Stephen King - Wolves of the Calla

"Big Coffin Hunters, Roland," Eddie murmured.

Roland nodded but never took his eyes from Callahan. "Let the man talk, Eddie."

"What they are-what they really are-is soldiers of the Crimson King," Callahan said. And he crossed himself.

Eddie started. Susannah's hand went back to her belly and began to rub. Roland found himself remembering their walk through Gage Park after they had finally escaped Blaine. The dead animals in the zoo. The run-to-riot rose garden. The carousel and the toy train. Then the metal road leading up to the even larger metal road which Eddie, Susannah, and Jake called a turnpike. There, on one sign, someone had slashed WATCH FOR THE WALKIN DUDE. And on another sign, decorated with the crude drawing of an eye, this message: ALL HAIL THE CRIMSON KING!

"You've heard of the gentleman, I see," Callahan said dryly.

"Let's say he's left his mark where we could see it, too," Susannah said.

Callahan nodded his head in the direction of Thunderclap. "If your quest takes you there," he said, "you're going to see a hell of a lot more than a few signs spray-painted on a few walls."

"What about you?" Eddie asked. "What did you do?"

"First, I sat down and considered the situation. And decided that, no matter how fantastic or paranoid it might sound to an outsider, I really was being stalked, and not necessarily by Type Three vampires. Although of course I did realize that the people leaving the graffiti around and putting up the lost-pet posters wouldn't scruple to use the vampires against me.

"At this point, remember, I had no idea who this mysterious group could be. Back in Jerusalem's Lot, Barlow moved into a house that had seen terrible violence and was reputed to be haunted. The writer, Mears, said that an evil house had drawn an evil man. My best thinking in New York took me back to that idea. I began to think I'd drawn another king vampire, another Type One, the way the Marsten House had drawn Barlow. Right idea or wrong one (it turned out to be wrong), I found it comforting to know my brain, booze-soaked or not, was still capable of some logic.

"The first thing I had to decide was whether to stay in New York or run away. I knew if I didn't run , they'd catch up to me, and probably sooner rather than later. They had a description, with this as an especially good marker." Callahan raised his burned hand. "They almost had my name; would have it for sure in another week or two. They'd stake out all my regular stops, places where my scent had collected. They'd find people I'd talked to, hung out with, played checkers and cribbage with. People I'd worked with on my ManPower and Brawny Man jobs, too."

"This led me to a place I should have gotten to much sooner, even after a month of binge drinking. I realized they'd find Rowan Magruder and Home and all sorts of other people who knew me there. Part-time workers, volunteers, dozens of clients. Hell, after nine months, hundreds of clients.

"On top of that, there was the lure of those roads." Callahan looked at Eddie and Susannah. "Do you know there's a footbridge over the Hudson River to New Jersey? It's practically in the shadow of the GWB, a plank footbridge that still has a few wooden drinking troughs for cows and horses along one side."

Eddie laughed the way a man will when he realizes one of his lower appendages is being shaken briskly. "Sorry, Father, but that's impossible. I've been over the George Washington Bridge maybe five hundred times in my life. Henry and I used to go to Palisades Park all the time. There's no plank bridge."

"There is, though," Callahan said calmly. "It goes back to the early nineteenth century, I should say, although it's been repaired quite a few times since then. In fact, there's a sign halfway across that says BICENTENNIAL REPAIRS COMPLETED 1975 BY LAMERK INDUSTRIES. I recalled that name the first time I saw Andy the robot. According to the plate on his chest, that's the company that made him."

"We've seen the name before, too," Eddie said. "In the city of Lud. Only there it said LaMerk Foundry ."

"Different divisions of the same company, probably," Susannah said.

Roland said nothing, only made that impatient twirling gesture with the remaining two fingers of his right hand: hurry up, hurry up.

"It's there, but it's hard to see," Callahan said. "It's in hiding. And it's only the first of the secret ways. From New York they radiate out like a spider's web."

"Todash turnpikes," Eddie murmured. "Dig the concept."

"I don't know if that's right or not," Callahan said. "I only know I saw extraordinary things in my wanderings over the next few years, and I also met a lot of good people. It seems almost an insult to call them normal people, or ordinary people, but they were both. And certainly they give such words as normal and ordinary a feel of nobility for me.

"I didn't want to leave New York without seeing Rowan Magruder again. I wanted him to know that maybe I had pissed in Lupe's dead face-I'd gotten drunk, surely enough-but I hadn't dropped my pants all the way down and done the other thing. Which is my too-clumsy way of saying I hadn't given up entirely. And that I'd decided not just to cower like a rabbit in a flashlight beam."

Callahan had begun to weep again. He wiped at his eyes with the sleeves of his shirt. "Also, I suppose I wanted to say goodbye to someone, and have someone say goodbye to me. The goodbyes we speak and the goodbyes we hear are the goodbyes that tell us we're still alive, after all. I wanted to give him a hug, and pass along the kiss Lupe had given me. Plus the same message: You're too valuable to lose. I-"

He saw Rosalita hurrying down the lawn with her skirt twitched up slightly at the ankle, and broke off. She handed him a flat piece of slate upon which something had been chalked.

For a wild moment Eddie imagined a message flanked by stars and moons:

"It's from Eisenhart," Callahan said, looking up. "If Overholser's the big farmer in these parts, and Eben Took's the big businessman, then you'd have to call Vaughn Eisenhart the big rancher. He says that he, Slightman Elder and Younger, and your Jake would meet us at Our Lady falls noon, if it do ya fine. It's hard to make out his shorthand, but I think he'd have you visit farms, smallholds, and ranches on your way back out to the Rocking B, where you'd spend the night. Does it do ya?"

"Not quite," Roland said. "I'd much like to have my map before I set off."

Callahan considered this, then looked at Rosalita. Eddie decided the woman was probably a lot more than just a housekeeper. She had withdrawn out of earshot, but not all the way back to the house. Like a good executive secretary , he thought. The Old Fella didn't need to beckon her; she came forward at his glance. They spoke, and then Rosalita set off.

"I think we'll take our lunch on the church lawn," Callahan said. "There's a pleasant old ironwood there that'll shade us. By the time we're done, I'm sure the Tavery twins will have something for you."

Roland nodded, satisfied.

Callahan stood up with a wince, put his hands in the small of his back, and stretched. "And I have something to show you now," he said.

"You haven't finished your story," Susannah said.

"No," Callahan agreed, "but time has grown short. I can walk and talk at the same time, if you fellows can walk and listen."

"We can do that," Roland said, getting up himself. There was pain, but not a great deal of it. Rosalita's cat-oil was something to write home about. "Just tell me two things before we go."