The Stand, Page 78

  "Cross my palm with silver, O aspirant to knowledge."

  "Never mind the silver, baldy. I'll take you down to the First National Bank of Boulder tomorrow and give you a million dollars. How's that?"

  "Seriously, Stu -- what do you want to know?"

  "Same things that mute guy Andros wants to know, I guess. What's going to happen next. I don't know how to put it any better than that."

  "There's going to be a society," Glen said slowly. "What kind? Impossible to say right now. There are almost four hundred people here now. I'd guess from the rate they've been coming in -- more every day -- that by the first of September there'll be fifteen hundred of us. Forty-five hundred by the first of October, and maybe as many as eight thousand by the time the snow flies in November and closes the roads. Write that down as prediction number one."

  To Glen's amusement, Stu did indeed produce a notebook from the back pocket of his jeans and jotted down what he had just said.

  "Hard for me to believe," Stu said. "We came all the way across the country and didn't see a hundred people all told."

  "Yes, but they're coming in, aren't they?"

  "Yes... in dribs and drabs."

  "In what and whats?" Glen asked, grinning.

  "Dribs and drabs. My mother used to say that. You shitting on my mom's way of talking?"

  "The day will never come in when I lose enough respect for my own hide to shit on a Texan's mother, Stuart."

  "Well, they're comin in, sure. Ralph's in touch with five or six groups right now that will bring us up to five hundred by the end of the week."

  Glen smiled again. "Yes, and Mother Abagail sits right there with him in his 'radio station,' but she won't talk on the CB. Says she's afraid she'll get an electroshock."

  "Frannie loves that old woman," Stu said. "Part of it is because she knows so much about delivering babies, but part of it is just... loving her. You know?"

  "Yes. Most everybody feels the same."

  "Eight thousand people by winter," Stu said, returning to the original topic. "Man oh man."

  "It's just arithmetic. Let's say the flu wiped out ninety-nine percent of the population. Maybe it wasn't that bad, but let's use that figure just so we have a place to put our feet. If the flu was ninety-nine percent fatal, that means it wiped out damned near two hundred and eighteen million people, just in this country." He looked at Stu's shocked face and nodded grimly. "Maybe it wasn't that bad, but we can make a pretty good guess that figure's in the ballpark. Makes the Nazis look like pikers, doesn't it?"

  "My Lord," Stu said in a dry voice.

  "But that would still leave over two million people, a fifth of the pre-plague population of Tokyo, a fourth of the pre-plague population of New York. That's in this country alone. Now, I believe that ten percent of that two million might not have survived the aftermath of the flu. Folks who fell victims to what I'd call the aftershock. People like poor Mark Braddock with his burst appendix, but also the accidents, the suicides, yes, and murder, too. That takes us down to 1.8 million. But we suspect there's an Adversary, don't we? The dark man that we dreamed about. West of us somewhere. There are seven states over there that could legitimately be called his territory... if he really exists."

  "I guess he exists, all right," Stu said.

  "My feeling, too. But is he simply in dominion of all the people over there? I don't think so, any more than Mother Abagail is automatically in dominion over the people in the other forty-one continental United States. I think things have been in a state of slow flux and that that state of affairs is beginning to end. People are cohering. When you and I first discussed this back in New Hampshire, I envisioned dozens of little tinpot societies. What I didn't count on--because I didn't know about it -- was the all but irresistible pull of these two opposing dreams. It was a new fact that no one could have foreseen."

  "Are you saying that we'll end up with nine hundred thousand people and he'll end up with nine hundred thousand?"

  "No. First, the coming winter is going to take its toll. It's going to take it here, and it's going to be even tougher for the small groups that don't make it here before the snow. You realize we don't even have one doctor in the Free Zone yet? Our medical staff consists of a veterinarian and Mother Abagail herself, who's forgotten more valid folk medicine than you or I will ever have a chance to learn. Still, they'd look cute trying to put a steel plate in your skull after you took a fall and bashed in the back of your head, wouldn't they?"

  Stu snickered. "That ole boy Rolf Dannemont would probably drag out his Remington and let daylight through me."

  "I'd guess the total American population might be down to 1.6 million by next spring -- and that's a kind estimate. Of that number, I'd like to hope we'd get the million."

  "A million people," Stu said, awed. He looked out over the sprawling, mostly deserted city of Boulder, now brightening as the sun began to hoist itself over the flat eastern horizon. "I just can't picture that. This town would be busting at the seams."

  "Boulder couldn't hold them. I know that boggles the mind when you walk around the empty streets downtown and out toward Table Mesa, but it just couldn't. We'd have to seed the communities around us. The situation you'd have is this one giant community and the rest of the country east of here absolutely empty."

  "Why do you think we'd get most of the people?"

  "For a very unscientific reason," Glen said, riffling his tonsure of hair with one hand. "I like to believe most people are good. And I believe that whoever is running the show west of us is really bad. But I have a hunch..." He trailed off.

  "Go on, spill it."

  "I will because I'm drunk. But it stays between us, Stuart."

  "All right."

  "Your word?"

  "My word," Stu said.

  "I think he's going to get most of the techies," Glen said finally. "Don't ask me why; it's just a hunch. Except that tech people like to work in an atmosphere of tight discipline and linear goals, for the most part. They like it when the trains run on time. What we've got here in Boulder right now is mass confusion, everyone bopping along and doing his own thing... and we've got to do something about what my students would have called 'getting our shit together.' But that other fellow... I'll bet he's got the trains running on time and all his ducks in a row. And techies are just as human as the rest of us; they'll go where they're wanted the most. I've a suspicion that our Adversary wants as many as he can get. Fuck the farmers, he'd just as soon have a few men who can dust off those Idaho missile silos and get them operational again. Ditto tanks and helicopters and maybe a B-52 bomber or two just for chuckles. I doubt if he's gotten that far yet -- in fact, I'm sure of it. We'd know. Right now he's probably still concentrating on getting the power back on, re-establishing communications... maybe he's even had to indulge in a purge of the fainthearted. Rome wasn't built in a day, and he'll know that. He has time. But when I watch the sun go down at night --this is no shit, Stuart--I get scared. I don't need bad dreams to scare me anymore. All I have to do is think of them over there on the other side of the Rockies, busy as little bees."

  "What should we be doing?"

  "Should I give you a list?" Glen responded, grinning.

  Stuart gestured at his battered notebook. There were two dancers in silhouette and the words BOOGIE DOWN! on its hot pink cover. "Yup," he said.

  "You're kidding."

  "No, I ain't. You said it, Glen, we got to start getting our shit together someplace. I feel it, too. It's getting later every day. We can't just sit here jacking off and listening to the CB. We may wake up some morning to find that hardcase waltzing into Boulder at the head of an armored column, complete with air support."

  "Don't look for him tomorrow," Glen said.

  "No. But what about next May?"

  "Possible," Glen said in a low voice. "Yes, quite possible."

  "And what do you think would happen to us?"

  Glen didn't reply with words. He made an explicit little trigger-pu
lling gesture with the forefinger of his right hand and then hurriedly scoffed the last of the wine.

  "Yeah," Stu said. "So let's start getting it together. Talk."

  Glen closed his eyes. The brightening day touched his wrinkled cheeks and forehead.

  "Okay," he said. "Here it is, Stu. First: Re-create America. Little America. By fair means and by foul. Organization and government come first. If it starts now, we can form the sort of government we want. If we wait until the population triples, we are going to have grave problems.

  "Let's say we call a meeting a week from today, that would make it August eighteenth. Everyone to attend. Before the meeting there should be an ad hoc Organization Committee. A committee of seven, let us say. You, me, Andros, Fran, Harold Lauder, maybe, a couple more. The job of the committee would be to create an agenda for the August eighteenth meeting. And I can tell you right now what some of the items on that agenda should be."

  "Shoot."

  "First, reading and ratification of the Declaration of Independence. Second, r and r of the Constitution. Third, r and r of the Bill of Rights. All ratification to be done by voice vote."

  "Christ, Glen, we're all Americans--"

  "No, that's where you're wrong," Glen said, opening his eyes. They looked socketed and bloodshot. "We're a bunch of survivors with no government at all. We're a hodgepodge collection from every age group, religious group, class group, and racial group. Government is an idea, Stu. That's really all it is, once you strip away the bureaucracy and the bullshit. I'll go further. It's an inculcation, nothing but a memory path worn through the brain. What we've got going for us now is culture lag. Most of these people still believe in government by representation -- the Republic -- what they think of as 'democracy.' But culture lag never lasts long. After a while they'll start having the gut reactions: the President is dead, the Pentagon is for rent, nobody is debating anything in the House and the Senate except maybe for the termites and the cockroaches. Our people here are very soon going to wake up to the fact that the old ways are gone, and that they can restructure society any old way they want. We want -- we need -- to catch them before they wake up and do something nutty."

  He leveled his finger at Stu.

  "If someone stood up at the August eighteenth meeting and proposed that Mother Abagail be put in absolute charge, with you and me and that fellow Andros as her advisers, those people would pass the item by acclamation, blissfully unaware that they had just voted the first operating American dictatorship into power since Huey Long."

  "Oh, I can't believe that. There are college graduates here, lawyers, political activists--"

  "Maybe they used to be. Now they're just a bunch of tired, scared people who don't know what's going to happen to them. Some might squawk, but they'd shut up when you told them that Mother Abagail and her advisers were going to get the power back on in sixty days. No, Stu, it's very important that the first thing we do is ratify the spirit of the old society. That's what I meant about re-creating America. It has to be that way as long as we're operating under direct threat of the man we're calling the Adversary."

  "Go on."

  "All right. The next item on the agenda would be that we run the government like a New England township. Perfect democracy. As long as we're relatively small, it'll work fine. Only instead of a board of selectmen we'll have seven... representatives, I guess. Free Zone Representatives. How does that sound?"

  "It sounds fine."

  "I think so, too. And we'll see to it that the people who get elected are the same people who were on the ad hoc committee. We'll put the rush on everybody and get the vote taken before people can do any tub-thumping for their friends. We can handpick people to nominate us and then second us. The vote'll go through as slick as shit through a goose."

  "That's neat," Stu said admiringly.

  "Sure," Glen said glumly. "If you want to short-circuit the democratic process, ask a sociologist."

  "What's next?"

  "This is going to be very popular. The item would read: 'Resolved: Mother Abagail is to be given absolute veto power over any action proposed by the Board.' "

  "Jesus! Will she agree to that?"

  "I think so. But I don't think she'd ever be apt to exercise her veto power, not in any circumstance I can foresee. We just can't expect to have a workable government here unless we make her its titular head. She's the thing we all have in common. We've all had a paranormal experience that revolves around her. And she has a ... a kind of aura about her. People all use the same loose bunch of adjectives to describe her: good, kind, old, wise, clever, nice. These people have had one dream that frightens the bejesus out of them and one that makes them feel safe and secure. They love and trust the source of the good dream all the more because of the dream that frightened them. And we can make it clear to her that she's our leader in name only. I think that's how she'd want it. She's old, tired..."

  Stu was shaking his head. "She's old and tired, but she sees this problem of the dark man as a religious crusade, Glen. And she's not the only one, either. You know that."

  "You mean she might decide to take the bit in her teeth?"

  "Maybe that wouldn't be so bad," Stu remarked. "After all, it was her we dreamed of, not a Representative Board."

  Glen was shaking his head. "No, I can't accept the idea that we're all pawns in some post-Apocalypse game of good and evil, dreams or not. Goddammit, it's irrational!"

  Stu shrugged. "Well, let's not get bogged down in it now. I think your idea of giving her veto power is a good one. In fact, I don't think it goes far enough. We ought to give her the power to propose as well as dispose."

  "But not absolute power on that side of the slate," Glen said hastily.

  "No, her ideas would have to be ratified by the Representative Board," Stu said, and then added slyly: "But we might find ourselves a rubber stamp for her instead of the other way around."

  There was a long silence. Glen had put his forehead into one hand. At last he said, "Yeah, you're right. She can't just be a figurehead... at the very least we have to accept the possibility that she may have her own ideas. And that's where I pack up my cloudy crystal ball, East Texas. Because she's what those of us who ride the sociology range call other-directed. "

  "Who's the other?"

  "God? Thor? Allah? Pee-wee Herman? It doesn't matter. What it means is that what she says won't necessarily be directed by what this society needs or by what its mores turn out to be. She'll be listening to some other voice. Like Joan of Arc. What you've made me see is that we just might wind up with a theocracy on our hands here."

  "Theoc-what?"

  "On a God trip," Glen said. He didn't sound too happy about it. "When you were a little boy, Stu, did you ever dream that you might grow up to be one of seven high priests and/or priestesses to a one-hundred-and-eight-year-old black woman from Nebraska?"

  Stu stared at him. Finally he said: "Is there any more of that wine?"

  "All gone."

  "Shit."

  "Yes," Glen said. They studied each other's face in silence and then suddenly burst out laughing.

  It was surely the nicest house Mother Abagail had ever lived in, and sitting here on the screened-in porch put her in mind of a traveling salesman who had come around Hemingford back in 1936 or '37. Why, he had been the sweetest-talking fellow she had ever met in her life; he could have charmed the birdies right down from the trees. She had asked this young man, Mr. Donald King by name, what his business was with Abby Freemantle, and he had replied: "My business, ma'am, is pleasure. Your pleasure. Do you like to read? Listen to the radio, perchance? Or maybe just put your tired old dogs up on a foot hassock and listen to the world as it rolls down the great bowling alley of the universe?"

  She had admitted she enjoyed all those things, not admitting that the Motorola had been sold a month before to pay for ninety bales of hay.

  "Well, those are the things I'm selling," this sweet-talking road-merchant had told her. "It may be calle
d an Electrolux vacuum cleaner complete with all the attachments, but what it really is, is spare time. Plug her in and you open up whole new vistas of relaxation for yourself. And the payments are almost as easy as your housework's going to be."

  They had been deep in the Depression then, she hadn't even been able to raise twenty cents for hair ribbons for her granddaughters' birthdays, and there was no chance for that Electrolux. But say, didn't that Mr. Donald King of Peru, Indiana, talk sweet. My! She had never seen him again, but she had never forgotten his name, either. She just bet he had gone on to break some white lady's heart. She never did own a vacuum cleaner until the end of the Nazi war, when it seemed like all of a sudden anybody could afford anything and even poor white trash had a Mercury hidden away in their back shed.

  Now this house, which Nick had told her was in the Mapleton Hill section of Boulder (Mother Abagail just bet there hadn't been many blacks living up here before the smiting plague), had every gadget she'd ever heard of and some she hadn't. Dishwasher. Two vacuums, one strictly for the upstairs work. Dispos-All in the sink. Microwave oven. Clothes washer and dryer. There was a gadget in the kitchen, looked like nothing more than a steel box, and Nick's good friend Ralph Brentner told her it was a "trash masher," and you could put about a hundred pounds of swill into it and get back a little block of garbage about the size of a footstool. Wonders never ceased.

  But come to think of it, some of them had.

  Sitting, rocking on the porch, her eye happened to fall upon an electrical plug-in plate set into the baseboard. Probably so folks could come out here in the summertime and listen to the radio or even have the baseball on that cute little round TV. Nothing in the whole country more common than those little wall-plates with the prong-slits in them. She'd even had them back in her squatter's shack in Hemingford. You didn't think nothing of those plates... unless they didn't work anymore. Then you realized that one hell of a lot of a person's life came out of them. All that spare time, that pleasure which the long-ago Don King had extolled her on ... it came out of those switchplates set into the wall. With their potency taken away, you might as well use all those gadgets like the microwave oven and the "trash masher" to hang your hat and coat on.