An hour later, with the moon well above the trees, Roland’s ka-tet arrived at the Citgo oilpatch. They rode out parallel to the Great Road for safety’s sake, but, as it happened, the caution was wasted: they saw not one rider on the road, going in either direction. It’s as if Reaping’s been cancelled this year, Susan thought... then she thought of the red-handed stuffies, and shivered. They would have painted Roland’s hands red tomorrow night, and still would, if they were caught. Not just him, either. All of us. Sheemie, too.

They left the horses (and Caprichoso, who had trotted ill-temperedly but nimbly behind them on a tether) tied to some long-dead pumping equipment in the southeastern corner of the patch, and then walked slowly toward the working derricks, which were clustered in the same area. They spoke in whispers when they spoke at all. Roland doubted if that was necessary, but whispers here seemed natural enough. To Roland, Citgo was far spookier than the graveyard, and while he doubted that the dead in that latter place awoke even when Old Demon was full, there were some very unquiet corpses here, squalling zombies that stood rusty-weird in the moonlight with their pistons going up and down like marching feet.

Roland led them into the active part of the patch, nevertheless, past a sign which read HOW’S YOUR HARDHAT? and another reading WE PRODUCE OIL, WE REFINE SAFETY. They stopped at the foot of a derrick grinding so loudly that Roland had to shout in order to be heard.

“Sheemie! Give me a couple of those big-bangers!”

Sheemie had taken a pocketful from Susan’s saddlebag and now handed a pair of them over. Roland took Bert by the arm and pulled him forward. There was a square of rusty fencing around the derrick, and when the boys tried to climb it, the horizontals snapped like old bones. They looked at each other in the running shadows combined of machinery and moonlight, nervous and amused.

Susan twitched Roland’s arm. “Be careful!” she shouted over the rhythmic whumpa-whumpa-whumpa of the derrick machinery. She didn’t look frightened, he saw, only excited and alert.

He grinned, pulled her forward, and kissed the lobe of her ear. “Be ready to run,” he whispered. “If we do this right, there’s going to be a new candle here at Citgo. A hellacious big one.”

He and Cuthbert ducked under the lowest strut of the rusty derrick tower and stood next to the equipment, wincing at the cacophony. Roland wondered that it hadn’t torn itself apart years ago. Most of the works were housed in rusty metal blocks, but he could see a gigantic turning shaft of some kind, gleaming with oil that must be supplied by automated jets. Up this close, there was a gassy smell that reminded him of the jet that flared rhythmically on the other side of the oilpatch.

“Giant-farts!” Cuthbert shouted.

“What?”