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FOR EDDIE, IT WAS, as soain: he was running with the wheelchair, racing time The beach had been replaced by The Street of the Turtle, but so else was the same Oh, there was one other relevant difference: noas a railway station (or a cradle) he was looking for, not a free-standing door

Susannah was sitting bolt upright with her hair blowing out behind her and Roland&039;s revolver in her right hand, its barrel pointed up at the cloudy, troubled sky The druantic, dish-shaped object lay in the street just ahead, and Eddie&039;s overstrained s on either side of the Frisbee Jove throws one wide and Thor lets it fall through a cloud - what the hell, it&039;s Miller Tiods, he thought, swerving Susannah between two cru, rusty cars, what a concept

He buet around the artifact, which looked like some sort of telecommunications dish now that he was really close to it He was easing the wheelchair over the curb and back into the street again - the sideas too littered with crap to make any real time - when the drums suddenly cut out The echoes rolled away into a new silence, except it wasn&039;t really silent at all, Eddie realized Up ahead, the arched entrance to astood at the intersection of The Street of the Turtle and another avenue This building had been overgrown by vines and soreen stuff that looked like cypress beards, but it was still nified Beyond it, around the corner, a croas babbling excitedly

"Don&039;t stop!" Susannah snapped "We haven&039;t got tih the babble It was accompanied by yells of approval, and, incredibly, the sort of applause Eddie had heard in Atlantic City hotel-casinos after so The shriek was choked into a long, dying gargle that sounded like the buzz of a cicada Eddie felt the hair on the nape of his neck co fro Pubes of Lud were hold-ing another public execution

Marvellous, he thought Now if they only had Tony Orlando and Dawn to sing "Knock Three Times," they could all die happy

Eddie looked curiously at the stone pile on the corner This close, the vines which overgrew it had a powerful herbal sly bitter, but he still liked it better than the cinnareenery growing fro waterfalls of vegetation where once there had been a series of arched entrances A figure suddenly barrelled out through one of these waterfalls and hurried toward them It was a kid, Eddie realized, and not thata weird little Lord Fauntleroy outfit, complete with ruffled white shirt and velveteen short pants There were ribbons in his hair Eddie felt a sudden e to wave his hands above his head and scream But-wheat say, "Lud is o-tay!"

"Co voice Several sprays of the green stuff had gotten caught in his hair; he brushed absently at these with his left hand as he ran "They&039;re gonna do Spankers! It&039;s the Spankero to the land of the druods cuss it!"

Susannah was equally stunned by the child&039;s appearance, but as he got closer, it struck her that there was so extre at the cruht in his beribboned hair: he kept using just that one hand His other had been behind his back when he ran out through the weedy waterfall, and there it reht, and then a tape-player turned on in her e I knew so like this could happen if we&039;d seen the fellow earlier, while ere still beyond the range of his exploding egg Daun at the child, who had leaped froht for them "Hold it!" she screamed "Stand still, you!"

"Suze, what are you doing?" Eddie yelled

Susannah ignored hier even here; it was Detta Walker in the chair now, and her eyes were glittering with feverish suspicion "Stop or I&039;ll shoot!"

Little Lord Fauntleroyhad "Hoss it!" he shouted jubilantly "Yer gointer ointer - "

His right hand finally began to come out from behind his back As it did, Eddie realized they weren&039;t looking at a kid but at a misshapen dhose childhood was many years past The expression Eddie had at first taken for childish glee was actually a chilly e The dwarf&039;s cheeks and broere covered with the oozing, discol-ored patches Roland called whore&039;s blossoms

Susannah never saw his face Her attention was fixed on the ereen sphere it held That was all she needed to see Roland&039;s gun crashed The das hae rose frorenade bounced out of his hand and rolled back into the saone like a dreaun to the tiny, sprawled figure on the sideith surprise, horror, and dismay "Oh, my Jesus! I shot him! Eddie, I shot him!"

"Grays die!"

Little Lord Fauntleroy tried to screa choke of blood that drenched the few re white patches on his frilly shirt There was a rown plaza of the corner building, and the shaggy carpets of green stuff hanging in front of the arches billowed outward like flags in a brisk gale With the hiritty shower of concrete fragments - all small ones, luckily - patter down on his back, his neck, and the crown of his head There was a series of unpleasantly wet s sounds to his left He opened his eyes a crack, looked in that direction, and saw Little Lord Fauntleroy&039;s head just coutter The dwarf&039;s eyes were still open, his mouth still fixed in its final snarl

Now there were other voices, so, all furi-ous Eddie rolled off Susannah&039;s chair - it tottered on one wheel before deciding to stay up - and stared in the direction froedfroe which obscured the corner building&039;s arches, renade like evil spirits Most earing blue headscarves and all were carrying weapons - a varied (and somehow pitiful) assortment of them which included rusty swords, dull knives, and splintery clubs Eddie saw one ht We interrupted their necktie party, and they&039;re pissed as hell about it

A tangle of shouts - Kill the Grays! Kill them both! They&039;ve done for Luster, God kill their eyes! - arose froht of Susannah in her wheelchair and Eddie, as now crouched on one knee before it Thea cutlass He brandished this wildly (he would have decapitated the heavyset wo close behind hied The others followed, yelling happily

Roland&039;s gun pounded its bright thunder into the windy, overcast day, and the top of the kilt-wearing Pube&039;s head lifted off The sallow skin of the woman who had almost been decapitated by his cutlass was suddenly stippled with red rain and she voiced a sound of barking dismay The others ca and wild-eyed

"Eddie!" Susannah screa a silk-lined cape and knee-boots collapsed into the street

Eddie groped for the&039; Ruger and had one panicky un had somehow slipped down inside the waistband of his pants He wrapped his hand around it and yanked hard The fucking thing wouldn&039;t cootten stuck in his underwear

Susannah fired three closely spaced shots Each found a target, but the onco Pubes didn&039;t slow

"Eddie, helplike soed to free the Ruger He hit the safety with the heel of his left palan to fire There was no need to think - no need to even aier&039;s hands worked on their own, and Eddie now discovered it was true It would have been hard for a blind e, anyway Susannah had cut the nu Pubes to no h the re four in less than two seconds

Now the single face of the an to break apart The man with the ha extravagantly on a pair of arthritis-twisted legs He was followed by two others The rest of them milled uncertainly in the street

"Co man snarled He wore his blue scarf around his throat like a rally-racer&039;s ascot He was bald except for two fluffs of frizzy red hair, one on each side of his head To Susannah, this fellow looked like Clarabell the Clown; to Eddie he looked like Ronald McDonald; to both of theht have started life as a steel tableleg It clattered harht "Coeth - "

"Sorry, guy," Eddie murmured, and shot hiered backward, one hand going to his shirt

He stared at Eddie with huge eyes that told his tale with heartbreaking clarity: this wasn&039;t supposed to happen The hand dropped heavily to the young ht in the gray day, slipped fro Pubes stared at him mutely as he slipped to his knees, and one of them turned to run

"Not at all," Eddie said "Stay put, ood look at the clearing where your path ends" He raised his voice "Drop eirls! All of e er?"

"That&039;s right," Eddie said His eyes surveyed the rerimly

"Cry your pardon," the asped, and then he fell forward onto his face

"Gunslingers?" one of the others asked His tone was one of dawning horror and realization

"Well, you&039;re stupid, but you ain&039;t deaf," Susannah said, "and that&039;s soun, which Eddie was quite sure was empty For that er? He realized he didn&039;t have any idea how many rounds the clip held, and cursed himself for a fool but had he really believed it could co like this? He didn&039;t think so "You heard him, folks Drop em Recess is over"

One by one, they co a pint or so of Mr Sword-and-Kilt&039;s blood on her face said, "You shouldn&039;t&039;ve killed Winston, missus - &039;twas his birthday, so it was"

"Well, I guess he should have stayed home and eaten some more birthday cake," Eddie said Given the overall quality of this experience, he didn&039;t find either the woman&039;s comment or his own response at all surreal

There was one other wo blonde hair was coe Eddie observed her sidling toward the dead dwarf - and the potential safety of the overgrown arches beyond him - and put a bullet into the cracked cement close by her foot He had no idea what he wanted with her, but what he didn&039;t as one of the, he was afraid of what his hands ht do if the sickly, sullen people before hiing business, his hands had discovered they liked it just fine

"Stand where you are, beautiful Officer Friendly says play it safe" He glanced at Susannah and was disturbed by the grayish quality of her coht?" he asked in a lower voice

"Yes"

"You&039;re not going to faint or anything, are you? Because - "

"No" She looked at him with eyes so dark they were like caves "It&039;s just that I never shot anyone before okay?"

Well, you better get used to it rose to his lips He bit it back and returned his gaze to the five people who re at him and Susannah with a species of sullen fear which nevertheless stopped well short of terror

Shit, ht Joy, sadness, love sa, any

Then he ree-act applause, and revised his thinking There was at least one thing that still got theirthat still pushed their buttons Spanker could have testified to that