The waste lands - Stephen King [34]
The three of them moved across the clearing, Eddie pushing Susannah, who held the bag of hides in her lap. The pocket in the back of her wheelchair was stuffed with other items; the piece of wood with the slingshot still mostly hidden inside it was only one of them.
From behind them the bear continued to roar out its final communication to the world, telling them shutdown would be complete in forty minutes. Eddie couldn’t wait. The broken spruces leaned in toward each other, forming a rude gate, and Eddie thought: This is where the quest for Roland’s Dark Tower really begins, at least for us.
He thought of his dream again—the spiraling windows issuing their unfurling flags of darkness, flags which spread over the field of roses like a stain—and as they passed beneath the leaning trees, a deep shudder gripped him.
22
THEY WERE ABLE TO use the wheelchair longer than Roland had expected. The firs of this forest were very old, and their spreading branches had created a deep carpet of needles which discouraged most undergrowth. Susannah’s arms were strong—stronger than Eddie’s, although Roland did not think that would be true much longer—and she wheeled herself along easily over the level, shady forest floor. When they came to one of the trees the bear had pushed over, Roland lifted her out of the chair and Eddie boosted it over the obstacle.
From behind them, only a little deadened by distance, the bear told them, at the top of its mechanical voice, that the capacity of its last operating nuclear subcell was now negligible.
“I hope you keep that damn harness lying empty over your shoulders all day!” Susannah shouted at the gunslinger.
Roland agreed, but less than fifteen minutes later the land began to slope downward and this old section of the forest began to be invaded with smaller, younger trees: birch, alder, and a few stunted maples scrabbling grimly in the soil for purchase. The carpet of needles thinned and the wheels of Susannah’s chair began to catch in the low, tough bushes which grew in the alleys between the trees. Their thin branches boinged and rattled in the stainless steel spokes. Eddie threw his weight against the handles and they were able to go on for another quarter of a mile that way. Then the slope began to grow more steep, and the ground underfoot became mushy.
“Time for a pig-back, lady,” Roland said.
“Let’s try the chair a little longer, what do you say? Going might get easier—”
Roland shook his head. “If you try that hill, you’ll . . . what did you call it, Eddie? . . . do a dugout?”
Eddie shook his head, grinning. “It’s called doing a doughnut, Roland. A term from my misspent sidewalk-surfing days.”
“Whatever you call it, it means landing on your head. Come on, Susannah. Up you come.”
“I hate being a cripple,” Susannah said crossly, but allowed Eddie to hoist her out of the chair and worked with him to seat herself firmly in the harness Roland wore on his back. Once she was in place, she touched the butt of Roland’s pistol. “Y’all want this baby?” she asked Eddie.
He shook his head. “You’re faster. And you know it, too.”
She grunted and adjusted the belt, settling the gunbutt so it was easily accessible to her right hand. “I’m slowing you boys down and I know that . . . but if we ever make it to some good old two-lane blacktop, I’ll leave the both of you kneelin in the blocks.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Roland said . . . and then cocked his head. The woods had fallen silent.
“Br’er Bear has finally given up,” Susannah said. “Praise God.”
“I thought it still had seven minutes to go,” Eddie said.
Roland adjusted the straps of the harness. “Its clock must have started running a little slow during the last five or six hundred years.”
“You really think it was that old, Roland?”
Roland nodded. “At least. And now it’s passed . . . the last of the Twelve Guardians, for all we know.”
“Yeah, ask me if I give a shit,” Eddie replied, and Susannah laughed.
“Are you comfortable?” Roland asked her.
“No. My butt hurts already, but go on. Just try not to drop me.”
Roland