The Stand, Page 71

  He would begin to scream then, and eventually he would scream himself awake, streaming with sweat and buggy-eyed. His hands would fly over his body, reassuring himself that all his human parts were still there. At the end of this panicky check he would grip his head, making sure it was still a human head and not something long and sleek and streamlined, furry and bullet-shaped.

  He crossed four hundred miles of Nebraska in three days, running mostly on high octane terror. He crossed into Colorado near Julesburg, and the dream began to fade and grow sepia-toned.

  (For Mother Abagail's part, she woke on the night of July 15--shortly after Trashcan Man had passed north of Hemingford Home--with a terrible chill and a feeling that was both fear and pity; pity for whom or for what she did not know. She thought she might have been dreaming of her grandson Anders, who had been killed senselessly in a hunting accident when he was but six.)

  On July 18, then southwest of Sterling, Colorado, and still some miles from Brush, he had met The Kid.

  Trash woke up just as twilight was falling. In spite of the clothes he had hung over the windows, the Mercedes had gotten hot. His throat was a dry well which had been faced with sandpaper. His temples thumped and jumped. He ran his tongue out, and when he stroked it with his finger, it felt like a dead treebranch. Sitting up, he put his hand on the Mercedes' steering wheel and then drew it back with a scalded hiss of pain. He had to wrap his shirttail around the doorhandle to let himself out. He thought he would just step out, but he had overestimated his strength and underestimated how far the dehydration had advanced on this August evening: his legs collapsed and he fell onto the road, which was also hot. Moaning, he scrabbled his way into the shadow of the Mercedes like a crippled crawdad. He sat there, arms and head dangling between his cocked knees, panting. He stared morbidly at the two bodies he had pulled out of the car, she with her bangles on her shriveled arms and he with his shock of theatrical white hair above his mummified monkey-face.

  He must get to Cibola before the sun came up tomorrow morning. If he didn't, he would die ... and in sight of his goal! Surely the dark man could not be as cruel as that--surely not!

  "My life for you," Trashcan Man whispered, and when the sun had dropped below the line of the mountains, he gained his feet and began to walk toward the towers, minarets, and avenues of Cibola, where the sparks of the lights were coming on again.

  As the heat of the day segued into the cool of the desert night, he found himself more able to walk. His sprung and rope-tied sneakers flapped and thudded against the surface of I-15. He was plodding along, his head hanging like the bloom of a dying sunflower, and did not see the green, reflectorized sign which read LAS VEGAS 30 when he passed it.

  He was thinking about The Kid. By rights The Kid should have been with him now. They should be driving into Cibola together, with the straightpipes of The Kid's deuce coupe blatting back echoes from the desert. But The Kid had proved unworthy, and Trash had been sent on alone into the wilderness.

  His feet rose and fell on the pavement. "Ci-a-bola!" he croaked. "Bumpty-bumpty-bump!"

  Around midnight he collapsed by the side of the road and fell into an uneasy doze. The city was closer now.

  He would make it.

  He was quite sure he would make it.

  He heard The Kid a long time before he saw him. It was the heavy, crackling roar of unmuffled straightpipes thundering toward him from the east, branding the day. The sound was coming up Highway 34 from the direction of Yuma, Colorado. His first impulse was to hide, the way he'd hidden from the few other survivors he'd seen since Gary. But this time something made him stay where he was, astride his bike on the shoulder of the road, looking back apprehensively over his shoulder.

  The thunder grew louder and louder, and then the sun was reflecting off chrome and

  (??FIRE??)

  something bright and orange.

  The driver saw him. Downshifted in a machine-gun burst of backfires. Goodyear rubber peeled off on the highway in hot swatches. And then the car was beside him, not idling but panting like a deadly animal which may or may not be tamed, and the driver was getting out. But at first Trashcan only had eyes for the car. He knew about cars, he liked cars, even though he had never gotten so much as a learner's permit. This one was a beauty, a car someone had worked on for years, put thousands of dollars into, the kind of thing you usually only saw at funnycar shows, a labor of love.

  It was a 1932 Ford deuce coupe, but the owner had not stinted nor stopped with the usual deuce coupe customizing innovations. He had gone on and on, turning it into a parody of all American cars, a glittering science fiction vehicle with hand-painted flames billowing out of the manifold pipes. The paintjob was flake gold. The chrome headpipes, which stretched almost the whole length of the car, reflected the sun fiercely. The windshield was a convex bubble. The back tires were gigantic Goodyear Wide Ovals, the wheel-wells cut to an exaggerated height and depth to accommodate them. Growing out of the hood like a weird heating duct was a supercharger. Growing out of the roof, solid black but shot with red flecks like embers, was a steel sharkfin. Written on both sides were two words, raked backward to indicate speed. THE KID, they said.

  "Hey, youall long tall an ogly," the driver drawled, and Trash shifted his attention from the painted flames to the driver of this rolling bomb.

  He stood about five feet three inches. His hair was piled and swirled and pomaded and brilliantined. The hair alone gave him another three inches of height. The swirls all met above his collar in what was not just a duck's ass but the avatar of all the duck's ass hairdos ever affected by the punks and hoods of the world. He was wearing black boots with pointed toes. The sides were elasticized. The heels, which gave The Kid another three inches, bringing him up to a respectable five-nine total, were stacked Cubans. His pegged and faded jeans were tight enough to read the dates of the coins in his pockets. They limned each nifty little buttock into a kind of blue sculpture and made his crotch look like he'd maybe stuffed a chamois bag full of Spalding golf-balls in there. He wore a Western-style silk shirt of an off-burgundy color. It was decorated with yellow trim and imitation sapphire buttons. The cufflinks looked like polished bone, and Trash later found out that was just what they were. The Kid had two sets, one made from a pair of human molars, the other from the incisors of a Doberman pinscher. Over this wonder of a shirt, in spite of the heat of the day, he wore a black leather motorcycle jacket with an eagle on the back. It was crisscrossed with zippers, the teeth glimmering like diamonds. From the shoulder-flaps and waistbelt three rabbits' feet dangled. One was white, one brown, one bright St. Paddy's Day green. This jacket, even more wonderful than the shirt, creaked smugly with rich oil. Above the eagle, this time written in white silk thread, were the words THE KID. The face now looking up at the Trashcan Man from between the high pile of gleaming hair and the upturned collar of the gleaming motorcycle jacket was tiny and pallid, a doll's face, with heavy but flawlessly sculpted pouting lips, dead gray eyes, a wide forehead without a mark or a seam, and strange full cheeks. He looked like Baby Elvis.

  Two gunbelts were crisscrossed on his flat belly, and a giant .45 leaned out of each of the sagging holsters on his hips.

  "Hey, boy, whatchall say?" The Kid drawled.

  And the only thing Trashcan could think of to say was, "I like your car."

  It was the right thing. Maybe the only thing. Five minutes later Trash was in the passenger seat and the deuce coupe was accelerating up to The Kid's cruising speed, which was about ninety-five. The bike Trash had ridden all the way from eastern Illinois was fading to a speck on the horizon.

  Timidly, Trashcan Man suggested that at such a speed The Kid would not be able to see a wreck or a stall in the road if they came to one (they had already come to several, as a matter of fact; The Kid simply slalomed around them, the Wide Ovals shrieking unheeded protest).

  "Hey, boy," The Kid said. "I got the reflexes. I got the timin. I got three-fiffs of a second. You believe that?
"

  "Yes, sir," Trash said faintly. He felt like a man who has just used a stick to stir up a nest of snakes.

  "I like you, boy," The Kid said in his odd, droning voice. His doll's eyes stared out over the fluorescent orange steering wheel at the shimmering road. Large Styrofoam dice with death's heads for pips dangled and bounced from the rearview mirror. "Getchall a beer out'n the back seat."

  They were Coors and they were warm and Trashcan Man hated beer and he drank one fast and said how good it was.

  "Hey, boy," The Kid said. "Coors beer's the only beer. I'd piss Coors if I could. You believe that happy crappy?"

  Trashcan said he did indeed believe that happy crappy.

  "They call me The Kid. Outta Shreveport, Looseyanna. You know that? This here beast won every major carshow award in the South. You believe that happy crappy?"

  Trashcan Man said he did and got another warm beer. It seemed like the best move under the circumstances.

  "What they call you, boy?"

  "The Trashcan Man."

  "The whut?" For one horrible moment the dead doll's eyes rested on Trashcan's face. "You jokin me, boy? Ain't nobody jokes The Kid. An you better believe that happy crappy."

  "I do believe it," Trashcan said earnestly, "but that's what they call me. Because I used to light fires in people's trashcans and mailboxes and stuff. I set old lady Semple's pension check on fire. I got sent to the reformatory for it. I also burned down the Methodist Church in Powtanville, Indiana."

  "Didja?" The Kid asked, delighted. "Boy, you sound as crazy as a rat in a shithouse. That's okay. I like crazy people. I'm crazy myself. Tripped right outta my fuckin gourd. Trashcan Man, huh? I like that. We make a pair. The fucking Kid and the fucking Trashcan Man. Shake, Trash."

  The Kid offered his hand and Trash shook it as quick as he could so that The Kid could put both hands back on the wheel. They whizzed around a bend and there was a Bekins semi nearly blocking the whole highway and Trashcan put his hands over his face, prepared to make an immediate transition to the astral plane. The Kid never turned a hair. The deuce coupe skittered along the left side of the highway like a waterbug and they skinned by the cab of the truck with a coat of paint to spare.

  "Close," Trashcan said when he felt he could speak without a quaver in his voice.

  "Hey, boy," The Kid said flatly. Then one of his doll's eyes closed in a solemn wink. "Don't tell me--I'll tell you. How's that beer? Pretty fuckin gnarly, ain't it? Hits the spot after ridin that kiddy-bike, don't it?"

  "It sure does," Trashcan Man said, and took another big swallow of warm Coors. He was insane, but not yet insane enough to disagree with The Kid while he was driving. Nowhere near.

  "Well, no sense beatin around the motherfuckin bush," The Kid said, reaching back over the seat to get his own can of suds. "I guess we're goin to the same place."

  "I guess so," Trash said cautiously.

  "Gonna jine up," The Kid said. "Goin west. Gonna get in on the motherfuckin ground floor. You believe that happy crappy?"

  "I guess so."

  "You been gettin dreams about that boogeyman in the black flight-suit, ain'tcha?"

  "You mean the priest."

  "I always mean what I say an say what I mean," The Kid said flatly. "Don't tell me, ya fuckin bug, I'll tell you. It's a black flight-suit, and the guy's got goggles. Like in a John Wayne movie about Big Two. Goggles so big you can't see his motherfuckin face. Spooky old cock-knocker, ain't he?"

  "Yeah," Trashcan said, and sipped his warm beer. His head was beginning to buzz.

  The Kid hunched over the orange steering wheel and began to imitate a fighter pilot--one who had done his stuff in Big Two, presumably --in a dogfight. The deuce coupe rollercoastered alarmingly from one side of the road to the other as he imitated loops and dives and barrel rolls.

  "Neeeeyaaaahhhh ... eheheheheheh ... budda-budda-budda ... take that, ya fuckin kraut ... Cap'n! Bandits at twelve o'clock! ... Turn the air-cooled cannon on em, ya fuckin dipstick ... takka ... takka ... takka-takka-takka! We got em, sir! All clear ... How-OOOGAH! Stand down, fellers! HowOOOOOOOGAH!"

  His face gained no expression as he went through this fantasy; not a single well-oiled hair fell from grace as he jerked the car back into its lane and pounded on up the road. Trashcan Man's heart thudded heavily in his chest. A light sheen of sweat had oiled his body. He drank his beer. He had to make wee-wee.

  "But he don't scare me," The Kid said, as if the former topic of conversation had never lapsed. "Fuck no. He's a hard baby, but The Kid has handled hard babies before. I shut em up and then I shut em down, just like The Boss says. You believe that happy crappy?"

  "Sure," Trash said.

  "You dig The Boss?"

  "Sure," Trash said. He hadn't the slightest idea who The Boss was or had been.

  "Fuckin better dig The Boss. Listen, you know what I'm gonna do?"

  "Go west?" Trashcan Man hazarded. It seemed safe.

  The Kid looked impatient. "After I get there, I mean. After. You know what I'm gonna do after?"

  "No. What?"

  "I'm gonna lay low for a while. Check out the situation. Can you dig that happy crappy?"

  "Sure," Trash said.

  "Fuckin A. Don't tell me, I'll fuckin tell you. Just check it out. Check out the big man. Then ..."

  The Kid fell silent, brooding over the top of his orange steering wheel.

  "Then what?" Trashcan asked hesitantly.

  "Gonna shut him down. Send him around dead man's curve. Put him out to pasture on the motherfuckin Cadillac Ranch. You believe it?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  "I'm gonna take over," The Kid said confidently. "Gonna strip his gears and leave him at the Cadillac Ranch. You stick with me, Trashman or whatever the fuck ya call yaself. We ain't gonna eat no pork and beans. We're gonna eat more chicken than any man ever seen."

  The deuce coupe roared down the highway with painted flames shooting up from the manifold. Trashcan Man sat in the passenger seat, a warm beer in his lap and troubled in his mind.

  It was almost dawn on the morning of August 5 when Trashcan Man entered Cibola, otherwise known as Vegas. Somewhere in the last five miles he had lost his left sneaker and now, as he walked down the curving exit ramp, his footfalls sounded like this: slap-THUMP, slap-THUMP, slap-THUMP. They sounded like the flap of a flat tire.

  He was almost done in, but a little wonder came back as he made his way down the Strip, which was jammed with dead cars and quite a few dead people, most of them well picked over by the buzzards. He had made it. He was here in Cibola. He had been tested and he had passed the test.

  He saw a hundred honky-tonk nightclubs. There were signs that read LIBERAL SLOTS, signs that said BLUEBELL WEDDING CHAPEL and 60-SECOND WEDDING BUT IT'LL LAST A LIFETIME! He saw a Silver Ghost Rolls-Royce halfway through a plate glass window of an adult bookstore. He saw a naked woman hanging upside down from a lamppost. He saw two pages of the Las Vegas Sun go riming by. The headline that revealed itself over and over again as the paper flapped and turned was PLAGUE GROWS WORSE WASHINGTON MUTE. He saw a gigantic billboard which said NEIL DIAMOND! THE AMERICANA HOTEL JUNE 15-AUGUST 30! Someone had scrawled the words DIE LAS VEGAS FOR YOUR SINS! across the show window of a jewelry store seeming to specialize in nothing but wedding and engagement rings. He saw an overturned grand piano lying in the street like a large dead wooden horse. His eyes were full of these wonders.

  As he walked on he began to see other signs, their neon dead this midsummer for the first time in years. Flamingo. The Mint. Dunes. Sahara. Glass Slipper. Imperial. But where were the people? Where was the water?

  Hardly knowing what he was doing, letting his feet pick their own path, Trashcan turned off the Strip. His head dropped forward, his chin resting on his chest. He dozed as he walked. And when his feet tripped over the curbing, when he fell forward and gave himself a bloody nose on the pavement, when he looked up and beheld what was there, he could hardly believe it. Blood ran unnoticed from his
nose to his tattered blue shirt. It was as if he was still dozing and this was his dream.

  A tall white building stretched up to the desert sky, a monolith in the desert, a needle, a monument, every bit as magnificent as the Sphinx or the Great Pyramid. The windows of its eastern face gave off the fire of the rising sun like an omen. In front of this bonewhite desert edifice, flanking its entranceway, were two huge gold pyramids. Over the canopy was a great bronze medallion, and carved on it in bas-relief was the snarling head of a lion.

  Above this, also in bronze, the simple but mighty legend: MGM GRAND HOTEL.

  But what captured his eyes was what stood on the grassy quadrangle between the parking lot and the entranceway. Trashcan stared, an orgasmic shivering consuming him so fiercely that for a moment he could only prop himself on his bloody hands, the unraveling end of the Ace bandage trailing between them, and stare at the fountain with his faded blue eyes, eyes that were halfway to being glareblind by now. A little groaning noise began to escape him.

  The fountain was working. It was a gorgeous construction of stone and ivory, chased and inlaid with gold. Colored lights played over the spray, making the water purple, then yellow-orange, then red, then green. The constant ticking patter as the spray fell back into the pool was very loud.

  "Cibola," he muttered, and struggled to his feet. His nose was still dripping blood.

  He began to stagger toward the fountain. His stagger became a trot. The trot became a run, the run a sprint, the sprint a mad dash. His scabbed knees rose, pistonlike, almost to his neck. A word began to fly out of his mouth, a long word like a paper streamer that rose to the sky, bringing people to the windows high above (and who saw them? God, perhaps, or the devil, but certainly not the Trashcan Man). The word grew higher and shriller, longer and longer as he approached the fountain and that word was:

  "CIIIIIIIIBOLAAAAAAAA!"