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.
The Collective Page 20
