Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [320]
While Jake reloaded the Ruger, Roland and Eddie, standing side by side, went to work. They almost certainly could have taken the remaining eight between them (it didn’t much surprise Eddie that there had been nineteen in this last cluster), but they left the last two for Jake. As they approached, swinging their light-swords over their heads in a way that would have been undoubtedly terrifying to a bunch of farmers, the boy shot the thinking-cap off the one on the left. Then he stood aside, dodging as the last surviving Wolf took a halfhearted swing at him.
Its horse leaped the pile of bodies at the end of the path. Susannah was on the far side of the road, sitting on her haunches amid a litter of fallen green-cloaked machinery and melting, rotting masks. She was also covered in Margaret Eisenhart’s blood.
Roland understood that Jake had left the final one for Susannah, who would have found it extremely difficult to join them on the arroyo path because of her missing lower legs. The gunslinger nodded. The boy had seen a terrible thing this morning, suffered a terrible shock, but Roland thought he would be all right. Oy—waiting for them back at the Pere’s rectory-house—would no doubt help him through the worst of his grief.
“Lady Oh-RIZA!” Susannah screamed, and flung one final plate as the Wolf reined its horse around, turning it east, toward whatever it called home. The plate rose, screaming, and clipped off the top of the green hood. For a moment this last child thief sat in its saddle, shuddering and blaring out its alarm, calling for help that couldn’t come. Then it snapped violently backward, turning a complete somersault in midair, and thudded to the road. Its siren cut off in mid-whoop.
And so, Roland thought, our five minutes are over. He looked dully at the smoking barrel of his revolver, then dropped it back into its holster. One by one the alarms issuing from the downed robots were stopping.
Zalia was looking at him with a kind of dazed incomprehension. “Roland!” she said.
“Yes, Zalia.”
“Are they gone? Can they be gone? Really?”
“All gone,” Roland said. “I counted sixty-one, and they all lie here or on the road or in our ditch.”
For a moment Tian’s wife only stood there, processing this information. Then she did something that surprised a man who was not often surprised. She threw herself against him, pressing her body frankly to his, and covered his face with hungry, wet-lipped kisses. Roland bore this for a little bit, then held her away. The sickness was coming now. The feeling of uselessness. The sense that he would fight this battle or battles like it over and over for eternity, losing a finger to the lobstrosities here, perhaps an eye to a clever old witch there, and after each battle he would sense the Dark Tower a little farther away instead of a little closer. And all the time the dry twist would work its way in toward his heart.
Stop that, he told himself. It’s nonsense, and you know it.
“Will they send more, Roland?” Rosa asked.
“They may have no more to send,” Roland said. “If they do, there’ll almost certainly be fewer of them. And now you know the secret to killing them, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, and gave him a savage grin. Her eyes promised him more than kisses later on, if he’d have her.
“Go down through the corn,” he told her. “You and Zalia both. Tell them it’s safe to come up now. Lady Oriza has stood friend to the Calla this day. And to the line of Eld, as well.”
“Will ye not come yourself?” Zalia asked him. She had stepped away from him, and her cheeks were filled with fire. “Will ye not come and let em cheer ye?”
“Perhaps later on we may all hear them cheer us,” Roland said. “Now we need to speak an-tet. The boy’s had a bad shock, ye ken.”
“Yes,” Rosa said. “Yes, all right. Come on, Zee.” She reached out and took Zalia’s hand. “Help me be the bearer of glad tidings.”
Seventeen
The two women crossed the road, making a wide berth around the tumbled, bloody remains of the poor Slightman lad. Zalia thought that most of what was left of him was