Stephen King - The Waste Lands

“I CAN PROVIDE THAT SENSATION, IF YOU LIKE,” Blaine said. “ALSO A LITTLE MOISTURE, WHICH WILL MATCH CURRENT OUTSIDE CONDITIONS. IT MIGHT NECESSITATE A CHANGE OF CLOTHES, HOWEVER.”

“That’s all right, Blaine. There’s such a thing as taking an illusion too far.”

The track slipped through a tall cluster of buildings which reminded Jake a little of the Wall Street area in New York. When they cleared these, the track dipped to pass under what looked like an elevated road. That was when they saw the purple cloud, and the crowd of people fleeing before it.

“BLAINE, WHAT’s THAT?” JAKE asked, but he already knew.

Blaine laughed… but made no other reply.

The purple vapor drifted from gratings in the sidewalk and the smashed windows of deserted buildings, but most of it seemed to be coming from manholes like the one Gasher had used to get into the tunnels below the streets. Their iron covers had been blown clear by the explosion they had felt as they were boarding the mono. They watched in silent horror as the bruise-colored gas crept down the avenues and spread into the debris-littered side-streets. It drove those inhabitants of Lud still interested in survival before it like cattle. Most were Pubes, judging from their scarves, but Jake could see a few splashes of bright yellow, as well. Old animosities had been forgotten now that the end was finally upon them.

The purple cloud began to catch up with the stragglers-mostly old people who were unable to run. They fell down, clawing at their throats and screaming soundlessly, the instant the gas touched them. Jake saw an agonized face staring up at him in disbelief as they passed over, saw the eyesockets suddenly fill up with blood, and closed his eyes.

Ahead, the monorail track disappeared into the oncoming purple fog. Eddie winced and held his breath as they plunged in, but of course it parted around them, and no whiff of the death engulfing the city came to them. Looking into the streets below was like looking through a stained-glass window into hell.

Susannah put her face against his chest.

“Make the walls come back, Blaine,” Eddie said. “We don’t want to see that.”

Blaine made no reply, and the transparency around and below them remained. The cloud was already disintegrating into ragged purple streamers. Beyond it, the buildings of the city grew smaller and closer together. The streets of this section were tangled alleyways, seemingly without order or coherence. In some places, whole blocks appeared to have burned flat… and a long time ago, for the plains were reclaiming these areas, burying the rubble in the grasses which would some day swallow all of Lud. The way the jungle swallowed the great civilizations of the Incas and Mayas, Eddie thought. The wheel of ka turns and the world moves on,

Beyond the slums-that, Eddie felt sure, was what they had been even before the evil days came-was a gleaming wall. Blaine was moving slowly in that direction. They could see a deep square notch cut in the white stone. The monorail track passed through it.

“LOOK TOWARD THE FRONT OF THE CABIN, PLEASE,” Blaine invited.

They did, and the forward wall reappeared-a blue-upholstered circle that seemed to float in empty space. It was unmarked by a door; if there was a way to get into the operator’s room from the Barony Cabin, Eddie couldn’t see it. As they watched, a rectangular area of this front wall darkened, going from blue to violet to black. A moment later, a bright red line appeared on the rectangle, squiggling across its surface. Violet dots appeared at irregular intervals along the line, and even before names appeared beside the dots, Eddie realized he was looking at a route-map, one not much different from those which were mounted in New York subway stations and on the trains themselves. A flashing green dot appeared at Lud, which was Blaine’s base of operations as well as his terminating point.

“YOU ARE LOOKING AT OUR ROUTE OF TRAVEL. ALTHOUGH THERE ARE SOME TWISTS AND TURNS ALONG THE BUNNY-TRAIL, YOU WILL NOTE THAT OUR COURSE KEEPS FIRMLY TO THE SOUTHWEST-ALONG THE PATH OF THE BEAM. THE TOTAL DISTANCE IS JUST OVER EIGHT THOUSAND WHEELS-OR SEVEN THOUSAND MILES, IF YOU PREFER THAT UNIT OF MEASURE. IT WAS ONCE MUCH LESS, BUT THAT WAS BEFORE ALL TEMPORAL SYNAPSES BEGAN TO MELT DOWN.”

“What do you mean, temporal synapses?” Susannah asked.

Blaine laughed his nasty laugh… but did not answer her question.

“AT MY TOP SPEED, WE WILL REACH THE TERMINATING POINT OF MY RUN IN EIGHT HOURS AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES.”

“Eight hundred-plus miles an hour over the ground,” Susannah said. Her voice was soft with awe. “Jesus-God.”

“I AM, OF COURSE, MAKING THE ASSUMPTION THAT ALL TRACKAGE ALONG MY ROUTE REMAINS INTACT. IT HAS BEEN NINE YEARS AND FIVE MONTHS SINCE I’ve BOTHERED TO MAKE THE RUN, SO I CAN’T SAY FOR SURE.”

Ahead, the wall at the southeastern edge of the city was drawing closer. It was high and thick and eroded to rubble at the top. It also appeared to be lined with skeletons-thousands upon thousands of dead Luddites. The notch toward which Blaine was slowly moving appeared to be at least two hundred feet deep, and here the trestle which bore the track was very dark, as if someone had tried to burn it or blow it up.

“What happens if we come to a place where the track is gone?” Eddie asked. He realized he kept raising his voice to talk to Blaine, as if he were speaking to somebody on the telephone and had a bad connection.

“AT EIGHT HUNDRED MILES AN HOUR?” Blaine sounded amused. “SEE YOU LATER, ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE, CROCODILE, DONT FORGET TO WRITE.”

“Come on!” Eddie said. “Don’t tell me a machine as sophisticated as you can’t monitor your own trackage for breaks.”

“WELL, I COULD HAVE,” Blaine agreed, “BUT-AW, SHUCKS!- I BLEW THOSE CIRCUITS OUT WHEN WE STARTED TO MOVE.”

Eddie’s face was a picture of astonishment. “Why?”

“IT’s QUITE A BIT MORE EXCITING THIS WAY, DON’T YOU THINK?”

Eddie, Susannah, and Jake exchanged thunderstruck looks. Roland, apparently not surprised at all, sat placidly in his chair with his hands folded in his lap, looking down as they passed thirty feet above the wretched hovels and demolished buildings which infested this side of the city.

“LOOK CLOSELY AS WE LEAVE THE CITY, AND MARK WHAT YOU SEE,” Blaine told them. “MARK IT VERY WELL.”

The invisible Barony Coach bore them toward the notch in the wall. They passed through, and as they came out the other side, Eddie and Susannah screamed in unison. Jake took one look and clapped his hands over his eyes. Oy began to bark wildly.

Roland stared down, eyes wide, lips set in a bloodless line like a scar. Understanding filled him like bright white light.

Beyond the Great Wall of Lud, the real waste lands began.

THE MONO HAD BEEN descending as they approached the notch in the wall, putting them not more than thirty feet above the ground. That made the shock greater… for when they emerged on the other side, they were skimming along at a horrifying height-eight hundred feet, perhaps a thousand.

Roland looked back over his shoulder at the wall, which was now receding behind them. It had seemed very high as they approached it, but from this perspective it seemed puny indeed-a splintered fingernail of stone clinging to the edge of a vast, sterile headland. Granite cliffs, wet with rain, plunged into what seemed at first glance to be an endless abyss. Directly below the wall, the rock was lined with large circular holes like empty eyesockets. Black water and tendrils of purple mist emerged from these in brackish, sludgy streams and spread downward over the granite in stinking, overlapping fans that looked almost as old as the rock itself. That must be where all the city’s waste-product goes, the gunslinger thought. Over the edge and into the pit.