The Waste Lands

aversion to being stung

Roland agreed, but less than fifteen minutes later the land began to slope downward and this old section of the forest began to be invaded with smaller, younger trees: birch, alder, and a few stunted maples scrabbling grimly in the soil for purchase.

But I also remember telling you about the boy, and how he fell from the trestle into the chasm.

You said you went under the mountains alone, on some land of crazy handcar.

Another tree fell with a ratcheting, coughing crash.

Gloria was now in that great upper deck in the sky, and it had not happened because she was unlucky or because the State of New York had decided not to jerk the jerk’s license after his third OUI or even because God had bent down to pick up a peanut;

She had been watching a game of hopscotch on the sidewalk when it happened.

He began to run with her, his sprung boots slapping the needle-strewn earth between the ruts left by her wheelchair.

If she was no gunslinger, then he was a billy-bumbler.

She was tense, keyed up, her claws already halfway out of their sheaths.