by Stephen King
“Goddam,” Andy Staunton breathed.
Approach with extreme caution, the dispatcher had said. This man is armed and extremely dangerous. Dispatchers usually sounded like the most bored human beings on earth— for all Andy Staunton knew, they were—and so the almost awed emphasis this one put on the word extremely had stuck to his consciousness like a burr.
He drew his weapon for the first time in his four years on the force, and glanced at Weaver. Weaver had also drawn. The two of them were standing outside a deli about thirty feet from the IRT stairway. They had known each other long enough to be attuned to each other in a way only cops and professional soldiers can be. Without a word between them they stepped back into the doorway of the delicatessen, weapons pointing upward.
“Subway?” Weaver asked.
“Yeah.” Andy took one quick glance at the entrance. Rush hour was in high gear now, and the subway stairs were clogged with people heading for their trains. “We’ve got to take him right now, before he can get close to the crowd.”
“Let’s do it.”
They stepped out of the doorway in perfect tandem, gunslingers Roland would have recognized at once as adversaries much more dangerous than the first two. They were younger, for one thing; and although he didn’t know it, some unknown dispatcher had labeled him extremely dangerous, and to Andy Staunton and Norris Weaver, that made him the equivalent of a rogue tiger. If he doesn’t stop the second I tell him to, he’s dead, Andy thought.
“Hold it!” he screamed, dropping into a crouch with his gun held out before him in both hands. Beside him, Weaver had done the same. “Police! Get your hands on your he—”
That was as far as he got before the guy ran for the IRT stairway. He moved with a sudden speed that was uncanny. Nevertheless, Andy Staunton was wired, all his dials turned up to the max. He swivelled on his heels, feeling a cloak of emotionless coldness drop over him—Roland would have known this, too. He had felt it many times in similar situations.
Andy led the running figure slightly, then squeezed the trigger of his .38. He saw the man in the blue suit spin around, trying to keep his feet. Then he fell to the pavement, as commuters who, only seconds ago, had been concentrating on nothing but surviving another trip home on the subway, screamed and scattered like quail. They had discovered there was more to survive than the uptown train this afternoon.
“Holy fuck, partner,” Norris Wheaton breathed, “you blew him away.”
“I know,” Andy said. His voice didn’t falter. The gunslinger would have admired it. “Let’s go see who he was.”
11
I’m dead! Jack Mort was screaming. I’m dead, you’ve gotten me killed, I’m dead, I’m—
No, the gunslinger responded. Through slitted eyes he saw the cops approaching, guns still out. Younger and faster than the ones who had been parked near the gunshop. Faster. And at least one of them was a hell of a shot. Mort—and Roland along with him—should have been dead, dying, or seriously wounded. Andy Staunton had shot to kill, and his bullet had drilled through the left lapel of Mort’s suitcoat. It had likewise punched through the pocket of Mort’s Arrow shirt—but that was as far as it went. The life of both men, the one inside and the one outside, were saved by Mort’s lighter.
Mort didn’t smoke, but his boss—whose job Mort had confidently expected to have himself by this time next year— did. Accordingly, Mort had bought a two hundred dollar silver lighter at Dunhill’s. He did not light every cigarette Mr. Framingham stuck in his gob when the two of them were together— that would have made him look too much like an ass-kisser. Just once in awhile … and usually when someone even higher up was present, someone who could appreciate a.) Jack Mort’s quiet courtesy, and b.) Jack Mort’s good taste.
Do-Bees covered all the bases.
This time covering the bases saved his life and Roland’s. Staunton’s bullet smashed the silver lighter instead of Mort’s heart (which was generic; Mort’s passion for brand names— good brand names—stopped mercifully at the skin).
He was hurt just the same, of course. When you were hit by a heavy-caliber slug, there was no such thing as a free ride. The lighter was driven against his chest hard enough to create a hollow. It flattened and then smashed apart, digging shallow grooves in Mort’s skin; one sliver of shrapnel sliced Mort’s left nipple almost in two. The hot slug also ignited the lighter’s fluid-soaked batting. Nevertheless, the gunslinger lay still as they approached. The one who had not shot him was telling people to stay back, just stay back, goddammit.
I’m on fire! Mort shrieked. I’m on fire, put it out! Put it out! PUT IT OWWWWWW—
The gunslinger lay still, listening to the grit of the gunslingers’ shoes on the pavement, ignoring Mort’s shrieks, trying to ignore the coal suddenly glowing against his chest and the smell of frying flesh.
A foot slid beneath his ribcage, and when it lifted, the gunslinger allowed himself to roll bonelessly onto his back. Jack Mort’s eyes were open. His face was slack. In spite of the shattered, burning remains of the lighter, there was no sign of the man screaming inside.
“God,” someone muttered, “did you shoot him with a tracer, man?”
Smoke was rising from the hole in the lapel of Mort’s coat in a neat little stream. It was escaping around the edge of the lapel in more untidy blotches. The cops could smell burning flesh as the wadding in the smashed lighter, soaked with Ronson lighter fluid, really began to blaze.
Andy Staunton, who had performed faultlessly thus far, now made his only mistake, one for which Cort would have sent him home with a fat ear in spite of his earlier admirable performance, telling him one mistake was all it took, took to get a man killed most of the time. Staunton had been able to shoot the guy—a thing no cop really knows if he can do until he’s faced with a situation where he must find out—but the idea that his bullet had somehow set the guy on fire filled him with unreasoning horror. So he bent forward to put it out without thinking, and the gunslinger’s feet smashed into his belly before he had time to do more than register the blaze of awareness in eyes he would have sworn were dead.
Staunton went flailing back into his partner. His pistol flew from his hand. Wheaton held onto his own, but by the time he had gotten clear of Staunton, he heard a shot and his gun was magically gone. The hand it had been in felt numb, as if it had been struck with a very large hammer.
The guy in the blue suit got up, looked at them for a moment and said, “You’re good. Better than the others. So let me advise you. Don’t follow. This is almost over. I don’t want to have to kill you.”
Then he whirled and ran for the subway stairs.
12
The stairs were choked with people who had reversed their downward course when the yelling and shooting started, obsessed with that morbid and somehow unique New Yorkers’ curiosity to see how bad, how many, how much blood spilled on the dirty concrete. Yet somehow they still found a way to shrink back from the man in the blue suit who came plunging down the stairs. It wasn’t much wonder. He was holding a gun, and another was strapped around his waist.
Also, he appeared to be on fire.
13
Roland ignored Mort’s increasing shrieks of pain as his shirt, undershirt, and jacket began to burn more briskly, as the silver of the lighter began to melt and run down his midsection to his belly in burning tracks.
He could smell dirty moving air, could hear the roar of an oncoming train.
This was almost the time; the moment had almost come around, the moment when he would draw the three or lose it all. For the second time he seemed to feel worlds tremble and reel about his head.
He reached the platform level and tossed the .38 aside. He unbuckled Jack Mort’s pants and pushed them casually down, revealing a pair of white underdrawers like a whore’s panties. He had no time to reflect on this oddity. If he did not move fast, he could stop worrying about burning alive; the bullets he had purchased would get hot enough to go off and this body would simply
explode.
The gunslinger stuffed the boxes of bullets into the underdrawers, took out the bottle of Keflex, and did the same with it. Now the underdrawers bulged grotesquely. He stripped off the flaming suit-jacket, but made no effort to take off the flaming shirt.
He could hear the train roaring toward the platform, could see its light. He had no way of knowing it was a train which kept the same route as the one which had run over Odetta, but all the same he did know. In matters of the Tower, fate became a thing as merciful as the lighter which had saved his life and as painful as the fire the miracle had ignited. Like the wheels of the oncoming train, it followed a course both logical and crushingly brutal, a course against which only steel and sweetness could stand.
He picked up Mort’s pants and began to run again, barely aware of the people scattering out of his way. As more air fed the fire, first his shirt collar and then his hair began to burn. The heavy boxes in Mort’s underdrawers slammed against his balls again and again, mashing them; excruciating pain rose into his gut. He jumped the turnstile, a man who was becoming a meteor. Put me out! Mort screamed. Put me out before I burn up!
You ought to burn, the gunslinger thought grimly. What’s going to happen to you is more merciful than you deserve.
What do you mean? WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
The gunslinger didn’t answer; in fact turned him off entirely as he pelted toward the edge of the platform. He felt one of the boxes of shells trying to slip out of Mort’s ridiculous panties and held it with one hand.
He sent out every bit of his mental force toward the Lady. He had no idea if such a telepathic command could be heard, or if the hearer could be compelled to obey, but he sent it just the same, a swift, sharp arrow of thought:
THE DOOR! LOOK THROUGH THE DOOR! NOW! NOW!
Train-thunder filled the world. A woman screamed “Oh my God he’s going to jump!” A hand slapped at his shoulder, trying to pull him back. Then Roland pushed the body of Jack Mort past the yellow warning line and dove over the edge of the platform. He fell into the path of the oncoming train with his hands cupping his crotch, holding the luggage he would bring back … if, that was, he was fast enough to get out of Mort at just the right instant. As he fell he called her— them—again:
ODETTA HOLMES! DETTA WALKER! LOOK NOW!
As he called, as the train bore down upon him, its wheels turning with merciless silver speed, the gunslinger finally turned his head and looked back through the door.
And directly into her face.
Faces!
Both of them, I see both of them at the same time—
NOO—! Mort shrieked, and in the last split second before the train ran him down, cutting him in two not above the knees but at the waist, Roland lunged at the door … and through it.
Jack Mort died alone.
The boxes of ammunition and the bottle of pills appeared beside Roland’s physical body. His hands clenched spasmodically at them, then relaxed. The gunslinger forced himself up, aware that he was wearing his sick, throbbing body again, aware that Eddie Dean was screaming, aware that Odetta was shrieking in two voices. He looked—only for a moment—and saw exactly what he had heard: not one woman but two. Both were legless, both dark-skinned, both women of great beauty. Nonetheless, one of them was a hag, her interior ugliness not hidden by her outer beauty but enhanced by it.
Roland stared at these twins who were not really twins at all but negative and positive images of the same woman. He stared with a feverish, hypnotic intensity.
Then Eddie screamed again and the gunslinger saw the lobstrosities tumbling out of the waves and strutting toward the place where Detta had left him, trussed and helpless.
The sun was down. Darkness had come.
14
Detta saw herself in the doorway, saw herself through her eyes, saw herself through the gunslinger’s eyes, and her sense of dislocation was as sudden as Eddie’s, but much more violent.
She was here.
She was there, in the gunslinger’s eyes.
She heard the oncoming train.
Odetta! she screamed, suddenly understanding everything: what she was and when it had happened.
Delta! she screamed, suddenly understanding everything: what she was and who had done it.
A brief sensation of being turned inside out… and then a much more agonizing one.
She was being torn apart.
15
Roland shambled down the short slope to the place where Eddie lay. He moved like a man who has lost his bones. One of the lobster-things clawed at Eddie’s face. Eddie screamed. The gunslinger booted it away. He bent rustily and grabbed Eddie’s arms. He began to drag him backwards, but it was too late, his strength was too little, they were going to get Eddie, hell, both of them—
Eddie screamed again as one of the lobstrosities asked him did-a-chick? and then tore a swatch of his pants and a chunk of meat to go along with it. Eddie tried another scream, but nothing came out but a choked gargle. He was strangling in Delta’s knots.
The things were all around them, closing in, claws clicking eagerly. The gunslinger threw the last of his strength into a final yank … and tumbled backwards. He heard them coming, them with their hellish questions and clicking claws. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, he thought. He had staked everything, and that was all he had lost.
The thunder of his own guns filled him with stupid wonder.
16
The two women lay face to face, bodies raised like snakes about to strike, fingers with identical prints locked around throats marked with identical lines.
The woman was trying to kill her but the woman was not real, no more than the girl had been real; she was a dream created by a falling brick … but now the dream was real, the dream was clawing her throat and trying to kill her as the gunslinger tried to save his friend. The dream-made-real was screeching obscenities and raining hot spittle into her face. “I took the blue plate because that woman landed me in the hospital and besides I didn’t get no forspecial plate an I bust it cause it needed bustin an when I saw a white boy I could bust why I bust him too I hurt the white boys because they needed hurtin I stole from the stores that only sell things that are forspecial to whitefolks while the brothers and sisters go hungry in Harlem and the rats eat their babies, I’m the one, you bitch, I’m the one, I… I… I!
Kill her, Odetta thought, and knew she could not.
She could no more kill the hag and survive than the hag could kill her and walk away. They could choke each other to death while Eddie and the
(Roland)/(Really Bad Man)
one who had called them were eaten alive down there by the edge of the water. That would finish all of them. Or she could
(love)/(hate)
let go.
Odetta let go of Delta’s throat, ignored the fierce hands throttling her, crushing her windpipe. Instead of using her own hands to choke, she used them to embrace the other.
“No, you bitch!” Delta screamed, but that scream was infinitely complex, both hateful and grateful. “No, you leave me lone, you jes leave me—”
Odetta had no voice with which to reply. As Roland kicked the first attacking lobstrosity away and as the second moved in lo lunch on a chunk of Eddie’s arm, she could only whisper in the witch-woman’s ear: “I love you.”
For a moment the hands tightened into a killing noose … and then loosened.
Were gone.
She was being turned inside out again … and then, suddenly, blessedly, she was whole. For the first time since a man named Jack Mort had dropped a brick on the head of a child who was only there to be hit because a white taxi driver had taken one look and driven away (and had not her father, in his pride, refused to try again for fear of a second refusal), she was whole. She was Odetta Holmes, but the other—?
Hurry up, bitch! Detta yelled… but it was still her own voice; she and Detta had merged. She had been one; she had been two; now the gunslinger had drawn a third from her. Hurry up or they go
nna be dinner!
She looked at the shells. There was no time to use them; by the time she had his guns reloaded it would be over. She could only hope.
But is there anything else? she asked herself, and drew.
And suddenly her brown hands were full of thunder.
17
Eddie saw one of the lobstrosities loom over his face, its rugose eyes dead yet hideously sparkling with hideous life. Its claws descended toward his face.
Dod-a—, it began, and then it was smashed backward in chunks and splatters.
Roland saw one skitter toward his flailing left hand and thought There goes the other hand … and then the lobstrosity was a splatter of shell and green guts flying into the dark air.
He twisted around and saw a woman whose beauty was heart stopping, whose fury was heart-freezing. “COME ON, MAHFAHS!” she screamed. “YOU JUST COME ON! YOU JUST COME FOR EM! I’M GONNA BLOW YO EYES RIGHT BACK THROUGH YO FUCKIN ASSHOLES!”
She blasted a third one that was crawling rapidly between Eddie’s spraddled legs, meaning to eat on him and neuter him at the same time. It flew like a tiddly-wink.
Roland had suspected they had some rudimentary intelligence; now he saw the proof.
The others were retreating.
The hammer of one revolver fell on a dud, and then she blew one of the retreating monsters into gobbets.
The others ran back toward the water even faster. It seemed they had lost their appetite.
Meanwhile, Eddie was strangling.
Roland fumbled at the rope digging a deep furrow into his neck. He could see Eddie’s face melting slowly from purple to black. Eddie’s strugglings were weakening.
Then his hands were pushed away by stronger ones.
“I’ll take care of it. “There was a knife in her hand… his knife.