The Dark Tower

His first thought was that there were toomany of them—far, far too many. He put their number at close to ahundred, the majority certainly of the sort Pere Callahan had referred to as“low men.” (Some were low women, but Jake had no doubt the principle was thesame.) Scattered among them, all less fleshy than the low folken andsome as slender as fencing weapons, their complexions ashy and their bodiessurrounded in dim blue auras, were what had to be vampires.

Oy stood at Jake’s heel, his small, foxyface stern, whining low in his throat.

That smell of cooking meat wafting throughthe air was not pork.

Four

Ten feet between us any time we have tenfeet to give, Pere—so Jake had said out on the sidewalk, and even asthey approached the maître d’s platform, Callahan was drifting toJake’s right, putting the required distance between them.

Jake had also told him to scream as loud ashe could for as long as he could, and Callahan was opening his mouth to begindoing just that when the voice of the White spoke up inside again. Only oneword, but it was enough.

Sköldpadda, it said.

Callahan was still holding the Ruger up byhis right cheek. Now he dipped into his breast pocket with his left hand. Hisawareness of the scene before him wasn’t as hyper-alert as his youngcompanion’s, but he saw a great deal: the orangey-crimson electric flambeauxon the walls, the candles on each table immured in glass containers of abrighter, Halloweenish orange, the gleaming napkins. To the left of the diningroom was a tapestry showing knights and their ladies sitting at a long banquettable. There was a sense in here—Callahan wasn’t sure exactly whatprovoked it, the various tells and stimuli were too subtle—of people justresettling themselves after some bit of excitement: a small kitchen fire, say,or an automobile accident on the street.

Or a lady having a baby, Callahanthought as he closed his hand on the Turtle. That’s always good for a littlepause between the appetizer and the entrée.

“Now come Gilead’s ka-mais!” shouted anexcited, nervous voice. Not a human one, of that Callahan was almost positive.It was too buzzy to be human. Callahan saw what appeared to be some sortof monstrous bird-human hybrid standing at the far end of the room. It worestraight-leg jeans and a plain white shirt, but the head rising from that shirtwas painted with sleek feathers of dark yellow. Its eyes looked like drops ofliquid tar.

“Get them!” this horridly ridiculousthing shouted, and brushed aside a napkin. Beneath it was some sort of weapon.Callahan supposed it was a gun, but it looked like the sort you saw on StarTrek. What did they call them? Phasers? Stu

It didn’t matter. Callahan had a far betterweapon, and wanted to make sure they all saw it. He swept the place-settingsand the glass container with the candle in it from the nearest table, thensnatched away the tablecloth like a magician doing a trick. The last thing hewanted to do was to trip over a swatch of linen at the crucial moment. Then,with a nimbleness he wouldn’t have believed even a week ago, he stepped ontoone of the chairs and from the chair to the table-top. Once on the table, helifted the sköldpadda with his fingers supporting the turtle’s flatundershell, giving them all a good look at it.

I could croon something, he thought.Maybe “Moonlight Becomes You” or “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

At that point they had been inside theDixie Pig for exactly thirty-four seconds.

Five

High school teachers faced with a largegroup of students in study hall or a school assembly will tell you that teenagers,even when freshly showered and groomed, reek of the hormones which their bodiesare so busy manufacturing. Any group of people under stress emits a similarstink, and Jake, with his senses tuned to the most exquisite pitch, smelled ithere. When they passed the maître d’s stand (Blackmail Central,his Dad liked to call such stations), the smell of the Dixie Pig’s diners hadbeen faint, the smell of people coming back to normal after some sort ofdust-up. But when the bird-creature in the far corner shouted, Jake had smelledthe patrons more strongly. It was a metallic aroma, enough like blood to incitehis temper and his emotions. Yes, he saw Tweety Bird knock aside the napkin onhis table; yes, he saw the weapon beneath; yes, he understood that Callahan,standing on the table, was an easy shot. That was of far less concern to Jakethan the mobilizing weapon that was Tweety Bird’s mouth. Jake was drawing backhis right arm, meaning to fling the first of his nineteen plates and amputatethe head in which that mouth resided, when Callahan raised the turtle.

It won’t work, not in here, Jakethought, but even before the idea had been completely articulated in his mind,he understood it was working. He knew by the smell of them. Theaggressiveness went out of it. And the few who had begun to rise from theirtables—the red holes in the foreheads of the low people gaping, the blueauras of the vampires seeming to pull in and intensify—sat back downagain, and hard, as if they had suddenly lost command of their muscles.

“Get them, those are the ones Sayre…”Then Tweety stopped talking. His left hand—if you could call such an uglytalon a hand—touched the butt of his high-tech gun and then fell away.The brilliance seemed to leave his eyes. “They’re the ones Sayre… S-S-

Sayre…” Another pause. Then the bird-thingsaid, “Oh sai, what is the lovely thing that you hold?”

“You know what it is,” Callahan said. Jakewas moving and Callahan, mindful of what the boy gunslinger had told himoutside—Make sure that every time I look on my right, I see your face—steppedback down from the table to move with him, still holding the turtle high. Hecould almost taste the room’s silence, but—

But there was another room. Roughlaughter and hoarse, carousing yells—a party from the sound of it, andclose by. On the left. From behind the tapestry showing the knights and theirladies at di

He heard Oy breathing fast and low throughhis perpetual grin, a perfect little engine. And something else. A harshrattling sound with a low and rapid clicking beneath. The combination setCallahan’s teeth on edge and made his skin feel cold. Something was hidingunder the tables.

Oy saw the advancing insects first andfroze like a dog on point, one paw raised and his snout thrust forward. For amoment the only part of him to move was the dark and velvety skin of hismuzzle, first twitching back to reveal the clenched needles of his teeth, thenrelaxing to hide them, then twitching back again.

The bugs came on. Whatever they were, theTurtle Maturin upraised in the Pere’s hand meant nothing to them. A fat guywearing a tuxedo with plaid lapels spoke weakly, almost questioningly, to thebird-thing: “They weren’t to come any further than here, Meiman, nor to leave.We were told…”

Oy lunged forward, a growl coming throughhis clamped teeth. It was a decidedly un-Oylike sound, reminding Callahan of acomic-strip balloon: Arrrrrr!

“No!” Jake shouted, alarmed. “No, Oy!”

At the sound of the boy’s shout, the yellsand laughter from behind the tapestry abruptly ceased, as if the folkenback there had suddenly become aware that something had changed in the frontroom.

Oy took no notice of Jake’s cry. Hecrunched three of the bugs in rapid succession, the crackle of their breakingcarapaces gruesomely clear in the new stillness. He made no attempt to eat thembut simply tossed the corpses, each the size of a mouse, into the air with asnap of the neck and a gri