Susannah uttered a short cry - more of surprise than fear, the gunslinger thought - and then hazy daylight was shining down on his face. It felt good. The taste of the air coming in through the blown emergency exit was even better - sweet with the smell of rain and damp earth.
There was a bony rattle, and a ladder - it appeared to be equipped with rungs made of twisted steel wire - dropped out of a slot up there.
"First they throw the chandelier at you, then they show you the door," Eddie said. He struggled to his feet, then got Susannah up. "Okay, I know when I'm not wanted. Let's make like bees and buzz off."
"Sounds good to me." She reached toward the cut on Eddie's face again. Eddie took her fingers, kissed them, and told her to stop poking the moichandise.
"Jake?" the gunslinger asked. "Okay?"
"Yes," Jake said. "What about you, Oy?"
"Oy!"
"Guess he is," Jake said. He raised his wounded hand and looked at it ruefully.
"Hurting again, is it?" the gunslinger asked.
"Yeah. Whatever Blaine did to it is wearing off. I don't care, though - I 'm just glad to still be alive."
"Yes. Life is good. So is astin. There's some of it left."
"Aspirin, you mean."
Roland nodded. A pill of magical properties, but one of the words from Jake's world he would never be able to say correctly.
"Nine out of ten doctors recommend Anacin, honey," Susannah said, and when Jake only looked at her quizzically: "Guess they don't use that one anymore in your when, huh? Doesn't matter. We're here, sugarpie, right here and just fine, and that's what matters." She pulled Jake into her arms and gave him a kiss between the eyes, on the nose, and then flush on the mouth. Jake laughed and blushed bright red. "That's what matters, and right now that's the only thing in the world that does."
6
"First aid can wait," Eddie said. He put his arm around Jake's shoulders and led the boy to the ladder. "Can you use that hand to climb with?"
"Yes. But I can't bring Oy. Roland, will you?"
"Yes." Roland picked Oy up and tucked him into his shirt as he had while descending a shaft under the city in pursuit of Jake and Gasher. Oy peeked out at Jake with his bright, gold-ringed eyes. "Up you go."
Jake climbed. Roland followed close enough so that Oy could sniff the kid's heels by stretching out his long neck.
"Suze?" Eddie asked. "Need a boost?"
"And get your nasty hands all over my well-turned fanny? Not likely, white boy!" Then she dropped him a wink and began to climb, pulling herself up easily with her muscular arms and balancing with the stumps of her legs. She went fast, but not too fast for Eddie; he reached up and gave her a soft pinch where the pinching was good. "Oh, my purity!" Susannah cried, laughing and rolling her eyes. Then she was gone. Only Eddie was left, standing by the foot of the ladder and looking around at the luxury coach which he had believed might well be their ka-tet's coffin.
You did it, kiddo. Henry said. Made him set himself on fire. I knew you could, f**kin-A. Remember when I said that to those scag-bags behind Dahlie's? Jimmie Polio and those guys? And how they laughed? But you did it. Sent him home with a f**kin rupture.
Well, it worked, anyway, Eddie thought, and touched the butt of Roland's gun without even being aware of it. Well enough for us to walk away one more time.
He climbed two rungs, then looked back down. The Barony Coach already felt dead. Long dead, in fact, just another artifact of a world that had moved on.
"Adios, Blaine," Eddie said. "So long, partner."
And he followed his friends out through the emergency exit in the roof.
CHAPTER IV TOPEKA
1
Jake stood on the slightly tilted roof of Blame the Mono, looking southeast along the Path of the Beam. The wind riffled his hair (now quite long and decidedly un-Piperish) back from his temples and forehead in waves. His eyes were wide with surprise.
He didn't know what he had expected to see - a smaller and more provincial version of Lud, perhaps - but what he had not expected was what loomed above the trees of a nearby park. It was a green roadsign (against the dull gray autumn sky, it almost screamed with color) with a blue shield mounted on it:
Roland joined him, lifted Oy gently out of his shirt, and put him down. The humbler sniffed the pink surface of Blaine's roof, then looked toward the front of the mono. Here the train's smooth bullet shape was broken by crumpled metal which had peeled back in jagged wings. Two dark slashes - they began at the mono's tip and extended to a point about ten yards from where Jake and Roland stood - gored the roof in parallel lines. At the end of each was a wide, flat metal pole painted in stripes of yellow and black. These seemed to jut from the top of the mono at a point just forward of the Barony Coach. To Jake they looked a little like football goalposts.
"Those are the piers he talked about hitting," Susannah murmured.
Roland nodded.
"We got off lucky, big boy, you know it? If this thing had been going much faster ..."
"Ka, " Eddie said from behind them. He sounded as if he might be smiling.