"Christ, Roland," Susannah said. "Christ almighty, what were they?"
Roland did not reply, although he knew the answer: they were folken who had run mad.
TEN
At hundred-yard intervals, little flights of stairs-the longest was only ten risers from top to bottom-took them gradually deeper into the bowels of the earth. After they'd gone what Susannah estimated to be a quarter of a mile, they came to a gate that had been torn away, perhaps by some sort of vehicle, and smashed to flinders. Here were more skeletons, so many that Roland had to tread upon some in order to pass. They did not crunch but made a damp puttering sound that was somehow worse. The smell that arose from them was sallow and wet. Most of the tiles had been torn away above these bodies, and those that were still on the walls had been pocked with bullet-
holes. A firefight, then. Susannah opened her mouth to say something about it, but before she could, that low thudding sound came again. She thought it was a little louder this time.
A little closer. She looked behind her again and saw nothing.
The lights fifty yards back were still going dark in a line.
"I don't like to sound paranoid, Roland, but I think we are being followed."
"I know we are."
"You want me to throw a shot at it? Or a plate? That whistling can be pretty spooky."
"No."
"Why not?"
"It may not know what we are. If you shoot... it will."
It took her a moment to realize what he was really saying: he wasn't sure bullets-or an Oriza-would stop whatever was back there. Or, worse, perhaps he was sure.
When she spoke again, she worked very hard to sound calm, and thought she succeeded tolerably well. "It's something from that crack in the earth, do you think?"
"It might be," Roland said. "Or it might be something that got through from todash space. Now hush."
The gunslinger went on more quickly, finally reaching jogging pace and then passing it. She was amazed by his mobility now that the pain that had troubled his hip was gone, but she could hear his breathing as well as feel it in the rise and fall of his back-quick, gasping intakes followed by rough expulsions that sounded almost like cries of annoyance. She would have given anything to be running beside him on her own legs, the strong ones Jack Mort had stolen from her.
The overhead globes pulsed faster now, the pulsation easier to see because there were fewer of them. In between, their combined shadow would stretch long ahead of them, then shorten little by litde as they approached the next light. The air was cooler; the ceramic stuff which floored the passage less and less even. In places it had split apart and pieces of it had been tossed aside, leaving traps for the unwary. These Oy avoided with ease, and so far Roland had been able to avoid them, too.
She was about to tell him that she hadn't heard their follower for awhile when something behind them pulled in a great gasping breath. She felt the air around her reverse direction; felt the tight curls on her head spring wildly about as the air was sucked backward. There was an enormous slobbering noise that made her feel like screaming. Whatever was back there, it was big.
No.-...
Enormous.
ELEVEN
They pelted down another of those short stairways. Fifty yards beyond it, three more of the pulsing globes bloomed with unsteady light, but after that there was just darkness. The ragged tiled sides of the passage and its uneven, decaying floor melted into a void so deep that it looked like a physical substance: great clouds of loosely packed black felt. They would run into it, she thought, and at first their momentum would continue to carry them forward. Then the stuff would shove them backward like a spring, and whatever was back there would be on them. She would catch a glimpse of it, something so awful and alien her mind would not be able to recognize it, and that might be a mercy. Then it would pounce, and-
Roland ran into the darkness without slowing, and of course they did not bounce back. At first there was a little light, some from behind them and some from the globes overhead (a few were still giving off a last dying core of radiance). Just enough to see another short stairway, its upper end flanked by crumbling skeletons wearing a few