Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [311]
“Roland, they’re coming fast! Like hell!”
Roland looked. “We’re all right,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Rosa asked.
“Yes.”
The youngest children were now hurrying back across the road, hand-in-hand, bug-eyed with fear and excitement. Cantab of the Manni and Ara, his wife, were leading them. She told them to walk straight down the middle of the rows and try not to even brush any of the skeletal plants.
“Why, sai?” asked one tyke, surely no older than four. There was a suspicious dark patch on the front of his overalls. “Corn all picked, see.”
“It’s a game,” Cantab said. “A don’t-touch-the-corn game.” He began to sing. Some of the children joined in, but most were too bewildered and frightened.
As the pairs crossed the road, growing taller and older as they came, Roland cast another glance to the east. He estimated the Wolves were still ten minutes from the other side of the Whye, and ten minutes should be enough, but gods, they were fast! It had already crossed his mind that he might have to keep Slightman the Younger and the Tavery twins up here, with them. It wasn’t in the plan, but by the time things got this far, the plan almost always started to change. Had to change.
Now the last of the kids were crossing, and only Overholser, Callahan, Slightman the Elder, and Sarey Adams were still on the road.
“Go,” Roland told them.
“I want to wait for my boy!” Slightman objected.
“Go!”
Slightman looked disposed to argue the point, but Sarey Adams touched one elbow and Overholser actually took hold of the other.
“Come’ee,” Overholser said. “The man’ll take care of yours same as he’ll take care of his.”
Slightman gave Roland a final doubtful look, then stepped over the ditch and began herding the tail end of the line downhill, along with Overholser and Sarey.
“Susannah, show them the hide,” Roland said.
They’d been careful to make sure the kids crossed the ditch on the road’s river side well down from where they had done their digging the day before. Now, using one of her capped and shortened legs, Susannah kicked aside a tangle of leaves, branches, and dead corn-plants—the sort of thing one would expect to see left behind in a roadside runoff ditch—and exposed a dark hole.
“It’s just a trench,” she said, almost apologetically. “There’s boards over the top. Light ones, easy to push back. That’s where we’ll be. Roland’s made a…oh, I don’t know what you call it, we call it a periscope where I come from, a thing with mirrors inside it you can see through…and when the time comes, we just stand up. The boards’ll fall away around us when we do.”
“Where’s Jake and those other three?” Eddie asked. “They should be back by now.”
“It’s too soon,” Roland said. “Calm down, Eddie.”
“I won’t calm down and it’s not too soon. We should at least be able to see them. I’m going over there—”
“No, you’re not,” Roland said. “We have to get as many as we can before they figure out what’s going on. That means keeping our firepower over here, at their backs.”
“Roland, something’s not right.”
Roland ignored him. “Lady-sais, slide in there, do ya please. The extra boxes of plates will be on your end; we’ll just kick some leaves over them.”
He looked across the road as Zalia, Rosa, and Margaret began to worm into the hole Susannah had disclosed. The path to the arroyo was now completely empty. There was still no sign of Jake, Benny, and the Tavery twins. He was beginning to think that Eddie was right; that something had gone amiss.
Six
Jake and his companions reached the place where the trail split quickly and without incident. Jake had held back two items, and when they reached the fork, he threw a broken rattle toward the Gloria and a little girl’s woven string bracelet toward the Redbird. Choose, he