A/N: Down below, you'll find verse 7 at the beginning of most pre-1990 editions. For some reason, it's not in my Uncut. Considering all things archetypal (that great Jungian sea of collective unconscious that drifts through all dimensions), it's just as relevant. In fact, I think music gets to the heart of these dark stories, why they bind us, why they move us. So thanks to Bob Dylan, for reprinting his lyrics:

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I come in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm."

If I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm."

Not a word was spoke between us, there was no risk involved
Nothing up to that point had even been resolved
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm."

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes an' blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm."

Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns
"Come in" she said, "I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm."

Now the bonds are broken but they can be retied
Ah, one more journey to the woods, the holes where spirits hide
It's a never ending battle, for a peace that's always torn
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm."

Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm."

Well I've heard newborn babies cryin' like a mournin' dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm."

And now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost
I took too much for granted, I got my signals crossed
And just to think it all began on an uneventful morn
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm."

In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an' she gave me a lethal dose
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm."

Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks on a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm.
" – Bob Dylan


They did make an amicable sort of peace. Nick resented being the one to capitulate, but the more he thought about it, he realized none of them were in a position to choose compatriots. Society had fallen down around them, but if he was going to justify his own need for order and infrastructure, then he couldn't be pushing others out on counts of being spoiled or immature. Julie would figure out soon enough that this world had very different limits, and if not, they could cross that door when they came to it.

Julie accepted the apology for his "over-reaction" with some dodging. He wrote it out and Meg stood impersonally back. The skinny, vapid girl didn't seem to be aware of the crisis he'd faced on account of Sheriff Baker's pistol. Hedging his eyes, Julie shrugged. "Sure, whatevah, man. If you stay cool with me, I'll be cool with you."

Her pout reminded him of the way she'd tugged at his belt in the drugstore, even as he wrote, "I can't." That had made him feel awkward and offended to begin with. There wasn't such a thing as complicated with Julie Lawry. It was either yay or nay.

But they let the whole thing with Tom slide. Nick preferred to have as little discussion with Julie as possible right then, and Meghan had decided it didn't make much difference. Tom took her word over Julie's, and though he hadn't taken much of the medicine, he'd made an effort. The tension had taken its toll on him, and he now sat on the wood bench, quietly stroking his garage. To force an acknowledgement of her wrong out of the girl would probably just elicit more spite. It was a volatile situation; there was no need to force it to a boiling point.

"You'll need some traveling clothes," Meg said. She hadn't failed to notice the crashed-out plate-glass window of the dress shop down the street. "I need some new things too." There was no doing laundry on the road. She planned on keeping only what was meaningful to her and discarding the rest. She turned to Julie and cocked her head. "Do you wanna go shopping with me?"

"So we're really going then? To Nebraska?" Her face fell slack-jawed. With the reality of leaving imminent, she was less than anxious. Maybe she wouldn't even want to go with them, when it came right down to it.

"Not tonight," Meg looked to Nick for confirmation and he nodded slightly. "Tomorrow morning. But we ought to get ready. You'll need a bike you're comfortable with … unless there's a car we can take?"

"Oh, I've got a bike," Julie said. She entirely disregarded the second suggestion, confirming Meg's suspicion that the girl at least lacked a license. Nick didn't miss it either. It came to him with sudden surety that she had lied about her age. The thought that she would have coupled with him there in the dim recesses of the store, moments after meeting, gave him the heebie-jeebies. He looked away, catching sight of Tom. He hoped Meg could convince her to put something else on. The poor guy hadn't buckled his lip since she came bouncing down the street half an hour ago.

With what struck her as false chumminess, Julie linked her arm in Meg's and nearly skipped down the sidewalk. The men stared after them, Tom woozily and Nick doubtfully.


The dress shop had already been ransacked, but Julie seemed to know exactly where everything was. There wasn't really any need to worry that her scanty outfit would last. It quickly joined the array of articles strewn about the floor as she doffed one thing and then another, each selection making only cursory acquaintance with her bare skin. She wasn't shy about changing either.

Meghan, who had tried to avoid high school locker sessions, usually wearing gym shorts under her other clothes, conveniently looked away while Julie chattered. She seemed to have gotten over the affront to her pride, at least for the time being. If she wasn't quite willing to embrace Meg as a friend, she had already decided to let her fill a blank space.

"Mary Beth and I could lift just about anything from the Rave in Towne West," she said, shimmying into yet another pair of tight jeans, these ones bedecked with silver studs and trendy shreds. "Never got caught neither. 'Course, that's no problem anymore." As if to emphasize this, she ripped a pair of dangly earrings and several bangles from a rack, accessorizing in short order. She stood in front of a mirror, puckering her lips in various postures. Meg almost smiled.

"So you two are doin' it, right?" The question took her aback for a moment. Meg shrugged, looking behind her out the broken glass. She couldn't see either Nick or Tom from that angle.

"Umm, I suppose you could say that." She smoothed the small pile of clothes she'd looped over her arm. In the time Julie had exhausted three or four outfits, Meg had already picked the things she would take with her. She wanted several loose cotton shirts and as many pairs of shorts, one pair of jeans, a sweater and a loose windbreaker. A package of ankle socks. A package of plain cotton underwear, though she did opt for bikinis. She was going to overhaul her pack tonight. She was keeping Jake's shirt, her book, some toiletries, and that was it.

"I knew it right away! He didn't want nothin' to do with me." Julie smirked at herself in the mirror. "So where'd you meet anyway? I don't know about him, but you're not from around here. I can tell that by your accent." She cast a knowing look over her shoulder. "And y'all couldn't have been together before."

Meg pushed her hair back. She badly wanted to wash it tonight and vowed somehow she'd find a way. "No. You're right about that. But time just doesn't seem to work the way it did before, either." This wasn't the first time Meg had hashed that thought over, and she made a mental note to bring it up with Nick. "I guess it's been about a week." She gave an abridged version of her roots, explaining how she summered with her grandmother in Texas and spent the rest of the year with her family in New York. "I met Nick coming back up through Arkansas. He was born in Nebraska, but he's traveled a lot," she said. She didn't figure he'd explained most of this to Julie.

"Oh, wow! Like, he might actually know that old woman then."

Julie, who was fixing a hunk of her hair up in a ponytail that jutted from the right side of her scalp, took Meg completely by surprise. "What?"

"Aren't you guys goin' there because of the weird dreams? I mean, the creepo's bad enough, but that's some weird shit. I wanna be in the movies and all, but not if the bogeyman's directin', you get me?"

Meg nodded. Suddenly, she felt like she had to sit down. Hollowly, she said, "So, you dreamt of the old woman, too?"

"Sure. I don't much care 'bout her gospel. Same shit my momma and Aunt Lynette used to shove down my throat every Sunday. She's just some ol' witch rockin' on her front porch. Her times all up, I figure. But if it comes down to a choice between truckin' with that dude and takin' my chances with the bunch that ol' lady draws … well, there's bound to be cute guys either way, right? And if I change my mind later, I'll just head on."

Meg's throat had gone entirely dry. "I guess that's one way of thinking about it." She thought her voice sounded far away.


At twelve, six years sounds like a very long time, half a life already and you can barely remember the first part. The next six, till eighteen stares you down and freedom descends like some mystic benediction, seems like it will take forever. Meg still remembered that last year Jacob was alive, and while he lived he was invincible.

Death can come at any time, they learned that early when their father got sick; and it was driven home when he opted to take the short road to that long good-bye. But surely it couldn't take anybody. Surely there were some rules by which even death, that nasty rat-toothed carnival barker, had to play. It couldn't take the young, could it? Not without reason. There was so much still to do. But Meghan, who had never really been alone since the time she was brought into the world, woke up alone in that hospital bed. By that time, her mother and brother had been in the ground for the passing of a moon. It was September 21, 1984. She'd missed the start of school. She'd missed her own birthday, which was their birthday. She'd missed the funeral.

The only thing she could ever remember about that sleep, if sleep was what it was, was being shrouded in green. The land was green and it seemed to her that it must have been grass, tall grass like on a savannah, waving around her, moving beneath her, covering her with its whispering fingers of secrecy. She couldn't move and she couldn't speak. Even the sky was drenched in green, veiled as it was by the verdant sea in which she lay quite still, cocooned like a baby. Sometimes, in the years since, she woke up from some dream or other and felt she'd been passing time as in a way-station. Only now, she thought perhaps she'd been visiting herself at some other age. There was six-year-old Meghan, playing hop-scotch, losing herself in the curtains of green. Here she was again at eleven, hiding her journal from Jake so he couldn't tease her about the cut-out pictures of Matt Dillon she'd pasted in there.

Only two weeks ago, she took these dreams as a unique phenomena constructed in the aftermath of her accident. It was something she psychologically owned. Surely no one else had ever appeared in that chimeric country, although Meg suspected that her brother Jake was not far off during these dreams. After all, he was still a part of her, wasn't he? But now she faced the certainty that something was pulling others into a territory that was similar if not the same. Following her exchange with Julie, she began to believe that on a subconscious wavelength, the green and empty place might mark one end while Mother Abagail's corn fields existed at another degree or level, likely in this world. If that was so, then her private country could even be real, albeit located in some world beyond the pale of death. The thought gave her shivers.

Anything can belong to it, she thought; it's entirely interchangeable. That would be enough to drive some mad, seeing connections everywhere, slices of an alternate reality. Meghan didn't have any idea what it meant, but it allowed her to accept the anomaly of a shared dream experience without becoming ensnared in the superstitious hoodoo and apocalyptic jargon she suddenly felt sure they were walking right into.


They ended up going out of their way to find a place to stay that night, picking a Super 8 on the east side of town. The electronic locks on the doors, which Meg figured wouldn't work at all with the power off, turned out to be battery-backed. After finding the correct key-cards, which had a hole-punch sequence to work with the locks, they were easily able to access a pair of rooms on the first floor.

There was an agreement to meet Julie the next morning in the same downtown place. Meg sat down on the end of the bed tiredly. It wasn't yet dark outside, but she felt like they'd packed several days into one. Tom was across the hall, sleeping off his stomach cramps. They'd left him with several quarts of Gatorade and water to keep him hydrated. Nick had grudgingly relinquished the idea of getting him to drink half the bottle of Pepto-Bismol. It just seemed to make him gag, anyway.

Nick tossed their packs on a chair near the window and turned to look at her. Her elbows were on her knees, her chin propped between her palms. Her hair was bedraggled and her features looked sharper, like she'd been losing weight. He supposed she was, as he was. His clothes all felt looser after the last week. Even during those lean and roaming years, he'd never felt the burn of exercise so much in his life.

Meg cocked an eyebrow. "Do you want to tell me now why you thought it might be a good idea to pull a gun on that girl?"

Nick shook his head. He looked down at his feet and back at her. He didn't think he would ever really have been tempted to sleep with Julie Lawry, but the way his head had started buzzing and his heart thudding in and out when he saw her … It was disturbing. More disturbing was her almost obligatory insistence. There was a girl who hated to be denied. Her provocative outfits were the least of it. He didn't like her obvious duplicity. He didn't like the condescending attitude and the brazen way she had taunted Tom. The impression she gave him was of something inhuman, more kin to the trundling and coldblooded beetles you find under dead trees than to other human beings. But how could he explain that to Meg without sounding unreasonable himself?

He just shook his head again. After a moment he sank to his knees in front of her. She lifted her arms and he laid his head on her lap. Taking in her breath, Meg began brushing her fingers over his hair. It was black and thick and tended to get unruly as it grew longer, which he had it now.

Long days, thought Nick, realizing his body and his mind were tired. Long days and pleasant nights, that's all we can really hope for. The thought made him feel strangely cold. How long would their days be? He wondered, as the sun sank over the flat scrub country outside. Tomorrow as long as today? He looked again into the girl's eyes. The room was growing dim. She traced the rim of his eye patch with her thumb and smiled wanly.

"Lie down," she whispered, her lips moving in the semi-darkness. "Lie down for awhile. I don't think it matters anyway."

Nick climbed up on the bed beside her, his lips grazing her mouth and her cheek as he did so. He sprawled on the bed and indeed, he was asleep before he knew it.

Meg took the lantern and used the water she'd carted into the bathroom to wash herself. She shampooed her hair. She lathered her legs, which got so dusty on the road, and shaved them. It was a small and private rite. Afterward, she felt better. She felt fresher and more prepared to accept the inevitable changes tomorrow would bring.

She put on a clean tee shirt and panties and crawled onto the big bed next to him. She noticed he was still wearing that damn patch, which she gently removed. Feeling bad that she hadn't thought of it before, she also removed his sneakers and socks. He woke up halfway through this and nearly kicked her. Then he sat up, looking disconcertedly around the room. His eyes ticked over the dead clock on the nightstand and the darkened window.

"It's only about 11:00," Meg said. "You haven't been asleep very long."

He leaned in to smell her damp hair. Long enough, he thought, wondering how a girl could keep so many mysteries when they were with each other almost twenty-four hours a day. He got up and drew the blinds. For some reason, meeting Julie had made him wary of other people. He was sure that some strangers would be threatening. He didn't care what Meg thought of the gun, he wasn't getting rid of it. It had saved him when Ray Booth came lurching out of the darkness. And Booth was dead. But there would be other dangers. It wasn't over, he felt sure of that. He'd been thinking it all along. Danger was everywhere, inside the houses, around the next bend in the highway, maybe even hiding beneath the cars and trucks littered all over the main roads. And if it wasn't there, it was in the calendar, hidden just two or three leaves down. Danger, every particle of his being seemed to whisper it. BRIDGE OUT. FORTY MILES OF BAD ROAD. WE ARE NOT RESPONIBLE FOR PERSONS PROCEEDING BEYOND THIS POINT.

He used the bathroom and came back to her. And they got down to the business of youth, which is always deadly serious, after all.

As he pulled her naked body onto his thighs, burying his face in her skin, she put her hand on his chest. "Forgetting something?" Her eyes were wide and a little unsure.

He narrowed his brows, questioning her.

She looked down. "You know …"

Right. That. Nick could scarcely believe it had slipped his mind. Now that he thought about it, he wanted to feel her without the thin layer of protection between them. He wondered how risky. A dozen clichéd arguments ran through his mind, and finally he stopped reasoning. He moved enticingly against her.

"I'll stop, if you want to stop," he signed. He thought of Sarah, who had once said something similar, in much the same position but their roles reversed. He shook her from his mind.

Meghan nodded, her eyes still wide, and let him guide her. She reached that plateau much quicker than she thought she would and her body arched, letting the crescendo break over her. She coasted for a moment then became still, the small nub between her legs too sensitive to continue. He was close to that point himself, pushing against her, his hands holding her hips so firmly she'd notice the next day a couple of small bruises in the shape of fingerprints. He withdrew from her and jettisoned on her stomach, upward nearly to her breasts. With his hands, he pushed some of this away but mostly it smeared deeper into her skin, feeling sticky and then tight.

She collapsed against him and he pulled them back against the mattress. "Was that your way of branding me?" She giggled but blushed deeply, halfway serious.

"Do you mind?" he signed, then collapsed his hand against her arm, stroking absently.

She shook her red tangles.


They were all three of them secretly hoping that Julie Lawry wouldn't show up the next day, but there she was as they rode back onto Main Street. She had kept her word so far. She had a pink ten-speed that looked fairly new. She'd packed a large knapsack, which honestly looked like it was busting its seams. She wasn't dressed much more demurely than she had been before, but the plaid shorts and white halter top at least looked like serviceable day wear.

Meg coasted up beside her and noticed that she was also wearing a Sony walkman, its skinny earphones buried in the ash brown hair drawn back from her temples. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad, after all. Meg looked back at Nick and Nick gestured north, a straight beeline out of town.

"I gotcha," Julie said. She was chewing gum, at least half a package by the way her jaw worked.

They rode on, making it to Iuka, some 6 miles away, by late morning. They stopped and ate a brief brunch of cold Pop-Tarts and bottled juice. There was silence between them. Tom was subdued and Julie was diffident. She never removed her earphones. Meg caught her surreptitious glances at Nick and sensed that the girl might have something up her sleeve, but figured it was immaterial.

They picked up and got back on the road by noon. Again, Julie glared at Nick and shot Meg a disgusted look as she turned the dial up on her walkman.

It was a dynamic that might have clamored to a head had it not been interrupted by the timely juxtaposition of Ralph Brentner.


A/N: Oh my lord! Have I finally gotten to the end of Chapter 43? I can't believe I spanned seven chapters just to get through King's one. Forgive me if I have been repetitive or tiresome. Got a little more graphic here and believe me, I debated that but convinced myself that it really is relevant to both the characters and the plot.

Also, I just finished Wizard and Glass, so I'm adding far more Dark Tower references than I ever intended. Nick's random interjection of the gunslinger's greeting, for instance. But Meg's green coma world is one I've imagined since I was a kid myself. I will be working more with this, perhaps drawing more analogies between it and Midworld. But don't expect any cameo appearances from Roland & co.