Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [312]
When he turned, he saw the Tavery twins had already started back. Benny was waiting for him, his face pale and his eyes shining. Jake nodded to him and made himself return Benny’s smile. “Let’s go,” he said.
Then they heard Roland’s whistle and the twins broke into a run, despite the scree and fallen rock which littered the path. They were still holding hands, weaving their way around what they couldn’t simply scramble over.
“Hey, don’t run!” Jake shouted. “He said not to run and mind your f—”
That was when Frank Tavery stepped into the hole. Jake heard the grinding, snapping sound his ankle made when it broke, knew from the horrified wince on Benny’s face that he had, too. Then Frank let out a low, screaming moan and pitched sideways. Francine grabbed for him and got a hand on his upper arm, but the boy was too heavy. He fell through her grip like a sashweight. The thud of his skull colliding with the granite outcrop beside him was far louder than the sound his ankle had made. The blood which immediately began to flow from the wound in his scalp was brilliant in the early morning light.
Trouble, Jake thought. And in our road.
Benny was gaping, his cheeks the color of cottage cheese. Francine was already kneeling beside her brother, who lay at a twisted, ugly angle with his foot still caught in the hole. She was making high, breathless keening sounds. Then, all at once, the keening stopped. Her eyes rolled up in their sockets and she pitched forward over her unconscious twin brother in a dead faint.
“Come on,” Jake said, and when Benny only stood there, gawping, Jake punched him in the shoulder. “For your father’s sake!”
That got Benny moving.
Seven
Jake saw everything with a gunslinger’s cold, clear vision. The blood splashed on the rock. The clump of hair stuck in it. The foot in the hole. The spittle on Frank Tavery’s lips. The swell of his sister’s new breast as she lay awkwardly across him. The Wolves were coming now. It wasn’t Roland’s whistle that told him this, but the touch. Eddie, he thought. Eddie wants to come over here.
Jake had never tried using the touch to send, but he did now: Stay where you are! If we can’t get back in time we’ll try to hide while they go past BUT DON’T YOU COME DOWN HERE! DON’T YOU SPOIL THINGS!
He had no idea if the message got through, but he did know it was all he had time for. Meanwhile, Benny was…what? What was le mot juste? Ms. Avery back at Piper had been very big on le mot juste. And it came to him. Gibbering. Benny was gibbering.
“What are we gonna do, Jake? Man Jesus, both of them! They were fine! Just running, and then…what if the Wolves come? What if they come while we’re still here? We better leave em, don’t you think?”
“We’re not leaving them,” Jake said. He leaned down and grabbed Francine Tavery by the shoulders. He yanked her into a sitting position, mostly to get her off her brother so Frank could breathe. Her head lolled back, her hair streaming like dark silk. Her eyelids fluttered, showing glabrous white beneath. Without thinking, Jake slapped her. And hard.
“Ow! Ow!” Her eyes flew open, blue and beautiful and shocked.
“Get up!” Jake shouted. “Get off him!”
How much time had passed? How still everything was, now that the children had gone back to the road! Not a single bird cried out, not even a rustie. He waited for Roland to whistle again, but Roland didn’t. And really, why would he? They were on their own now.
Francine rolled aside, then staggered to her feet. “Help him…please, sai, I beg…”
“Benny. We have to get his foot out of the hole.” Benny dropped to one knee on the other side of the awkwardly sprawled boy. His face was still pale, but his lips were pressed together in a tight straight line that Jake found encouraging. “Take his shoulder.”
Benny grasped Frank Tavery’s right shoulder. Jake took the left. Their eyes met across the unconscious boy’s body. Jake nodded.
“Now.”
They pulled together. Frank Tavery’s eyes flew open—they were as blue and as beautiful as his sister’s—and he uttered