He fired into the dust near the dog's good forepaw, the sound
crashing into the hot day and temporarily silencing the insects. The
dog could run, it seemed, although at a lurching trot that hurt
Roland's eyes ... and his heart, a little, too. It stopped at the far side
of the square, by an overturned flatbed wagon (there looked to be
more dried blood splashed on the freighter's side), and glanced
back. It uttered a forlorn howl that raised the hairs on the nape of
Roland's neck even further.
Then it turned, skirted the wrecked wagon, and limped down a lane
which opened between two of the stalls. This way towards Eluria's
back gate, Roland guessed.
Still leading his dying horse, the gunslinger crossed the square to
the ironwood trough and looked in.
The owner of the chewed boot wasn't a man but a boy who had just
been beginning to get his man's growth - and that would have been
quite a large growth indeed, Roland judged, even setting aside the
bloating effects which had resulted from being immersed for some
unknown length of time in nine inches of water simmering under a
summer sun.
The boy's eyes, now just milky balls, stared blindly up at the
gunslinger like the eyes of a statue. His hair appeared to be the
white of old age, although that was the effect of the water; he had
likely been a towhead. His clothes were those of a cowboy,
although he couldn't have been much more than fourteen or
sixteen. Around his neck, gleaming blearily in water that was
slowly turning into a skin stew under the summer sun, was a gold
medallion.
Roland reached into the water, not liking to but feeling a certain
obligation. He wrapped his fingers around the medallion and
pulled. The chain parted, and he lifted the thing, dripping, into the
air.
He rather expected a Jesus-man sigil - what was called the crucifix
or the rood -but a small rectangle hung from the chain, instead. The
object looked like pure gold. Engraved into it was this legend:
James
Loved of Family, Loved of GOD
Roland, who had been almost too revolted to reach into the
polluted water (as a younger man, he could never have brought
himself to that), was now glad he'd done it. He might never run
into any of those who had loved this boy, but he knew enough of
ka to think it might be so. In any case, it was the right thing. So
was giving the kid a decent burial ... assuming, that was, he could
get the body out of the trough without having it break apart inside
the clothes.
Roland was considering this, trying to balance what might be his
duty in this circumstance against his growing desire to get out of
this town, when Topsy finally fell dead.
The roan went over with a creak of gear and a last whuffling groan
as it hit the ground. Roland turned and saw eight people in the
street, walking towards him in a line, like beaters who hope to
flush out birds or drive small game. Their skin was waxy green.
Folk wearing such skin would likely glow in the dark like ghosts.
It was hard to tell their sex, and what could it matter - to them or
anyone else? They were slow mutants, walking with the hunched
deliberation of corpses reanimated by some arcane magic.
The dust had muffled their feet like carpet. With the dog banished,
they might well have gotten within attacking distance if Topsy
hadn't done Roland the favour of dying at such an opportune
moment. No guns that Roland could see; they were armed with
clubs. These were chair-legs and table-legs, for the most part, but
Roland saw one that looked made rather than seized - it had a
bristle of rusty nails sticking out of it, and he suspected it had once
- been the property of a saloon bouncer, possibly
the one who kept school in The Bustling Pig.
Roland raised his pistol, aiming at the fellow in the centre of the
line. Now he could hear the shuffle of their feet, and the wet
snuffle of their breathing. As if they all had bad chest-colds.
Came out of the mines, most likely, Roland thought. There are
radium mines somewhere about. That would account for the skin. I
wonder that the sun doesn't kill them.
Then, as he watched, the one on the end - a creature with a face
like melted candle-wax - did die ... or collapsed, at any rate. He
(Roland was quite sure it was a male) went to his knees with a low,
gobbling cry, groping for the hand of the thing walking next to him
- something with a lumpy bald head and red sores sizzling on its
neck. This creature took no notice of its fallen companion, but kept
its dim eyes on Roland, lurching along in rough step with its
remaining companions.
'Stop where you are!' Roland said. "Ware me, if you'd live to see
day's end! 'Ware me very well!'
He spoke mostly to the one in the centre, who wore ancient red
suspenders over rags of shirt, and a filthy bowler hat. This gent had
only one good eye, and it peered at the gunslinger with a greed as
horrible as it was unmistakable. The one beside Bowler Hat
(Roland believed this one might be a woman, with the dangling
vestiges of breasts beneath the vest it wore) threw the chair-leg it
held. The arc was true, but the missile fell ten yards short.
Roland thumbed back the trigger of his revolver and fired again.
This time the dirt displaced by the slug kicked up on the tattered
remains of Bowler Hat's shoe instead of on a lame dog's paw.
The green folk didn't run as the dog had, but they stopped, staring
at him with their dull greed. Had the missing folk of Eluria
finished up in these creatures' stomachs? Roland couldn't believe it
. . . although he knew perfectly well that such as these held no
scruple against cannibalism. (And perhaps it wasn't cannibalism,
not really; how could such things as these be considered human,
whatever they might once have been?) They were too slow, too
stupid. If they had dared come back into town after the Sheriff had
run them out, they would have been burned or stoned to death.
Without thinking about what he was doing, wanting only to free
his other hand to draw his second gun if the apparitions didn't see
reason, Roland stuffed the medallion which he had taken from the
dead boy into the pocket of his jeans, pushing the broken fine-link
chain in after.
They stood staring at him, their strangely twisted shadows drawn
out behind them. What next? Tell them to go back where they'd
come from? Roland didn't know if they'd do it, and in any case had
decided he liked them best where he could see them. And at least
there was no question now about staying to bury the boy named
James; that conundrum had been solved.
'Stand steady,' he said in the low speech, beginning to retreat. 'First
fellow that moves -'
Before he could finish, one of them - a thick-chested troll with a
pouty toad's mouth and what looked like gills on the sides of his
wattled neck - lunged forward, gibbering in a high-pitched and
peculiarly flabby voice.
It might have been a species of laughter. He was waving what
looked like a piano-leg.
Roland fired. Mr Toad's chest caved in like a bad piece of roofing.
He ran backwards several steps, trying to catch his balance and
clawing at his chest with the hand not holding the piano-leg. His
feet, clad in dirty red velvet slippers with curled-up toes, tangled in
each other and he fell over, making a queer and somehow lonely
gargling sound. He let go of his club, rolled over on one side, tried
to rise, and then fell back into the dust. The brutal sun glared into