Stephen King - Wolves of the Calla

Because they were too small, he supposed. And because they'd been hidden. Smile, you're on Candid Camera .

But the church… the rectory… those were buildings that hadn't even existed in the Calla until a few years previous. And inside? Inside the rectory? Who had put a camera there, and when?

Jake didn't know when, but he had a terrible idea that he knew who. Thank God they'd done most of their palavering on the porch, or outside on the lawn. But still, how much must the Wolves-or their masters-know? How much had the infernal machines of this place, the infernal fucking machines of this place, recorded?

And transmitted?

Jake felt pain in his hands and realized they were tightly clenched, the nails biting into his palms. He opened them with an effort. He kept expecting the voice from the speaker-grille-the voice so much like Blaine's-to challenge him, ask him what he was doing here. But it was mostly silent in this room of not-quite-ruin; no sounds but the low hum of the equipment and the occasionally raspy whoosh of the air-exchangers. He looked over his shoulder at the door and saw it had closed behind him on a pneumatic hinge. He wasn't worried about that; from this side it would probably open easily. If it didn't, good old ninety-nine would get him out again. He remembered introducing himself to the folken that first night in the Pavilion, a night that already seemed a long time ago. I am Jake Chambers, son of Elmer, the Line of Eld , he had told them. The ka-tet of the Ninety and Nine . Why had he said that? He didn't know. All he knew was that things kept showing up again. In school, Ms. Avery had read them a poem called "The Second Coming," by William Buder Yeats. There had been something in it about a hawk turning and turning in a widening gyre, which was- according to Ms. Avery-a kind of circle. But here things were in a spiral, not a circle. For the Ka-Tet of Nineteen (or of the Ninety and Nine, Jake had an idea they were really the same), things were tightening up even as the world around them grew old, grew loose, shut down, shed pieces of itself. It was like being in the cyclone which had carried Dorothy off to the Land of Oz, where witches were real and bumhugs ruled. To Jake's heart it made perfect sense that they should be seeing the same things over and over, and more and more often, because-

Movement on one of the screens caught his eye. He looked at it and saw Benny's Da' and Andy the Messenger Robot coming over the hilltop guarded by the cactus sentries. As he watched, the spiny barrel arms swung inward to block the road-and, perhaps, impale the prey. Andy, however, had no reason to fear cactus spines. He swung an arm and broke one of the barrels off halfway down its length. It fell into the dust, spurting white goo. Maybe it wasn't sap at all, Jake thought. Maybe it was blood. In any case, the cactus on the other side swiveled away in a hurry. Andy and Ben Slightman stopped for a moment, perhaps to discuss this. The screen's resolution wasn't clear enough to show if the human's mouth was moving or not.

Jake was seized by an awful, throat-closing panic. His body suddenly seemed too heavy, as if it were being tugged by the gravity of a giant planet like Jupiter or Saturn. He couldn't breathe; his chest lay perfecdy flat. This is what Goldilocks would have felt like , he thought in a faint and distant way, if she had awakened in the little bed that was just right to hear the Three Bears coming back in downstairs . He hadn't eaten the porridge, he hadn't broken Baby Bear's chair, but he now knew too many secrets. They boiled down to one secret. One monstrous secret.

Now they were coming down the road. Coming to the Dogan.

Oy was looking up at him anxiously, his long neck stretched to the max, but Jake could barely see him. Black flowers were blooming in front of his eyes. Soon he would faint. They would find him stretched out here on the floor. Oy might try to protect him, but if Andy didn't take care of the bumbler, Ben Slightman would. There were four dead rock-cats out there and Benny's Da' had dispatched at least one of them with his trusty bah. One small barking billy-bumbler would be no problem for him. Would you be so cowardly, then ? Roland asked inside his head. But why would they kill such a coward as you? Why would they not just send you west with the broken ones who have forgotten the faces of their fathers ?

That brought him back. Most of the way, at least. He took a huge breath, yanking in air until the bottoms of his lungs hurt. He let it out in an explosive whoosh. Then he slapped himself across the face, good and hard.

" Ake! " Oy cried in a reproving-almost shocked-voice.

"S'okay," Jake said. He looked at the monitors showing the galley and the bunkroom and decided on the latter. There was nothing to hide behind or under in the galley. There might be a closet, but what if there wasn't? He'd be screwed.

"Oy, to me," he said, and crossed the humming room beneath the bright white lights.

The bunkroom held the ghostly aroma of ancient spices: cinnamon and clove. Jake wondered-in a distracted, back-of-the-mind way-if the tombs beneath the Pyramids had smelled this way when the first explorers had broken into them. From the upper bunk in the corner, the reclining skeleton grinned at him, as if in welcome. Feel like a nap, little trailhand? I'm taking a long one! It's ribcage shimmered with silky overlays of spiderweb, and Jake wondered in that same distracted way how many generations of spider-babies had been born in that empty cavity. On another pillow lay a jawbone, prodding a ghostly, ghastly memory from the back of the boy's mind. Once, in a world where he had died, the gunslinger had found a bone like that. And used it

The forefront of his mind pounded with two cold questions and one even colder resolve. The questions were how long it would take them to get here and whether or not they would discover his pony. If Slightman had been riding a horse of his own, Jake was sure the amiable little pony would have whinnied a greeting already. Luckily, Slightman was on foot, as he had been last time. Jake would have come on foot himself, had he known his goal was less than a mile east of the river. Of course, when he'd snuck away from the Rocking B, he hadn't even been sure that he had a goal.

The resolve was to kill both the tin-man and the flesh-and-blood man if he was discovered. If he could, that was. Andy might be tough, but those bulging blue-glass eyes looked like a weak point. If he could blind him-

There'll be water if God wills it , said the gunslinger who now always lived in his head, for good and ill. Your job now is to hide if you can. Where ?

Not in the bunks. All of them were visible in the monitor covering this room and there was no way he could impersonate a skeleton. Under one of the two bunk-stacks at the rear? Risky, but it would serve… unless…

Jake spied another door. He sprang forward, depressed the lever-handle, and pulled the door open. It was a closet, and closets made fine hiding places, but this one was filled with jumbles of dusty electronic equipment, top to bottom. Some of it fell out.

"Beans!" he whispered in a low, urgent voice. He picked up what had fallen, tossed it high and low, then shut the closet door again. Okay, it would have to be under one of the beds-

"WELCOME TO ARC QUADRANT OUTPOST 16," boomed the recorded voice. Jake flinched, and saw another door, this one to his left and standing partway open. Try the door or squeeze under one of the two tiers of bunks at the rear of the room? He had time to try one bolthole or the other, but not both. "THIS IS A MEDIUM SECURITY OUTPOST."