The Dark Tower

North of the Algul compound, Susannah broke cover, moving in on the triple run of fence. This wasn’t in the plan, but the need to keep shooting, to keep knocking them down, was stronger than ever. She simply couldn’t help herself, and Roland would have understood. Besides, the billowing smoke from Damli House had momentarily obscured everything at this end of the compound. Red beams from the “lazers” stabbed into it—on and off, on and off, like some sort of neon sign—and Susannah reminded herself not to get in the way of them, not unless she wanted a hole two inches across all the way through her.

She used bullets from the Coyote to cut her end of the fence—outer run, middle run, inner run—and then vanished into the thickening smoke, reloading as she went.

And—

The Breaker named Waverly tried to pull free of Finli. Nar, nar, none of that, may it please ya, Finli thought. He yanked the man—who’d been a bookkeeper or some such thing in his pre-Algul life—closer to him, then slapped him twice across the face, hard enough to make his hand hurt. Waverly screamed in pain and surprise.

“Who the fuck is back there!” Finli roared. “WHO THE FUCK IS DOING THIS?” The follow-up fire engines had halted in front of Damli House and were pouring streams of water into the smoke. Finli didn’t know if it could help, but probably it couldn’t hurt. And at least the damned things hadn’t crashed into the building they were supposed to save, like the first one.

“Sir, I don’t know!” Waverly sobbed. Blood was streaming from one of his nostrils and the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know, but there has to be fifty, maybe a hundred of the devils! Dinky got us out! God bless Dinky Earnshaw!”

Gaskie o’ Tego, meanwhile, wrapped one good-sized hand around James Cagney’s neck and the other around Jakli’s. Gaskie had an idea son of a bitching crowhead Jakli had been on the verge of running, but there was no time to worry about that now. He needed them both.

And—

“Boss!” Finli shouted. “Boss, grab the Earnshaw kid! Something about this smells!”

And—

With Cag’s face pressing against one of his cheeks and Jakli’s against the other, the Wease (who thought as clearly as anyone that terrible morning) was finally able to make himself heard. Gaskie, meanwhile, repeated his command: divide up the armed guards and put them with the retreating Breakers. “Don’t try to stop them, but stay with them! And for Christ’s sake, keep em from getting electrocuted! Keep em off the fence if they go past Main Stree—”

Before he could finish this admonishment, a figure came plummeting out of the thickening smoke. It was Gangli, the compound doctor, his white coat on fire, his roller skates still on his feet.

And—

Susannah Dean took up a position at the left rear corner of Damli House, coughing. She saw three of the sons of bitches—Gaskie, Jakli, and Cagney, had she but known it. Before she could draw a bead, eddying smoke blotted them out. When it cleared, Jakli and Cag were gone, rounding up armed guards to act as sheepdogs who would at least try to protect their panicked charges, even if they could not immediately stop them. Gaskie was still there, and Susannah took him with a single headshot.

Pimli didn’t see it. It was becoming clear to him that all the confusion was on the surface. Quite likely deliberate. The Breakers’ decision to move away from the attackers north of the Algul had come a little too quickly and was a little too organized.

Never mind Earnshaw,

he thought, Brautigan’s the one I want to talk to.

But before he could catch up to Ted, Tassa grabbed the Master in a frantic, terrified hug, babbling that Warden’s House was on fire, he was afraid, terribly afraid, that all of Master’s clothes, his books—

Pimli Prentiss knocked him aside with a hammer-blow to the side of his head. The pulse of the Breakers’ unified thought (bad-mind now instead of good-mind), yammered

(WITH YOUR HANDS UP YOU WON’T BE)

crazily in his head, threatening to drive out all thought. Fucking Brautigan had done this, he knew it, and the man was too far ahead . . . unless . . .

Pimli looked at the Peacemaker in his hand, considered it, then jammed it back into the docker’s clutch under his left arm. He wanted fucking Brautigan alive. Fucking Brautigan had some explaining to do. Not to mention some more goddamned breaking.