“Fire a shot every half hour or so. When I get Jake, I’ll come.” “Shots may attract other people as well,” Susannah said. Eddie had helped her out of the sling and she was seated in her chair again. Roland surveyed them coldly. “Handle them.” “Okay.” Eddie stuck out his hand and Roland took it briefly. “Find him, Roland.” “Oh, I’ll find him. Just pray to your gods that I find him soon enough. And remember the faces of your fathers, both of you.” Susannah nodded. “We’ll try.”
Roland turned and ran light-footed down the ramp. When he was out of sight, Eddie looked at Susannah and was not very surprised to see she was crying. He felt like crying himself. Half an hour ago they had been a tight little band of friends. Their comfortable fellowship had been smashed to bits in the space of just a few minutes—Jake abducted, Roland gone after him. Even Oy had run away. Eddie had never felt so lonely in his life. “I have a feeling we’re never going to see either of them again,” Susannah said. “Of course we will!” Eddie said roughly, but he knew what she meant, because he felt the same way. The premonition that their quest was all over before it was fairly begun lay heavy on his heart. “In a fight with Attila the Hun, I’d give you three-to-two odds on Roland the Barbar-ian. Come on, Suze—we’ve got a train to catch.”
“But where?” she asked forlornly.
“I don’t know. Maybe we should just find the nearest wise old elf and ask him, huh?”
“What are you talking about, Edward Dean?” “Nothing,” he said, and because that was so goddam true he thought he might burst into tears, he grasped the handles of her wheelchair and began to push it down the cracked and glass-littered ramp that led into the city of Lud.
JAKE QUICKLY DESCENDED INTO a foggy world where the only landmarks were pain: his throbbing hand, the place on his upper arm where Gasher’s fingers dug in like steel pegs, his burning lungs. Before they had gone far, these pains were first joined and then overmatched by a deep, burning stitch in his left side. He wondered if Roland was following after them yet. He also wondered how long Oy would be able to live in this world which was so unlike the plains and forest which were all he had known until now. Then Gasher clouted him across the face, bloodying his nose, and thought was lost in a red wash of pain. “Come on, yer little bastard! Move yer sweet cheeks!” “Running … as fast as I can,” Jake gasped, and just managed to dodge a thick shard of glass which jutted like a long transparent tooth from the wall of junk to his left.
“You better not be, because I’ll knock yer cold and drag yer along by the hair o’ yer head if y’are! Now hup, you little barstard!” Jake somehow forced himself to run faster. He’d gone into the alley with the idea that they must shortly re-emerge onto the avenue, but he now reluctantly realized that wasn’t going to happen. This was more than an alley; it was a camouflaged and fortified road leading ever deeper into the country of the Grays. The tall, tottery walls which pressed in on them had been built from an exotic array of materials: cars which had been partially or completely flattened by the chunks of granite and steel placed on top of them; marble pillars; unknown factory machines which were dull red with rust wherever they weren’t still black with grease; a chrome-and-crystal fish as big as a private plane with one cryptic word of the High Speech—DELIGHT—carefully incised into its scaly gleaming side; crisscrossing chains, each link as big as Jake’s head, wrapped around mad jumbles of furniture that appeared to balance above them as precariously as circus elephants do on their tiny steel platforms.