The Stand

  This remark was greeted with such a storm of cheering that he gained enough confidence to finish in style and actually strut a little as he left the podium.

  Chad Norris was next, and Stu told Frannie later that he had approached the thing in just the right way: They were burying the dead out of common decency, none of them would feel really good until that was done and life could go on, and if it was finished by the fall rainy season they would all feel so much the better. He asked for a couple of volunteers and could have had three dozen if he wanted them. He finished by asking each member of the current Spade Squad (as he called them) to stand and take a bow.

  Harold Lauder barely popped up and then sat back down again, and there were those who left the meeting remarking on what a smart but very modest fellow he was. Actually, Nadine had been whispering things in his ear and he was afraid to do much more than bob and nod. A fairly large pup-tent appeared to have been erected in the crotch of his pants.

  When Norris left the podium, Ralph Brentner took his place. He told them that they at last had a doctor. George Richardson stood up (to loud applause; Richardson flipped the peace sign with both hands, and the applause turned to cheers), and then told them that, as far as he could tell, they had another sixty people joining them over the next couple of days.

  "Well, that's the agenda," Stu said. He looked out over the gathered people. "I want Sandy DuChiens to come up here again and tell us how many we are, but before I do that, is there other business we should take up tonight?"

  He waited. He could see Glen's face in the crowd, and Sue Stern's, Larry's, Nick's, and of course, Frannie's. They all looked a bit strained. If someone was going to bring up Flagg, ask what the committee was doing about him, this would be the time. But there was silence. After fifteen seconds of it, Stu turned the meeting over to Sandy, who ended things in style. As people began to file out, Stu thought: Well, we got by it again.

  Several people came up to congratulate him after the meeting, one of them the new doctor. "You handled that very well, Marshal," Richardson said, and for a moment Stu almost looked over his shoulder to see who Richardson was talking to. Then he remembered, and suddenly felt scared. Lawman? He was an imposter.

  A year, he told himself. A year and no more. But he still felt scared.

  Stu, Fran, Sue Stern, and Nick walked back toward the center of town together, their feet clicking hollowly on the cement sidewalk as they crossed the C.U. campus toward Broadway. Around them, other people were streaming away, talking quietly, headed home. It was nearly eleven-thirty.

  "It's chilly," Fran said. "I wish I'd worn my jacket as well as this sweater."

  Nick nodded. He also felt the chill. The Boulder evenings were always cool, but tonight it could be no more than fifty degrees. It served to remind that this strange and terrible summer was nearing its end. Not for the first time he wished that Mother Abagail's God or Muse or whatever It was had been more in favor of Miami or New Orleans. But that might not have been so great, now that he stopped to think about it. High humidity, lots of rain ... and lots of bodies. At least Boulder was dry.

  "They jumped the shit out of me, wanting the Judge for the Law Committee," Stu said. "We should have expected that."

  Frannie nodded, and Nick jotted quickly on his pad: "Sure. People will miss Tom & Dayna, 2. Fax of life."

  "Think people will be suspicious, Nick?" Stu asked.

  Nick nodded. "They'll wonder if they did go west. For real."

  They all considered this as Nick took out his butane match and burned the scrap of paper.

  "That's tough," Stu said finally. "You really think so?"

  "Sure, he's right," Sue said glumly. "What else have they got to think? That Judge Farris went to Far Rockaway to ride the Monster Coaster?"

  "We were lucky to get away tonight without a big discussion of what's going on in the West," Fran said.

  Nick wrote: "Sure were. Next time we'll have to tackle it head on, I think. That's why I want to postpone another big meeting as long as possible. Three weeks, maybe. September 15?"

  Sue said, "We can hold off that long if Brad gets the power on."

  "I think he will," Stu said.

  "I'm going home," Sue told them. "Big day tomorrow. Dayna's off. I'm going with her as far as Colorado Springs."

  "Do you think that's safe, Sue?" Fran asked.

  She shrugged. "Safer for her than for me."

  "How did she take it?" Fran asked her.

  "Well, she's a funny sort of girl. She was a jock in college, you know. Tennis and swimming were her biggies, although she played them all. She went to some small community college down in Georgia, but for the first two years she kept on going with her high school boyfriend. He was a big leather jacket type, me Tarzan, you Jane, so get out in the kitchen and rattle those pots and pans. Then she got dragged along to a couple of female consciousness meetings by her roomie, who was this big libber type."

  "And as an upshot, she got to be an even bigger libber than the roomie," Fran guessed.

  "First a libber, then a lesbian," Sue said.

  Stu stopped as if thunderstruck. Frannie looked at him with guarded amusement. "Come on, splendor in the grass," she said. "See if you can't fix the hinge on your mouth."

  Stu shut his mouth with a snap.

  Sue went on: "She dropped both rocks on the caveman boyfriend at the same time. It blew his wheels, and he came after her with a gun. She disarmed him. She says it was the major turning point of her life. She told me she always knew she was stronger and more agile than he was-- she knew it intellectually. But it took doing it to put it in her guts."

  "You sayin she hates men?" Stu asked, looking at Sue closely.

  Susan shook her head. "She's bi now."

  "Bye now?" Stu said doubtfully.

  "She's happy with either sex, Stuart. And I hope you're not going to start leaning on the committee to institute the blue laws along with 'Thou shalt not kill.' "

  "I got enough to worry about without gettin into who sleeps with who," he mumbled, and they all laughed. "I only asked because I don't want anyone goin into this thing as a crusade. We need eyes over there, not guerrilla fighters. This is a job for a weasel, not a lion."

  "She knows that," Susan said. "Fran asked me how she took it when I asked her if she'd go over there for us. She took it very well. For one thing, she reminded me that if we'd stayed with those men ... remember how you found us, Stu?"

  He nodded.

  "If we'd stayed with them, we would have either wound up dead or in the West anyway, because that's the direction they were going in ... at least when they were sober enough to read the road-signs. She said she'd been wondering what her place in the Zone was, and guessed that her place in the Zone was out of it. And she said ..."

  "What?" Fran asked.

  "That she'd try to come back," Sue said, rather abruptly, and said no more. What else Dayna Jurgens had said was between the two of them, something not even the other members of the committee were to know. Dayna was going west with a ten-inch switchblade strapped to her arm in a spring-loaded clip. When she bent her wrist sharply, the spring unloaded and hey, presto, she had suddenly grown a sixth finger, one which was ten inches long and double-bladed. She felt that most of them--the men--would not have understood.

  If he's a big enough dictator, then maybe he's all that's holding them together. If he was gone, maybe they'd start fighting and squabbling among themselves. It might be the end of them, if he dies. And if I get close to him, Susie, he better have his guardian devil with him.

  They'll kill you, Dayna.

  Maybe. Maybe not. It might be worth it just to have the pleasure of watching his guts fall out on the floor.

  Susan could have stopped her, maybe, but she hadn't tried. She had contented herself with extracting a promise from Dayna that she would stick to the original script unless a near-perfect opportunity came up. To that, Dayna had agreed and Sue didn't think her friend would get that chance. Flagg would be w
ell guarded. Still, in the three days since she had broached the idea of going west as a spy to her friend, Sue Stem had found it very difficult to sleep.

  "Well," she said to the rest of them now, "I'm home to bed. Night, folks."

  She walked off, hands in the pockets of her fatigue jacket.

  "She looks older," Stu said.

  Nick wrote and offered the open pad to both of them.

  We all do was written there.

  Stu was on his way up to the power station the next morning when he saw Susan and Dayna headed down Canyon Boulevard on a pair of cycles. He waved and they pulled over. He thought he had never seen Dayna looking prettier. Her hair was tied behind her with a bright green silk scarf, and she was wearing a rawhide coat open over jeans and a chambray shirt. A bedroll was strapped on behind her.

  "Stuart!" she cried, and waved to him, smiling.

  Lesbian? he thought doubtfully.

  "I understand you're off on a little trip," he said.

  "For sure. And you never saw me."

  "Nope," Stu said. "Never did. Smoke?"

  Dayna took a Marlboro and cupped her hands over his match.

  "You be careful, girl."

  "I will."

  "And get back."

  "I hope to."

  They looked at each other in the bright late-summer morning.

  "You take care of Frannie, big fella."

  "I will."

  "And go easy on the marshaling."

  "That I know I can do."

  She cast the cigarette away. "What do you say, Suze?"

  Susan nodded and put her bike in gear, smiling a strained smile.

  "Dayna?"

  She looked at him, and Stu planted a soft kiss on her mouth.

  "Good luck."

  She smiled. "You have to do it twice for really good luck. Didn't you know that?"

  He kissed her again, more slowly and thoroughly this time. Lesbian? he wondered again.

  "Frannie's a lucky woman," Dayna said. "And you can quote me."

  Smiling, not really knowing what to say, Stu stepped back and said nothing at all. Two blocks up, one of the lumbering orange Burial Committee trucks rumbled through the intersection like an omen and the moment was broken.

  "Let's go, kid," Dayna said. "Get-em-up-Scout."

  They drove off, and Stu stood on the curbing and watched them.

  Sue Stern was back two days later. She had watched Dayna moving west from Colorado Springs, she said, had watched her until she was nothing but a speck that merged with the great still landscape. Then she had cried a little. The first night Sue had made camp at Monument, and had awakened in the small hours, chilled by a low whining sound that seemed to be coming from a culvert that traveled beneath the farm road she had camped by.

  Finally summoning up her courage, she had shined her flash into the corrugated pipe and had discovered a gaunt and shivering puppy. It looked to be about six months old. It shied from her touch and she was too big to crawl into the pipe. At last she had gone into the town of Monument, smashed her way into the local grocery, and had come back in the first cold light of false dawn with a knapsack full of Alpo and Cycle One. That did the trick. The puppy rode back with her, neatly tucked into one of the BSA saddlebags.

  Dick Ellis went into raptures over the puppy. It was an Irish setter bitch, either purebred or so close as to make no difference. When she got older, he was sure Kojak would be glad to make her acquaintance. The news swept the Free Zone, and for that day the subject of Mother Abagail was forgotten in the excitement over the canine Adam and Eve. Susan Stern became something of a heroine, and as far as any of the committee ever knew, no one even thought to wonder what she had been doing in Monument that night, far south of Boulder.

  But it was the morning the two of them left Boulder that Stu remembered, watching them ride off toward the Denver-Boulder Turnpike. Because no one in the Zone ever saw Dayna Jurgens again.

  August 27; nearly dusk; Venus shining against the sky.

  Nick, Ralph, Larry, and Stu sat on the steps of Tom Cullen's house. Tom was on the lawn, whooping and knocking croquet balls through a set of wickets.

  It's time, Nick wrote.

  Speaking low, Stu asked if they would have to hypnotize him again, and Nick shook his head.

  "Good," Ralph said. "I don't think I could take that action." Raising his voice, he called: "Tom! Hey, Tommy! Come on over here!"

  Tom came running over, grinning.

  "Tommy, it's time to go," Ralph said.

  Tom's smile faltered. For the first time he seemed to notice that it was getting dark.

  "Go? Now? Laws, no! When it gets dark, Tom goes to bed. M-O-O-N, that spells bed. Tom doesn't like to be out after dark. Because of the boogies. Tom ... Tom ..."

  He fell silent, and the others looked at him uneasily. Tom had lapsed into dull silence. He came out of it ... but not in the usual way. It was not a sudden reanimation, life flooding back in a rush, but a slow thing, reluctant, almost sad.

  "Go west?" he said. "Do you mean it's that time?"

  Stu laid a hand on his shoulder. "Yes, Tom. If you can."

  "On the road."

  Ralph made a choked, muttering sound and walked around the house. Tom did not seem to notice. His gaze alternated between Stu and Nick.

  "Travel at night. Sleep in the day." Very slowly, in the dusk, Tom added: "And see the elephant."

  Nick nodded.

  Larry brought Tom's pack up from where it had rested beside the steps. Tom put it on slowly, dreamily.

  "You want to be careful, Tom," Larry said thickly.

  "Careful. Laws, yes."

  Stu wondered belatedly if they should have given Tom a one-man tent as well, and rejected it. Tom would get all bollixed up trying to set up even a little tent.

  "Nick," Tom whispered. "Do I really have to do this?"

  Nick put an arm around Tom and nodded slowly.

  "All right."

  "Just stay on the big four-lane highway, Tom," Larry said. "The one that says 70. Ralph is going to drive you down to the start of it on his motorcycle."

  "Yes, Ralph." He paused. Ralph had come back around the house. He was swabbing at his eyes with his bandanna.

  "You ready, Tom?" he asked gruffly.

  "Nick? Will it still be my house when I get back?"

  Nick nodded vigorously.

  "Tom loves his house. Laws, yes."

  "We know you do, Tommy." Stu could feel warm tears in the back of his own throat now.

  "All right. I'm ready. Who am I riding with?"

  "Me, Tom," Ralph said. "Down to Route 70, remember?"

  Tom nodded and began to walk toward Ralph's cycle. After a moment Ralph followed him, his big shoulders slumped. Even the feather in his hatband seemed dejected. He climbed on the bike and kicked it alive. A moment later it pulled out onto Broadway and turned east. They stood together, watching the motorcycle dwindle to a moving silhouette in the purple dusk marked by a moving headlight. Then the light disappeared behind the bulk of the Holiday Twin Drive-in and was gone.

  Nick walked away, head down, hands in pockets. Stu tried to join him, but Nick shook his head almost angrily and motioned him away. Stu went back to Larry.

  "That's that," Larry said, and Stu nodded gloomily.

  "You think we'll ever see him again, Larry?"

  "If we don't, the seven of us--well, maybe not Fran, she was never for sending him--the rest of us are going to be eating and sleeping with the decision to send him for the rest of our lives."

  "Nick more than anyone else," Stu said.

  "Yeah. Nick more than anyone else."

  They watched Nick walking slowly down Broadway, losing himself in the shadows which grew around him. Then they looked at Tom's darkened house in silence for a minute.

  "Let's get out of here," Larry said suddenly. "The thought of all those stuffed animals ... all of a sudden I got a grade-A case of the creeps."

  When they left, Nick was still standing on
the side lawn of Tom Cullen's house, his hands in his pockets, his head down.

  George Richardson, the new doctor, had set up in the Dakota Ridge Medical Center, because it was close to Boulder City Hospital with its medical equipment, its large supplies of drugs, and its operating rooms.

  By August 28 he was pretty much in business, assisted by Laurie Constable and Dick Ellis. Dick had asked leave to quit the world of medicine and had been refused permission to do so. "You're doing a fine job here," Richardson said. "You've learned a lot and you're going to learn more. Besides, there's just too much for me to do by myself. We're going to be out of our minds as it is if we don't get another doctor in a month or two. So congratulations, Dick, you're the Zone's first paramedic. Give him a kiss, Laurie."

  Laurie did.

  Around eleven o'clock on that late August morning, Fran let herself into the waiting room and looked around curiously and a little nervously. Laurie was behind the counter, reading an old copy of the Ladies' Home Journal.

  "Hi, Fran," she said, jumping up. "I thought we'd see you sooner or later. George is with Candy Jones right now, but he'll be right with you. How are you feeling?"

  "Pretty well, thanks," Fran said. "I guess--"

  The door to one of the examining rooms opened and Candy Jones came out, following a tall, stooped man in corduroy slacks and a sport shirt with the Izod alligator on the breast. Candy was looking doubtfully at a bottle of pink stuff which she held in one hand.

  "Are you sure that's what it is?" she asked Richardson doubtfully. "I never got it before. I thought I was immune."

  "Well, you're not and you have it now," George said with a grin. "Don't forget the starch baths, and stay out of the tall grass after this."

  She smiled ruefully. "Jack's got it too. Should he come in?"

  "No, but you can make the starch baths a family affair."

  Candy nodded dolefully and then spotted Fran. "Hi, Frannie, how's the girl?"

  "Okay. How's by you?"

  "Terrible." Candy held up the bottle so Fran could read the word CALADRYL on the label. "Poison ivy. And you couldn't guess where I got it." She brightened. "But I bet you can guess where Jack's got it."

  They watched her go with some amusement. Then George said, "Miss Goldsmith, isn't it? Free Zone Committee. A pleasure."

  She held out her hand to be shaken. "Just Fran, please. Or Frannie."

  "Okay, Frannie. What's the problem?"

  "I'm pregnant," Fran said. "And pretty damn scared." And then, with no warning at all, she was in tears.