The gunslinger - Stephen King [78]
XI
They went on for three “days” without incident.
XII
During the fourth period of waking (halfway through? three-quarters? they didn’t know—knew only that they weren’t tired enough yet to stop) there was a sharp thump beneath them; the handcar swayed, and their bodies immediately leaned to the right against gravity as the rails took a gradual turn to the left.
There was a light ahead—a glow so faint and alien that it seemed at first to be a totally new element, not earth, air, fire, nor water. It had no color and could only be discerned by the fact that they had regained their hands and faces in a dimension beyond that of touch. Their eyes had become so light-sensitive that they noticed the glow more than five miles before they approached its source.
“The end,” the boy said tightly. “It’s the end.”
“No.” The gunslinger spoke with odd assurance. “It isn’t.”
And it was not. They reached light but not day.
As they approached the source of the glow, they saw for the first time that the rock wall to the left had fallen away and their tracks had been joined by others which crossed in a complex spiderweb. The light laid them in burnished vectors. On some of them there were dark boxcars, passenger coaches, a stage that had been adapted to rails. They made the gunslinger nervous, like ghost galleons trapped in an underground Sargasso.
The light grew stronger, hurting their eyes a little, but growing slowly enough to allow them to adapt. They came from dark to light like divers coming up from deep fathoms in slow stages.
Ahead, drawing nearer, was a huge hangar stretching up into the dark. Cut into it, showing yellow squares of light, were a series of perhaps twenty-four entranceways, growing from the size of toy windows to a height of twenty feet as they drew closer. They passed inside through one of the middle ways. Written above were a series of characters, in various languages, the gunslinger presumed. He was astounded to find that he could read the last one; it was an ancient root of the High Speech itself and said:
TRACK 10 TO SURFACE AND POINTS WEST
The light inside was brighter; the tracks met and merged through a series of switchings. Here some of the traffic lanterns still worked, flashing eternal reds and greens and ambers.
They rolled between the rising stone piers caked black with the passage of thousands of vehicles, and then they were in some kind of central terminal. The gunslinger let the handcar coast slowly to a stop, and they peered around.
“It’s like a subway,” the boy said.
“Subway?”
“Never mind. You wouldn’t know what I was talking about. I don’t even know what I’m talking about, not anymore.”
The boy climbed up onto the cracked cement. They looked at silent, deserted booths where newspapers and books had once been traded or sold; a bootery; a weapon shop (the gunslinger, suddenly feverish with excitement, saw revolvers and rifles; closer inspection showed that their barrels had been filled with lead; he did, however, pick out a bow, which he slung over his back, and a quiver of almost useless, badly weighted arrows); a women’s apparel shop. Somewhere a converter was turning the air over and over, as it had for thousands of years—but perhaps would not for much longer. It had a grating noise somewhere in its cycle which served to remind that perpetual motion, even under strictly controlled conditions, was still a fool’s dream. The air had a mechanized taste. The boy’s shoes and the gunslinger’s boots made flat echoes.
The boy cried out: “Hey! Hey . . .”
The gunslinger turned around and went to him. The boy was standing, transfixed, at the book stall. Inside, sprawled in the far corner, was a mummy. It was wearing a blue uniform with gold piping—a trainman’s uniform, by the look. There was an ancient, perfectly preserved newspaper on the dead thing’s lap, and it crumbled to dust when the gunslinger touched it. The mummy’s face was like an old, shriveled apple. Cautiously, the gunslinger touched the cheek. There was a small puff of dust. When it cleared, they were able to look through the