The waste lands - Stephen King [166]
“Come on, Oy!” Jake called.
“Oy!” the bumbler called back, and the tremble in his hoarse voice was almost human. He stretched his long neck forward toward Jake but didn’t move. His gold-ringed eyes were huge and dismayed.
Another gust of wind struck the bridge, making it sway and squall. Something twanged beside Jake’s head—the sound of a guitar string which has been tightened until it snaps. A steel thread had popped out of the nearest vertical hanger, almost scratching his cheek. Ten feet away, Oy crouched miserably with his eyes fixed on Jake.
“Come on!” Roland shouted. “Wind’s freshening! Come on, Jake!”
“Not without Oy!”
Jake began to shuffle back the way he had come. Before he had gone more than two steps, Oy stepped gingerly onto the support rod. The claws at the ends of his stiffly braced legs scratched at the rounded metal surface. Eddie stood behind the bumbler now, feeling helpless and scared to death.
“That’s it, Oy!” Jake encouraged. “Come to me!”
“Oy-Oy! Ake-Ake!” the bumbler cried, and trotted rapidly along the rod. He had almost reached Jake when the traitorous wind gusted again. The bridge swung. Oy’s claws scratched madly at the support rod for purchase, but there was none. His hindquarters slued off the edge and into space. He tried to cling with his forepaws, but there was nothing to cling to. His rear legs ran wildly in midair.
Jake let go of the rail and dived for him, aware of nothing but Oy’s gold-ringed eyes.
“No, Jake!” Roland and Eddie bellowed together, each from his own side of the gap, each too far away to do anything but watch.
Jake hit the cable on his chest and belly. His pack bounced against his shoulderblades and he heard his teeth click together in his head with the sound of a cueball breaking a tight rack. The wind gusted again. He went with it, looping his right hand around the support rod and reaching for Oy with his left as he swayed out into space. The bumbler began to fall, and clamped his jaws on Jake’s reaching hand as he did. The pain was immediate and excruciating. Jake screamed but held on, head down, right arm clasping the rod, knees pressing hard against its wretchedly smooth surface. Oy dangled from his left hand like a circus acrobat, staring up with his gold-ringed eyes, and Jake could now see his own blood flowing along the sides of the bumbler’s head in thin streams.
Then the wind gusted again and Jake began to slip outward.
13
EDDIE’S FEAR LEFT HIM. In its place came that strange yet welcome coldness. He dropped Susannah’s wheelchair to the cracked cement with a clatter and raced nimbly out along the support cable, not even bothering with the handrail. Jake hung head-down over the gap with Oy swinging at the end of his left hand like a furry pendulum. And the boy’s right hand was slipping.
Eddie opened his legs and seat-dropped to a sitting position. His undefended balls smashed painfully up into his crotch, but for the moment even this exquisite pain was news from a distant country. He seized Jake by the hair with one hand and one strap of his pack with the other. He felt himself beginning to tilt outward, and for a nightmarish moment he thought all three of them were going to go over in a daisy-chain.
He let go of Jake’s hair and tightened his grip on the packstrap, praying the kid hadn’t bought the pack at one of the cheap discount outlets. He flailed above his head for the handrail with his free hand. After an interminable moment in which their combined outward slide continued, he found it and seized it.
“ROLAND!” he bawled. “I COULD USE A LITTLE HELP HERE!”
But Roland was already there, with Susannah still perched on his back. When he bent, she locked her arms around his neck so she wouldn’t drop headfirst from the sling. The gunslinger wrapped an arm around Jake