Another hoodlum dashed around the corner of the store on Eddie’s side and saw Eddie waiting for him with a grin on his bloody face. The fellow dropped his gun immediately and began to raise his hands. Eddie put a bullet through his chest before they got as high as his shoulders. He’s learning, Roland thought. Gods help him, but he is.

“That fire’s a little slow for my taste, boys,” said John, and leaped up onto the loading dock. The store was barely visible through the rolling smoke of the deflected grenado, but bullets came flying through it. John seemed not to notice them, and Roland thanked ka for putting such a good man in their path. Such a hard man.

John took a square silver object from his pants pocket, flipped up the lid, and produced a good flame with the flick of his thumb on a small wheel. He tossed the little flaming tinderbox underhand into the storeroom. Flames burst up all around it with a whoomp sound.

“What’s the matter with you?” Andolini screamed. “Get them!”

“Come and do it yourself!” Roland called. At the same time he pulled on John’s pants leg. John jumped off the loading dock backward and stumbled. Roland caught him. Chip the storekeeper chose this moment to faint, pitching forward to the trash-littered earth with a groan so soft it was almost a sigh.

“Yeah, come on!” Eddie goaded. “Come on Slick, what-samatta Slick, don’t send a boy to do a man’s work, you ever hear that one? How many guys did you have over there, two dozen? And we’re still standing! So come on! Come on and do it yourself! Or do you want to lick Enrico Balazar’s ass for the rest of your life?”

More bullets came through the smoke and flame, but the harriers in the store showed no interest in trying to charge through the growing fire. No more came around the sides of the store, either.

Roland pointed at Eddie’s lower right leg, where the hole was. Eddie gave him a thumbs-up, but the leg of his jeans now seemed too full below the knee—swollen—and when he moved, his shor’boot squelched. The pain had settled to a steady hard ache that seemed to cycle with the beat of his heart. Yet he was coming to believe it might have missed the bone. Maybe, he admitted to himself, because I want to believe it.

The first siren had been joined by two or three others, and they were closing in.

“Go!” Jack screamed. He now sounded on the verge of hysterics. “Go, you chickenshit motherfuckers, go get them!”

Roland thought that the remaining badmen might have attacked a couple of minutes ago—maybe even thirty seconds ago—if Andolini had led their charge personally. But now the frontal-assault option had been closed off, and Andolini must surely know that if he led men around either side of the store, Roland and Eddie would pick them off like clay birds in a Fair-Day shooting contest. The only workable strategies left to him were siege or a long flanking movement through the woods, and Jack Andolini had no time for either. Standing their ground back here, however, would present its own problems. Dealing with the local constabulary, for instance, or the fire brigade if that showed up first.