Roland knew the look, and the look was always the same. Whether it was an open field of battle where thousands had died by cannon, rifle, sword, and halberd or a small room where five or six had shot each other, it was the same place, always the same place in the end: another deadhouse, stinking of gunpowder and raw meat.
The wall between the bathroom and the office was gone except for a few struts. Broken glass twinkled everywhere. Ceiling panels that had been shredded by Tricks Postino’s gaudy but useless M-16 fireworks display hung down like pieces of peeled skin.
Eddie coughed dryly. Now he could hear other sounds—a babble of excited conversation, shouted voices outside the bar, and, in the distance, the warble of sirens.
“How many?” the gunslinger asked Eddie. “Can we have gotten all of them?”
“Yes, I think—”
“I got something for you, Eddie,” Kevin Blake said from the hallway. “I thought you might want it, like for a souvenir, you know?” What Balazar had not been able to do to the younger Dean brother Kevin had done to the elder. He lobbed Henry Dean’s severed head through the doorway.
Eddie saw what it was and screamed. He ran toward the door, heedless of the splinters of glass and wood that punched into his bare feet, screaming, shooting, firing the last live shell in the big revolver as he went.
“No, Eddie!” Roland screamed, but Eddie didn’t hear. He was beyond hearing.
He hit a dud in the sixth chamber, but by then he was aware of nothing but the fact that Henry was dead, Henry, they had cut off his head, some miserable son of a bitch had cut off Henry’s head, and that son of a bitch was going to pay, oh yes, you could count on that.
So he ran toward the door, pulling the trigger again and again, unaware that nothing was happening, unaware that his feet were red with blood, and Kevin Blake stepped into the doorway to meet him, crouched low, a Llama .38 automatic in his hand. Kevin’s red hair stood around his head in coils and springs, and Kevin was smiling.
24
He’ll be low, the gunslinger thought, knowing he would have to be lucky to hit his target with this untrustworthy little toy even if he had guessed right.
When he saw the ruse of Balazar’s soldier was going to draw Eddie out, Roland rose to his knees and steadied his left hand on his right fist, grimly ignoring the screech of pain making that fist caused. He would have one chance only. The pain didn’t matter.
Then the man with the red hair stepped into the doorway, smiling, and as always Roland’s brain was gone; his eye saw, his hand shot, and suddenly the red-head was lying against the wall of the corridor with his eyes open and a small blue hole in his forehead. Eddie was standing over him, screaming and sobbing, dry-firing the big revolver with the sandalwood grips again and again, as if the man with the red hair could never be dead enough.
The gunslinger waited for the deadly crossfire that would cut Eddie in half and when it didn’t come he knew it was truly over. If there had been other soldiers, they had taken to their heels.
He got wearily to his feet, reeled, and then walked slowly over to where Eddie Dean stood.
“Stop it,” he said.
Eddie ignored him and went on dry-firing Roland’s big gun at the dead man.
“Stop it, Eddie, he’s dead. They’re all dead. Your feet are bleeding.”
Eddie ignored him and went on pulling the revolver’s trigger. The babble of excited voices outside was closer. So were the sirens.
The gunslinger reached for the gun and pulled on it. Eddie turned on him, and before Roland was entirely sure what was happening, Eddie struck him on the side of the head with his own gun. Roland felt a warm gush of blood and collapsed against the wall. He struggled to stay on his feet—they had to get out of here, quick. But he could feel himself sliding down the wall in spite of his every effort, and then the world was gone for a little while in a drift of grayness.
25
He was out for no more than two minutes, and then he managed to get things back into focus and make it to his feet. Eddie was no longer in the hallway. Roland’s gun lay on the chest of the dead man with the red hair. The gunslinger bent, fighting off