Stephen King - The Dark Tower

And you understand our compact?

Aye. I’ll help you get away from these with your chap, if I can. And…

Kill us if you can’t! the voice finished fiercely. It had never been so loud. That was partly the work of the connecting cable, Susannah felt sure. Say it, Susannah, daughter of Dan!

I’ll kill you both if you —

She stopped there. Mia seemed satisfied, however, and that was well, because Susannah couldn’t have gone on if both their lives had depended on it. Her eye had happened on the ceiling of this enormous room, over the aisles of beds halfway down. And there she saw Eddie and Roland. They were hazy, floating in and out of the ceiling, looking down at her like phantom fish.

Another pain, but this one not as severe. She could feel her thighs hardening, pushing, but that seemed far away. Not important. What mattered was whether or not she was really seeing what she thought she was seeing. Could it be that her over-stressed mind, wishing for rescue, had created this hallucination to comfort her?

She could almost believe it. Would have, very likely, had they not both been naked, and surrounded by an odd collection of floating junk: a matchbook, a peanut, ashes, a penny. And a floormat, by God! A car floormat with FORD printed on it.

“Doctor, I can see the hea—”

A breathless squawk as Dr. Scowther, no gentleman he, elbowed Nurse Ratty unceremoniously aside and bent even closer to the juncture of Mia’s thighs. As if he meant to pull her chap out with his teeth, perhaps. The hawk-thing, Jey or Gee, was speaking to the one called Haber in an excited, buzzing dialect.

They’re really there, Susannah thought. The floormat proves it . She wasn’t sure how the floormat proved it, only that it did. And she mouthed the word Mia had given her: chassit . It was a password. It would open at least one door and perhaps many. To wonder if Mia had told the truth never even crossed Susannah’s mind. They were tied together, not just by the cable and the helmets, but by the more primitive (and far more powerful) act of childbirth. No, Mia hadn’t lied.

“Push, you gods-damned lazy bitch! ” Scowther almost howled, and Roland and Eddie suddenly disappeared through the ceiling for good, as if blown away by the force of the man’s breath. For all Susannah knew, they had been.

She turned on her side, feeling her hair stuck to her head in clumps, aware that her body was pouring out sweat in what could have been gallons. She pulled herself a little closer to Mia; a little closer to Scowther; a little closer to the crosshatched butt of Scowther’s dangling automatic.

“Be still, sissa, hear me I beg,” said one of the low men, and touched Susannah’s arm. The hand was cold and flabby, covered with fat rings. The caress made her skin crawl. “This will be over in a minute and then all the worlds change. When this one joins the Breakers in Thunderclap—”

“Shut up, Straw!” Haber snapped, and pushed Susannah’s would-be comforter backward. Then he turned eagerly to the delivery again.

Mia arched her back, groaning. The rathead nurse put her hands on Mia’s hips and pushed them gently back down to the bed. “Nawthee, nawthee, push ’ith thy belly.”

“Eat shit, you bitch! ” Mia screamed, and while Susannah felt a faint tug of her pain, that was all. The connection between them was fading.

Summoning her own concentration, Susannah cried into the well of her own mind. Hey! Hey Positronics lady! You still there?

“The link…is down,” said the pleasant female voice. As before, it spoke in the middle of Susannah’s head, but unlike before, it seemed dim, no more dangerous than a voice on the radio that comes from far away due to some atmospheric flaw. “Repeat: the link…is down. We hope you’ll remember North Central Positronics for all your mental enhancement needs. And Sombra Corporation! A leader in mind-to-mind communication since the ten thousands!”

There was a tooth-rattling BEE-EEEEP far down in Susannah’s mind, and then the link was gone. It wasn’t just the absence of the horridly pleasant female voice; it was everything . She felt as if she’d been let out of some painful body-compressing trap.

Mia screamed again, and Susannah let out a cry of her own. Part of this was not wanting Sayre and his mates to know the link between her and Mia had been broken; part was genuine sorrow. She had lost a woman who had become, in a way, her true sister.

Susannah! Suze, are you there?

She started up on her elbows at this new voice, for a moment almost forgetting the woman beside her. That had been—

Jake? Is it you, honey? It is, isn’t it? Can you hear me?

YES! he cried. Finally! God, who’ve you been talking to? Keep yelling so I can home in on y —

The voice broke off, but not before she heard a ghostly rattle of distant gunfire. Jake shooting at someone? She thought not. She thought someone was shooting at him .

“Now!” Scowther shouted. “ Now, Mia! Push! For your life! Give it all you have! PUSH! ”

Susannah tried to roll closer to the other woman— Oh, I’m concerned and wanting comfort, see how concerned I am, concern and wanting comfort is all it is —but the one called Straw pulled her back. The segmented steel cable swung and stretched out between them. “Keep your distance, bitch,” Straw said, and for the first time Susannah faced the possibility that they weren’t going to let her get hold of Scowther’s gun. Or any gun.

Mia screamed again, crying out to a strange god in a strange language. When she tried to raise her midsection from the table, the nurse — Alia, Susannah thought the nurse’s name was Alia — forced her down again, and Scowther gave a short, curt cry of what sounded like satisfaction. He tossed aside the forceps he’d been holding.

“Why d’ye do that?” Sayre demanded. The sheets beneath Mia’s spread legs were now damp with blood, and the boss sounded flustered.

“Won’t need them!” Scowther returned breezily. “She was built for babies, could have a dozen in the rice-patch and never miss a row’s worth of picking. Here it comes, neat as you please!”

Scowther made as if to grab the largish basin sitting on the next bed, decided he didn’t have quite enough time, and slipped his pink, gloveless hands up the inside of Mia’s thighs, instead. This time when Susannah made an effort to move closer to Mia, Straw didn’t stop her. All of them, low men and vampires alike, were watching the last stage of the birth with complete fascination, most of them clustered at the end of the two beds which had been pushed together to make one. Only Straw was still close to Susannah. The vampire with the fire-sword had just been demoted; she decided that Straw would be the first to go.

“Once more! ” Scowther cried. “For your baby! ”

Like the low men and the vampires, Mia had forgotten Susannah. Her wounded, pain-filled eyes fixed on Sayre. “May I have him, sir? Please say I may have him, if only for a little while!”

Sayre took her hand. The mask which covered his real face smiled. “Yes, my darling,” he said. “The chap is yours for years and years. Only push this one last time.”

Mia, don’t believe his lies! Susannah cried, but the cry went nowhere. Likely that was just as well. Best she be entirely forgotten for the time being.

Susannah turned her thoughts in a new direction. Jake! Jake, where are you?

No answer. Not good. Please God he was still alive.