Wizard and glass - Stephen King [33]
“It crossed the road because it was stapled to the chicken, you dopey fuck!” Eddie yelled. He got to his feet and started to walk toward the smoking hole where the route-map had been. Susannah grabbed at the back of his shirt, but Eddie barely felt it. Barely knew where he was, in fact. The battle-fire had dropped over him, burning him everywhere with its righteous heat, sizzling his sight, frying his synapses and roasting his heart in its holy glow. He had Blaine in his sights, and although the thing behind the voice was already mortally wounded, he was unable to stop squeezing the trigger: I shoot with my mind.
“What’s the difference between a truckload of bowling balls and a truckload of dead woodchucks?” Eddie raved. “You can’t unload a truckload of bowling balls with a pitchfork!”
A terrible shriek of mingled anger and agony issued from the hole where the route-map had been. It was followed by a gust of blue fire, as if somewhere forward of the Barony Coach an electric dragon had exhaled violently. Jake called a warning, but Eddie didn’t need it; his reflexes had been replaced with razor-blades. He ducked, and the burst of electricity went over his right shoulder, making the hair on that side of his neck stand up. He drew the gun he wore—a heavy .45 with a worn sandalwood grip, one of two revolvers which Roland had brought out of Mid-World’s ruin. He kept walking as he bore down on the front of the coach . . . and of course he kept talking. As Roland had said, Eddie would die talking. As his old friend Cuthbert had done. Eddie could think of many worse ways to go, and only one better.
“Say, Blaine, you ugly, sadistic fuck! Since we’re talking riddles, what is the greatest riddle of the Orient? Many men smoke but Fu Manchu! Get it? No? So solly, Cholly! How about this one? Why’d the woman name her son Seven and a Half? Because she drew his name out of a hat!”
He had reached the pulsing square. Now he lifted Roland’s gun and the Barony Coach suddenly filled with its thunder. He put all six rounds into the hole, fanning the hammer with the flat of his hand in the way Roland had shown them, knowing only that this was right, this was proper . . . this was ka, goddammit, fucking ka, it was the way you ended things if you were a gunslinger. He was one of Roland’s tribe, all right, his soul was probably damned to the deepest pit of hell, and he wouldn’t have changed it for all the heroin in Asia.
“I HATE YOU!” Blaine cried in his childish voice. The splinters were gone from it now; it was growing soft, mushy. “I HATE YOU FOREVER!”
“It’s not dying that bothers you, is it?” Eddie asked. The lights in the hole where the route-map had been were fading. More blue fire flashed, but he hardly had to pull his head back to avoid it; the flame was small and weak. Soon Blaine would be as dead as all the Pubes and Grays in Lud. “It’s losing that bothers you.”
“HATE . . . FORRRRrrrrr . . .”
The word degenerated into a hum. The hum became a kind of stuttery thudding sound. Then it was gone.
Eddie looked around. Roland was there, holding Susannah with one arm curved around her butt, as one might hold a child. Her thighs clasped his waist. Jake stood on the gunslinger’s other side, with Oy at his heel.
Drifting out of the hole where the route-map had been was a peculiar charred smell, somehow not unpleasant. To Eddie it smelled like burning leaves in October. Otherwise, the hole was as dead and dark as a corpse’s eye. All the lights in there had gone out.
Your goose is cooked, Blaine, Eddie thought, and your turkey’s baked. Happy fuckin Thanksgiving.
5
The shrieking from beneath the mono stopped. There was one final, grinding thud from up front, and then those sounds ceased, too. Roland felt his legs and hips sway gently forward and put out his free hand