The Dark Tower VII

by Stephen King

  And—

  North of the Algul compound, Susannah broke cover, moving in on the triple run of fence. This wasn’t in the plan, but the need to keep shooting, to keep knocking them down, was stronger than ever. She simply couldn’t help herself, and Roland would have understood. Besides, the billowing smoke from Damli House had momentarily obscured everything at this end of the compound. Red beams from the “lazers” stabbed into it—on and off, on and off, like some sort of neon sign—and Susannah reminded herself not to get in the way of them, not unless she wanted a hole two inches across all the way through her.

  She used bullets from the Coyote to cut her end of the fence—outer run, middle run, inner run—and then vanished into the thickening smoke, reloading as she went.

  And—

  The Breaker named Waverly tried to pull free of Finli. Nar, nar, none of that, may it please ya, Finli thought. He yanked the man—who’d been a bookkeeper or some such thing in his pre-Algul life—closer to him, then slapped him twice across the face, hard enough to make his hand hurt. Waverly screamed in pain and surprise.

  “Who the fuck is back there!” Finli roared. “WHO THE FUCK IS DOING THIS?” The follow-up fire engines had halted in front of Damli House and were pouring streams of water into the smoke. Finli didn’t know if it could help, but probably it couldn’t hurt. And at least the damned things hadn’t crashed into the building they were supposed to save, like the first one.

  “Sir, I don’t know!” Waverly sobbed. Blood was streaming from one of his nostrils and the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know, but there has to be fifty, maybe a hundred of the devils! Dinky got us out! God bless Dinky Earnshaw!”

  Gaskie o’ Tego, meanwhile, wrapped one good-sized hand around James Cagney’s neck and the other around Jakli’s. Gaskie had an idea son of a bitching crowhead Jakli had been on the verge of running, but there was no time to worry about that now. He needed them both.

  And—

  “Boss!” Finli shouted. “Boss, grab the Earnshaw kid! Something about this smells!”

  And—

  With Cag’s face pressing against one of his cheeks and Jakli’s against the other, the Wease (who thought as clearly as anyone that terrible morning) was finally able to make himself heard. Gaskie, meanwhile, repeated his command: divide up the armed guards and put them with the retreating Breakers. “Don’t try to stop them, but stay with them! And for Christ’s sake, keep em from getting electrocuted! Keep em off the fence if they go past Main Stree—”

  Before he could finish this admonishment, a figure came plummeting out of the thickening smoke. It was Gangli, the compound doctor, his white coat on fire, his roller skates still on his feet.

  And—

  Susannah Dean took up a position at the left rear corner of Damli House, coughing. She saw three of the sons of bitches—Gaskie, Jakli, and Cagney, had she but known it. Before she could draw a bead, eddying smoke blotted them out. When it cleared, Jakli and Cag were gone, rounding up armed guards to act as sheepdogs who would at least try to protect their panicked charges, even if they could not immediately stop them. Gaskie was still there, and Susannah took him with a single headshot.

  Pimli didn’t see it. It was becoming clear to him that all the confusion was on the surface. Quite likely deliberate. The Breakers’ decision to move away from the attackers north of the Algul had come a little too quickly and was a little too organized.

  Never mind Earnshaw, he thought, Brautigan’s the one I want to talk to.

  But before he could catch up to Ted, Tassa grabbed the Master in a frantic, terrified hug, babbling that Warden’s House was on fire, he was afraid, terribly afraid, that all of Master’s clothes, his books—

  Pimli Prentiss knocked him aside with a hammer-blow to the side of his head. The pulse of the Breakers’ unified thought (bad-mind now instead of good-mind), yammered

  (WITH YOUR HANDS UP YOU WON’T BE)

  crazily in his head, threatening to drive out all thought. Fucking Brautigan had done this, he knew it, and the man was too far ahead…unless…

  Pimli looked at the Peacemaker in his hand, considered it, then jammed it back into the docker’s clutch under his left arm. He wanted fucking Brautigan alive. Fucking Brautigan had some explaining to do. Not to mention some more goddamned breaking.

  Chow-chow-chow. Bullets flicking all around him. Running hume guards, taheen, and can-toi all around him. And Christ, only a few of them were armed, mostly humes who’d been down for fence-patrol. Those who guarded the Breakers didn’t really need guns, by and large the Breakers were as tame as parakeets and the thought of an outside attack had seemed ludicrous until…

  Until it happened, he thought, and spied Trampas.

  “Trampas!” he bawled. “Trampas! Hey, cowboy! Grab Earnshaw and bring him to me! Grab Earnshaw!”

  Here in the middle of the Mall it was a little less noisy and Trampas heard sai Prentiss quite clearly. He sprinted after Dinky and grabbed the young man by one arm.

  And—

  Eleven-year-old Daneeka Rostov came out of the rolling smoke that now entirely obscured the lower half of Damli House, pulling two red wagons behind her. Daneeka’s face was red and swollen; tears were streaming from her eyes; she was bent over almost double with the effort it was taking her to keep pulling Baj, who sat in one Radio Flyer wagon, and Sej, who sat in the other. Both had the huge heads and tiny, wise eyes of hydrocephalic savants, but Sej was equipped with waving stubs of arms while Baj had none. Both were now foaming at the mouth and making hoarse gagging sounds.

  “Help me!” Dani managed, coughing harder than ever. “Help me, someone, before they choke!”

  Dinky saw her and started in that direction. Trampas restrained him, although it was clear his heart wasn’t in it. “No, Dink,” he said. His tone was apologetic but firm. “Let someone else do it. Boss wants to talk to—”

  Then Brautigan was there again, face pale, mouth a single stitched line in his lower face. “Let him go, Trampas. I like you, dog, but you don’t want to get in our business today.”

  “Ted? What—”

  Dink started toward Dani again. Trampas pulled him back again. Beyond them, Baj fainted and tumbled headfirst from his wagon. Although he landed on the soft grass, his head made a dreadful rotten splitting sound, and Dani Rostov shrieked.

  Dinky lunged for her. Trampas yanked him back once more, and hard. At the same time he pulled the .38 Colt Woodsman he was wearing in his own docker’s clutch.

  There was no more time to reason with him. Ted Brautigan hadn’t thrown the mind-spear since using it against the wallet-thief in Akron, back in 1935; hadn’t even used it when the low men took him prisoner again in the Bridgeport, Connecticut, of 1960, although he’d been sorely tempted. He had promised himself he’d never use it again, and he certainly didn’t want to throw it at

  (smile when you say that)

  Trampas, who had always treated him decently. But he had to get to the south end of the compound before order was restored, and he meant to have Dinky with him when he arrived.

  Also, he was furious. Poor little Baj, who always had a smile for anyone and everyone!

  He concentrated and felt a sick pain rip through his head. The mind-spear flew. Trampas let go of Dinky and gave Ted a look of unbelieving reproach that Ted would remember to the end of his life. Then Trampas grabbed the sides of his head like a man with the worst Excedrin Headache in the universe, and fell dead on the grass with his throat swollen and his tongue sticking out of his mouth.

  “Come on!” Ted cried, and grabbed Dinky’s arm. Prentiss was looking away for the time being, thank God, distracted by another explosion.

  “But Dani…and Sej!”

  “She can get Sej!” Sending the rest of it mentally:

  (now that she doesn’t have to pull Baj too)

  Ted and Dinky fled while behind them Pimli Prentiss turned, looked unbelievingly at Trampas, and bawled for them to stop—to stop in the name of the Crimson King.r />
  Finli o’ Tego unlimbered his own gun, but before he could fire, Daneeka Rostov was on him, biting and scratching. She weighed almost nothing, but for a moment he was so surprised to be attacked from this unexpected quarter that she almost bowled him over. He curled a strong, furry arm around her neck and threw her aside, but by then Ted and Dinky were almost out of range, cutting to the left side of Warden’s House and disappearing into the smoke.

  Finli steadied his pistol in both hands, took in a breath, held it, and squeezed off a single shot. Blood flew from the old man’s arm; Finli heard him cry out and saw him swerve. Then the young pup grabbed the old cur and they cut around the corner of the house.

  “I’m coming for you!” Finli bellowed after them. “Yar I am, and when I catch you, I’ll make you wish you were never born!” But the threat felt horribly empty, somehow.

  Now the entire population of Algul Siento—Breakers, taheen, hume guards, can-toi with bloody red spots glaring on their foreheads like third eyes—was in tidal motion, flowing south. And Finli saw something he really did not like at all: the Breakers and only the Breakers were moving that way with their arms raised. If there were more harriers down there, they’d have no trouble at all telling which ones to shoot, would they?

  And—

  In his room on the third floor of Corbett Hall, still on his knees at the foot of his glass-covered bed, coughing on the smoke that was drifting in through his broken window, Sheemie Ruiz had his revelation…or was spoken to by his imagination, take your pick. In either case, he leaped to his feet. His eyes, normally friendly but always puzzled by a world he could not quite understand, were clear and full of joy.

  “BEAM SAYS THANKYA!” he cried to the empty room.

  He looked around, as happy as Ebenezer Scrooge discovering that the spirits have done it all in one night, and ran for the door with his slippers crunching on the broken glass. One sharp spear of glass pierced his foot—carrying his death on its tip, had he but known it, say sorry, say Discordia—but in his joy he didn’t even feel it. He dashed into the hall and then down the stairs.

  On the second floor landing, Sheemie came upon an elderly female Breaker named Belle O’Rourke, grabbed her, shook her. “BEAM SAYS THANKYA!” he hollered into her dazed and uncomprehending face. “BEAM SAYS ALL MAY YET BE WELL! NOT TOO LATE! JUST IN TIME!”

  He rushed on to spread the glad news (glad to him, anyway), and—

  On Main Street, Roland looked first at Eddie Dean, then at Jake Chambers. “They’re coming, and this is where we have to take them. Wait for my command, then stand and be true.”

  Eighteen

  First to appear were three Breakers, running full out with their arms raised. They crossed Main Street that way, never seeing Eddie, who was in the box-office of the Gem (he’d knocked out the glass on all three sides with the sandalwood grip of the gun which had once been Roland’s), or Jake (sitting inside an engineless Ford sedan parked in front of the Pleasantville Bake Shoppe), or Roland himself (behind a mannequin in the window of Gay Paree Fashions).

  They reached the other sidewalk and looked around, bewildered.

  Go, Roland thought at them. Go on and get out of here, take the alley, get away while you can.

  “Come on!” one of them shouted, and they ran down the alley between the drug store and the bookshop. Another appeared, then two more, then the first of the guards, a hume with a pistol raised to the side of his frightened, wide-eyed face. Roland sighted him…and then held his fire.

  More of the Devar personnel began to appear, running into Main Street from between the buildings. They spread themselves wide apart. As Roland had hoped and expected, they were trying to flank their charges and channel them. Trying to keep the retreat from turning into a rout.

  “Form two lines!” a taheen with a raven’s head was shouting in a buzzing, out-of-breath voice. “Form two lines and keep em between, for your fathers’ sakes!”

  One of the others, a redheaded taheen with his shirttail out, yelled: “What about the fence, Jakli? What if they run on the fence?”

  “Can’t do nothing about that, Cag, just—”

  A shrieking Breaker tried to run past the raven before he could finish, and the raven—Jakli—gave him such a mighty push that the poor fellow went sprawling in the middle of the street. “Stay together, you maggots!” he snarled. “Run if’ee will, but keep some fucking order about it!” As if there could be any order in this, Roland thought (and not without satisfaction). Then, to the redhead, the one called Jakli shouted: “Let one or two of em fry—the rest’ll see and stop!”

  It would complicate things if either Eddie or Jake started shooting at this point, but neither did. The three gunslingers watched from their places of concealment as a species of order rose from the chaos. More guards appeared. Jakli and the redhead directed them into the two lines, which was now a corridor running from one side of the street to the other. A few Breakers got past them before the corridor was fully formed, but only a few.

  A new taheen appeared, this one with the head of a weasel, and took over for the one called Jakli. He pounded a couple of running Breakers on the back, actually hurrying them up.

  From south of Main Street came a bewildered shout: “Fence is cut!” And then another: “I think the guards are dead!” This latter cry was followed by a howl of horror, and Roland knew as surely as if he had seen it that some unlucky Breaker had just come upon a severed watchman’s head in the grass.

  The terrified babble on the heels of this hadn’t run itself out when Dinky Earnshaw and Ted Brautigan appeared from between the bakery and the shoe store, so close to Jake’s hiding place that he could have reached out the window of his car and touched them. Ted had been winged. His right shirtsleeve had turned red from the elbow down, but he was moving—with a little help from Dinky, who had an arm around him. Ted turned as the two of them ran through the gauntlet of guards and looked directly at Roland’s hiding place for a moment. Then he and Earnshaw entered the alley and were gone.

  That made them safe, at least for the time being, and that was good. But where was the big bug? Where was Prentiss, the man in charge of this hateful place? Roland wanted him and yon Weasel-head taheen sai both—cut off the snake’s head and the snake dies. But they couldn’t afford to wait much longer. The stream of fleeing Breakers was drying up. The gunslinger didn’t think sai Weasel would wait for the last stragglers; he’d want to keep his precious charges from escaping through the cut fence. He’d know they wouldn’t go far, given the sterile and gloomy countryside all around, but he’d also know that if there were attackers at the north end of the compound, there might be rescuers standing by at the—

  And there he was, thank the gods and Gan—sai Pimli Prentiss, staggering and winded and clearly in a state of shock, with a loaded docker’s clutch swinging back and forth under his meaty arm. Blood was coming from one nostril and the corner of one eye, as if all this excitement had caused something to rupture inside of his head. He went to the Weasel, weaving slightly from side to side—it was this drunken weave that Roland would later blame in his bitter heart for the final outcome of that morning’s work—probably meaning to take command of the operation. Their short but fervent embrace, both giving comfort and taking it, told Roland all he needed to know about the closeness of their relationship.

  He leveled his gun on the back of Prentiss’s head, pulled the trigger, and watched as blood and hair flew. Master Prentiss’s hands shot out, the fingers spread against the dark sky, and he collapsed almost at the stunned Weasel’s feet.

  As if in response to this, the atomic sun came on, flooding the world with light.

  “Hile, you gunslingers, kill them all!” Roland cried, fanning the trigger of his revolver, that ancient murder-machine, with the flat of his right hand. Four had fallen to his fire before the guards, lined up like so many clay ducks in a shooting gallery, had registered the sound of the gunshots, let alone had time to react. “For Gilead, for New York, for the B
eam, for your fathers! Hear me, hear me! Leave not one of them standing! KILL THEM ALL!”

  And so they did: the gunslinger out of Gilead, the former drug addict out of Brooklyn, the lonely child who had once been known to Mrs. Greta Shaw as ’Bama. Coming south from behind them, rolling through thickening banners of smoke on the SCT (diverting from a straight course only once, to swerve around the flattened body of another housekeeper, this one named Tammy), was a fourth: she who had once been instructed in the ways of nonviolent protest by young and earnest men from the N-double A-C-P and who had now embraced, fully and with no regrets, the way of the gun. Susannah picked off three laggard humie guards and one fleeing taheen. The taheen had a rifle slung over one shoulder but never tried for it. Instead he raised his sleek, fur-covered arms—his head was vaguely bearish—and cried for quarter and parole. Mindful of all that had gone on here, not in the least how the pureed brains of children had been fed to the Beam-killers in order to keep them operating at top efficiency, Susannah gave him neither, although neither did she give him cause to suffer or time to fear his fate.

  By the time she rolled down the alley between the movie theater and the hair salon, the shooting had stopped. Finli and Jakli were dying; James Cagney was dead with his hume mask torn half-off his repulsive rat’s head; lying with these were another three dozen, just as dead. The formerly immaculate gutters of Pleasantville ran with their blood.

  There were undoubtedly other guards about the compound, but by now they’d be in hiding, positive that they had been set upon by a hundred or more seasoned fighters, land-pirates from God only knew where. The majority of Algul Siento’s Breakers were in the grassy area between the rear of Main Street and the south watchtowers, huddled like the sheep they were. Ted, unmindful of his bleeding arm, had already begun taking attendance.