Stephen King - The Waste Lands

Juke had begun to flag badly. Roland swept him into his arms again and chased the steel ball past machines at whose function and intent he could not even guess. Oy ran at his heels. The ball banked left, and the aisle in which they now found themselves ran between banks of TV monitors, thousands of them, stacked in rows like a child’s building blocks.

My dad would love it, Jake thought.

Some sections of this vast video arcade were still dark, but many of the screens were on. They showed a, city in chaos, both above and below. Clumps of Pubes surged pointlessly through the streets, eyes wide, mouths moving soundlessly. Many were leaping from the tall buildings. Jake observed with horror that hundreds more had congregated at the Send Bridge and were throwing themselves into the river. Other screens showed large, cot-filled rooms like dormitories. Some of these rooms were on fire, but the panic-stricken Grays seemed to be setting the fires themselves-torching their own mattresses and furniture for God alone knew what reason.

One screen showed a barrel-chested giant tossing men and women into what looked like a blood-spattered stamping press. This was bad enough, but there was something worse: the victims were standing in an unguarded line, docilely waiting their turns. The executioner, his yellow scarf pulled tight over his skull and the knotted ends swinging below his ears like pigtails, seized an old woman and held her up, waiting patiently for the stainless steel block of metal to clear the killing floor so he could toss her in. The old woman did not struggle; seemed, in fact, to be smiling.

“IN THE ROOMS THE PEOPLE COME AND GO,” Blaine said, “BUT I DON’T THINK ANY OF THEM ARE TALKING OF MICHELANGELO.” He suddenly laughed-strange, tittery laughter that sounded like rats scampering over broken glass. The sound sent chills chasing up Jake’s neck. He wanted nothing at all to do with an intelligence that laughed like that… but what choice did they have?

He turned his gaze helplessly back to the monitors… and Roland at once turned his head away. He did this gently but firmly. “There’s nothing there you need to look at, Jake,” he said.

“But why are they doing it?” Jake asked. He had eaten nothing all day, but he still felt like vomiting. “Why?”

“Because they’re frightened, and Blaine is feeding their fear. But mostly, I think, because they’ve lived too long in the graveyard of their grandfathers and they’re tired of it. And before you pity them, remember how happy they would have been to take you along with them into the clearing where the path ends.”

The steel ball zipped around another corner, leaving the TV screens and electronic monitoring equipment behind. Ahead, a wide ribbon of some synthetic stuff was set into the floor. It gleamed like fresh tar between two narrow strips of chrome steel that dwindled to a point on what was not the far side of this room, but its horizon.

The ball bounced impatiently above the dark strip, and suddenly the belt-for that was what it was-swept into silent motion, trundling along between its steel facings at jogging speed. The ball made small arcs in the air, urging them to climb on.

Roland trotted beside the moving strip until he was roughly matching its speed, then did just that. He set Jake down and the three of them-gunslinger, boy, and golden-eyed bumbler-were carried rapidly across this shadowy underground plain where the ancient machines were awakening. The moving strip carried them into an area of what looked like filing cabinets-row after endless row of them. They were dark… but not dead. A low, sleepy humming sound came from within them, and Jake could see hairline cracks of bright yellow light shining between the steel panels.

He suddenly found himself thinking of the Tick-Tock Man.

There’s maybe a hundred thousand of those ever-fucking dipolar computers under the ever-fucking city! I want those computers!

Well, Jake thought, they’re waking up, so I guess you’re getting what you wanted, Ticky… but if you were here, I’m not sure you’d still want it.

Then he remembered Tick-Tock’s great-grandfather, who’d been brave enough to climb into an airplane from another world and take it into the sky. With that kind of blood running in his veins, Jake supposed, Tick-Tock, far from being frightened to the point of suicide, would have been delighted by this turn of events… and the more people who killed themselves in terror, the happier he would have been.

Too late now, Ticky, he thought. Thank God.

Roland spoke in a soft, wondering voice. “All these boxes… I think we’re riding through the mind of the thing that calls itself Blaine, Jake. / think we’re riding through its mind.”

Jake nodded, and found himself thinking of his Final Essay. “Blaine the Brain is a hell of a pain.”

“Yes.”

Jake looked closely at Roland. “Are we going to come out where I think we’re going to come out?”

“Yes,” Roland said. “If we’re still following the Path of the Beam, we’ll come out in the Cradle.”

Jake nodded. “Roland?”

“What?”

“Thanks for coming after me.”

Roland nodded and put an arm around Jake’s shoulders.

Far ahead of them, huge motors rumbled to life. A moment later a heavy grinding sound began and new light-the harsh glow of orange arc-sodiums-flooded down on them. Jake could now see the place where the moving belt stopped. Beyond it was a steep, narrow escalator, leading up into that orange light.

EDDIE AND SUSANNAH HEARD heavy motors start up almost directly beneath them. A moment later, a wide strip of the marble floor began to pull slowly back, revealing a long lighted slot below. The floor was disappearing in their direction. Eddie seized the handles of Susannah’s chair and rolled it rapidly backward along the steel barrier between the monorail platform and the rest of the Cradle. There were several pillars along the course of the growing rectangle of light, and Eddie waited for them to tumble into the hole as the floor upon which they stood disappeared from beneath their bases. It didn’t happen. The pillars went on serenely standing, seeming to float on nothing.

“I see an escalator!” Susannah shouted over the endless, pulsing alarm. She was leaning forward, peering into the hole.

“Uh-huh,” Eddie shouted back. “We got the el station up here, so it must be notions, perfume, and ladies’ lingerie down there.”

“What?”

“Never mind!”

“Eddie!” Susannah screamed. Delighted surprise burst over her face like a Fourth of July firework. She leaned even further forward, pointing, and Eddie had to grab her to keep her from tumbling out of the chair. “It’s Roland! It’s both of them!”

There was a shuddery thump as the slot in the floor opened to its maximum length and stopped. The motors which had driven it along its hidden tracks cut out in a long, dying whine. Eddie ran to the edge of the hole and saw Roland riding on one of the escalator steps. Jake- white-faced, bruised, bloody, but clearly Jake and clearly alive-was standing next to him and leaning on the gunslinger’s shoulder. And sitting on the step right behind them, looking up with his bright eyes was Oy.

“Roland! Jake!” Eddie shouted. He leaped up, waving his hands over his head, and came down dancing on the edge of the slot. If he had been wearing a hat, he would have thrown it in the air.

They looked up and waved. Jake was grinning, Eddie saw, and even old long tall and ugly looked as if he might break down and crack a smile before long. Wonders, Eddie thought, would never cease. His heart suddenly felt too big for his chest and he danced faster, waving his arms and whooping, afraid that if he didn’t keep moving, his joy and relief might actually cause him to burst. Until this moment he had not realized how positive his heart had become that they would never see Roland and Jake again.