The waste lands - Stephen King [192]
Although neither of them knew it, the first of the great autumn storms of Mid-World had arrived.
25
ONCE THEY WERE IN the smelly darkness of the sewers, Gasher slowed the killing pace he’d maintained aboveground. Jake didn’t think it was because of the darkness; Gasher seemed to know every twist and turn of the route he was following, just as advertised. Jake believed it was because his captor was satisfied that Roland had been squashed to jelly by the deadfall trap.
Jake himself had begun to wonder.
If Roland had spotted the tripwires—a far more subtle trap than the one which followed—was it really likely that he had missed seeing the fountain? Jake supposed it was possible, but it didn’t make much sense. Jake thought it more likely that Roland had tripped the fountain on purpose, to lull Gasher and perhaps slow him down. He didn’t believe Roland could follow them through this maze under the streets—the total darkness would defeat even the gunslinger’s tracking abilities—but it cheered his heart to think that Roland might not have died in an attempt to keep his promise.
They turned right, left, then left again. As Jake’s other senses sharpened in an attempt to compensate for his lack of sight, he had a vague perception of other tunnels around him. The muffled sounds of ancient, laboring machinery would grow loud for a moment, then fade as the stone foundations of the city drew close around them again. Drafts blew intermittently against his skin, sometimes warm, sometimes chilly. Their splashing footfalls echoed briefly as they passed the intersecting tunnels from which these stenchy breaths blew, and once Jake nearly brained himself on some metal object jutting down from the ceiling. He slapped at it with one hand and felt something that might have been a large valve-wheel. After that he waved his hands as he trotted along in an attempt to read the air ahead of him.
Gasher guided him with taps to the shoulders, as a waggoner might have guided his oxen. They moved at a good clip, trotting but not running. Gasher got enough of his breath back to first hum and then begin singing in a low, surprisingly tuneful tenor voice.
“Ribble-ti-tibble-ti-ting-ting-ting,
I’ll get a job and buy yer a ring,
When I get my mitts
On yer jiggly tits,
Ribble-ti-tibble-ti-ting-ting-ting!
O ribble-ti-tibble,
I just wanter fiddle,
Fiddle around with your ting-ting-ting!”
There were five or six more verses along this line before Gasher quit. “Now you sing somethin, squint.”
“I don’t know anything,” Jake puffed. He hoped he sounded more out of breath than he actually was. He didn’t know if it would do him any good or not, but down here in the dark any edge seemed worth trying for.
Gasher brought his elbow down in the center of Jake’s back, almost hard enough to send him sprawling into the ankle-high water running sluggishly through the tunnel they were traversing. “You better know sommat, ’less you want me to rip your ever-lovin spine right outcher back.” He paused, then added: “There’s haunts down here, boy. They live inside the fuckin machines, so they do. Singin keeps em off . . . don’t you know that? Now sing!”
Jake thought hard, not wanting to earn another love-tap from Gasher, and came up with a song he’d learned in summer day camp at the age of seven or eight. He opened his mouth and began to bawl it into the darkness, listening to the echoes bounce back amid the sounds of running water, falling water, and ancient thudding machinery.
“My girl’s a corker, she’s a New Yorker,
I buy her everything to keep her in style,
She got a pair of hips
Just like two battleships,
Oh boy, that’s how my money goes.
My girl’s a dilly, she comes from Philly,
I buy her everything to keep her in style,
She’s got a pair of eyes
Just like two pizza pies,
Oh boy, that’s how—”
Gasher reached