The Waste Lands by Stephen King Read Free Book Online Page A

I’m fucked,” Eddie whispered as another tree bent, cracked like a mortar, then crashed to the forest floor in a cloud of dust and dead needles. Now it was lumbering straight toward the clearing where he stood, a bear the size of King Kong. Its footfalls made the ground shake.
    What will you do, Eddie? Roland suddenly asked. Think! It’s the only advantage you have over yon beast. What will you do?
    He didn’t think he could kill it. Maybe with a bazooka, but probably not with the gunslinger’s .45. He could run, but had an idea that the oncoming beast might be pretty fast when it wanted to be. He guessed the chances of ending up as jam between the great bear’s toes might be as high as fifty-fifty.
    So which one was it going to be? Stand here and start shooting or run like his hair was on fire and his ass was catching?
    It occurred to him that there was a third choice. He could climb.
    He turned toward the tree against which he had been leaning. It was a huge, hoary pine, easily the tallest tree in this part of the woods. The first branch spread out over the forest floor in a feathery green fan about eight feet up. Eddie dropped the revolver’s hammer and then jammed the gun into the waistband of his pants. He leaped for the branch, grabbed it, and did a frantic chin-up. Behind him, the bear gave voice to another bellow as it burst into the clearing.
    The bear would have had him just the same, would have left Eddie Dean’s guts hanging in gaudy strings from the lowest branches of the pine, if another of those sneezing fits had not come on it at that moment. It kicked the ashy remains of the campfire into a black cloud and then stood almost doubled over, huge front paws on its huge thighs, looking for a moment like an old man in a fur coat, an old man with a cold. It sneezed again and again— AH-CHOW! AH-CHOW! AH-CHOW! —and clouds of parasites blew out of its muzzle. Hot urine flowed in a stream between its legs and hissed out the campfire’s scattered embers.
    Eddie did not waste the few crucial extra moments he had been given. He went up the tree like a monkey on a stick, pausing only once to make sure the gunslinger’s revolver was still seated firmly in the waistband of his pants. He was in terror, already half convinced that he was going to die (what else could he expect, now that Henry wasn’t around to Watch Out for him?), but a crazy laughter raved through his head just the same. Been treed, he thought. How bout that, sports fans? Been treed by Bearzilla .
    The creature raised its head again, the thing turning between its ears catching winks and flashes of sunlight as it did so, then charged Eddie’s tree. It reached high with one paw and slashed forward, meaning to knock Eddie loose like a pinecone. The paw tore through the branch he was standing on just as he lunged upward to the next. That paw tore through one of his shoes as well, pulling it from his foot and sending it flying in two ragged pieces.
    That’s okay , Eddie thought. You can have em both, Br’er Bear, if you want. Goddam things were worn out, anyway.
    The bear roared and lashed at the tree, cutting deep wounds in its ancient bark, wounds which bled clear, resinous sap. Eddie kept on yanking himself up. The branches were thinning now, and when he risked a glance down he stared directly into the bear’s muddy eyes. Below its cocked head, the clearing had become a target with the scattered smudge of campfire as its bullseye.
    “Missed me, you hairy motherf—” Eddie began, and then the bear, its head still cocked back to look at him, sneezed. Eddie was immediately drenched in hot snot that was filled with thousands of small white worms. They wriggled frantically on his shirt, his forearms, his throat and face.
    Eddie screamed in mingled surprise and revulsion. He began to brush at his eyes and mouth, lost his balance, and just managed to hook an arm around the branch beside him in time. He held on and raked at his skin, wiping off as