Top of the world, Ma, he thought. He looked down into the bear’s upturned face again, and for a moment all-coherent thought was driven from his mind by simple amazement.
There was something growing out of the bear’s skull, and to Eddie it looked like a small radar-dish.
The gadget turned jerkily, kicking up flashes of sun as it did, and Eddie could hear it screaming thinly. He had owned a few old cars in his time-the kind that sat in the used-car lots with the words HANDYMAN’s SPECIAL soaped on the windshields-and he thought the sound coming from that gadget was the sound of bearings which will freeze up if they are not replaced soon.
The bear uttered a long, purring growl. Yellowish foam, thick with worms, squeezed between its paws in curdled gobbets. If he had never looked into the face of utter lunacy (and he supposed he had, having been eyeball to eyeball with that world-class bitch Detta Walker on more than one occasion), Eddie was looking into it now… but that face was, thankfully, a good thirty feet below him, and at their highest reach those killing talons were fifteen feet under the soles of his feet. And, unlike the trees upon which the bear had vented its spleen as it approached the clearing, this one was not dead.
“Mexican standoff, honey, Eddie panted. He wiped sweat from his forehead with one sap-sticky hand and flicked the mess down into the bugbear’s face.
Then the creature the Old People had called Mir embraced the tree with its great forepaws and began to shake it. Eddie grabbed the trunk and held on for dear life; eyes squeezed into grim slits, as the pine began to sway back and forth like a pendulum.
6
ROLAND HALTED AT THE EDGE of the clearing. Susannah, perched on his shoulders, stared unbelievingly across the open space. The creature stood at the base of the tree where Eddie had been when the two of them left the clearing forty-five minutes ago. She could see only chunks and sections of its body through the screen of branches and dark green needles. Roland’s other gunbelt lay beside one of the monster’s feet. The holster, she saw, was empty.
“My God,” she murmured.
The bear screamed like a distraught woman and began shaking the tree. The branches lashed as if in a high wind. Her eyes skated upward and she saw a dark form near the top. Eddie was hugging the trunk as the tree rocked and rolled. As she watched, one of his hands slipped and flailed wildly for purchase.
“What do we do?” she screamed down at Roland. “It’s goan shake him loose! What do we do?”
Roland tried to think about it, but that queer sensation had returned again-it was always with him now, but stress seemed to make it worse. He felt like two men existing inside one skull. Each man had his own set of memories, and when they began to argue, each insisting that his memories were the true ones, the gunslinger felt as if he were being ripped in two. He made a desperate effort to reconcile these two halves and succeeded… at least for the moment.
“It’s one of the Twelve!” he shouted. “One of the Guardians! Must be! But I thought they were-”
The bear bellowed up at Eddie again. Now it began to slap at the tree like a punchy fighter. Branches snapped and fell around its feet in a tangle.
“What?” Susannah screamed. “What’s the rest?”
Roland closed his eyes. Inside his head, a voice shouted, The boy’s name was Jake! Another voice shouted back, There WAS no boy! There WAS no boy, and you know it!
Get away, both of you! he snarled, and then called out aloud: “Shoot it! Shoot it in the ass, Susannah! It’ll turn and charge! When it does, look for something on its head! It-”
The bear squalled again. It gave up slapping the tree and went back to shaking it. Ominous popping, grinding sounds were now coming from the upper part of the trunk.
When he could be heard again, Roland shouted: “I think it looks like a hat! A little steel hat! Shoot it, Susannah! And don’t miss!”
Terror suddenly filled her-terror and another emotion, one she would never have expected: crushing loneliness.
“No! I’ll miss! You do it, Roland!” She began to fumble his revolver out of the belt she wore, meaning to give it to him.
“Can’t!” Roland shouted. “The angle’s bad! You have to do it, Susannah! This is the real test, and you’d better pass it!”
“Roland-”
“It means to snap the top of the tree off!” he roared at her. “Can’t you see that?”
She looked at the revolver in her hand. Looked across the clearing, at the gigantic bear obscured in the clouds and sprays of green needles. Looked at Eddie, swaying back and forth like a metronome. Eddie probably had Roland’s other gun, but Susannah could see no way he could use it without being shaken from his perch like an over-ripe plum. Also, he might not shoot at the right thing.
She raised the revolver. Her stomach was thick with dread. “Hold me still, Roland,” she said. “If you don’t-”
“Don’t worry about me!”
She fired twice, squeezing the shots as Roland had taught her. The heavy reports cut across the sound of the bear shaking the tree like the cracks of a bullwhip. She saw both bullets strike home in the left cheek of the bear’s rump, less than two inches apart.
It shrieked in surprise, pain, and outrage. One of its huge front paws came out of the dense screen of branches and needles and slapped at the hurt place. The hand came away dripping scarlet and rose back out of sight. Susannah could imagine it up there, examining its bloody palm. Then there was a rushing, rustling, snapping sound as the bear turned, bending down at the same time, dropping to all fours in order to achieve maximum speed. For the first time she saw its face, and her heart quailed. Its muzzle was lathered with foam; its huge eyes glared like lamps. Its shaggy head swung to the left… back to the right… and centered upon Roland, who stood with his legs apart and Susannah Dean balanced on his shoulders.
With a shattering roar, the bear charged.
7
SAY YOUR LESSON, Susannah Dean, and be true.
The bear came at them in a rumbling lope; it was like watching a runaway factory machine over which someone had thrown a huge, moth-eaten rug.
It looks like a hat! A little steel hat!
She saw it… but it didn’t look like a hat to her. It looked like a radar-dish-a much smaller version of the kind she had seen in Movie Tone newsreel stories about how the DEW-line was keeping everyone safe from a Russian sneak attack. It was bigger than the pebbles she had shot off the boulder earlier, but the distance was greater. Sun and shadow ran across it in deceiving dapples.
I do not aim with my hand; she who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of her father.
I can’t do it!
I do not shoot with my hand; she who shoots with her hand has forgotten the face of her father.
I’ll miss! I know I’ll miss!
I do not kill with my gun; she who kills with her gun-
“Shoot it!” Roland roared. “Susannah, shoot it!”
With the trigger as yet unpulled, she saw the bullet go home, guided from muzzle to target by nothing more or less than her heart’s fierce desire that it should fly true. All fear fell away. What was left was a feeling of deep coldness and she had time to think: This is what he feels. My God-how does he stand it?
“I kill with my heart, motherfucker,” she said, and the gunslinger’s revolver roared in her hand.
8
THE SILVERY THING SPUN on a steel rod planted in the bear’s skull. Susannah’s bullet struck it dead center and the radar-dish blew into a hundred glittering fragments. The pole itself was suddenly engulfed in a burst of crackling blue fire which reached out in a net and seemed to grasp the sides of the bear’s face for a moment.