by Stephen King
“Bark, Oy, so we don’t run into each other!” Roland snapped. “Bark!”
Oy barked. A thirty-count later, he snapped the same order and Oy barked again.
“Roland, what if we come to another stairway?”
“We will,” he said, and a ninety-count after that, they did. She felt him tip forward, feet stuttering. She felt the muscles in his shoulders jump as he put his hands out before him, but they did not fall. Susannah could only marvel at his reflexes. His boots rapped unhesitatingly downward in the dark. Twelve steps this time? Fourteen? They were back on the flat surface of the passageway before she could get a good count. So now she knew he was capable of negotiating stairs even in the dark, even at a dead run. Only what if he stuck his foot in a hole? God knew it was possible, given the way the flooring had rotted. Or suppose they came to a stacked bone-barrier of skeletons? In the flat passageway, at the speed he was now running, that would mean a nasty tumble at the very least. Or suppose they ran into a jumble of bones at the head of one of the little stairways? She tried to block the vision of Roland swooping out into blackness like a crippled high-diver and couldn’t quite do it. How many of their bones would be broken when they crash-landed at the bottom?
Shit, sugar, pick a number, Eddie might have said. This flatout run was insanity.
But there was no choice. She could hear the thing behind them all too clearly now, not just its slobbering breath but a sandpapery rasping sound as something slid across one of the passageway walls-or maybe both. Every now and then she’d also hear a clink and a clitter as a tile was torn off. It was impossible not to construct a picture from these sounds, and what Susannah began to see was a great black worm whose segmented body filled the passage from side to side, occasionally ripping off loose ceramic squares and crushing them beneath its gelatinous body as it rushed ever onward, hungry, closing the gap between it and them.
And closing it much more rapidly now. Susannah thought she knew why. Before, they had been running in a moving island of light. Whatever that thing behind them was, it didn’t like the light. She thought of the flashlight Roland had added to their gunna, but without fresh batteries, it would be next to useless. Twenty seconds after flicking the switch on its long barrel, the damn thing would be dead.
Except… wait a minute.
Its barrel.
Its long barrel!
Susannah reached into the leather bag bouncing around at Roland’s side, finding tins of food, but those weren’t the tins she wanted. At last she found one that she did, recognizing it by the circular gutter running around the lid. There was no time to wonder why it should feel so immediately and intimately familiar; Detta had her secrets, and something to do with Sterno was probably one of them. She held die can up to smell and be sure, then promptly bashed herself on the bridge of the nose with it when Roland stumbled over something-maybe a chunk of flooring, maybe another skeleton-and had to batde again for balance. He won diis time, too, but eventually he’d lose and the thing back there might be on them before he could get up.
Susannah felt warm blood begin to course down her face and the thing behind them, perhaps smelling it, let loose an enormous damp cry. She thought of a gigantic alligator in a Florida swamp, raising its scaly head to bay at the moon. And it was so close.
Oh dear God give me time, she thought. I don’t want to go like this, getting shot’s one thing, but getting eaten alive in the dark-
That was another.
“Go fasterV she snarled at Roland, and thumped at his sides with her thighs, like a rider urging on a weary horse.
Somehow, Roland did. His respiration was now an agonized roar. He had not breathed so even after dancing the commala. If he kept on, his heart would burst in his chest. But-
“Faster, Tex! Let it all out, goddammit! I might have a trick up my sleeve, but in the meantime you give it every-damneverything you got!”
And there in the dark beneath Casde Discordia, Roland did…
TWELVE
She plunged her free hand once more into the bag and it closed on the flashlight’s barrel. She pulled it out and tucked it under her arm (knowing if she dropped it they were gone for sure), then snapped back the tab-release on the Sterno can, relieved to hear the momentary hiss as the vacuum-seal broke.
Relieved but not surprised-if the seal had been broken, the flammable jelly inside would have evaporated long ago and the can would have been lighter.
“Roland!” she shouted. “Roland, I need matches!”
“Shirt… pocket!” he panted. “Reach for them!”
But first she dropped the flashlight into the seam where her crotch met the middle of his back, then snatched it up just before it could slide away. Now, with a good hold on it, she plunged the barrel into the can of Sterno. To grab one of the matches while holding the can and the jelly-coated flashlight would have taken a third hand, so she jettisoned the can. There were two others in the bag, but if this didn’t work she’d never have a chance to reach for one of them.
The thing bellowed again, sounding as if it were right behind them. Now she could smell it, the aroma like a load of fish rotting in the sun.
She reached over Roland’s shoulder and plucked a single match from his pocket. There might be time to light one; not for two. Roland and Eddie were able to pop them alight with their thumbnails, but Detta Walker had known a trick worth two of that, had used it on more than one occasion to impress her whiteboy victims in the roadhouses where she’d gone trolling.
She grimaced in the dark, peeling her lips away from her teeth, and placed the head of the match between the two front ones on top. Eddie, if you’re there, help me, sugar-help me do right.
She struck the match. Something hot burned the roof of her mouth and she tasted sulfur on her tongue. The head of the match nearly blinded her dark-adapted eyes, but she could see well enough to touch it to the jelly-coated barrel of the flashlight.
The Sterno caught at once, turning the barrel into a torch. It was weak but it was something.
“Turn around!” she screamed.
Roland skidded to a stop immediately-no questions, no protest-and pivoted on his heels. She held the burning flashlight out before her and for a moment they both saw the head of something wet and covered with pink albino eyes. Below them was a mouth the size of a trapdoor, filled with squirming tentacles. The Sterno didn’t burn brightly, but in this Stygian blackness it was bright enough to make the thing recoil. Before it disappeaied into the blackness again, she saw all those eyes squeezing shut and had a moment to think of how sensitive they must be if even a little guttering flame like this could-
Lining the floor of the passageway on both sides were jumbled heaps of bones. In her hand, the bulb end of the flashlight was already growing warm. Oy was barking frantically, looking back into the dark with his head down and his short legs splayed, every hair standing on end.
“Squat down, Roland, squat!”
He did and she handed him the makeshift torch, which was already beginning to gutter, the yellow flames running up and down the stainless steel barrel turning blue. The thing in the dark let out another deafening roar, and now she could see its shape again, weaving from side to side. It was creeping closer as the light faltered.
If the floor’s wet here, we’re most likely done, she thought, but the touch of her fingers as she groped for a thighbone suggested it was not. Perhaps that was a false message sent by her hopeful senses-she could certainly hear water dripping from the ceiling somewhere up ahead-but she didn’t think so.
She reached into the bag for another can of Sterno, but at first the release-ring defied her. The thing was coming and now she could see any number of short, misshapen legs beneaui its raised lump of a head. Not a worm after all but some kind of giant centipede. Oy placed himself in front of her, still barking, every tooth on display. It was Oy the thing would take first if she couldn’t-
Then her finger slipped into the ring lying almost flat against the lid of the can.
There was a pop-hissh sound. Roland was waving die flashlight back and forth, trying to fan a litde life into the guttering flames (which might have worked had there been fuel for them), and she saw their fading shadows rock deliriously back and fordi on the decaying tile walls.
The circumference of die bone was too big for the can. Now lying in an awkward sprawl, half in and half out of the harness, she dipped into it, brought out a handful of jelly, and slathered it up and down the bone. If the bone was wet, this would only buy them a few more seconds of horror. If it was dry, however, then maybe… just maybe…
The thing was creeping ever closer. Amid the tentacles sprouting from its mouth she could see jutting fangs. In another moment it would be close enough to lunge at Oy, taking him with the speed of a gecko snatching a fly out of the air. Its rotted-fish aroma was strong and nauseating. And what might be behind it? What other abominations?
No time to think about that now.
She touched her thighbone torch to the fading flames licking along the barrel of the flashlight. The bloom of fire was greater than she had expected-far greater-and the thing’s scream this time was filled with pain as well as surprise. There was a nasty squelching sound, like mud being squeezed in a vinyl raincoat, and it lashed backward.
“Git me more bones,” she said as Roland cast the flashlight aside. “And make sure they’re dem drah bones.” She laughed at her own wit (since nobody else would), a down-anddirty Detta cackle.
Still gasping for breath, Roland did as she told him.
THIRTEEN
They resumed their progress along the passage, Susannah now riding backward, a position that was difficult but not impossible.
If they got out of here, her back would ache a bitch for the next day or two. And I’ll relish every single throb, she told herself.
Roland still had the Bridgton Old Home Days tee-shirt Irene Tassenbaum had bought him. He handed it up to Susannah.
She wrapped it around the bottom of the bone and held it out as far as she possibly could while still keeping her balance.
Roland wasn’t able to run-she would have surely tumbled out of the harness had he tried doing that-but he maintained a good fast walking pace, pausing every now and then to pick up a likely-looking arm- or legbone. Oy soon got the idea and began bringing them to the gunslinger in his mouth. The thing continued to follow them. Every now and then Susannah caught a glimpse of its slick-gleaming skin, and even when it drew back beyond the chancy light of her current torch they would hear those liquid stomping sounds, like a giant in mudfilled boots. She began to think it was the sound of the thing’s tail. This filled her with a horror that was unreasoning and private and almost powerful enough to undo her mind.
That it should have a tail! her mind nearly raved. A tail that sounds like it’s filled with water or jelly or half-coagulated blood!
Christ! My God! My Christ!
It wasn’t just light keeping it from attacking them, she reckoned, but fear of fire. The thing must have hung back while they were in the part of the passage where the glow-globes still worked, thinking (if it could think) that it would wait and take them once they were in the dark. She had an idea that if it had known they had access to fire, it might simply have closed some or all of its many eyes and pounced on them where a few of the globes were out and the light was dimmer. Now it was at least temporarily out of luck, because the bones made surprisingly good torches (the idea that they were being helped by the recovering Beam in this regard did not cross her mind). The only question was whether or not the Sterno would hold out.
She was able to conserve now because the bones burned on their own once they were going-except for a couple of damp ones that she had to cast aside after lighting her next torches from their guttering tips-but you did have to get diem going, and she was already deep into the third and last can. She bitterly regretted the one she’d tossed away when the thing had been closing in on them, but didn’t know what else she could have done. She also wished Roland would go faster, although she guessed he now couldn’t have maintained much speed even if she’d been faced around the right way and holding onto him.
Maybe a short burst, but surely no more. She covild feel his muscles trembling under his shirt. He was close to blown out.
Five minutes later, while getting a handful of canned heat to slather on a bony bulb of knee atop a shinbone, her fingers touched the bottom of the Sterno can. From the darkness behind them came another of those watery stomping sounds.
The tail of their friend, her mind insisted. It was keeping pace.
Waiting for them to run out of fuel and for the world to go dark again. Then it would pounce.
Then it would eat.
FOURTEEN
They were going to need a fallback position. She became sure of that almost as soon as the tips of her fingers touched the bottom of the can. Ten minutes and three torches later, Susannah prepared to tell the gunslinger to stop when-and if-they came to another especially large ossuary. They could make a bonfire of rags and bones, and once it was going hot and bright, they’d simply run like hell. When-and if-they heard the thing on their side of the fire-barrier again, Roland could lighten his load and speed his heels by leaving her behind. She saw this idea not as self-sacrificing but merely logical-there was no reason for the monstrous centipede to get both of them if they could avoid it. And she had no plans to let it take her, as far as that went. Certainly not alive. She had his gun, and she’d use it. Five shots for Sai Centipede; if it kept coming after that, the sixth for herself.
Before she could say any of these things, however, Roland got in three words that stopped all of hers. “Light,” he panted.
“Up ahead.”
She craned around and at first saw nothing, probably because of the torch she’d been holding out. Then she did: a faint white glow.
“More of those globes?” she asked. “A stretch of them that are still working?”
“Maybe. I don’t think so.”
Five minutes later she realized she could see the floor and walls in the light of her latest torch. The floor was covered with a fine scrim of dust and pebbles such as could only have been blown in from outside. Susannah threw her arms up over her head, one hand holding a blazing bone wrapped in a shirt, and gave a scream of triumph. The thing behind her answered with a roar of fury and frustration that did her heart good even as it pebbled her skin with goosebumps.
“Goodbye, honey!” she screamed. “Goodbye, you eyecovered muthafuck!”
It roared again and thrust itself forward. For one moment she saw it plain: a huge round lump that couldn’t be called a face in spite of the lolling mouth; the segmented body, scratched and oozing from contact with the rough walls; a quartet of stubby armlike appendages, two on each side. These ended in snapping pincers. She shrieked and thrust the torch back at it, and the thing retreated with another deafening roar.
“Did your mother never teach you that it’s wrong to tease the animals?” Roland asked her, and his tone was so dry she couldn’t tell if he was kidding her or not.
Five minutes after that they were out.
Chapter II:
ON BADLANDS AVENUE
ONE
They exited through a crumbling hillside arch beside a Quonset hut similar in shape but much smaller than the Arc 16 Experimental Station. The roof of this little building was covered with rust. There were piles of bones scattered around the front in a rough ring. The surrounding rocks had been blackened and splintered in places; one boulder the size of the Queen Anne house where the Breakers had been kept was split in two, revealing an interior filled with sparkling minerals.
The air was cold and they could hear the resdess whine of the wind, but the rocks blocked the worst of it and they turned their faces up to the sharp blue sky with wordless gratitude.
“There was some kind of battle here, wasn’t there?” she asked.
“Yes, I’d say so. A big one, long ago.” He sounded utterly whipped.
A
sign lay facedown on the ground in front of the Quonset’s half-open door. Susannah insisted that he put her down so she could turn it over and read it. Roland did as she asked and then sat with his back propped against a rock, staring at Castle Discordia, which was now behind them. Two towers jutted into the blue, one whole and the other shattered off near what he judged had been the top. He concentrated on getting his breath back. The ground under him was very cold, and he knew already that their trek through the Badlands was going to be difficult.
Susannah, meanwhile, had lifted the sign. She held it with one hand and wiped off an ancient scrum of dirt with the other. The words she uncovered were in English, and gave her a deep chill:
THIS CHECKPOINT IS CLOSED.
FOR-EVER.
Below it, in red, seeming to glare at her, was the Eye of the King.
TWO
There was nothing in the Quonset’s main room butjumbles of equipment that had been blasted to ruin and more skeletons, none whole. In the adjoining storeroom, however, she found delightful surprises: shelves and shelves of canned food-more than they could possibly carry-and also more Sterno. (She did not think Roland would sneer at the idea of canned heat anymore, and she was right.) She poked her head out of the storeroom’s rear door almost as an afterthought, not expecting to find anything except maybe a few more skeletons, and there was one. The prize was the vehicle in which this loose agglomeration of bones was resting: a dogcart a bit like the one she’d found herself sitting in atop the castle, during her palaver with Mia.