The Stand

  "Order, I say, order!" Stu said, rapping harder. "That tape recorder working, baldy?"

  "It's fine," Glen said. "I see your mouth is in good working order, too, East Texas."

  "I oil her a little and she do just fine," Stu said, smiling. He glanced around at the eleven people spotted around the big combination living room/dining room area. "Okay ... we've got a right smart of business, but first I'd like to thank Ralph for providing the roof over our heads and the booze and the crackers--"

  He's really getting good at it, Frannie thought. She tried to judge just how much Stu had changed since the day she and Harold had met him, and couldn't do it. You get too subjective about the behavior of the people you're close to, she decided. But she knew that when she had first met him, Stu would have been stricken at the thought of having to chair a meeting of almost a dozen people ... and he probably would have jumped straight up to heaven at the thought of chairing a mass Free Zone meeting of over a thousand people. She was now watching a Stu that never would have been without the plague.

  It's released you, my darling, she thought. I can cry for the others and still be so proud of you and love you so much--

  She shifted a little, propping her back more firmly against the closet door.

  "We'll have our guests speak first," Stu said, "and after that we'll have a short closed meeting. Any objections to that?"

  There were none.

  "Okay," Stu said. "I'll turn the floor over to Brad Kitchner, and you folks want to listen close because he's the guy that's going to put the rocks back in your bourbon in about three days."

  This generated a hearty round of spontaneous applause. Blushing furiously, tugging at his tie, Brad walked to the center of the room. He came very close to tripping over a hassock on his way.

  "I'm. Real. Happy. To be. Here," Brad began in a trembling monotone. He looked as if he would have been happier anywhere else, even at the South Pole, addressing a penguin convention. "The ... ah ..." He paused, examining his notes, and then brightened. "The power!" he exclaimed with the air of a man making a great discovery. "The power is almost on. Right."

  He fumbled with his notes some more and then went on.

  "We had two of the generators going yesterday, and as you know, one of them overloaded and blew its cookies. So to speak. What I mean is that it overlooked. Overloaded, rather. Well ... you know what I mean".

  A chuckle ran through them, and it seemed to put Brad a little more at ease.

  "That happened because when the plague hit, a lot of stuff got left on and we didn't have the rest of the generators on to take the overload. We can take care of the overload danger by turning on the rest of the generators--even three or four would have absorbed the load easily--but that isn't going to solve the fire danger. So we've got to get everything shut off that we can. Stove burners, electric blankets, all that stuff. In fact, I was thinking like this: The quickest way might be to go into every house where no one lives and just pull all the fuses or turn off the main breaker switches. See? Now, when we get ready to turn on, I think we ought to take some elementary fire precautions. I went to the liberty of checking out the fire station in East Boulder, and ..."

  The fire snapped comfortably. It's going to be all right, Fran thought. Harold and Nadine have taken off without any prompting, and maybe that's best. It solves the problem and Stu is safe from them. Poor Harold, I felt sorry for you, but in the end I felt more fear than pity. The pity is still there, and I'm afraid of what may happen to you, but I'm glad your house is empty and you and Nadine have gone. I'm glad you've left us in peace.

  Harold sat atop a graffiti-inlaid picnic table like something out of a lunatic's Zen handbook. His legs were crossed. His eyes were far, hazy, contemplative. He had gone to that cold and alien place where Nadine could not follow and she was frightened. In his hands he held the twin of the walkie-talkie in the shoebox. The mountains fell away in front of them in breathtaking ledges and pine-choked ravines. Miles to the east-- maybe ten, maybe forty--the land smoothed into the American Midwest and marched away to the dim blue horizon. Night had already come over that part of the world. Behind them, the sun had just disappeared behind the mountains, leaving them outlined in gold that would flake and fade.

  "When?" Nadine asked. She was horribly keyed up, and she had to go to the bathroom badly.

  "Pretty soon," Harold said. His grin had become a mellow smile. It was an expression she could not place right away, because she had never seen it on Harold's face before. It took her a few minutes to place it. Harold looked happy.

  The committee voted 7-0 to empower Brad to round up twenty men and women for his Turning-Off Crew. Ralph Brentner had agreed to fill up two of the Fire Department's old tanker trucks at Boulder Reservoir and to have them at the power station when Brad turned on.

  Chad Norris was next. Speaking quietly, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his chino pants, he talked about the work the Burial Committee had done over the last three weeks. He told them they had buried an incredible twenty-five thousand corpses, better than eight thousand a week, and that he believed they were now over the bulge.

  "We've either been lucky or blessed," he said. "This mass exodus-- that's all I know to call it--has done most of our work for us. In another town Boulder's size, it would have taken a year to get it done. We're expecting to inter another twenty thousand plague victims by the first of October, and we'll probably keep stumbling over individual victims for a long time after, but I wanted you to know that the job is getting done and I don't think we have to worry too much about diseases breeding in the bodies of the unburied dead."

  Fran shifted her position so she could look out at the last of the day. The gold that had surrounded the peaks was already beginning to fade to a less spectacular lemon color. She felt a sudden wave of homesickness that was totally unexpected and almost sickening in its force.

  It was five minutes to eight.

  If she didn't go in the bushes, she was going to wet her pants. She went around a stand of scrub, lowered herself a little, and let go. When she came back, Harold was still sitting on the picnic table with the walkie-talkie clasped loosely in his hand. He had pulled up the antenna.

  "Harold," she said. "It's getting late. It's past eight o'clock."

  He glanced at her indifferently. "They'll be there half the night, clapping each other on the back. When the time's right, I'll pull the pin. Don't you worry."

  "When?"

  Harold's smile widened emptily. "Just as soon as it's dark."

  Fran stifled a yawn as Al Bundell stepped confidently up beside Stu. They were going to run late, and suddenly she wished she was back in the apartment, just the two of them. It wasn't just tiredness, not precisely that feeling of homesickness, either. All of a sudden she didn't want to be in this house. There was no reason for the feeling, but it was strong. She wanted to get out. In fact, she wanted them all to get out. I've just lost my happy thoughts for the evening, she told herself. Pregnant woman blues, that's all.

  "The Law Committee has had four meetings in the last week," Al was saying, "and I'll keep this as brief as possible. The system we've decided on is a kind of tribunal. Sitting members would be chosen by lottery, much the same way as young men were once selected for the draft--"

  "Hiss! Boo!" Susan said, and there was some companionable laughter.

  Al smiled. "But, I was going to add, I think service on such a tribunal would be a lot more palatable to those who were called upon to serve. The tribunal would consist of three adults--eighteen and over--who would serve for six months. Their names would be picked out of a big drum containing the names of every adult in Boulder."

  Larry's hand waved. "Could they be excused for cause?"

  Frowning a trifle at this interruption, Al said: "I was just getting to that. There would have to be--"

  Fran shifted uneasily and Sue Stem winked at her. Fran didn't wink back. She was frightened--and frightened of her own baseless fear, if such a thing were po
ssible. Where had this stifling, claustrophobic feeling come from? She knew that what you were supposed to do with baseless feelings was to ignore them ... at least in the old world. But what about Tom Cullen's trance? What about Leo Rockway?

  Get out of here, the voice inside suddenly cried. Get them all out!

  But it was so crazy. She shifted again and decided to say nothing. "--a brief deposition from the person wanting to be excused, but I don't think--"

  "Someone's coming," Fran said suddenly, getting to her feet.

  There was a pause. They could all hear motorcycle engines revving toward them up Baseline, coming fast. Horns were beeping. And suddenly, for Frannie, the panic overflowed.

  "Listen," she said, "all of you!"

  Faces turning toward her, surprised, concerned.

  "Frannie, are you--" Stu started toward her.

  She swallowed. It felt as if there was a heavy weight on her chest, stifling her. "We have to get out of here. Right ... now."

  It was eight twenty-five. The last of the light had gone out of the sky. It was time. Harold sat up a little straighter and held the walkie-talkie to his mouth. His thumb rested lightly on the SEND button. He would depress it and blow them all to hell by saying--

  "What's that?"

  Nadine's hand on his arm, distracting him, pointing. Far below, snaking up Baseline, there was a daisy-chain of lights. In the great silence they could hear the faint roar of a great many motorcycle engines. Harold felt a thin thread of disquiet and threw it off.

  "Leave me be," he said. "This is it."

  Her hand fell from his shoulder. Her face was a white blur in the darkness. Harold pressed the SEND button.

  She never knew if it was the motorcycles or her own words that got them moving. But they didn't move fast enough. That would always be on her heart; they didn't move fast enough.

  Stu was first out the door, the snarl and echo of the motorcycles enormous. They came across the bridge that spanned the small dry wash below Ralph's house, headlights blazing. Instinctively, Stu's hand dropped to the butt of his gun.

  The screen door opened and he turned, thinking it would be Frannie. It wasn't; it was Larry.

  "What's up, Stu?"

  "Don't know. But we better get them out."

  Then the cycles were winding their way into the driveway and Stu relaxed a little. He could see Dick Vollman, the Gehringer kid, Teddy Weizak, others he recognized. Now he could allow himself to recognize what his chief fear had been: that behind the blazing headlights and snarling motorcycle engines had been the spearhead of Flagg's forces, that the war was about to start.

  "Dick," Stu said. "What the hell?"

  "Mother Abagail!" Dick roared over the motors. More and more cycles filled the yard as the members of the committee crowded out of the house. It was a carnival of swinging headlights and merry-go-round shadows.

  "What?" Larry screamed. Behind him and Stu, Glen, Ralph, and Chad Norris crowded out, forcing Larry and Stu to the foot of the steps.

  "She's come back!" Dick had to bellow to make himself heard over the cycles. "Oh, she's in terrible shape! We need a doctor ... Christ, we need a miracle!"

  George Richardson pushed through them. "The old woman? Where?"

  "Get on, Doc!" Dick shouted at him. "Don't ask questions! Just for Christ's sake be quick!"

  Richardson mounted the cycle behind Dick Vollman. Dick turned in a tight circle and began to weave his way back through the cluster of motorcycles.

  Stu's eyes met Larry's. Larry looked as bewildered as Stu felt ... but there was a gathering cloud in Stu's head, and suddenly a terrible feeling of impending doom engulfed him.

  "Nick, come on! Come on!" Fran cried, seizing his shoulder. Nick was standing in the middle of the living room, his face still, immobile.

  He couldn't talk, but suddenly he knew. He knew. It came from nowhere, from everywhere.

  There was something in the closet.

  He gave Frannie a tremendous push.

  "Nick--!"

  GO!! he waved at her.

  She went. He turned to the closet, pulled open the door, and began to rip madly at the tangle of things inside, praying God that he wasn't too late.

  Suddenly Frannie was next to Stu, her face pallid, her eyes huge. She clutched at him. "Stu ... Nick's still in there ... something ... something ..."

  "Frannie, what are you talking about?"

  "Death!" she screamed at him. "I'm talking about death and NICK IS STILL IN THERE!"

  He pulled aside a handful of scarves and mittens and felt something. A shoebox. He grabbed it, and as he did, like malign necromancy, Harold Lauder's voice spoke from inside it.

  "What about Nick?" Stu shouted, grabbing her shoulders.

  "We have to get him out--Stu--something's going to happen, something awful--"

  Al Bundell shouted: "What the hell is going on, Stuart?"

  "I don't know," Stu said.

  "Stu, please, we have to get Nick out of there!" Fran screamed. That was when the house blew up behind them.

  With the SEND button depressed, the background static disappeared and was replaced by a smooth, dark silence. Void, waiting for him to fill it. Harold sat cross-legged on the picnic table, summoning himself up.

  Then he raised his arm, and at the end of the arm one finger pointed out of his knotted fist, and in that moment he was like Babe Ruth, old and almost washed up, pointing to the spot where he was going to hit the home run, pointing for all the hecklers and badmouths in Wrigley Field, shutting them up once and for all.

  Speaking firmly but not loudly into the walkie-talkie, he said: "This is Harold Emery Lauder speaking. I do this of my own free will."

  A blue-white spark greeted This is. A gout of flame shot up at Harold Emery Lauder speaking. A faint, flat bang, like a cherrybomb stuffed into a tin can, reached their ears at I do this, and by the time he had spoken the words of my own free will and tossed the walkie-talkie away, its purpose served, a fire-rose had bloomed at the base of Flagstaff Mountain.

  "Breaker, breaker, that's a big ten-four, over and out," Harold said softly.

  Nadine clutched at him, much as Frannie had clutched Stu only seconds ago. "We ought to be sure. We ought to be sure that it got them."

  Harold looked at her, then gestured at the blooming rose of destruction below them. "Do you think anything could have lived through that?"

  "I ... I d-don't kn ... ooow, Harold, I'm--" Nadine turned away, clutched her belly, and began to retch. It was a deep, constant, raw sound. Harold watched her with mild contempt.

  She turned back at last, panting, pale, wiping at her mouth with a Kleenex. Scrubbing at her mouth. "Now what?"

  "Now I guess we go west," Harold said. "Unless you plan to go down there and sample the mood of the community."

  Nadine shuddered.

  Harold slid off the picnic table and winced at the pins and needles as his feet struck the ground. They had gone to sleep.

  "Harold--" She tried to touch him and he jerked away. Without looking at her, he began to strike the tent.

  "I thought we'd wait until tomorrow--" she began timidly.

  "Sure," he jeered at her. "So twenty or thirty of them can decide to fan out on their bikes and catch us. Did you ever see what they did to Mussolini?"

  She winced. Harold was rolling the tent up and cinching the ground-cords tight.

  "And we don't touch each other. That's over. It got Flagg what he wanted. We wasted their Free Zone Committee. They're washed up. They may get the power on, but as a functioning group, they're washed up. He'll give me a woman who makes you look like a potato sack, Nadine. And you ... you get him. Happy days, right? Only if I were wearing your Hush Puppies, I would be shaking in them plenty."

  "Harold--please--" She was sick, crying. He could see her face in the dim fireglow, and felt pity for her. He forced it out of his heart like an unwelcome drunk who has tried to enter a cozy little suburban tavern where everybody knows everybody else. The irrevocable fac
t of murder was in her heart forever--that fact shone sickly in her eyes. But so what? It was in his, as well. In it and on it, weighing it down like stones.

  "Get used to it," Harold said brutally. He flung the tent on the back of his cycle and began to tie it down. "It's over for them down there, and it's over for us, and it's over for everybody that died in the plague. God went off on a celestial fishing trip and He's going to be gone a long time. It's totally dark. The dark man's in the driver's seat now. Him. So get used to it."

  She made a squeaking, moaning noise in her throat.

  "Come on, Nadine. This stopped being a beauty contest two minutes ago. Help me get this shit packed up. I want to do a hundred miles before sunup."

  After a moment she turned her back on the destruction below--destruction that seemed almost inconsequential from this height--and helped him pack the rest of the camping gear in his saddlebags and her wire carrier. Fifteen minutes later they had left the fire-rose behind and were riding through the cool and windy dark, heading west.

  For Fran Goldsmith, that day's ending was painless and simple. She felt a warm push of air at her back and suddenly she was flying through the night. She had been knocked out of her sandals.

  Whafuck? she thought.

  She landed on her shoulder, landed hard, but there was still no pain. She was in the ravine that ran north-to-south at the foot of Ralph's back yard.

  A chair landed in front of her, neatly, on its legs. Its seat-cushion was a smoldering black snarl.

  WhaFUCK?

  Something landed on the seat of the chair and rolled off. Something that was dripping. With faint and clinical horror, she saw that it was an arm.

  Stu? Stu! What's happening?

  A steady, grinding roar of sound engulfed her, and stuff began to rain down everywhere. Rocks. Hunks of wood. Bricks. A glass block spiderwebbed with cracks (hadn't the bookcase in Ralph's living room been made of those blocks?). A motorcycle helmet with a horrible, lethal hole punched through the back of it. She could see everything clearly ... much too clearly. It had been dark out only a few seconds ago--