The Stand Read online

  Heads were nodding, and that excited hum of conversation broke out again. Stu thought they sounded like boys who had just discovered sex, were comparing notes, and were excited to find that all reports put the receptacle in approximately the same place. He covered a slight grin with his hand, and reminded himself to save that one for Fran later on.

  "This Flagg is in the West," Glen continued. "Equal numbers of people have 'seen' him in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland. Some people--Mother Abagail was among them--claim that Flagg is crucifying people who step out of line. All of them seem to believe that there is a confrontation shaping up between this man and ourselves, and that Flagg will stick at nothing to bring us down. And sticking at nothing includes quite a lot. Armored force. Nuclear weapons. Perhaps ... plague."

  "I'd like to catch hold of that dirty bastard!" Rich Moffat called shrilly. "I'd give him a dose of the everfucking plague!"

  There was a tension-relieving burst of laughter, and Rich got a hand. Glen grinned easily. He had given Rich his cue and his line half an hour before the meeting, and Rich had delivered admirably. Old baldy had been right as rain about one thing, Stu was discovering: a background in sociology often came in handy at large meetings.

  "All right, I've outlined what I know about him," he went on. "My last contribution before throwing the meeting open to discussion is this: I think Stu is right in telling you that we have to deal with Harold and Nadine in a civilized way if they're caught, but like him, I think that is unlikely. Also like him, I believe they did what they did on this man Flagg's orders."

  His words rang out strongly in the hall.

  "This man has got to be dealt with. George Richardson told you mysticism isn't his field of study. It isn't mine, either. But I tell you this: I think that dying old woman somehow represents the forces of good as much as Flagg represents the forces of evil. I think that whatever power controls her used her to bring us together. I don't think that power intends to forsake us now. Maybe we need to talk it over and let some air into those nightmares. Maybe we need to begin deciding what we're going to do about him. But he can't just walk into this Zone next spring and take over, not if you people are standing watch. Now I'll turn the meeting back to Stu, who'll chair the discussion."

  His last sentence was lost in a crash of applause, and Glen went back to his seat feeling pleased. He had stirred them with a big stick ... or was the phrase played them like a violin? It didn't really matter. They were more mad than scared, they were ready for a challenge (although they might not be so eager next April, after they'd had a long winter to cool off in) ... and most of all, they were ready to talk.

  And talk they did, for the next three hours. A few people left as midnight came and went, but not many. As Larry had suspected, no good hard advice came out of it. There were wild suggestions: a bomber and/ or a nuclear stockpile of their own, a summit meeting, a trained hit squad. There were few practical ideas.

  For the final hour, person after person stood up and recited his or her dream, to the seemingly endless fascination of the others. Stu was once again reminded of the endless bull sessions about sex he had participated in (mostly as a listener) during his teenage years.

  Glen was both amazed and heartened by their growing willingness to talk, and by the charged atmosphere of excitement that had taken over the dull blankness with which they had begun the meeting. A large catharsis, long overdue, was going on, and he was also reminded of sex-talk, but in a different way. They talk like people, he thought, who have kept the huddled-up secrets of their guilts and inadequacies to themselves for a long time, only to discover that these things, when verbalized, were only life-sized after all. When the inner terror sowed in sleep was finally harvested in this marathon public discussion, the terror became more manageable ... perhaps even conquerable.

  The meeting broke up at one-thirty in the morning, and Glen left it with Stu, feeling good for the first time since Nick's death. He left feeling they had gone the first hard steps out of themselves and toward whatever battleground there would be.

  He felt hope.

  The power went on at noon on September 5, as Brad had promised.

  The air raid siren atop of the County Courthouse went on with a huge, braying whoop, scaring many people into the streets, where they looked wildly up into the blameless blue sky for a glimpse of the dark man's air force. Some ran for their cellars, where they stayed until Brad found a fused switch and turned the siren off. Then they came up, shamefaced.

  There was an electrical fire on Willow Street, and a group of a dozen volunteer firepeople promptly rushed over and put it out. A manhole cover exploded into the air at the Broadway-and-Walnut intersection, went nearly fifty feet, and came down on the roof of the Oz Toyshop like a great rusty tiddledywink.

  There was a single fatality on what the Zone came to call Power Day. For some unknown reason, an auto-body shop on outer Pearl Street exploded. Rich Moffat was sitting in a doorway across the street with a bottle of Jack Daniel's in his newsboy's pouch, and a flying panel of corrugated steel siding struck him and killed him instantly. He would break no more plate-glass windows.

  Stu was with Fran when the fluorescents buzzed into life in the ceiling of her hospital room. He watched them flicker, flicker, flicker, and finally catch with the old familiar light. He was unable to look away until they had been glowing solidly for nearly three minutes. When he looked at Frannie again, her eyes were shiny with tears.

  "Fran? What's wrong? Is it the pain?"

  "It's Nick," she said. "It's so wrong that Nick isn't alive to see this. Hold me, Stu. I want to pray for him if I can. I want to try."

  He held her, but didn't know if she prayed or not. He suddenly found himself missing Nick very much, and hating Harold Lauder more than he ever had before. Fran was right. Harold had not just killed Nick and Sue; he had stolen their light.

  "Shh," he said. "Frannie, shh."

  But she cried for a long time. When the tears were finally gone, he used the button to raise her bed and turned on the night table lamp so she could see to read.

  Stu was being shaken awake, and it took him a long time to come all the way around. His mind ran over a slow and seemingly endless list of people who might be trying to rob his sleep. It was his mother, telling him it was time to get up and light the stoves and get ready for school. It was Manuel, the bouncer in that sleazy little Nuevo Laredo whorehouse, telling him his twenty dollars was used up and it would be another twenty if he wanted to stay all night. It was a nurse in a white all-over suit who wanted to take his blood pressure and a throat culture. It was Frannie.

  It was Randall Flagg.

  The last thought brought him up like a dash of cold water in the face. It was none of those people. It was Glen Bateman, with Kojak at his knee.

  "You're a hard man to wake up, East Texas," Glen said. "Like a stone post." He was only a vague shape in nearly total darkness.

  "Well, you could have turned on the damn light to start with."

  "You know, I clean forgot all about that."

  Stu switched on the lamp, squinted against the sudden bright light, and peered owlishly at the wind-up alarm clock. It was quarter to three in the morning.

  "What are you doing here, Glen? I was sleepin, in case you didn't happen to notice."

  He got his first good look at Glen as he put the clock down. He looked pale, scared ... and old. The lines were drawn deeply into his face and he looked haggard.

  "What is it?"

  "Mother Abagail," Glen said quietly.

  "Dead?"

  "God help me, I almost wish she were. She's awake. She wants us."

  "The two of us?"

  "The five of us. She--" His voice roughened, went hoarse. "She knew Nick and Susan were dead, and she knew Fran was in the hospital. I don't know how, but she did."

  "And she wants the committee?"

  "What's left of it. She's dying and she says she has to tell us something. And I don't know if I want
to hear it."

  Outside the night was cold--not just chilly but cold. The jacket Stu had pulled from the closet felt good, and he zipped it all the way to the neck. A frosty moon hung overhead, making him think of Tom, who had instructions to come back to them and report when the moon was full. This moon was just a trifle past the first quarter. God knew where that moon was looking down on Tom, on Dayna Jurgens, on Judge Farris. God knew it was looking down on strange doings here.

  "I got Ralph up first," Glen said. "Told him to go over to the hospital and get Fran."

  "If the doctor wanted her up and around, he would have sent her home," Stu said angrily.

  "This is a special case, Stu."

  "For someone who doesn't want to hear what that old woman has to say, you seem to be in an all-fired hurry to get to her."

  "I'm afraid not to," Glen said.

  The jeep drew up in front of Larry's house at ten minutes past three. The place was blazing with light--not gaslamps now, but good electric lights. Every second streetlamp was on, too, not just here but all over town, and Stu had stared at them all the way over in Glen's jeep, fascinated. The last of the summer bugs, sluggish with the cold, were beating lackadaisically against the sodium globes.

  They got out of the jeep just as headlights swung around the corner. It was Ralph's clattering old truck, and it pulled up nose to nose with the jeep. Ralph got out, and Stu went quickly around to the passenger side, where Frannie sat with her back resting against a plaid sofa cushion.

  "Hey, babe," he said softly.

  She took his hand. Her face was a pale disk in the darkness.

  "Bad pain?" Stu asked.

  "Not so bad. I took some Advil. Just don't ask me to do the hustle."

  He helped her out of the truck and Ralph took her other arm. They both saw her wince as she stepped away from the cab.

  "Want me to carry you?"

  "I'll be fine. Just keep your arm around me, huh?"

  "Sure will."

  "And walk slow. Us grammies can't go very fast."

  They crossed behind Ralph's truck, more shuffling than walking. When they reached the sidewalk, Stu saw Glen and Larry standing in the doorway, watching them. Against the light they looked like figures cut from black construction paper.

  "What is it, do you think?" Frannie murmured.

  Stu shook his head. "I don't know."

  They got up the walk, Frannie very obviously in pain now, and Ralph helped Stu get her in. Larry, like Glen, looked pale and worried. He was wearing faded jeans, a shirt that was untucked and buttoned wrong at the bottom, and expensive mocs on bare feet.

  "I'm sorry like hell to have to get you out," he said. "I was in with her, dozing off and on. We've been keeping watch. You understand?"

  "Yes. I understand," Frannie said. For some reason the phrase keeping watch made her think of her mother's parlor ... and in a kinder, more forgiving light than she had ever thought of it before.

  "Lucy had been in bed about an hour. I snapped out of my doze, and --Fran, can I help you?"

  Fran shook her head and smiled with an effort. "No, I'm fine. Go on".

  "--and she was looking at me. She can't talk above a whisper, but she's perfectly understandable." Larry swallowed. All five of them were now standing in the hallway. "She told me the Lord was going to take her home at the sunrise. But that she had to talk to those of us God hadn't taken first. I asked her what she meant and she said God had taken Nick and Susan. She knew." He let out a ragged breath and ran his hands through his long hair.

  Lucy appeared at the end of the hall. "I made coffee. It's here when you want it."

  "Thank you, love," Larry said.

  Lucy looked uncertain. "Should I come in with you folks? Or is it private, like the committee?"

  Larry looked at Stu, who said quietly, "Come on along. I got an idea that stuff don't cut ice anymore."

  They went up the hall to the bedroom, moving slowly to accommodate Fran.

  "She'll tell us," Ralph said suddenly. "Mother will tell us. No sense fretting."

  They went in together, and Mother Abagail's bright, dying gaze fell upon them.

  Fran knew about the old woman's physical condition, but it was still a nasty shock. There was nothing left of her but a pemmican-tough membrane of skin and tendon binding her bones. There was not even a smell of putrescence and oncoming death in the room; instead there was a dry attic smell ... no, a parlor smell. Half the length of the IV needle hung out of her flesh, simply because there was nowhere for it to go.

  Yet the eyes had not changed. They were warm and kind and human. That was a relief, but Fran still felt a kind of terror ... not strictly fear, but perhaps something more sanctified--awe. Was it awe? An impending feeling. Not doom, but as though some dreadful responsibility was poised above their heads like a stone.

  Man proposes--God disposes.

  "Little girl, sit down," Mother Abagail whispered. "You're in pain."

  Larry led her to an armchair and Fran sat down with a thin, whistling sigh of relief, although she knew even sitting would pain her after a while.

  Mother Abagail was still watching her with those bright eyes.

  "You're quick with child," she whispered.

  "Yes ... how ..."

  "Shhhhh ..."

  Silence fell in the room, deep silence. Fascinated, hypnotized, Fran looked at the dying old woman who had been in their dreams before she had been in their lives.

  "Look out the window, little girl."

  Fran turned her face to the window, where Larry had stood and looked out at the gathered people two days before. She saw not pressing darkness but a quiet light. It was not a reflection of the room; it was morning light. She was looking at the faint, slightly distorted reflection of a bright nursery with ruffled check curtains. There was a crib--but it was empty. There was a playpen--empty. A mobile of bright plastic butterflies-- moved only by the wind. Dread clapped its cold hands around her heart. The others saw it on her face but did not understand it; they saw nothing through the window but a section of lawn lit by a streetlight.

  "Where's the baby?" Fran asked hoarsely.

  "Stuart is not the baby's father, little girl. But his life is in Stuart's hands, and in God's. This chap will have four fathers. If God lets him draw breath at all."

  "If he draws--"

  "God has hidden that from my eyes," she whispered.

  The empty nursery was gone. Fran saw only darkness. And now dread closed its hands into fists, her heart beating between them.

  Mother Abagail whispered: "The Imp has called his bride, and he means to put her with child. Will he let your child live?"

  "Stop it," Frannie moaned. She put her hands over her face.

  Silence, deep silence like snow in the room. Glen Bateman's face was an old dull searchlight. Lucy's right hand worked slowly up and down the neck of her bathrobe. Ralph had his hat in his hands, picking absently at the feather in the band. Stu looked at Frannie, but could not go to her. Not now. He thought fleetingly of the woman at the meeting, the one who had put her hands rapidly over her eyes, ears, and mouth at the mention of the dark man's name.

  "Mother, father, wife, husband," Mother Abagail whispered. "Set against them, the Prince of High Places, the lord of dark mornings. I sinned in pride. So have you all, all sinned in pride. Ain't you heard it said, put not your faith in the lords and princes of this world?"

  They watched her.

  "Electric lights ain't the answer, Stu Redman. CB radio ain't it, either, Ralph Brentner. Sociology won't end it, Glen Bateman. And you doin penance for a life that's long since a closed book won't stop it from coming, Larry Underwood. And your boy-child won't stop it either, Fran Goldsmith. The bad moon has risen. You propose nothing in the sight of God."

  She looked at each of them in turn. "God will dispose as He sees fit. You are not the potter but the potter's clay. Mayhap the man in the West is the wheel on which you will be broken. I am not allowed to know."

  A te
ar, amazing in that dying desert, stole from her left eye and rolled down her cheek.

  "Mother, what should we do?" Ralph asked.

  "Draw near, all of you. My time is short. I'm going home to glory, and there's never been no human more ready than I am now. Get close to me".

  Ralph sat on the edge of the bed. Larry and Glen stood at the foot of it. Fran got up with a grimace, and Stu dragged her chair up beside Ralph. She sat down again and took his hand with her own cold fingers.

  "God didn't bring you folks together to make a committee or a community," she said. "He brought you here only to send you further, on a quest. He means for you to try and destroy this Dark Prince, this Man of Far Leagues."

  Ticking silence. In it, Mother Abagail sighed.

  "I thought it was Nick to lead you, but He's taken Nick--although not all of Nick is gone yet, it seems to me. No, not all. But you must lead, Stuart. And if it's His will to take Stu, then you must lead, Larry. And if He takes you, it falls to Ralph."

  "Looks like I'm riding drag," Glen began. "What--"

  "Lead?" Fran asked coldly. "Lead? Lead where--?"

  "Why, west, little girl," Mother Abagail said. "West. You're not to go. Only these four."

  "No!" She was on her feet in spite of the pain. "What are you saying? That the four of them are just supposed to deliver themselves into his hands? The heart and soul and guts of the Free Zone?" Her eyes blazed. "So he can hang them on crosses and just walk in here next summer and kill everyone? I won't see my man sacrificed to your killer God. Fuck Him."

  "Frannie!" Stu gasped.

  "Killer God! Killer God!" she spat. "Millions--maybe billions-dead in the plague. Millions more afterward. We don't even know if the children will live. Isn't He done yet? Does it just have to go on and on until the earth belongs to the rats and the roaches? He's no God. He's a daemon, and you're His witch."

  "Stop it, Frannie."

  "No problem. I'm done. I want to leave. Take me home, Stu. Not to the hospital but back home."