The Collective

by The Collective [lit]

  against the faded no-colour of his jeans, and continued on up the

  street. The wooden knocking sound grew steadily louder as he

  walked (he had not holstered his gun when leaving LAW, nor

  cared to holster it now), and as he neared the town square, which

  must have housed the Eluria market in more normal times, Roland

  at last saw movement.

  On the far side of the square was a long watering trough, made of

  iron-wood from the look (what some called 'seequoiah' out here),

  apparently fed in happier times from a rusty steel pipe which now

  jutted waterless above the trough's south end. Lolling over one side

  of this municipal oasis, about halfway down its length, was a leg

  clad in faded grey pants and terminating in a well-chewed cowboy

  boot.

  The chewer was a large dog, perhaps two shades greyer than the

  corduroy pants. Under other circumstances, Roland supposed the

  mutt would have had the boot off long since, but perhaps the foot

  and lower calf inside it had swelled. In any case, the dog was well

  on its way to simply chewing the obstacle away. It would seize the

  boot and shake it back and forth. Every now and then the boot's

  heel would collide with the wooden side of the trough, producing

  another hollow knock. The gunslinger hadn't been so wrong to

  think of coffin tops after all, it seemed.

  Why doesn't it just back off a few steps, jump into the trough, and

  have at him? Roland wondered. No water coming out of the pipe,

  so it can't be afraid of drowning.

  Topsy uttered another of his hollow, tired sneezes, and when the

  dog lurched around in response, Roland understood why it was

  doing things the hard way. One of its front legs had been badly

  broken and crookedly mended. Walking would be a chore for it,

  jumping out of the question. On its chest was a patch of dirty white

  fur. Growing out of this patch was black fur in a roughly cruciform

  shape. A Jesus-dog, mayhap, hoping for a spot of afternoon

  communion.

  There was nothing very religious about the snarl which began to

  wind out of its chest, however, or the roll of its rheumy eyes. It

  lifted its upper lip in a trembling sneer, revealing a goodish set of

  teeth.

  'Light out,' Roland said. 'While you can.'

  The dog backed up until its hindquarters were pressed against the

  chewed boot. It regarded the oncoming man fearfully, but clearly

  meant to stand its ground. The revolver in Roland's hand held no

  significance for it. The gunslinger wasn't surprised - he guessed the

  dog had never seen one, had no idea it was anything other than a

  club of some kind, which could only be thrown once.

  'Hie on with you, now,' Roland said, but still the dog wouldn't

  move.

  He should have shot it - it was no good to itself, and a dog that had

  acquired a taste for human flesh could be no good to anyone else -

  but he somehow didn't like to. Killing the only thing still living in

  this town (other than the singing bugs, that was) seemed like an

  invitation to bad luck.

  He fired into the dust near the dog's good forepaw, the sound

  crashing into the hot day and temporarily silencing the insects. The

  dog could run, it seemed, although at a lurching trot that hurt

  Roland's eyes ... and his heart, a little, too. It stopped at the far side

  of the square, by an overturned flatbed wagon (there looked to be

  more dried blood splashed on the freighter's side), and glanced

  back. It uttered a forlorn howl that raised the hairs on the nape of

  Roland's neck even further.

  Then it turned, skirted the wrecked wagon, and limped down a lane

  which opened between two of the stalls. This way towards Eluria's

  back gate, Roland guessed.

  Still leading his dying horse, the gunslinger crossed the square to

  the ironwood trough and looked in.

  The owner of the chewed boot wasn't a man but a boy who had just

  been beginning to get his man's growth - and that would have been

  quite a large growth indeed, Roland judged, even setting aside the

  bloating effects which had resulted from being immersed for some

  unknown length of time in nine inches of water simmering under a

  summer sun.

  The boy's eyes, now just milky balls, stared blindly up at the

  gunslinger like the eyes of a statue. His hair appeared to be the

  white of old age, although that was the effect of the water; he had

  likely been a towhead. His clothes were those of a cowboy,

  although he couldn't have been much more than fourteen or

  sixteen. Around his neck, gleaming blearily in water that was

  slowly turning into a skin stew under the summer sun, was a gold

  medallion.

  Roland reached into the water, not liking to but feeling a certain

  obligation. He wrapped his fingers around the medallion and

  pulled. The chain parted, and he lifted the thing, dripping, into the

  air.

  He rather expected a Jesus-man sigil - what was called the crucifix

  or the rood -but a small rectangle hung from the chain, instead. The

  object looked like pure gold. Engraved into it was this legend:

  James

  Loved of Family, Loved of GOD

  Roland, who had been almost too revolted to reach into the

  polluted water (as a younger man, he could never have brought

  himself to that), was now glad he'd done it. He might never run

  into any of those who had loved this boy, but he knew enough of

  ka to think it might be so. In any case, it was the right thing. So

  was giving the kid a decent burial ... assuming, that was, he could

  get the body out of the trough without having it break apart inside

  the clothes.

  Roland was considering this, trying to balance what might be his

  duty in this circumstance against his growing desire to get out of

  this town, when Topsy finally fell dead.

  The roan went over with a creak of gear and a last whuffling groan

  as it hit the ground. Roland turned and saw eight people in the

  street, walking towards him in a line, like beaters who hope to

  flush out birds or drive small game. Their skin was waxy green.

  Folk wearing such skin would likely glow in the dark like ghosts.

  It was hard to tell their sex, and what could it matter - to them or

  anyone else? They were slow mutants, walking with the hunched

  deliberation of corpses reanimated by some arcane magic.

  The dust had muffled their feet like carpet. With the dog banished,

  they might well have gotten within attacking distance if Topsy

  hadn't done Roland the favour of dying at such an opportune

  moment. No guns that Roland could see; they were armed with

  clubs. These were chair-legs and table-legs, for the most part, but

  Roland saw one that looked made rather than seized - it had a

  bristle of rusty nails sticking out of it, and he suspected it had once

  - been the property of a saloon bouncer, possibly

  the one who kept school in The Bustling Pig.

  Roland raised his pistol, aiming at the fellow in the centre of the

  line. Now he could hear the shuffle of their feet, and the wet

  snuffle of
their breathing. As if they all had bad chest-colds.

  Came out of the mines, most likely, Roland thought. There are

  radium mines somewhere about. That would account for the skin. I

  wonder that the sun doesn't kill them.

  Then, as he watched, the one on the end - a creature with a face

  like melted candle-wax - did die ... or collapsed, at any rate. He

  (Roland was quite sure it was a male) went to his knees with a low,

  gobbling cry, groping for the hand of the thing walking next to him

  - something with a lumpy bald head and red sores sizzling on its

  neck. This creature took no notice of its fallen companion, but kept

  its dim eyes on Roland, lurching along in rough step with its

  remaining companions.

  'Stop where you are!' Roland said. "Ware me, if you'd live to see

  day's end! 'Ware me very well!'

  He spoke mostly to the one in the centre, who wore ancient red

  suspenders over rags of shirt, and a filthy bowler hat. This gent had

  only one good eye, and it peered at the gunslinger with a greed as

  horrible as it was unmistakable. The one beside Bowler Hat

  (Roland believed this one might be a woman, with the dangling

  vestiges of breasts beneath the vest it wore) threw the chair-leg it

  held. The arc was true, but the missile fell ten yards short.

  Roland thumbed back the trigger of his revolver and fired again.

  This time the dirt displaced by the slug kicked up on the tattered

  remains of Bowler Hat's shoe instead of on a lame dog's paw.

  The green folk didn't run as the dog had, but they stopped, staring

  at him with their dull greed. Had the missing folk of Eluria

  finished up in these creatures' stomachs? Roland couldn't believe it

  . . . although he knew perfectly well that such as these held no

  scruple against cannibalism. (And perhaps it wasn't cannibalism,

  not really; how could such things as these be considered human,

  whatever they might once have been?) They were too slow, too

  stupid. If they had dared come back into town after the Sheriff had

  run them out, they would have been burned or stoned to death.

  Without thinking about what he was doing, wanting only to free

  his other hand to draw his second gun if the apparitions didn't see

  reason, Roland stuffed the medallion which he had taken from the

  dead boy into the pocket of his jeans, pushing the broken fine-link

  chain in after.

  They stood staring at him, their strangely twisted shadows drawn

  out behind them. What next? Tell them to go back where they'd

  come from? Roland didn't know if they'd do it, and in any case had

  decided he liked them best where he could see them. And at least

  there was no question now about staying to bury the boy named

  James; that conundrum had been solved.

  'Stand steady,' he said in the low speech, beginning to retreat. 'First

  fellow that moves -'

  Before he could finish, one of them - a thick-chested troll with a

  pouty toad's mouth and what looked like gills on the sides of his

  wattled neck - lunged forward, gibbering in a high-pitched and

  peculiarly flabby voice.

  It might have been a species of laughter. He was waving what

  looked like a piano-leg.

  Roland fired. Mr Toad's chest caved in like a bad piece of roofing.

  He ran backwards several steps, trying to catch his balance and

  clawing at his chest with the hand not holding the piano-leg. His

  feet, clad in dirty red velvet slippers with curled-up toes, tangled in

  each other and he fell over, making a queer and somehow lonely

  gargling sound. He let go of his club, rolled over on one side, tried

  to rise, and then fell back into the dust. The brutal sun glared into

  his open eyes, and as Roland watched, white tendrils of steam

  began to rise from his skin, which was rapidly losing its green

  undertint. There was also a hissing sound, like a gob of spit on top

  of a hot stove.

  Saves explaining, at least, Roland thought, and swept his eyes over

  the others. 'All right; he was the first one to move. Who wants to

  be the second?'

  None did, it seemed. They only stood there, watching him, not

  coming at him ... but not retreating, either. He thought (as he had

  about the crucifix-dog) that he should kill them as they stood there,

  just draw his other gun and mow them down. It would be the work

  of seconds only, and child's play to his gifted hands, even if some

  ran. But he couldn't.

  Not just cold, like that. He wasn't that kind of killer ... at least, not

  yet.

  Very slowly, he began to step backwards, first bending his course

  around the watering trough, then putting it between him and them.

  When Bowler Hat took a step forward, Roland didn't give the

  others in the line a chance to copy him; he put a bullet into the dust

  of High Street an inch in advance of Bowler Hat's foot.

  'That's your last warning,' he said, still using the low speech. He

  had no idea if they understood it, didn't really care. He guessed

  they caught this tune's music well enough. 'Next bullet I fire eats

  up someone's heart. The way it works is, you stay and I go. You

  get this one chance. Follow me, and you all die. It's too hot to play

  games and I've lost my -'

  'Booh!' cried a rough, liquidy voice from behind him. There was

  unmistakable glee in it. Roland saw a shadow grow from the

  shadow of the overturned freight wagon, which he had now almost

  reached, and had just time to understand that another of the green

  folk had been hiding beneath it.

  As he began to turn, a club crashed down on Roland's shoulder,

  numbing his right arm all the way to the wrist. He held on to the

  gun and fired once, but the bullet went into one of the wagon-

  wheels, smashing a wooden spoke and turning the wheel on its hub

  with a high screeching sound. Behind him, he heard the green folk

  in the street uttering hoarse, yapping cries as they charged forward.

  The thing which had been hiding beneath the overturned wagon

  was a monster with two heads growing out of his neck, one with

  the vestigial, slack face of a corpse. The other, although just as

  green, was more lively. Broad lips spread in a cheerful grin as he

  raised his club to strike again.

  Roland drew with his left hand - the one that wasn't numbed and

  distant. He had time to put one bullet through the bushwhacker's

  grin, flinging him backwards in a spray of blood and teeth, the

  bludgeon flying out of his relaxing fingers. Then the others were

  on him, clubbing and drubbing.

  The gunslinger was able to slip the first couple of blows, and there

  was one moment when he thought he might be able to spin around

  to the rear of the overturned wagon, spin and turn and go to work

  with his guns. Surely he would be able to do that. Surely his quest

  for the Dark Tower wasn't supposed to end on the sun-blasted

  street of a little far-western town called Eluria, at the hands of half

  a dozen green-skinned slow mutants. Surely ka could not be so

  cruel.

  But Bowler Hat caught him with a vicious sidehand blow, and

  Rolan
d crashed into the wagon's slowly spinning rear wheel

  instead of skirting around it. As he went to his hands and knees,

  still scrambling and trying to turn, trying to evade the blows which

  rained down on him, he saw there were now many more than half a

  dozen. Coming up the street towards the town square were at least

  thirty green men and women. This wasn't a clan but a damned tribe

  of them. And in broad, hot daylight! Slow mutants were, in his

  experience, creatures that loved the dark, almost like toadstools

  with brains, and he had never seen any such as these before. They -

  The one in the red vest was female. Her bare breasts swinging

  beneath the dirty red vest were the last things he saw clearly as

  they gathered around and above him, bashing away with their

  clubs. The one with the nails studded in it came down on his lower

  right calf, sinking its stupid rusty fangs in deep. He tried again to

  raise one of the big guns (his vision was fading, now, but that

  wouldn't help them if he got to shooting; he had always been the

  most hellishly talented of them; Jamie DeCurry had once

  proclaimed that Roland could shoot blindfolded, because he had

  eyes in his fingers), and it was kicked out of his hand and into the

  dust. Although he could still feel the smooth sandalwood grip of

  the other, he thought it was nevertheless already gone.

  He could smell them - the rich, rotted smell of decaying meat. Or

  was that only his hands, as he raised them in a feeble and useless

  effort to protect his head? His hands, which had been in the

  polluted water where flecks and strips of the dead boy's skin

  floated?

  The clubs slamming down on him, slamming down all over him, as

  if the green folk wanted not just to beat him to death but to

  tenderize him as they did so. And as he went down into the

  darkness of what he most certainly believed would be his death, he

  heard the bugs singing, the dog he had spared barking, and the

  bells hung on the church door ringing. These sounds merged

  together into strangely sweet music. Then that was gone, too; the

  darkness ate it all.

  II. Rising. Hanging Suspended. White Beauty.

  Two Others. The Medallion.

  The gunslinger's return to the world wasn't like coming back to

  consciousness after a blow, which he'd done several times before,

  and it wasn't like waking from sleep, either. It was like rising.