A sign lay facedown on the ground in front of the Quonset's half-open door. Susannah insisted that he put her down so she could turn it over and read it. Roland did as she asked and then sat with his back propped against a rock, staring at Castle Discordia, which was now behind them. Two towers jutted into the blue, one whole and the other shattered off near what he judged had been the top. He concentrated on getting his breath back. The ground under him was very cold, and he knew already that their trek through the Badlands was going to be difficult.
Susannah, meanwhile, had lifted the sign. She held it with one hand and wiped off an ancient scrum of dirt with the other. The words she uncovered were in English, and gave her a deep chill:
THIS CHECKPOINT IS CLOSED.
FOR-EVER.
Below it, in red, seeming to glare at her, was the Eye of the King.
TWO
There was nothing in the Quonset's main room butjumbles of equipment that had been blasted to ruin and more skeletons, none whole. In the adjoining storeroom, however, she found delightful surprises: shelves and shelves of canned food-more than they could possibly carry-and also more Sterno. (She did not think Roland would sneer at the idea of canned heat anymore, and she was right.) She poked her head out of the storeroom's rear door almost as an afterthought, not expecting to find anything except maybe a few more skeletons, and there was one. The prize was the vehicle in which this loose agglomeration of bones was resting: a dogcart a bit like the one she'd found herself sitting in atop the castle, during her palaver with Mia.
This one was both smaller and in much better shape. Instead of wood, the wheels were metal coated with thin rinds of some synthetic stuff. Pull-handles jutted from the sides, and she realized it wasn't a dogcart at all, but a kind of rickshaw.
Git ready to pull yo sweetie, gray meat!
This was a typically nasty Detta Walker thought, but it surprised a laugh out of her, all the same.
"What have you found that's amusing?" Roland called.
"You'll see," she called back, straining to keep Detta out of her voice, at least. In this she did not entirely succeed. 'You gonna see soon enough, sho."
THREE
There was a small motor at the rear of the rickshaw, but both saw at a glance it had been ages since it had run. In the storeroom Roland found a few simple tools, including an adjustable wrench. It was frozen with its jaw open, but an application of oil
(in what was to Susannah a very familiar red-and-black 3-In-l can) got it working again. Roland used the wrench to unbolt the motor from its mounts and then tumbled it off the side. While he worked and Susannah did what Daddy Mose would have called the heavy looking-on, Oy sat forty paces outside the arch through which they had exited, clearly on guard against the thing that had followed them in the dark.
"No more than fifteen pounds," Roland said, wiping his hands on his jeans and looking at the tumbled motor, "but I reckon I'll be glad we got rid of it by the time we're done with this thing."
"When do we start?" she asked.
"As soon as we've loaded as much canned stuff into the back as I think I can carry," he said, and fetched a heavy sigh. His face was pale and stubbly. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, new lines carving his cheeks and descending to his jaw from the corners of his mouth. He looked as thin as a whip.
"Roland, you can't! Not so soon! You're done up!"
He gestured at Oy, sitting so patiently, and at the maw of darkness forty paces beyond him. "Do you want to be this close to that hole when dark comes?"
"We can build a fire-"
"It may have friends," he said, "that aren't shy of fire. While we were in yonder shaft, that thing wouldn't have wanted to share us because it didn't think it had to share. Now it might not care, especially if it's vengeance-minded."
"A thing like that can't think. Surely not." This was easier to believe now that they were out. But she knew she might change her mind once the shadows began to grow long and pool together.
"I don't think it's a chance we can afford to take," Roland said.
She decided, very reluctandy, that he was right.
FOUR
Luckily for them, this first stretch of the narrow path winding into the Badlands was mosdy level, and when they did come to an uphill stretch, Roland made no objection to Susannah's getting out and hopping gamely along behind what she had dubbed Ho Fat's Luxury Taxi until they reached die crest of die hill. Little by litde, Castle Discordia fell behind them. Roland kept going after the rocks had blocked the blasted tower from their view, but when the odier one was gone as well, he pointed to a stony bower beside the path and said, "That's where we'll camp tonight, unless you have objections."