Jake shrugged out of his pack, lay down, and pushed it through the gap ahead of him. And as he eased his way under the thin, taut wires, he discovered that he wanted to live a little longer after all. It seemed that he could actually feel all those tons of carefully balanced junk waiting to come down on him. These wires are probably holding a couple of carefully chosen keystones in place, he thought. If one of them breaks . . . ashes, ashes, we all fall down. His back brushed one of the wires, and high overhead, something creaked. “Careful, cully!” Gasher almost moaned. “Be oh so careful!” Jake pushed himself beneath the crisscrossing wires, using his feet and his elbows. His stinking, sweat-clogged hair fell in his eyes again, but he did not dare brush it away.
“You’re clear,” Gasher grunted at last, and slipped beneath the tripwires himself with the ease of long practice. He stood up and snatched Jake’s pack before Jake could reshoulder it. “What’s in here, cully?” he asked, undoing the straps and peering in. “Got any treats for yer old pal? For the Gasherman loves his treaties, so he does!”
“There’s nothing in there but-“
Gasher’s hand flashed out and rocked Jake’s head back with a hard slap that sent a fresh spray of bloody froth flying from the boy’s nose. “What did you do that for?” Jake cried, hurt and outraged. “For tellin me what my own beshitted eyes can see!” Gasher yelled, and cast Jake’s pack aside. He bared his remaining teeth at the boy in a dangerous, terrible grin. “And fer almost bringin the whole beshitted works down on us!” He paused, then added in a quieter voice: “And because I felt like it—I must admit that. Your stupid sheep’s face puts me wery much in a slappin temper, so it does.” The grin widened, reveal-ing his oozing whitish gums, a sight Jake could have done without. “If your hardcase friend follows us this far, he’ll have a surprise when he runs into those wires, won’t he?” Gasher looked up, still grinning. “There’s a city bus balanced up there someplace, as I remember.” Jake began to weep—tired, hopeless tears that cut through the dirt on his cheeks in narrow channels.
Gasher raised an open, threatening hand. “Get moving, cully, before I start cryin myself … for a wery sentermental fellow is yer old pal, so he is, and when he starts to grieve and mourn, a little slappin is the only thing to put a smile on his face again. Run!”
They ran. Gasher chose pathways leading deeper into the smelly, creaking maze seemingly at random, indicating his choices with hard whacks to the shoulders. At some point the sound of the drums began. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and for Jake it was the final straw. He gave up hope and thought alike, and allowed himself to descend wholly into the nightmare.
ROLAND HALTED IN FRONT of the barricade which choked the street from side to side and top to bottom. Unlike Jake, he had no hopes of emerging into the open on the other side. The buildings lying east of this point would be sentry-occupied islands emerging from an inland sea of trash, tools, artifacts . . . and booby-traps, he had no doubt. Some of these leavings undoubtedly still remained where they had fallen five hun-dred or seven hundred or a thousand years ago, but Roland thought most of it had been dragged here by the Grays a piece at a time. The eastern portion of Lud had become, in effect, the castle of the Grays, and Roland was now standing outside its wall. He walked forward slowly and saw the mouth of a passageway half-hidden behind a ragged cement boulder. There were footprints in the powdery dust—two sets, one big, one small. Roland started to get up, looked again, and squatted on his hunkers once more. Not two sets but three, the third marking the paws of a small animal.
“Oy?” Roland called softly. For a moment there was no response, and then a single soft bark came from the shadows. Roland stepped into the passageway and saw gold-ringed eyes peering at him from around the first crooked corner. Roland trotted down to the humbler. Oy, who still didn’t like to come really close to anyone but Jake, backed up a step and then held his ground, looking anxiously up at the gunslinger.
“Do you want to help me?” Roland asked. He could feel the dry red curtain that was battle fever at the edge of his consciousness, but this was not the time for it. The time would come, but for now he must not allow himself that inexpressible relief. “Help me find Jake?” “Ake!” Oy barked, still watching Roland with his anxious eyes. “Go on, then. Find him.”
Oy turned away at once and ran rapidly down the alley, nose skim-ming the ground. Roland followed, his eyes only occasionally flicking up to glance at Oy. Mostly he kept his gaze fixed on the ancient pavement, looking for sign.
“JESUS,” EDDIE SAID. “WHAT land of people are these guys?” They had followed the avenue at the base of the ramp for a couple of blocks, had seen the barricade (missing Roland’s entry into the partially hidden passageway by less than a minute) which lay ahead, and had turned north onto a broad thoroughfare which reminded Eddie of Fifth Avenue. He hadn’t dared to tell Susannah that; he was still too bitterly disappointed with this stinking, littered ruin of a city to articulate anything hopeful. “Fifth Avenue” led them into an area of large white stone buildings that reminded Eddie of the way Rome looked in the gladiator movies he’d watched on TV as a kid. They were austere and, for the most part, still in good shape. He was pretty sure they had been public buildings of some sort—galleries, libraries, maybe museums. One, with a big domed roof that had cracked like a granite egg, might have been an observatory, although Eddie had read someplace that astronomers liked to be away from big cities, because all the electric lights f**ked up their star-gazing.