by Stephen King
From behind it, utter silence. Eddie waited for the siren to start up again, waited for Andy to resume bashing his way out of the privy. He’d tell Tian and Rosa to run, try to cover them—
The voice that spoke from inside the battered building was colorless and flat: the voice of a machine. Both the fake smarminess and the genuine fury were gone. Andy as generations of Calla-folken had known him was gone, and for good.
“Thank you,” the voice said. “I am Andy, a messenger robot, many other functions. Serial number DNF-44821-V-63. How may I help?”
“By shutting yourself down.”
Silence from the privy.
“Do you understand what I’m asking?”
A small, horrified voice said, “Please don’t make me. You bad man. Oh, you bad man.”
“Shut yourself down now.”
A longer silence. Rosa stood with her hand pressed against her throat. Several men appeared around the side of the Pere’s house, armed with various homely weapons. Rosa waved them back.
“DNF-44821-V-63, comply!”
“Yes, Eddie of New York. I will shut myself down.” A horrible self-pitying sadness had crept into Andy’s new small voice. It made Eddie’s skin crawl. “Andy is blind and will shut down. Are you aware that with my main power cells ninety-eight per cent depleted, I may never be able to power up again?”
Eddie remembered the vast roont twins out at the Jaffords smallhold—Tia and Zalman—and then thought of all the others like them this unlucky town had known over the years. He dwelled particularly on the Tavery twins, so bright and quick and eager to please. And so beautiful. “Never won’t be long enough,” he said, “but I guess it’ll have to do. Palaver’s done, Andy. Shut down.”
Another silence from within the half-busted privy. Tian and Rosa crept up to either side of Eddie and the three of them stood together in front of the locked door. Rosa gripped Eddie’s forearm. He shook her off immediately. He wanted his hand free in case he had to draw. Although where he would shoot now that Andy’s eyes were gone, he didn’t know.
When Andy spoke again, it was in a toneless amplified voice that made Tian and Rosa gasp and step back. Eddie stayed where he was. He had heard a voice like this and words like this once before, in the clearing of the great bear. Andy’s rap wasn’t quite the same, but close enough for government work.
“DNF-44821-V-63 IS SHUTTING DOWN! ALL SUBNUCLEAR CELLS AND MEMORY CIRCUITS ARE IN SHUTDOWN PHASE! SHUTDOWN IS 13 PER CENT COMPLETE! I AM ANDY, MESSENGER ROBOT, MANY OTHER FUNCTIONS! PLEASE REPORT MY LOCATION TO LAMERK INDUSTRIES OR NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD! CALL 1-900-54! REWARD IS OFFERED! REPEAT, REWARD IS OFFERED!” There was a click as the message recycled. “DNF-44821-V-63 IS SHUTTING DOWN! ALL SUBNUCLEAR CELLS AND MEMORY CIRCUITS ARE IN SHUTDOWN PHASE! SHUTDOWN IS 19 PER CENT COMPLETE! I AM ANDY—”
“You were Andy,” Eddie said softly. He turned to Tian and Rosa, and had to smile at their scared-children’s faces. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s over. He’ll go on blaring like that for awhile, and then he’ll be done. You can turn him into a…I don’t know…a planter, or something.”
“I think we’ll tear up the floor and bury him right there,” Rosa said, nodding at the privy.
Eddie’s smile widened and became a grin. He liked the idea of burying Andy in shit. He liked that idea very well.
Seventeen
As dusk ended and night deepened, Roland sat on the edge of the bandstand and watched the Calla-folken tuck into their great dinner. Every one of them knew it might be the last meal they’d ever eat together, that tomorrow night at this time their nice little town might lie in smoking ruins all about them, but still they were cheerful. And not, Roland thought, entirely for the sake of the children. There was great relief in finally deciding to do the right thing. Even when folk knew the price was apt to be high, that relief came. A kind of giddiness. Most of these people would sleep on the Green tonight with their children and grandchildren in the tent nearby, and here they would stay, their faces turned to the northeast of town, waiting for the outcome of the battle. There would be gunshots, they reckoned (it was a sound many of them had never heard), and then the dust-cloud that marked the Wolves would either dissipate, turn back the way it had come, or roll on toward town. If the last, the folken would scatter and wait for the burning to commence. When it was over, they would be refugees in their own place. Would they rebuild, if that was how the cards fell? Roland doubted it. With no children to build for—because the Wolves would take them all this time if they won, the gunslinger did not doubt it—there would be no reason. At the end of the next cycle, this place would be a ghost town.
“Cry your pardon, sai.”
Roland looked around. There stood Wayne Overholser, with his hat in his hands. Standing thus, he looked more like a wandering saddle-tramp down on his luck than the Calla’s big farmer. His eyes were large and somehow mournful.
“No need to cry my pardon when I’m still wearing the dayrider hat you gave me,” Roland said mildly.
“Yar, but…” Overholser trailed off, thought of how he wanted to go on, and then seemed to decide to fly straight at it. “Reuben Caverra was one of the fellas you meant to take to guard the children during the fight, wasn’t he?”
“Aye?”
“His gut busted this morning.” Overholser touched his own swelling belly about where his appendix might have been. “He lays home feverish and raving. He’ll likely die of the bloodmuck. Some get better, aye, but not many.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Roland said, trying to think who would be best to replace Caverra, a hulk of a man who had impressed Roland as not knowing much about fear and probably nothing at all about cowardice.
“Take me instea’, would ye?”
Roland eyed him.
“Please, gunslinger. I can’t stand aside. I thought I could—that I must—but I can’t. It’s making me sick.” And yes, Roland thought, he did look sick.
“Does your wife know, Wayne?”
“Aye.”
“And says aye?”
“She does.”
Roland nodded. “Be here half an hour before dawn.”
A look of intense, almost painful gratitude filled Overholser’s face and made him look weirdly young. “Thankee, Roland! Say thankee! Big-big!”
“Glad to have you. Now listen to me a minute.”
“Aye?”
“Things won’t be just the way I told them at the big meeting.”
“Because of Andy, y’mean.”
“Yes, partly that.”
“What else? You don’t mean to say there’s another traitor, do’ee? You don’t mean to say that?”
“All I mean to say is that if you want to come with us, you have to roll with us. Do you ken?”
“Yes, Roland, Very well.”
Overholser thanked him again for the chance to die north of town and then hurried off with his hat still in his hands. Before Roland could change his mind, perhaps.
Eddie came over. “Overholser’s coming to the dance?”
“Looks like it. How much trouble did you have with Andy?”
“It went all right,” Eddie said, not wanting to admit that he, Tian, and Rosalita had probably all come within a second of being toast. In the distance, they could still hear him bellowing. But probably not for much longer; the amplified voice was claiming shutdown was seventy-nine per cent complete.
“I think you did very well.”
A compliment from Roland always made Eddie feel like king of the world, but he tried not to show it. “As long as we do well tomorrow.”
“Susannah?”
“Seems fine.”
“No…?” Roland rubbed above his left eyebrow.
“No, not that I’ve seen.”
“And no talking short and sharp?”
“No, she’s good for it. Practiced with her plates all the time you guys were digging.” Eddie tipped his chin toward J
ake, who was sitting by himself on a swing with Oy at his feet. “That’s the one I’m worried about. I’ll be glad to get him out of here. This has been hard for him.”
“It’ll be harder on the other boy,” Roland said, and stood up. “I’m going back to Pere’s. Going to get some sleep.”
“Can you sleep?”
“Oh, yes,” Roland said. “With the help of Rosa’s cat-oil, I’ll sleep like a rock. You and Susannah and Jake should also try.”
“Okay.”
Roland nodded somberly. “I’ll wake you tomorrow morning. We’ll ride down here together.”
“And we’ll fight.”
“Yes,” Roland said. He looked at Eddie. His blue eyes gleamed in the glow of the torches. “We’ll fight. Until they’re dead, or we are.”
Chapter VII:
The Wolves
One
See this now, see it very well:
Here is a road as wide and as well-maintained as any secondary road in America, but of the smooth packed dirt the Calla-folk call oggan. Ditches for runoff border both sides; here and there neat and well-maintained wooden culverts run beneath the oggan. In the faint, unearthly light that comes before dawn, a dozen bucka waggons—they are the kind driven by the Manni, with rounded canvas tops—roll along the road. The canvas is bright clean white, to reflect the sun and keep the interiors cool on hot summer days, and they look like strange, low-floating clouds. The cumulus kind, may it do ya. Each waggon is drawn by a team of six mules or four horses. On the seat of each, driving, are either a pair of fighters or of designated child-minders. Overholser is driving the lead waggon, with Margaret Eisenhart beside him. Next in line comes Roland of Gilead, mated with Ben Slightman. Fifth is Tian and Zalia Jaffords. Seventh is Eddie and Susannah Dean. Susannah’s wheelchair is folded up in the waggon behind her. Bucky and Annabelle Javier are in charge of the tenth. On the peak-seat of the last waggon are Father Donald Callahan and Rosalita Munoz.
Inside the buckas are ninety-nine children. The left-over twin—the one that makes for an odd number—is Benny Slightman, of course. He is riding in the last waggon. (He felt uncomfortable about going with his father.) The children don’t speak. Some of the younger ones have gone back to sleep; they will have to be awakened shortly, when the waggons reach their destination. Ahead, now less than a mile, is the place where the path into the arroyo country splits off to the left. On the right, the land runs down a mild slope to the river. All the drivers keep looking to the east, toward the constant darkness that is Thunderclap. They are watching for an approaching dust-cloud. There is none. Not yet. Even the seminon winds have fallen still. Callahan’s prayers seem to have been answered, at least in that regard.
Two
Ben Slightman, sitting next to Roland on the bucka’s peak-seat, spoke in a voice so low the gunslinger could barely hear him. “What will’ee do to me, then?”
If asked, when the waggons set out from Calla Bryn Sturgis, to give odds on Slightman’s surviving this day, Roland might have put them at five in a hundred. Surely no better. There were two crucial questions that needed to be asked and then answered correctly. The first had to come from Slightman himself. Roland hadn’t really expected the man to ask it, but here it was, out of his mouth. Roland turned his head and looked at him.
Vaughn Eisenhart’s foreman was very pale, but he took off his spectacles and met Roland’s gaze. The gunslinger ascribed no special courage to this. Surely Slightman the Elder had had time to take Roland’s measure and knew that he must look the gunslinger in the eye if he was to have any hope at all, little as he might like to do it.
“Yar, I know,” Slightman said. His voice was steady, at least so far. “Know what? That you know.”
“Have since we took your pard, I suppose,” Roland said. The word was deliberately sarcastic (sarcasm was the only form of humor Roland truly understood), and Slightman winced at it: pard. Your pard. But he nodded, eyes still steady on Roland’s.
“I had to figure that if you knew about Andy, you knew about me. Although he’d never have peached on me. Such wasn’t in his programming.” At last it was too much and he could bear the eye-contact no longer. He looked down, biting his lip. “Mostly I knew because of Jake.”
Roland wasn’t able to keep the surprise out of his face.
“He changed. He didn’t mean to, not as trig as he is—and as brave—but he did. Not toward me, toward my boy. Over the last week, week and a half. Benny was only…well, puzzled, I guess you’d say. He felt something but didn’t know what it was. I did. It was like your boy didn’t want to be around him anymore. I asked myself what could do that. The answer seemed pretty clear. Clear as short beer, do ya.”
Roland was falling behind Overholser’s waggon. He flicked the reins over the backs of his own team. They moved a little faster. From behind them came the quiet sound of the children, some talking now but most snoring, and the muted jingle of trace. He’d asked Jake to collect up a small box of children’s possessions, and had seen the boy doing it. He was a good boy who never put off a chore. This morning he wore a dayrider hat to keep the sun out of his eyes, and his father’s gun. He rode on the seat of the eleventh waggon, with one of the Estrada men. He guessed that Slightman had a good boy, too, which had gone far toward making this the mess that it was.
“Jake was at the Dogan one night when you and Andy were there, passing on news of your neighbors,” Roland said. On the seat beside him, Slightman winced like a man who has just been punched in the belly.
“There,” he said. “Yes, I could almost sense…or thought I could…” A longer pause, and then: “Fuck.”
Roland looked east. A little brighter over there now, but still no dust. Which was good. Once the dust appeared, the Wolves would come in a rush. Their gray horses would be fast. Continuing on, speaking almost idly, Roland asked the other question. If Slightman answered in the negative, he wouldn’t live to see the coming of the Wolves no matter how fast their gray horses rode.
“If you’d found him, Slightman—if you’d found my boy—would you have killed him?”
Slightman put his spectacles back on as he struggled with it. Roland couldn’t tell if he understood the importance of the question or not. He waited to see if the father of Jake’s friend would live or die. He’d have to decide quickly; they were approaching the place where the waggons would stop and the children would get down.
The man at last raised his head and met Roland’s eyes again. He opened his mouth to speak and couldn’t. The fact of the matter was clear enough: he could answer the gunslinger’s question, or he could look into the gunslinger’s face, but he could not do both at the same time.
Dropping his gaze back to the splintery wood between his feet, Slightman said: “Yes, I reckon we would have killed him.” A pause. A nod. When he moved his head a tear fell from one eye and splashed on the wood of the peak-seat’s floor. “Yar, what else?” Now he looked up; now he could meet Roland’s eyes again, and when he did he saw his fate had been decided. “Make it quick,” said he, “and don’t let me boy see it happen. Beg ya please.”
Roland flapped the reins over the mules’ backs again. Then he said: “I won’t be the one to stop your miserable breath.”
Slightman’s breath did stop. Telling the gunslinger that yes, he would have killed a twelve-year-old boy to protect his secret, his face had had a kind of strained nobility. Now it wore hope instead, and hope made it ugly. Nearly grotesque. Then he let his breath out in a ragged sigh and said, “You’re fooling with me. A-teasing me. You’re going to kill me, all right. Why would you not?”
“A coward judges all he sees by what he is,” Roland remarked. “I’d not kill you unless I had to, Slightman, because I love my own boy. You must understand that much, don’t you? To love a boy?”
“Yar.” Slightman lowered his head again and began to rub the back of his sunburned neck. The neck he must have thought would end this day packed in dirt.
&n
bsp; “But you have to understand something. For your own good and Benny’s as much as ours. If the Wolves win, you will die. That much you can be sure of. ‘Take it to the bank,’ Eddie and Susannah say.”
Slightman was looking at him again, eyes narrowed behind his specs.
“Hear me well, Slightman, and take understanding from what I say. We’re not going to be where the Wolves think we’re going to be, and neither are the kiddies. Win or lose, this time they’re going to leave some bodies behind. And win or lose, they’ll know they were misled. Who was there in Calla Bryn Sturgis to mislead them? Only two. Andy and Ben Slightman. Andy’s shut down, gone beyond the reach of their vengeance.” He gave Slightman a smile that was as cold as the earth’s north end. “But you’re not. Nor the only one you care for in your poor excuse for a heart.”
Slightman sat considering this. It was clearly a new idea to him, but once he saw the logic of it, it was undeniable.
“They’ll likely think you switched sides a-purpose,” Roland said, “but even if you could convince them it was an accident, they’d kill you just the same. And your son, as well. For vengeance.”
A red stain had seeped into the man’s cheeks as the gunslinger spoke—roses of shame, Roland supposed—but as he considered the probability of his son’s murder at the hands of the Wolves, he grew white once more. Or perhaps it was the thought of Benny being taken east that did it—being taken east and roont. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry for what I’ve done.”
“Balls to your sorry,” Roland said. “Ka works and the world moves on.”
Slightman made no reply.
“I’m disposed to send you with the kids, just as I said I would,” Roland told him. “If things go as I hope, you won’t see a single moment’s action. If things don’t go as I hope, you want to remember Sarey Adams is boss of that shooting match, and if I talk to her after, you want to hope that she says you did everything you were told to do.” When this met with only more silence from Slightman, the gunslinger spoke sharply. “Tell me you understand, gods damn you. I want to hear ‘Yes, Roland, I ken.’ ”