Wolves of the Calla

'Are you crazy? Did fighting the Wolves loosen your screws ?'

'If we let her alone, she may finish her business and be gone.' Even as he spoke the words, Roland doubted them.

'Yeah,' Eddie said, studying him with burning eyes, 'she'll finish her business, all right. First piece, have the kid. Second piece, kill my wife.'

'That would be suicide.'

'But she might do it. We have to go after her.'

Surrender was an art Roland practiced rarely but with some skill on the few occasions in his life when it had been necessary. He took another look at Eddie Dean's pale, set face and practiced it now. 'All right,' he said, 'but we'll have to be careful. She'll fight to keep from being taken. She'll kill, if it comes to that. You before any of us, mayhap.'

'I know,' Eddie said. His face was bleak. He looked up the path, but a quarter of a mile up, it hooked around to the south side of the bluff and out of sight. The path zigged back to their side just below the mouth of the cave. That stretch of the climb was deserted, but what did that prove? She could be anywhere. It crossed Eddie's mind that she might not even be up there at all, that the crashed chair might have been as much a red herring as the children's possessions Roland had had scattered along the arroyo path.

I won't believe that. There's a million ratholes in this part of the Calla, and if I believe that she could be in any of them …

Callahan and Jake had caught up and stood there looking at Eddie.

'Come on,' he said. 'I don't care who she is, Roland. If four able-bodied men can't catch one no-legs lady, we ought to turn in our guns and call it a day.'

Jake smiled wanly. 'I'm touched. You just called me a man.'

'Don't let it go to your head, Sunshine. Come on.'

THREE

Eddie and Susannah spoke and thought of each other as man and wife, but he hadn't exactly been able to take a cab over to Carrier's and buy her a diamond and a wedding band. He'd once had a pretty nice high school class ring, but that he'd lost in the sand at Coney Island during the summer he turned seventeen, the summer of Mary Jean Sobieski. Yet on their journeyings from the Western Sea, Eddie had rediscovered his talent as a wood- carver ('wittle baby-ass whittler,' the great sage and eminent junkie would have said), and Eddie had carved his beloved a beautiful ring of willowgreen, light as foam but strong. This Susannah had worn between her breasts, hung on a length of rawhide.

They found it at the foot of the path, still on its rawhide loop. Eddie picked it up, looked at it grimly for a moment, then slipped it over his own head, inside his own shirt.

'Look,' Jake said.

They turned to a place just off the path. Here, in a patch of scant grass, was a track. Not human, not animal. Three wheels in a configuration that made Eddie think of a child's tricycle. What the hell?

'Come on,' he said, and wondered how many times he'd said it since realizing she was gone. He also wondered how long they'd keep following him if he kept on saying it. Not that it mattered. He'd go on until he had her again, or until he was dead. Simple as that. What frightened him most was the baby… what she called the chap. Suppose it turned on her? And he had an idea it might do just that.

'Eddie,' Roland said.

Eddie looked over his shoulder and gave him Roland's own impatient twirl of the hand: let's go .

Roland pointed at the track, instead. 'This was some sort of motor.'

'Did you hear one?'

'No.'

'Then you can't know that.'

'But I do,' Roland said. 'Someone sent her a ride. Or something .'

'You can't know that, goddam you!'

'Andy could have left a ride for her,' Jake said. 'If someone told him to.'

'Who would have told him to do a thing like that?' Eddie rasped.

Finli , Jake thought. Finli o' Tego, whoever he is. Or maybe Walter . But he said nothing. Eddie was upset enough already.

Roland said, 'She's gotten away. Prepare yourself for it.'

'Go fuck yourself!' Eddie snarled, and turned to the path leading upward. 'Come on!'

FOUR

Yet in his heart, Eddie knew Roland was right. He attacked the path to the Doorway Cave not with hope but with a kind of desperate determination. At the place where the boulder had fallen, blocking most of the path, they found an abandoned vehicle with three balloon tires and an electric motor that was still softly humming, a low and constant ummmmm sound. To Eddie, the gadget looked like one of those funky ATV things they sold at Abercrombie & Fitch. There was a handgrip accelerator and handgrip brakes. He bent close and read what was stamped into the steel of the left one:

'SQUEEZIE-PIE' BRAKES, BY NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS

Behind the bicycle-style seat was a little carry-case. Eddie flipped it up and was totally unsurprised to see a six-pack of Nozz-A-La, the drink favored by discriminating bumhugs everywhere. One can had been taken off the ring. She'd been thirsty, of course. Moving fast made you thirsty. Especially if you were in labor.

'This came from the place across the river,' Jake murmured. 'The Dogan. If I'd gone out back, I would have seen it parked there. A whole fleet of them, probably. I bet it was Andy.'

Eddie had to admit it made sense. The Dogan was clearly an outpost of some sort, probably one that predated the current unpleasant residents of Thunderclap. This was exactly the sort of vehicle you'd want to make patrols on, given the terrain.

From this vantage-point beside the fallen boulder, Eddie could see the battleground where they'd stood against the Wolves, throwing plates and lead. That stretch of East Road was so full of people it made him think of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The whole Calla was out there partying, and oh how Eddie hated them in that moment. My wife's gone because of you chickenshit motherfuckers , he thought. It was a stupid idea, stupendously unkind, as well, yet it offered a certain hateful satisfaction. What was it that poem by Stephen Crane had said, the one they'd read back in high school? 'I like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.' Something like that. Close enough for government work.

Now Roland was standing beside the abandoned, softly humming trike, and if it was sympathy he saw in the gunslinger's eyes—or, worse, pity—he wanted none of it.

'Come on, you guys. Let's find her.'

FIVE

This time the voice that greeted them from the Doorway Cave's depths belonged to a woman Eddie had never actually met, although he had heard of her—aye, much, say thankya—and knew her voice at once.

'She's gone, ye great dickled galoot!' cried Rhea of the Coos from the darkness. 'Taken her labor elsewhere, ye ken! And I've no doubt that when her cannibal baby finally comes out, it'll munch its mother north from the cunt, aye!' She laughed, a perfect (and perfectly grating) Witch Hazel cackle. 'No titty-milk fer this one, ye grobbut lost lad! This one'll have meat!'

'Shut up!' Eddie screamed into the darkness. 'Shut up, you… you fucking phantom!'

And for a wonder, the phantom did.