The Dark Tower

The rest had gathered behind the taheen now. They were alternating glances into the hazy clearing with looks at Lamla. Flaherty didn’t like what he saw on their faces, not a bit. Killing one or two of those least willing to veil their sullen eyes might restore the enthusiasm of the rest, but what good would that do if Lamla was right? Cursed old people, always leaving their toys behind! Dangerous toys! How they complicated a man’s life! A pox on every last one!

“Then how do we get past?” Flaherty cried. “For that mattah, how did the brat get past?”

“Dunno about the brat,” Lamla said, “but all we need to do is shoot the projectors.”

“What shitting projectors?”

Lamla pointed below . . . or along the course of the corridor, if what the ugly bastard said was true. “There,” Lam said. “I know you can’t see em, but take my word for it, they’re there. Either side.”

Flaherty was watching with a certain fascination as Jake’s misty jungle clearing continued to change before his eyes into the deep dark forest, as in Once upon a time when everyone lived in the deep dark forest and nobody lived anywhere else, a dragon came to rampage.

Flaherty didn’t know what Lamla and the rest of them were seeing, but before his eyes the dragon (which had been a Tyrannasorbet Wrecks not so long ago) obediently rampaged, setting trees on fire and looking for little Catholic boys to eat.

“I see NOTHING!” he shouted at Lamla. “I think youah out of your shitting MIND!”

“I’ve seen em turned off,” Lamla said quietly, “and can recall near about where they lie. If you’ll let me bring up four men and set em shooting on either side, I don’t believe it will take long to shut em down.”

And what will Sayre say when I tell him we shot the hell out of his precious mind-trap? Flaherty could have said. What will Walter o’ Dim say, for that mattah? For what’s roont can never be fixed, not by such as us who know how to rub two sticks together and make a fire but not much more.

Could have said but didn’t. Because getting the boy was more important than any antique gadget of the old people, even one as amazing as yon mind-trap. And Sayre was the one who turned it on, wasn’t he? Say aye! If there was explaining to be done, let Sayre do it! Let him make his knee to the big boys and talk till they shut him up! Meanwhile, the gods-damned snot-babby continued to rebuild the lead that Flaherty (who’d had visions of being honored for stepping so promptly into the breach) and his men had so radically reduced. If only one of them had been lucky enough to hit the kid when he and his little furbag friend had been in view! Ah, but wish in one hand, shit in the other! See which one fills up first!

“Bring youah best shots,” Flaherty said in his Back Bay/John F. Kennedy accent. “Have at it.”

Lamla ordered three low men and one of the vamps forward, put two on each side, and talked to them rapidly in another language. Flaherty gathered that a couple of them had already been down here and, like Lam, remembered about where the projectors lay hidden in the walls.

Meanwhile, Flaherty’s dragon—or, more properly speaking, his da’s dragon—continued to rampage in the deep dark forest (the jungle was completely gone now) and set things on fire.

At last—although it seemed a very long time to Flaherty, it was probably less than thirty seconds—the sharpshooters began to fire. Almost immediately both forest and dragon paled before Flaherty’s eyes, turned into something that looked like overexposed movie footage.

“That’s one of em, cullies!” Lamla yelled in a voice that became unfortunately ovine when it was raised. “Pour it on! Pour it on for the love of your fathers!”

Half this crew probably never had such a thing, Flaherty thought morosely. Then came the clearly audible shatter-sound of breaking glass and the dragon froze in place with billows of flame issuing from its mouth and nostrils, as well as from the gills on the sides of its armored throat.

Encouraged, the sharpshooters began firing faster, and a few moments later the clearing and the frozen dragon both disappeared. Where they had been was only more tiled hallway, with the tracks of those who had recently passed this way marking the dust. On either side were the shattered projector portals.

“All right!” Flaherty yelled after giving Lamla an approving nod. “Now we’re going after the kid, and we’re going to double-time it, and we’re going to catch him, and we’re going to bring him back with his head on a stick! Are you with me?”