The Stand

  He rested as easily as he could, trying to make himself ready.

  The van stopped and the doors were thrown open. Bright sunlight poured in, making him and Ralph blink dazedly. Rat-Man and Burlson hopped inside. Pouring in with the sunlight was a sound--a low, rustling murmur that made Ralph cock his head warily. But Larry knew what that sound was.

  In 1986 the Tattered Remnants had played their biggest gig--opening for Van Halen at Chavez Ravine. And the sound just before they went on had been like this sound. And so when he stepped out of the van he knew what to expect, and his face didn't change, although he heard Ralph's thin gasp beside him.

  They were on the lawn of a huge hotel-casino. The entrance was flanked by two golden pyramids. Drawn up on the grass were two flatbed trucks. On each flatbed was a cage constructed of steel piping.

  Surrounding them were people.

  They spread out across the lawn in a rough circle. They were standing in the casino parking lot, on the steps leading up to the lobby doors, in the turnaround drive where incoming guests had once parked while the doorman whistled up a bellhop. They spilled out into the street itself. Some of the younger men had hoisted their girlfriends on their shoulders for a better look at the upcoming festivities. The low murmuring was the sound of the crowd-animal.

  Larry ran his eyes over them, and every eye he met turned away. Every face seemed pallid, distant, marked for death and seeming to know it. Yet they were here.

  He and Ralph were nudged toward the cages, and as they went, Larry noticed the cars with their chains and trailer hitches. But it was Ralph who understood the implication. He had, after all, spent most of his life working with and around machinery.

  "Larry," he said in a dry voice. "They're going to pull us to pieces!"

  "Go on, get in," Rat-Man said, breathing a stale odor of garlic into his face. "Get on up there, Wonder Bread. You and your friend goan ride the tiger."

  Larry climbed onto the flatbed.

  "Gimme your shirt, Wonder Bread."

  Larry took off his shirt and stood barechested, the morning air cool and kind on his skin. Ralph had already taken off his. A ripple of conversation went through the crowd and died. They were both terribly thin from their walk; each rib was clearly visible.

  "Get in that cage, graymeat."

  Larry backed into the cage.

  Now it was Barry Dorgan giving the orders. He went from place to place, checking arrangements, a set expression of disgust on his face.

  The four drivers got into the cars and started them up. Ralph stood blankly for a moment, then seized one of the welded handcuffs that dangled into his cage and threw it out through the small hole. It hit Paul Burlson on the head, and a nervous titter ran through the crowd.

  Dorgan said, "You don't want to do that, fella. I'll just have to send some guys to hold you."

  "Let them do their thing," Larry said to Ralph. He looked down at Dorgan. "Hey, Barry. Did they teach you this one in the Santa Monica P.D.?"

  Another laugh rippled through the crowd. "Police brutality!" some daring soul cried. Dorgan flushed but said nothing. He fed the chains farther into Larry's cell and Larry spit on them, a little surprised that he had enough saliva to do it. A small cheer went up from the back of the crowd and Larry thought, Maybe this is it, maybe they're going to rise up--

  But his heart didn't believe it. Their faces were too pale, too secretive. The defiance from the back was meaningless. It was the sound of kids cutting up in a studyhall, no more than that. There was doubt here--he could feel it--and disaffection. But Flagg colored even that. These people would steal away in the dead of night for some of the great empty space that the world had become. And the Walkin Dude would let them go, knowing he only had to keep a hard core, people like Dorgan and Burlson. The runners and midnight creepers could be gathered up later, perchance to pay the price of their imperfect faith. There would be no open rebellion here.

  Dorgan, Rat-Man, and a third man crowded their way into the cage with him. Rat-Man was holding the cuffs welded to the chains open for Larry's wrists.

  "Put out your arms," Dorgan said.

  "Isn't law and order a wonderful thing, Barry?"

  "Put them out, goddammit!"

  "You don't look well, Dorgan--how's your heart these days?"

  "I'm telling you for the last time, my friend. Put your arms out through those holes!"

  Larry did it. The cuffs were slipped on and locked. Dorgan and the others backed out and the door was shut. Larry looked right and saw Ralph standing in his cage, head down, arms at his sides. His wrists had also been cuffed.

  "You people know this is wrong!" Larry cried, and his voice, trained by years of singing, rolled out of his chest with surprising strength. "I don't expect you to stop it, but I do expect you to remember it! We're being put to death because Randall Flagg is afraid of us! He's afraid of us and the people we came from!" A rising murmur ran through the crowd. "Remember the way we die! And remember that next time it may be your turn to die this way, with no dignity, just an animal in a cage!"

  That low murmur again, rising and angry ... and the silence.

  "Larry!" Ralph called out.

  Flagg was coming down the steps of the Grand, Lloyd Henreid beside him. Flagg was wearing jeans, a checked shirt, his jeans jacket with the two buttons on the breast pockets, and his rundown cowboy boots. In the sudden hush the sound of those bootheels clocking their way down the cement path was the only sound ... a sound out of time.

  The dark man was grinning.

  Larry stared down at him. Flagg came to a halt between the two cages and stood looking up. His grin was darkly charming. He was a man completely in control, and Larry suddenly knew this was his watershed moment, the apotheosis of his life.

  Flagg turned away from them and faced his people. He passed his eyes over them, and no eye would meet his. "Lloyd," he said quietly, and Lloyd, who looked pale, haunted, and sickly, handed Flagg a paper that had been rolled up like a scroll.

  The dark man unrolled it, held it up, and began to speak. His voice was deep, sonorous, and pleasing, spreading in the stillness like a single silver ripple on a black pond. "Know you that this is a true bill to which I, Randall Flagg, have put my name on this thirtieth day of September, the year nineteen hundred and ninety, now known as The Year One, year of the plague."

  "Flagg's not your name!" Ralph roared. There was a shocked murmur from the crowd. "Why don't you tell em your real name?"

  Flagg took no notice.

  "Know you that these men, Lawson Underwood and Ralph Brentner, are spies, here in Las Vegas with no good intent but rather with seditious motives, who have entered this state with stealth, and under cover of darkness--"

  "That's pretty good," Larry said, "since we were coming down Route 70 in broad daylight." He raised his voice to a shout. "They took us at noon on the Interstate, how's that for stealth and under cover of darkness?"

  Flagg bore through this patiently, as if he felt that Larry and Ralph had every right to answer the charges ... not that it was going to make any ultimate difference.

  Now he continued: "Know you that the cohorts of these men were responsible for the sabotage bombing of the helicopters at Indian Springs, and therefore responsible for the deaths of Carl Hough, Bill Jamieson, and Cliff Benson. They are guilty of murder."

  Larry's eyes touched those of a man standing on the front rim of the crowd. Although Larry did not know it, this was Stan Bailey, Operations Chief at Indian Springs. He saw a haze of bewilderment and surprise cover the man's face, and saw him mouthing something ridiculous that looked like Can Man.

  "Know you that the cohorts of these men have sent other spies among us and they have been killed. It is the sentence then that these men shall be put to death in an appropriate manner, to wit, that they shall be pulled apart. It is the duty and the responsibility of each of you to witness this punishment, so you may remember it and tell others what you have seen here today."

  Flagg's grin f
lashed out, meant to be solicitous in this instance, but still no more warm and human than a shark's grin.

  "Those of you with children are excused."

  He turned toward the cars, which were now idling, sending out small puffs of exhaust into the morning. As he did so, there was a commotion near the front of the crowd. Suddenly a man pushed through into the clearing. He was a big man, his face nearly as pallid as his cook's whites. The dark man had handed the scroll back to Lloyd, and Lloyd's hands jerked convulsively when Whitney Horgan pushed into the clear. There was a clear ripping sound as the scroll tore in half.

  "Hey, you people!" Whitney cried.

  A confused murmur ran through the crowd. Whitney was shaking all over, as if with a palsy. His head kept jerking toward the dark man and then away again. Flagg regarded Whitney with a ferocious smile. Dorgan started toward the cook, and Flagg motioned him back.

  "This ain't right!" Whitney yelled. "You know it ain't!"

  Dead silence from the crowd. They might all have been turned to gravestones.

  Whitney's throat worked convulsively. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down like a monkey on a stick.

  "We was Americans once!" Whitney cried at last. "This ain't how Americans act. I wasn't so much, I'll tell you that, nothin but a cook, but I know this ain't how Americans act, listening to some murderin freak in cowboy boots--"

  A horrified, rustling gasp came from these new Las Vegans. Larry and Ralph exchanged a puzzled glance.

  "That's what he is!" Whitney insisted. The sweat was running down his face like tears from the brushy edges of his flattop haircut. "You wanna watch these two guys ripped in two right in front of you, huh? You think that's the way to start a new life? You think a thing like that can ever be right? I tell you you'll have nightmares about it for the rest of your lives!"

  The crowd murmured its assent.

  "We got to stop this," Whitney said. "You know it? We got to have time to think about what ... what ..."

  "Whitney." That voice, smooth as silk, little more than a whisper, but enough to silence the cook's faltering voice completely. He turned toward Flagg, lips moving soundlessly, his eye as fixed as a mackerel's. Now the sweat was pouring down his face in torrents.

  "Whitney, you should have kept still." His voice was soft, but still it carried easily to every ear. "I would have let you go ... why would I want you?"

  Whitney's lips moved, but still no sound came out.

  "Come here, Whitney."

  "No," Whitney whispered, and no one heard his demurral except Lloyd and Ralph and Larry and possibly Barry Dorgan. Whitney's feet moved as if they had not heard his mouth. His sprung and mushy black loafers whispered through the grass and he moved toward the dark man like a ghost.

  The crowd had become a slack jaw and staring eye.

  "I knew about your plans," the dark man said. "I knew what you meant to do before you did. And I would have let you crawl away until I was ready to take you back. Maybe in a year, maybe in ten. But that's all behind you now, Whitney. Believe it."

  Whitney found his voice one last time, his words rushing out in a strangled scream. "You ain't a man at all! You're some kind of a ... a devil!"

  Flagg stretched out the index finger of his left hand so that it almost touched Whitney Horgan's chin. "Yes, that's right," he said so softly that no one but Lloyd and Larry Underwood heard. "I am."

  A blue ball of fire no bigger than the Ping-Pong ball Leo was endlessly bouncing leaped from the tip of Flagg's finger with a faint ozone crackle.

  An autumn wind of sighs went through those watching.

  Whitney screamed--but didn't move. The ball of fire lit on his chin. There was a sudden cloying smell of burning flesh. The ball moved across his mouth, fusing his lips shut, locking the scream behind Whitney's bulging eyes. It crossed one cheek, digging a charred and instantly cauterized trench.

  It closed his eyes.

  It paused above his forehead and Larry heard Ralph speaking, saying the same thing over and over, and Larry joined his voice to Ralph's, making it a litany: "I will fear no evil ... I will fear no evil ... I will fear no evil ..."

  The ball of fire rolled up from Whitney's forehead and now there was a hot smell of burning hair. It rolled toward the back of his head, leaving a grotesque bald strip behind it. Whitney swayed on his feet for a moment and then fell over, mercifully facedown.

  The crowd released a long, sibilant sound: Aaaahhhh. It was the sound people had made on the Fourth of July when the fireworks display had been particularly good. The ball of blue fire hung in the air, bigger now, too bright to look at without slitting the eyes. The dark man pointed at it and it moved slowly toward the crowd. Those in the front row--a whey-faced Jenny Engstrom was among them--shrank back.

  In a thundering voice, Flagg challenged them. "Is there anyone else here who disagrees with my sentence? If so, let him speak now!"

  Deep silence greeted this.

  Flagg seemed satisfied. "Then let--"

  Heads began to turn away from him suddenly. A surprised murmur ran through the crowd, then rose to a babble. Flagg seemed completely caught by surprise. Now people in the crowd began to cry out, and while it was impossible to make out the words clearly, the tone was one of wonder and surprise. The ball of fire dipped and spun uncertainly.

  The humming sound of an electric motor came to Larry's ears. And again he caught that puzzling name tossed from mouth to mouth, never clear, never all of one piece: Man ... Can Man ... Trash ... Trashy ...

  Someone was coming through the crowd, as if in answer to the dark man's challenge.

  Flagg felt terror seep into the chambers of his heart. It was a terror of the unknown and the unexpected. He had foreseen everything, even Whitney's foolish spur-of-the-moment speech. He had foreseen everything but this. The crowd -- his crowd -- was parting, peeling back. There was a scream, high, clear, and freezing. Someone broke and ran. Then someone else. And then the crowd, already on an emotional hairtrigger, broke and stampeded.

  "Hold still!" Flagg cried at the top of his voice, but it was useless. The crowd had become a strong wind, and not even the dark man could stop the wind. Terrible, impotent rage rose in him, joining the fear and making some new and volatile mix. It had gone wrong again. In the last minute it had somehow gone wrong, like the old lawyer in Oregon, the woman slitting her throat on the windowglass ... and Nadine ... Nadine falling ...

  They ran, scattering to all the points of the compass, pounding across the lawn of the MGM Grand, across the street, toward the Strip. They had seen the final guest, arrived at last like some grim vision out of a horror tale. They had seen, perhaps, the raddled face of some final awful retribution.

  And they had seen what the returning wanderer had brought with him.

  As the crowd melted, Randall Flagg also saw, as did Larry and Ralph and a frozen Lloyd Henreid, who was still holding the torn scroll in his hands.

  It was Donald Merwin Elbert, now known as the Trashcan Man, now and forever, world without end, hallelujah, amen.

  He was behind the wheel of a long, dirty electric cart. The cart's heavy-duty bank of batteries was nearly drained dry. The cart was humming and buzzing and lurching. Trashcan Man bobbed back and forth on the open seat like a mad marionette.

  He was in the last stages of radiation sickness. His hair was gone. His arms, poking out of the tatters of his shirt, were covered with open running sores. His face was a cratered red soup from which one desert-faded blue eye peered with a terrible, pitiful intelligence. His teeth were gone. His nails were gone. His eyelids were frayed flaps.

  He looked like a man who had driven his electric cart out of the dark and burning subterranean mouth of hell itself.

  Flagg watched him come, frozen. His smile was gone. His high, rich color was gone. His face was suddenly a window made of pale clear glass.

  Trashcan Man's voice bubbled ecstatically up from his thin chest: "I brought it ... I brought you the fire ... please ... I'm sorry ..."

/>   It was Lloyd who moved. He took one step forward, then another. "Trashy ... Trash, baby ..." His voice was a croak.

  That single eye moved, painfully seeking Lloyd out. "Lloyd? That you?"

  "It's me, Trash." Lloyd was shaking violently all over, the way Whitney had been shaking. "Hey, what you got there? Is it--"

  "It's the Big One," Trash said happily. "It's the A-bomb." He began to rock back and forth on the seat of the electric cart like a convert at a revival meeting. "The A-bomb, the Big One, the big fire, my life for you!"

  "Take it away, Trash," Lloyd whispered. "It's dangerous. It's ... it's hot. Take it away ..."

  "Make him get rid of it, Lloyd," the dark man who was now the pale man whined. "Make him take it back where he got it. Make him--"

  Trashcan's one operative eye grew puzzled. "Where is he?" he asked, and then his voice rose to an agonized howl. "Where is he? He's gone! Where is he? What did you do to him?"

  Lloyd made one last supreme effort. "Trash, you've got to get rid of that thing. You--"

  And suddenly Ralph shrieked: "Larry! Larry! The Hand of God!" Ralph's face was transported in a terrible joy. His eyes shone. He was pointing into the sky.

  Larry looked up. He saw the ball of electricity Flagg had flicked from the end of his finger. It had grown to a tremendous size. It hung in the sky, jittering toward Trashcan Man, giving off sparks like hair. Larry realized dimly that the air was now so full of electricity that every hair on his own body was standing on end.

  And the thing in the sky did look like a hand.

  "Noooo!" the dark man wailed.

  Larry looked at him ... but Flagg was no longer there. He had a bare impression of something monstrous standing in front of where Flagg had been. Something slumped and hunched and almost without shape-- something with enormous yellow eyes slit by dark cat's pupils.

  Then it was gone.

  Larry saw Flagg's clothes--the jacket, the jeans, the boots--standing upright with nothing in them. For a split second they held the shape of the body that had been inside them. And then they collapsed.

  The crackling blue fire in the air rushed at the yellow electric cart that Trashcan Man had somehow driven back from the Nellis Range. He had lost hair and thrown up blood and finally vomited out his own teeth as the radiation sickness sank deeper and deeper into him, yet he had never faltered in his resolve to bring it back to the dark man ... you could say that he had never flagged in his determination.