The waste lands - Stephen King [187]
Jake nodded frantically. Gasher’s face was disappearing into deepening folds of gray, and his voice seemed to be coming from a great distance.
“All right.” Gasher shoved him backward. Jake fell in a heap beside the manhole cover, gagging and retching. He finally managed to draw in a deep, whooping breath that burned like liquid fire. He spat out a blood-flecked wad of stuff and almost threw up at the sight of it.
“Now yank back that cover, my heart’s delight, and let’s have no more natter about it.”
Jake crawled over to it, slid his hands into the grip, and this time pulled with all his might. For one terrible moment he thought he was still not going to be able to budge it. Then he imagined Gasher’s fingers reaching into his mouth and seizing his tongue, and found a little extra. There was a dull, spreading agony in his lower back as something gave there, but the circular lid slipped slowly aside, grinding on the cobbles and exposing a grinning crescent of darkness.
“Good, cully, good!” Gasher cried cheerfully. “What a little mule y’are! Keep pulling—don’t give up now!”
When the crescent had become a half-moon and the pain in Jake’s lower back was a white-hot fire, Gasher booted him in the ass, knocking him asprawl.
“Wery good!” Gasher said, peering in. “Now, cully, go smartly down the ladder on the side. Mind you don’t lose your grip and tumble all the way to the bottom, for those rungs are fearsome slick and greezy. There’s twenty or so, as I remember. And when you get to the bottom, stand stock-still and wait for me. You might feel like runnin from yer old pal, but do you think that would be a good idea?”
“No,” Jake said. “I suppose not.”
“Wery intelligent, old son!” Gasher’s lips spread in his hideous smile, once more revealing his few surviving teeth. “It’s dark down there, and there are a thousand tunnels going every which-a-way. Yer old pal Gasher knows em like the back of his hand, so he does, but you’d be lost in no time. Then there’s the rats—wery big and wery hungry they are. So you just wait.”
“I will.”
Gasher regarded him narrowly. “You speak just like a little triggie, you do, but you’re no Pube—I’ll set my watch and warrant to that. Where are you from, squint?”
Jake said nothing.
“Bumbler got your tongue, do he? Well, that’s all right; Tick-Tock’ll get it all out of you, so he will. He’s got a way about him, Ticky does; just naturally wants to make people conwerse. Once he gets em goin, they sometimes talks so fast and screams so loud someone has to hit em over the head to slow em down. Bumblers ain’t allowed to hold no one’s tongue around the Tick-Tock Man, not even fine young triggers like you. Now get the fuck down that ladder. Hup!”
He lashed out with his foot. This time Jake managed to tuck in and dodge the blow. He looked into the half-open manhole, saw the ladder, and started down. He was still chest-high to the alley when a tremendous stonelike crash hammered the air. It came from a mile or more away, but Jake knew what it was without having to be told. A cry of pure misery burst from his lips.
A grim smile tugged at the corners of Gasher’s mouth. “Your hardcase friend trailed ye a little better than ye thought he would, didn’t he? Not better than I thought, though, cully, for I got a look at his eyes— wery pert and cunning they were. I thought he’d come arter his juicy little night-nudge a right smart, if he was to come at all, and so he did. He spied the tripwires, but the fountain’s got him, so that’s all right. Get on, sweetcheeks.”
He aimed a kick at Jake’s protruding head. Jake ducked it, but one foot slipped on the ladder bolted to the side of the sewer shaft and he only saved himself from falling by clutching Gasher’s scab-raddled ankle. He looked up, pleading, and saw no softening on that dying, infected face.
“Please,” he said, and heard the word trying to break into a sob. He kept seeing Roland lying crushed beneath the huge fountain. What