The Stand

  He slid the last fifteen feet on his belly, like a kid on a greasy chute-the-chute. He came to rest with his pants full of mud and his heart beating crazily in his ears. The leg was white fire. His coat and the shirt beneath were both rucked up to his chin.

  Broken. But how bad? Pretty bad from the way it feels. Two places at least, maybe more. And the knee's sprung.

  Larry was coming down the slope, moving in little jumps that seemed almost a mockery of what had just happened to Stu. Then he was kneeling beside him, asking the question which Stu had already asked himself.

  "How bad, Stu?"

  Stu got up on his elbows and looked at Larry, his face white with shock and streaked brown with dirt.

  "I figure I'll be walking again in about three months," he said. He began to feel as if he were going to puke. He looked up at the cloudy sky, balled his fists up, and shook them at it.

  "OHHH, SHIT!" he screamed.

  Ralph and Larry splinted the leg. Glen had produced a bottle of what he called "my arthritis pills" and gave Stu one. Stu didn't know what was in the "arthritis pills" and Glen refused to say, but the pain in his leg faded to a faraway drone. He felt very calm, even serene. It occurred to him that they were all living on borrowed time, not because they were on their way to find Flagg, necessarily, but because they had survived Captain Trips in the first place. At any rate, he knew what had to be done ... and he was going to see that it was done. Larry had just finished speaking. They all looked at him anxiously to see what he would say.

  What he said was simple enough. "No."

  "Stu," Glen said gently, "you don't understand--"

  "I understand. I'm saying no. No trip back to Green River. No rope. No car. Against the rules of the game."

  "It's no fucking game!" Larry cried. "You'd die here!"

  "And you're almost surely gonna die over there in Nevada. Now go on and get getting. You've got another four hours of daylight. No need to waste it."

  "We're not going to leave you," Larry said.

  "I'm sorry, but you are. I'm telling you to."

  "No. I'm in charge now. Mother said if anything happened to you--"

  "--that you were to go on."

  "No. No." Larry looked around at Glen and Ralph for support. They looked back at him, troubled. Kojak sat nearby, watching all four with his tail curled neatly around his paws.

  "Listen to me, Larry," Stu said. "This whole trip is based on the idea that the old lady knew what she was talking about. If you start frigging around with that, you're putting everything on the line."

  "Yeah, that's right," Ralph said.

  "No, it ain't right, you sodbuster," Larry said, furiously mimicking Ralph's flat Oklahoma accent. "It wasn't God's will that Stu fell down here, it wasn't even the dark man's doing. It was just loose dirt, that's all, just loose dirt! I'm not leaving you, Stu. I'm done leaving people behind."

  "Yes. We are going to leave him," Glen said quietly.

  Larry stared around unbelievingly, as if he had been betrayed. "I thought you were his friend!"

  "I am. But that doesn't matter."

  Larry uttered a hysterical laugh and walked a little way down the gully. "You're crazy! You know that?"

  "No I'm not. We made an agreement. We stood around Mother Abagail's deathbed and entered into it. It almost certainly meant our deaths, and we knew it. We understood the agreement. Now we're going to live up to it."

  "Well, I want to, for Chrissake. I mean, it doesn't have to be Green River; we can get a station wagon, put him in the back, and go on--"

  "We're supposed to walk," Ralph said. He pointed at Stu. "He can't walk."

  "Right. Fine. He's got a broken leg. What do you propose we do? Shoot him like a horse?"

  "Larry--" Stu began.

  Before he could go on, Glen grabbed Larry's shirt and yanked him toward him. "Who are you trying to save?" His voice was cold and stern. "Stu, or yourself?"

  Larry looked at him, mouth working.

  "It's very simple," Glen said. "We can't stay ... and he can't go."

  "I refuse to accept that," Larry whispered. His face was dead pale.

  "It's a test," Ralph said suddenly. "That's what it is."

  "A sanity test, maybe," Larry said.

  "Vote," Stu said from the ground. "I vote you go on."

  "Me too," Ralph said. "Stu, I'm sorry. But if God's gonna watch out for us, maybe he'll watch out for you, too--"

  "I won't do it," Larry said.

  "It's not Stu you're thinking of," Glen said. "You're trying to save something in yourself, I think. But this time it's right to go on, Larry. We have to."

  Larry rubbed his mouth slowly with the back of his hand.

  "Let's stay here tonight," he said. "Let's think this thing out."

  "No," Stu said.

  Ralph nodded. A look passed between him and Glen, and then Glen fished the bottle of "arthritis pills" out of his pocket and put it in Stu's hand. "These have a morphine base," he said. "More than three or four would probably be fatal." His eyes locked with Stu's. "Do you understand, East Texas?"

  "Yeah. I get you."

  "What are you talking about?" Larry cried. "Just what the hell are you suggesting?"

  "Don't you know?" Ralph said with such utter contempt that for a moment Larry was silenced. Then it all rushed before him again with the nightmare speed of strangers' faces as you ride the whip at the carnival: pills, uppers, downers, cruisers. Rita. Turning her over in her sleeping bag and seeing that she was dead and stiff, green puke coming out of her mouth like a rancid party favor.

  "No!" he yelled, and tried to snatch the bottle from Stu's hand.

  Ralph grabbed him by the shoulders. Larry struggled.

  "Let him go," Stu said. "I want to talk to him." Ralph still held on, looking at Stu uncertainly. "No, go on, let him go."

  Ralph let go, but looked ready to spring again.

  Stu said, "Come here, Larry. Hunker down."

  Larry came over and hunkered by Stu. He looked miserably into Stu's face. "It's not right, man. When somebody falls down and breaks his leg, you don't ... you can't just walk off and let that person die. Don't you know that? Hey, man ..." He touched Stu's face. "Please. Think."

  Stu took Larry's hand and held it. "Do you think I'm crazy?"

  "No! No, but--"

  "And do you think that people who are in their right minds have the right to decide for themselves what they want to do?"

  "Oh, man," Larry said, and started to cry.

  "Larry, you're not in this. I want you to go on. If you get out of Vegas, come back this way. Maybe God'll send a raven to feed me, you don't know. I read once in the funny-pages that a man can go seventy days without food, if he's got water."

  "It's going to be winter before that here. You'll be dead of exposure in three days, even if you don't use the pills."

  "That ain't up to you. You ain't in this part of it."

  "Don't send me away, Stu."

  Stu said grimly: "I'm sending you."

  "This sucks," Larry said, and got to his feet. "What's Fran going to say to us? When she finds out we left you for the gophers and the buzzards?"

  "She's not going to say anything if you don't get over there and fix his clock. Neither is Lucy. Or Dick Ellis. Or Brad. Or any of the others."

  Larry said, "Okay. We'll go. But tomorrow. We'll camp here tonight, and maybe we'll have a dream ... something ..."

  "No dreams," Stu said gently. "No signs. It doesn't work like that. You'd stay one night and there'd be nothing and then you'd want to stay another night, and another night ... you got to go right now."

  Larry walked away from them, head down, and stood with his back turned. "All right," he said at last in a voice almost too low to hear. "We'll do it your way. God help our souls."

  Ralph came over to Stu and knelt down. "Can we get you anything, Stu?"

  Stu smiled. "Yeah. Everything Gore Vidal ever wrote--those books about Lincoln and Aaron Burr and those guys. I always
meant to read the suckers. Now it looks like I got the chance."

  Ralph grinned crookedly. "Sorry, Stu. Looks like I'm tapped."

  Stu squeezed his arm, and Ralph went away. Glen came over. He had also been crying, and when he sat down by Stu, he started leaking again.

  "Come on, ya baby," Stu said. "I'll be okay."

  "Larry's right. This is bad. Like something you'd do to a horse."

  "You know it has to be done."

  "I guess I do, but who really knows? How's that leg?"

  "No pain at all, right now."

  "Okay, you got the pills." Glen swiped his arm across his eyes. "Goodbye, East Texas. It's been pretty goddam good to know you."

  Stu turned his head aside. "Don't say goodbye, Glen. Make it so long, it's better luck. You'll probably get halfway up that frigging bank and fall down here and we can spend the winter playing cribbage."

  "It's not so long," Glen said. "I feel that, don't you?"

  And because he did, Stu turned his face back to look at Glen. "Yeah, I do," he said, and then smiled a little. "But I will fear no evil, right?"

  "Right!" Glen said. His voice dropped to a husky whisper. "Pull the plug if you have to, Stuart. Don't screw around."

  "No."

  "Goodbye, then."

  "Goodbye, Glen."

  The three of them drew together on the west side of the gully, and after a look back over his shoulder, Glen started to go up. Stu followed his progress up the side with growing alarm. He was moving casually, almost carelessly, hardly even glancing at his footing. The ground crumbled away beneath him once, then twice. Both times he grabbed nonchalantly for a handhold, and both times one just happened to be there. When he reached the top, Stu released his pent-up breath in a long, harsh sigh.

  Ralph went next, and when he reached the top, Stu called Larry over one last time. He looked up into Larry's face and reflected that in its way it was remarkably like the late Harold Lauder's--remarkably still, the eyes watchful and a little wary. A face that gave away nothing but what it wanted to give away.

  "You're in charge now," Stu said. "Can you handle it?"

  "I don't know. I'll try."

  "You'll be making the decisions."

  "Will I? Looks like my first one was overruled." Now his eyes did give away an emotion: reproach.

  "Yeah, but that's the only one that will be. Listen--his men are going to grab you."

  "Yeah. I figure they will. They'll either grab us or shoot us from ambush like we were dogs."

  "No, I think they'll grab you and take you to him. It'll happen in the next few days, I think. When you get to Vegas, keep your eyes open. Wait. It'll come."

  "What, Stu? What'll come?"

  "I don't know. Whatever we were sent for. Be ready. Know it when it comes."

  "We'll be back for you, if we can. You know it."

  "Yeah, okay."

  Larry went up the bank quickly and joined the other two. They stood and waved down. Stu raised his hand in return. They left. And they never saw Stu Redman again.

  CHAPTER 73

  The three of them camped sixteen miles west of the place where they had left Stu. They had come to another washout, this one minor. The real reason they had made such poor mileage was because some of the heart seemed to have gone out of them. It was hard to tell if it was going to come back. Their feet seemed to weigh more. There was little conversation. Not one of them wanted to look into the face of another, for fear of seeing his own guilt mirrored there.

  They camped at dark and built a scrub fire. There was water, but no food. Glen tamped the last of his tobacco into his pipe, and wondered suddenly if Stu had any cigarettes. The thought spoiled his own taste for tobacco, and he knocked his pipe out on a rock, absently kicking away the last of his Borkum Riff. When an owl hooted somewhere out in the darkness a few minutes later, he looked around.

  "Say, where's Kojak?" he asked.

  "Now, that's kinda funny, ain't it?" Ralph said. "I can't remember seeing him the last couple of hours at all."

  Glen got to his feet. "Kojak!" he yelled. "Hey, Kojak! Kojak!" His voice echoed lonesomely away into the wastes. There was no answering bark. He sat down again, overcome with gloom. A soft sighing noise escaped him. Kojak had followed him almost all the way across the continent. Now he was gone. It was like a terrible omen.

  "You s'pose something got him?" Ralph asked softly.

  Larry said in a quiet, thoughtful voice: "Maybe he stayed with Stu."

  Glen looked up, startled. "Maybe," he said, considering it. "Maybe that's what happened."

  Larry tossed a pebble from one hand to the other, back and forth, back and forth. "He said maybe God would send a raven to feed him. I doubt if there's any out here, so maybe He sent a dog instead."

  The fire made a popping sound, sending a column of sparks up into the darkness to whirl in brief brightness and then to wink out.

  When Stu saw the dark shape come slinking down the gully toward him, he pulled himself up against the nearby boulder, leg sticking out stiffly in front of him, and found a good-sized stone with one numb hand. He was chilled to the bone. Larry had been right. Two or three days of lying around in these temperatures was going to kill him quite efficiently. Except now it looked like whatever this was would get him first. Kojak had remained with him until sunset and then had left him, scrambling easily out of the gully. Stu had not called him back. The dog would find his way back to Glen and go on with them. Perhaps he had his own part to play. But now he wished that Kojak had stayed a little longer. The pills were one thing, but he had no wish to be ripped to pieces by one of the dark man's wolves.

  He gripped the rock harder and the dark shape paused about twenty yards up the cut. Then it started coming again, a blacker shadow in the night.

  "Come on, then," Stu said hoarsely.

  The black shadow wagged its tail and came. "Kojak?"

  It was. And there was something in his mouth, something he dropped at Stu's feet. He sat down, tail thumping, waiting to be complimented.

  "Good dog," Stu said in amazement. "Good dog!"

  Kojak had brought him a rabbit.

  Stu pulled out his pocket knife, opened it, and disemboweled the rabbit in three quick movements. He picked up the steaming guts and tossed them to Kojak. "Want these?" Kojak did. Stu skinned the rabbit. The thought of eating it raw didn't do much for his stomach.

  "Wood?" he said to Kojak without much hope. There were scattered branches and hunks of tree all along the banks of the gully, dropped by the flash flood, but nothing within reach.

  Kojak wagged his tail and didn't move.

  "Fetch? F-- "

  But Kojak was gone. He whirled, streaked to the east side of the gully, and ran back with a large piece of deadwood in his jaws. He dropped it beside Stu, and barked. His tail wagged rapidly.

  "Good dog," Stu said again. "I'll be a son of a bitch! Fetch, Kojak!"

  Barking with joy, Kojak went again. In twenty minutes, he had brought back enough wood for a large fire. Stu carefully stripped enough splinters to make kindling. He checked the match situation and saw that he had a book and a half. He got the kindling going on the second match and fed the fire carefully. Soon there was a respectable blaze going and Stu got as close to it as he could, sitting in his sleeping bag. Kojak lay down on the far side of the fire with his nose on his paws.

  When the fire had burned down a little, Stu spitted the rabbit and cooked it. The smell was soon strong enough and savory enough to have his stomach rumbling. Kojak came to attention and sat watching the rabbit with close interest.

  "Half for you and half for me, big guy, okay?"

  Fifteen minutes later he pulled the rabbit off the fire and managed to rip it in half without burning his fingers too badly. The meat was burned in places, half-raw in others, but it put the canned ham from Great Western Markets in the shade. He and Kojak gulped it down ... and as they were finishing, a bone-chilling howl drifted down the wash.

  "Christ!" Stu s
aid around a mouthful of rabbit.

  Kojak was on his feet, hackles up, growling. He advanced stiff-legged around the fire and growled again. Whatever had howled fell silent.

  Stu lay down, the hand-sized stone by one hand and his opened pocket knife by the other. The stars were cold and high and indifferent. His thoughts turned to Fran and he turned them away just as quickly. That hurt too much, full belly or not. I won't sleep, he thought. Not for a long time.

  But he did sleep, with the help of one of Glen's pills. And when the coals of the fire had burned down to embers, Kojak came over and slept next to him, giving Stu his heat. And that was how, on the first night after the party was broken, Stu ate when the others went hungry, and slept easy while their sleep was broken by bad dreams and an uneasy feeling of rapidly approaching doom.

  On the twenty-fourth, Larry Underwood's group of three pilgrims made thirty miles and camped northeast of the San Rafael Knob. That night the temperature slid down into the mid-twenties, and they built a large fire and slept close by it. Kojak had not rejoined them.

  "What do you think Stu's doing tonight?" Ralph asked Larry.

  "Dying," Larry said shortly, and was sorry when he saw the wince of pain on Ralph's homely, honest face, but he didn't know how to redeem what he had said. And after all, it was almost surely true.

  He lay down again, feeling strangely certain that it was tomorrow. Whatever they were coming to, they were almost there.

  Bad dreams that night. He was on tour with an outfit called the Shady Blues Connection in the one he remembered most clearly on waking. They were booked into Madison Square Garden, and the place was sold out. They took the stage to thunderous applause. Larry went to adjust his mike, bring it down to proper height, and couldn't budge it. He went to the lead guitarist's mike, but that one was frozen, too. Bass guitarist, organist, same thing. Booing and rhythmic clapping began to come from the crowd. One by one, the members of the Shady Blues Connection slunk off the stage, grinning furtively into high psychedelic shirt-collars like the ones the Byrds used to wear back in 1966, when Roger McGuinn was still eight miles high. Or eight hundred. And still Larry wandered from mike to mike, trying to find at least one he could adjust. But they were all at least nine feet tall and frozen solid. They looked like stainless steel cobras. Someone in the crowd began to yell for "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?" I don't do that number anymore, he tried to say. I stopped doing that one when the world ended. They couldn't hear him, and a chant began to arise, starting in the back rows, then sweeping the Garden, gaining strength and volume: "Baby Can You Dig Your Man! Baby Can You Dig Your Man! BABY CAN YOU DIG YOUR MAN!"