will a strange dog bite?” the gunslinger countered. “What’s that mean?” Eddie asked. “I hate it when you start up with your Zen Buddhist shit, Roland.”

“It means I don’t know,” Roland said. “Who is this man Zen Bud-dhist? Is he wise like me?”

Eddie looked at Roland for a long, long time before deciding the gunslinger was making one of his rare jokes. “Ah, get outta here,” he said. He saw one corner of Roland’s mouth twitch before he turned away. As Eddie started to push Susannah’s chair again, something else caught his eye. “Hey, Jake!” he called. “I think you made a friend!”

Jake looked around, and a big grin overspread his face. Forty yards to the rear, the scrawny billy-bumbler was limping industriously after them, sniffing at the weeds which grew between the crumbling cobbles of the Great Road.

SOME HOURS LATER ROLAND called a halt and told them to be ready. “For what?” Eddie asked.

Roland glanced at him. “Anything.”

It was perhaps three o’clock in the afternoon. They were standing at a point where the Great Road crested a long, rolling drumlin which ran diagonally across the plain like a wrinkle in the world’s biggest bed-spread. Below and beyond, the road ran through the first real town they had seen. It looked deserted, but Eddie had not forgotten the conversa-tion that morning. Roland’s question—Will a strange dog bite?—no longer seemed quite so Zenny. “Jake?”

“What?”

Eddie nodded to the butt of the Ruger, which protruded from the waistband of Jake’s bluejeans—the extra pair he had tucked into his pack before leaving home. “Do you want me to carry that?”

Jake glanced at Roland. The gunslinger only shrugged, as if to say It’s your choice.

“Okay.” Jake handed it over. He unshouldered his pack, rummaged through it, and brought out the loaded clip. He could remember reaching behind the hanging files in one of his father’s desk drawers to get it, but all that seemed to have occurred a long, long time ago. These days, thinking about his life in New York and his career as a student at Piper was like looking into the wrong end of a telescope.

Eddie took the clip, examined it, rammed it home, checked the safety, then stuck the Ruger in his own belt.

“Listen closely and heed me well,” Roland said. “If there are people, they’ll likely be old and much more frightened of us than we are of them. The younger folk will be long gone. It’s unlikely that those left will have firearms—in fact, ours may be the first guns many of them have ever seen, except maybe for a picture or two in the old books. Make no threatening gestures. And the childhood rule is a good one: speak only when spoken to.” “What about bows and arrows?” Susannah asked. “Yes, they may have those. Spears and clubs, as well.” “Don’t forget rocks,” Eddie said bleakly, looking down at the cluster of wooden buildings. The place looked like a ghost-town, but who knew for sure? “And if they’re hard up for rocks, there’s always the cobbles from the road.” “Yes, there’s always something,” Roland agreed. “But we’ll start no trouble ourselves—is that clear?”

They nodded.

“Maybe it would be easier to detour around.” Susannah said. Roland nodded, eyes never leaving the simple geography ahead. Another road crossed the Great Road at the center of the town, making the dilapidated buildings look like a target centered in the telescopic sight of a high-powered rifle. “It would, but we won’t. Detouring’s a bad habit that’s easy to get into. It’s always better to go straight on, unless there’s a good visible reason not to. I see no reason not to here. And if there are people, well, that might be a good thing. We could do with a little palaver.” Susannah reflected that Roland seemed different now, and she didn’t think it was simply because the voices in his mind had ceased. This is the way he was when he still had wars to fight and men to lead and his old friends around him, she thought. How he was before the world moved on and he moved on with it, chasing that man Walter. This is how he was before the Big Empty turned him inward on himself and made him strange.

“They might know what those drum sounds are,” Jake suggested. Roland nodded again. “Anything they know—particularly about the city—would come in handy, but there’s no need to think ahead too much about people who may not even be there.”

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