“Muties.”
“Like under the mountains?” Jake heard the fear in his own voice and knew the gunslinger must, also, but he was helpless to keep it out. He remembered that endless nightmare journey on the handcart very well. “I think that here the mutant strains are being bred out. The things we found under the mountains were still getting worse.” “What about up there?” Jake pointed toward the city. “Will there be mutants there, or—” He found it was as close as he could come to voicing his hope. Roland shrugged. “I don’t know, Jake. I’d tell you if I did.” They were passing an empty building—almost surely a farmhouse— that had been partially burnt. But that amid have been lighting, Jake thought, and wondered which it was he was trying to do—explain to himself or fool himself. Roland, perhaps reading his mind, put an arm around Jake’s shoul-ders. “No use even trying to guess, Jake,” he said. “Whatever happened here happened long ago.” He pointed. “That over there was probably a corral. Now it’s just a few sticks poking out of the grass.”
“The world has moved on, right?”
Roland nodded.
“What about the people? Did they go to the city, do you think?” “Some may have,” Roland said. “Some are still around.” “What?” Susannah jerked around to look at him, startled. Roland nodded. “We’ve been watched the last couple of days. There aren’t a lot of folk denning in these old buildings, but there are some. There’ll be more as we get closer to civilization.” He paused. “Or what used to be civilization.” “How do you know they’re there?” Jake asked. “Smelled them. Seen a few gardens hidden behind banks of weeds grown purposely to hide the crops. And at least one working windmill way back in a grove of trees. Mostly, though, it’s just a feeling . . . like shade on your face instead of sunshine. It’ll come to you three in time, I imagine.” “Do you think they’re dangerous?” Susannah asked. They were approaching a large, ramshackle building that might once have been a storage shed or an abandoned country market, and she eyed it uneasily, her hand dropping to the butt of the gun she wore on her chest.
“Will a strange dog bite?” the gunslinger countered. “What’s that mean?” Eddie asked. “I hate it when you start up with your Zen Buddhist shit, Roland.”
“It means I don’t know,” Roland said. “Who is this man Zen Bud-dhist? Is he wise like me?”
Eddie looked at Roland for a long, long time before deciding the gunslinger was making one of his rare jokes. “Ah, get outta here,” he said. He saw one corner of Roland’s mouth twitch before he turned away. As Eddie started to push Susannah’s chair again, something else caught his eye. “Hey, Jake!” he called. “I think you made a friend!”
Jake looked around, and a big grin overspread his face. Forty yards to the rear, the scrawny billy-bumbler was limping industriously after them, sniffing at the weeds which grew between the crumbling cobbles of the Great Road.
SOME HOURS LATER ROLAND called a halt and told them to be ready. “For what?” Eddie asked.
Roland glanced at him. “Anything.”
It was perhaps three o’clock in the afternoon. They were standing at a point where the Great Road crested a long, rolling drumlin which ran diagonally across the plain like a wrinkle in the world’s biggest bed-spread. Below and beyond, the road ran through the first real town they had seen. It looked deserted, but Eddie had not forgotten the conversa-tion that morning. Roland’s question—Will a strange dog bite?—no longer seemed quite so Zenny. “Jake?”
“What?”
Eddie nodded to the butt of the Ruger, which protruded from the waistband of Jake’s bluejeans—the extra pair he had tucked into his pack before leaving home. “Do you want me to carry that?”
Jake glanced at Roland. The gunslinger only shrugged, as if to say It’s your choice.
“Okay.” Jake handed it over. He unshouldered his pack, rummaged through it, and brought out the loaded clip. He could remember reaching behind the hanging files in one of his father’s desk drawers to get it, but all that seemed to have occurred a long, long time ago. These days, thinking about his life in New York and his career as a student at Piper was like looking into the wrong end of a telescope.