Stephen King - Song of Susannah

And what about Jake and Callahan? Had there been a reception party waiting for them, too, and had it been twenty-two years up the line from this when? The little poem on the fence surrounding the vacant lot suggested that, if they’d followed his wife, it had been-susannah-mio, divided girl of mine, the poem had said, parked her rig in the dixie pig in the year OF ’99. And if there had been a reception party waiting, could they possibly still be alive?

Eddie clung to one idea: if any member of the ka-tet died-Susannah, Jake, Callahan, even Oy-he and Roland would know. If he was kidding himself about that, succumbing to some romantic fallacy, so be it.

Roland caught the eye of the man in the flannel shirt and drew the side of his hand across his throat. John nodded and let go of the oil-pump’s squeeze-handle at once. Chip, the store owner, was now standing beside the loading dock, and where his face wasn’t lathered with blood, he was looking decidedly gray. Roland thought he would pass out soon. No loss there.

“Jack!” the gunslinger shouted. “Jack Andolini!” His pronunciation of the Italian name was a pretty thing to listen to, both precise and rippling.

“You Slick’s big brother?” Andolini asked. He sounded amused. And he sounded closer. Roland put him in front of the store, perhaps on the very spot where he and Eddie had come through. He wouldn’t wait long to make his next move; this was the countryside, but there were still people about. The rising black plume of smoke from the overturned wood-waggon would already have been noticed. Soon they would hear sirens.

“I suppose you’d call me his foreman,” Roland said. He pointed at the gun in Eddie’s hand, then pointed into the storeroom, then pointed at himself: Wait for my signal. Eddie nodded.

“Why don’t you send him out, mi amigo? This doesn’t have to be your concern. I’ll take him and let you go. Slick’s the one I want to talk to. Getting the answers I need from him will be a pleasure.”

“You could never take us,” Roland said pleasantly. ’You’ve forgotten the face of your father. You’re a bag of shit with legs. Your own ka-daddy is a man named Balazar, and you lick his dirty ass. The others know and they laugh at you. ’Look at Jack,’ they say, ’all that ass-licking only makes him uglier.’”

There was a brief pause. Then: “You got a mean mouth on you, mister.” Andolini’s voice was level, but all the bogus good humor had gone out of it. All the laughter. “But you know what they say about sticks and stones.”

In the distance, at last, a siren rose. Roland nodded first to John (who was watching him alertly) and then at Eddie. Soon, that nod said.

“Balazar will be building his towers of cards long after you’re nothing but bones in an unmarked grave, Jack. Some dreams are destiny, but not yours. Yours are only dreams.”

“Shut up!”

“Hear the sirens? Your time’s almost u-”

“ Vai! "Jack Andolini shouted. “Vai! Get em! I want that old fucker’s head, do you hear me? I want his head! ”

A round black object arced lazily through the hole where the employees only door had been. Another grenado. Roland had been expecting it. He fired once, from the hip, and the grenado exploded in midair, turning the flimsy wall between the storeroom and the lunchroom into a storm of destructive, splintery blowback. There were screams of surprise and agony.

“ Now, Eddie! ” Roland shouted, and began to fire into the diesel. Eddie joined in. At first Roland didn’t think anything was going to happen, but then a sluggish ripple of blue flame appeared in the center aisle and went snaking toward where the rear wall had been. Not enough! Gods, how he wished it had been the kind they called gasoline!

Roland tipped out the cylinder of his gun, dropped the spent casings around his boots, and reloaded.

“On your right, mister,” John said, almost conversationally, and Roland dropped flat. One bullet passed through the place where he’d been. The second flipped at the ends of his long hair. He’d only had time to reload three of his revolver’s six chambers, but that was one more bullet than he needed. The two harriers flew backward with identical holes in the center of their brows, just below the hairline.

Another hoodlum dashed around the corner of the store on Eddie’s side and saw Eddie waiting for him with a grin on his bloody face. The fellow dropped his gun immediately and began to raise his hands. Eddie put a bullet through his chest before they got as high as his shoulders. He’s learning, Roland thought. Gods help him, but he is.

“That fire’s a little slow for my taste, boys,” said John, and leaped up onto the loading dock. The store was barely visible through the rolling smoke of the deflected grenado, but bullets came flying through it. John seemed not to notice them, and Roland thanked ka for putting such a good man in their path. Such a hard man.

John took a square silver object from his pants pocket, flipped up the lid, and produced a good flame with the flick of his thumb on a small wheel. He tossed the little flaming tinderbox underhand into the storeroom. Flames burst up all around it with a whoomp sound.

“ What’s the matter with you? ” Andolini screamed. “ Get them! ”

“Come and do it yourself!” Roland called. At the same time he pulled on John’s pants leg. John jumped off the loading dock backward and stumbled. Roland caught him. Chip the storekeeper chose this moment to faint, pitching forward to the trash-littered earth with a groan so soft it was almost a sigh.

“Yeah, come on!” Eddie goaded. “Come on Slick, what-samatta Slick, don’t send a boy to do a man’s work, you ever hear that one? How many guys did you have over there, two dozen? And we’re still standing! So come on! Come on and do it yourself! Or do you want to lick Enrico Balazar’s ass for the rest of your life?”

More bullets came through the smoke and flame, but the harriers in the store showed no interest in trying to charge through the growing fire. No more came around the sides of the store, either.

Roland pointed at Eddie’s lower right leg, where the hole was. Eddie gave him a thumbs-up, but the leg of his jeans now seemed too full below the knee-swollen-and when he moved, his shor’boot squelched. The pain had settled to a steady hard ache that seemed to cycle with the beat of his heart. Yet he was coming to believe it might have missed the bone. Maybe, he admitted to himself, because I want to believe it.

The first siren had been joined by two or three others, and they were closing in.

“ Go! ” Jack screamed. He now sounded on the verge of hysterics. “ Go, you chickenshit motherfuckers, go get them! ”

Roland thought that the remaining badmen might have attacked a couple of minutes ago-maybe even thirty seconds ago-if Andolini had led their charge personally. But now the frontal-assault option had been closed off, and Andolini must surely know that if he led men around either side of the store, Roland and Eddie would pick them off like clay birds in a Fair-Day shooting contest. The only workable strategies left to him were siege or a long flanking movement through the woods, and Jack Andolini had no time for either. Standing their ground back here, however, would present its own problems. Dealing with the local constabulary, for instance, or the fire brigade if that showed up first.

Roland pulled John to him so he could speak quietly. “We need to get out of here right now. Can you help us?”

“Oh, ayuh, I think so.” The wind shifted. A draft blew through the mercantile’s broken front windows, through the place where the back wall had been, and out the back door.