The Stand

  Lucy slipped an arm around his waist, making him jump a little. "I love you," she said.

  He groped for her, held her. He put his head down and began to shudder helplessly.

  "I love you," she said calmly. "It's all right. Let it come. Let it come out, Larry."

  He cried. The tears were as hot and hard as bullets. "Lucy--"

  "Shhh." Her hands on the back of his neck; her soothing hands.

  "Oh Lucy, my God, what is all this?" he cried out against her neck, and she held him as tight as she could, not knowing, not knowing yet, and Mother Abagail breathed harshly behind them, holding on in the depths of her coma.

  George drove up the street at walking speed, passing the same message over and over again: Yes, still alive. Prognosis is poor. No, she hasn't said anything and isn't likely to. You might as well go home. If anything happens, you'll hear.

  When they reached the corner they accelerated, turning toward the hospital. The exhaust of their bikes crackled and echoed back, hitting buildings and bouncing off them, finally fading away to nothing.

  People did not go home. They remained standing for a while, renewing their conversations, examining each word George had said. Prognosis, now what might that mean? Coma. Brain-death. If her brain was dead, that was it. Might as well expect a can of peas to talk as a person with a dead brain. Well, maybe that would be it if this was a natural situation, but things were hardly natural anymore, were they?

  They sat down again. Darkness came. The glow of Coleman lamps came on in the house where the old woman lay. They would go home later, and lie sleepless.

  Talk turned hesitantly to the dark man. If Mother Abagail died didn't that mean he was stronger?

  What do you mean, "not necessarily"?

  Well I hold he's Satan, pure and simple.

  The Antichrist, that's what I think. We're living out the Book of Revelation right in our own time ... how can you doubt it? "And the seven vials were opened ..." Sure sounds like the superflu to me.

  Ah, balls, people said Hitler was the Antichrist.

  If those dreams come back, I'll kill myself.

  In mine I was in a subway station and he was the ticket-taker, only I couldn't see his face. I was scared. I ran into the subway tunnel. Then I could hear him, running after me. And gaining.

  In mine I was going down cellar to get ajar of pickled watermelon slices and I saw someone standing by the furnace ... just a shape. And I knew it was him.

  Crickets began to chirrup. Stars spread across the sky. The chill in the air was duly commented on. Drinks were drunk. Pipes and cigarettes glowed in the dark.

  I heard the Power people went right ahead turning things off.

  Good for them. If they don't get the lights and heat back on pretty quick, we're going to be in a peck of trouble.

  Low murmur of voices, now faceless in the gloom.

  I guess we're safe for this winter. Sure enough. No way he can get over the passes. Too full of cars and snow. But in the spring ...

  Suppose he's got a few A-bombs?

  Fuck the A-bomb, what if he's got a few of those dirty neutron bombs? Or the other six of Sally's seven vials?

  Or planes?

  What's to do?

  I don't know.

  Damn if I know.

  Ain't got a friggin clue.

  Dig a hole, then jump in and pull it over you.

  And around ten o'clock Stu Redman, Glen Bateman, and Ralph Brentner came among them, talking quietly and giving out fliers, telling them to pass the word on to those not here tonight. Glen was limping slightly because a flying stove dial had clipped a piece of meat out of his right calf. The mimeographed posters said: FREE ZONE MEETING MUNZINGER AUDITORIUM SEPTEMBER 4 * 8:00 P.M.

  That seemed to be the signal to leave. People drifted away silently into the dark. Most of them took the fliers, but quite a few were crumpled into balls and thrown away. All of them went home to get what sleep they could.

  Perchance to dream.

  The auditorium was crammed but extremely quiet when Stu convened the meeting the following night. Sitting behind him were Larry, Ralph, and Glen. Fran had tried to get up, but her back was still much too painful. Unmindful of the grisly irony, Ralph had patched her through to the meeting by walkie-talkie.

  "There's a few things that need talking about," Stu said with quiet and studied understatement. His voice, although only slightly amplified, carried well in the silent hall. "I guess there's nobody here who doesn't know about the explosion that killed Nick and Sue and the others, and nobody who doesn't know that Mother Abagail has come back. We need to talk about those things, but we wanted you to have some good news first. Want you to listen to Brad Kitchner for that. Brad?"

  Brad walked toward the podium, not nearly as nervous as he had been the night before last, and was greeted by listless applause. When he got there he turned to face them, gripped the lectern in both hands, and said simply: "We're going to switch on tomorrow."

  This time the applause was much louder. Brad held up his hands, but the applause rode over him in a wave. It held for thirty seconds or more. Later Stu told Frannie that if it hadn't been for the events of the last two days, Brad probably would have been dragged down from the podium and carried around the auditorium on the shoulders of the crowd like a halfback who has scored the winning touchdown of the championship game in the last thirty seconds. It had gotten so close to the end of the summer that, in a way, that was just what he was.

  But at last the applause subsided.

  "We're going to switch on at noon, and I'd like to have every one of you at home and ready. Ready for what? Four things. Listen up now, this is important. First, turn off every light and electrical appliance in your own house that you're not using. Second, do the same for the unoccupied houses around yours. Third, if you smell gas, track down the smell and shut off whatever is on. Fourth, if you hear a fire siren, go to the source of the sound ... but go safely and sanely. Let's not have any necks broken in motorcycle accidents. Now--are there any questions?"

  There were several, all of them reconfirming Brad's original points. He answered each one patiently, the only sign of nervousness the way he bent his little black notebook ceaselessly back and forth in his hands.

  When the questions had slowed to a trickle, Brad said: "I want to thank the folks who busted their humps getting us going again. And I want to remind the Power Committee that it isn't disbanded. There are going to be lines down, power outages, oil supplies to track down in Denver and haul up here. I hope you'll all stick with it. Mr. Glen Bateman says we may have ten thousand people here by the time the snow flies, and a lot more next spring. There's power stations in Longmont and Denver that are going to have to come on line before next year's done with--"

  "Not if that hardcase gets his way!" someone shouted out hoarsely in the back of the hall.

  There was a moment of dead silence. Brad stood with his hands clutching the lectern in a deathgrip, his face pasty white. He's not going to be able to finish, Stu thought, and then Brad did go on, his voice amazingly even:

  "My business is power, whoever said that. But I think we'll be here long after that other guy's dead and gone. If I didn't think that, I'd be wrapping motors over on his side. Who gives a shit for him?"

  Brad stepped away from the podium and someone else bellowed, "You're goddam right!"

  This time the applause was heavy and hard, nearly savage, but there was a note to it Stu didn't like. He had to pound with his gavel a long time to get the meeting back under control.

  "The next thing on the agenda--"

  "Fuck your agenda!" a young woman yelled stridently. "Let's talk about the dark man! Let's talk about Flagg! It's long overdue, I'd say!"

  Roars of approval. Shouts of "Out of order!" Disapproving babble at the young woman's choice of words. Rumble of side-chatter.

  Stu whacked at the block on the podium so hard that the mallet-head flew off his gavel. "This is a meeting here!" he shouted. "You're go
ing to get a chance to talk about whatever you want to talk about, but while I'm chairing this meeting, I want ... to have ... some ORDER!" He bellowed the last word so loudly that feedback cut through the auditorium like a boomerang, and they quieted at last.

  "Now," Stu said, his voice purposely low and calm, "the next thing is to report to you on what happened up at Ralph's on the night of September second, and I guess that falls to me, since I'm our elected law enforcement officer."

  He had quiet again, but like the applause that had greeted Brad's closing remarks, this wasn't a quiet Stu liked. They were leaning forward, intent, their expressions greedy. It made him feel disquieted and bewildered, as if the Free Zone had changed radically over the last forty-eight hours and he didn't know what it was anymore. It made him feel the way he'd felt when he had been trying to find his way out of the Stovington Plague Center--a fly caught and struggling in an invisible spider's web. There were so many faces he didn't recognize out there, so many strangers ...

  But there was no time to think about it now.

  He described the events leading up to the explosion briefly, omitting Fran's last-minute premonition; with the mood they were in, they didn't need that.

  "Yesterday morning Brad and Ralph and I went up and poked through the ruins for three hours or more. We found what seemed to be a dynamite bomb wired up to a walkie-talkie. It appears that this bomb was planted in the living room closet. Bill Scanlon and Ted Frampton found another walkie-talkie up in Sunrise Amphitheater, and we assume the bomb was set off from there. It--"

  "Assume, my ass!" Ted Frampton shouted from the third row. "It was that bastard Lauder and his little whore!"

  An uneasy murmur ran through the room.

  These are the good guys? They don't give a shit about Nick and Sue and Chad and the rest. They're like a lynch-mob, and all they care about is catching Harold and Nadine and hanging them ... like a charm against the dark man.

  He happened to catch Glen's eye; Glen offered him a very small, very cynical shrug.

  "If one more person yells out from the floor without bein recognized, I'm gonna declare this meeting closed and you can talk to each other," Stu said. "This is no bull session. If we don't keep to the rules, where are we?" Ted Frampton was staring up at him angrily, and Stu stared back. After a few moments, Ted dropped his eyes.

  "We suspect Harold Lauder and Nadine Cross. We have some good reasons, some pretty convincing circumstantial evidence. But there's no real hard evidence against them yet, and I hope you'll keep that in mind."

  A sullen eddy of conversation rippled and disappeared.

  "I only said that to say this," Stu continued. "If they happen to wander back into the Zone, I want them brought to me. I'll lock them up and Al Bundell will see to it that they're tried ... and a trial means they get to tell their side, if they got one. We're ... we're supposed to be the good guys here. I guess we know where the bad guys are. And being the good guys means we have to be civilized about this."

  He looked out at them hopefully and saw only puzzled resentment. Stuart Redman had seen two of his best friends blown to hell, those eyes said, and here he was, taking up for the ones who did it.

  "For what it's worth to you, I think they're the ones," he said. "But it's got to be done right. And I'm here to tell you that it will be."

  Eyes boring into him. Over a thousand pairs, and he could feel the thought behind each one: What's this shit you're talking, anyway? They're gone. Gone west. You act like they were on a two-day bird-watching trip.

  He poured a glass of water and drank some, hoping to get rid of the dryness in his throat. The taste of it, boiled and flat, made him grimace. "Anyway, that's where we stand on that," he said lamely. "What's next, I guess, is filling the committee back up to strength. We're not goin to do that tonight, but you ought to be thinkin about who you want-- A hand shot up on the floor and Stu pointed. "Go ahead. Just identify yourself so everybody'll know who you are."

  "I'm Sheldon Jones," a big man in a wool-plaid shirt said. "Why don't we just go ahead and get two new ones tonight? I nom'nate Ted Frampton over there."

  "Hey, I second that!" Bill Scanlon yelled. "Beautiful!"

  Ted Frampton clasped his hands and shook them over his head to scattered applause, and Stu felt that despairing, disoriented feeling sweep over him again. They were supposed to replace Nick Andros with Ted Frampton? It was like one of those sick jokes. Ted had tried the Power Committee and had found it too much like work. He had drifted over to the Burial Committee and that had seemed to suit him better, although Chad had mentioned to Stu that Ted was one of those fellows who seemed able to stretch a coffee break into a lunch hour and a lunch hour into a half-day vacation. He had been quick to join yesterday's hunt for Harold and Nadine, probably because it offered a change. He and Bill Scanlon had stumbled on the walkie-talkie up at Sunrise through sheer luck (and to give Ted his due, he had admitted that), but since the find he had acquired a swagger that Stu didn't like at all.

  Now Stu caught Glen's eyes again, and could almost read Glen's thought in the cynical look there, the slight tuck in the corner of Glen's mouth: Maybe we could use Harold to stack this one, too.

  A word that Nixon had used a lot suddenly floated into Stu's mind, and as he grasped it, he suddenly understood the source of his despair and feeling of disorientation. The word was "mandate." Their mandate had disappeared. It had gone up two nights ago in a flash and a roar.

  He said, "You may know who you want, Sheldon, but I imagine some of the other folks would like to have time to think it over. Let's call the question. Those of you who want to elect two new reps tonight say aye."

  Quite a few ayes were shouted out.

  "Those of you who'd like a week or so to think it over, say nay."

  The nays were louder, but not by a whole lot. A great many people had abstained altogether, as if the topic had no interest for them.

  "Okay," Stu said. "We'll plan to meet here in Munzinger Auditorium a week from today, September eleventh, to nominate and vote on candidates for the two empty slots on the committee."

  Pretty crappy epitaph, Nick. I'm sorry.

  "Dr. Richardson is here to talk to you about Mother Abagail and about those folks that were injured in the explosion. Doc?"

  Richardson got a solid blast of applause as he stepped forward, polishing his eyeglasses. He told them that there were nine dead as a result of the explosion, three people still in critical condition, two in serious condition, eight in satisfactory condition.

  "Considering the force of the blast, I think that fortune was with us. Now, concerning Mother Abagail."

  They leaned forward.

  "I think a very short statement and a brief bit of elaboration should suffice. The statement is this: I can do nothing for her."

  A mutter ran through the crowd and stilled. Stu saw unhappiness but no real surprise.

  "I am told by members of the Zone who were here before she left that the lady claimed one hundred and eight years. I can't vouch for that, but I can say she is the oldest human being I myself have ever seen and treated. I'm told she has been gone for two weeks, and my estimation-- no, my guess--is that her diet during that period contained no prepared foods at all. She seems to have lived on roots, herbs, grass, and other things of a similar nature." He paused. "She has had one small bowel movement since she returned. It contained a number of small sticks and twigs."

  "My God," someone muttered, and it was impossible to tell if the voice belonged to a man or a woman.

  "One arm is covered with poison ivy. Her legs are covered with ulcerations which would be running if her condition were not so--"

  "Hey, can't you stop it?" Jack Jackson hollered, standing up. His face was white, furious, miserable. "Don't you have any damn decency?"

  "Decency is not my concern, Jack. I'm only reporting her condition as it is. She's comatose, malnourished, and most of all, she's very, very old. I think she's going to die. If she was anyone else, I would state th
at as a certainty. But ... like all of you, I dreamed of her. Her and one other."

  The low mutter again, like a passing breeze, and Stu felt the hackles on the nape of his neck first stir and then come to attention.

  "To me, dreams of such opposing configurations seem mystical," George said. "The fact that we all shared them seems to indicate a telepathic ability at the very least. But I pass on parapsychology and theology just as I pass on decency, and for the same reason: neither of them is my field. If the woman is from God, He may choose to heal her. I cannot. I will tell you that the fact that she is still alive at all seems a miracle of sorts to me. That is my statement. Are there any questions?"

  There weren't. They looked at him, stunned, some of them openly weeping.

  "Thank you," George said, and returned to his seat in a dead sea of silence.

  "All right," Stu whispered to Glen. "You're on."

  Glen approached the podium without introduction and gripped it familiarly. "We've discussed everything but the dark man," he said.

  That mutter again. Several men and women instinctively made the sign of the cross. An elderly woman on the left-hand aisle placed her hands rapidly across her eyes, mouth, and ears in an eerie imitation of Nick Andros before refolding them over the bulky black purse in her lap.

  "We've discussed him to some degree in closed committee meetings," Glen went on, his tone calm and conversational, "and the question came up in private as to whether or not we should bring the question up in public. The point was made that no one in the Zone really seemed to want to talk about it, not after the funhouse dreams we all had on the way here. That perhaps a period of recuperation was needed. Now, I think, is the time to bring the subject up. To drag him out into the light, as it were. In police work, they have a handy gadget called an Ident-i-Kit, which a police artist uses to create the face of a criminal from various witnesses' recollections of him. In our case we have no face, but we do have a series of recollections that form at least an outline of our Antagonist. I've talked to quite a few people about this and I would like to present you with my own Ident-i-Kit sketch.

  "This man's name seems to be Randall Flagg, although some people have associated the names Richard Frye, Robert Freemont, and Richard Freemantle with him. The initials R.F. may have some significance, but if so, none of us on the Free Zone Committee know what it is. His presence--at least in dreams--produces feelings of dread, disquiet, terror, horror. In case after case, the physical feeling associated with him is one of coldness."