The Stand Read online

  Flagg screamed: "And you sat there and talked about Indian Springs? I ought to throw you out that window!"

  Something--perhaps it was seeing the dark man vulnerable, perhaps it was only the knowledge that Flagg wouldn't kill him until he got all of the information -- allowed Lloyd to find his tongue and speak in his own defense.

  "I tried to tell you!" he cried. "You cut me off! And you cut me off from the red list, whatever that is! If I'd known about that, I could have had that fucking retard last night!"

  Then he was flung across the room to crash into the far wall. Stars exploded in his head and he dropped to the parquet floor, dazed. He shook his head, trying to clear it. There was a high humming noise in his ears.

  Flagg seemed to have gone crazy. He was striding jerkily around the room, his face blank with rage. Nadine had shrunk back into her chair. Flagg reached a knickknack shelf populated with a milky-green menagerie of jade animals. He stared at them for a second, seeming almost puzzled by them, and then swept them all off onto the floor. They shattered like tiny grenades. He kicked at the bigger pieces with one bare foot, sending them flying. His dark hair had fallen over his forehead. He flipped it back with a jerk of his head and then turned toward Lloyd. There was a grotesque expression of sympathy and compassion on his face --both emotions every bit as real as a three-dollar bill, Lloyd thought. He walked over to help Lloyd up, and Lloyd noticed that he stepped on several jagged pieces of broken jade with no sign of pain ... and no blood.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "Let's have a drink." He offered a hand and helped Lloyd to his feet. Like a kid doing a temper tantrum, Lloyd thought. "Yours is bourbon straight up, isn't it?"

  "Fine."

  Flagg went to the bar and made monstrous drinks. Lloyd demolished half of his at a gulp. The glass chattered briefly on the end table as he set it down. But he felt a little better.

  Flagg said, "The red list is something I didn't think you'd ever have to use. There were eight names on it--five now. It was their governing council plus the old woman. Andros was one of them. But he's dead now. Yes, Andros is dead, I'm sure of it." He fixed Lloyd with a narrow, baleful stare.

  Lloyd told the story, referring to his notebook from time to time. He didn't really need it, but it was good, from time to time, to get away from that smoking glare. He began with Julie Lawry and ended with Barry Dorgan.

  "You say he's retarded," Flagg mused.

  "Yes."

  Happiness spread over Flagg's face and he began to nod. "Yes," he said, but not to Lloyd. "Yes, that's why I couldn't see--"

  He broke off and went to the telephone. Moments later he was talking to Barry.

  "The helicopters. You get Carl in one and Bill Jamieson in the other. Continuous radio contact. Send out sixty--no, a hundred men. Close every road going out of eastern and southern Nevada. See that they have this Cullen's description. And I want hourly reports."

  He hung up and rubbed his hands happily. "We'll get him. I only wish we could send his head back to his bum-buddy Andros. But Andros is dead. Isn't he, Nadine?"

  Nadine only stared blankly.

  "The helicopters won't be much good tonight," Lloyd said. "It'll be dark in three hours."

  "Don't you fret, old Lloyd," the dark man said cheerfully. "Tomorrow will be time enough for the helicopters. He isn't far. No, not far at all."

  Lloyd was bending his spiral notebook nervously back and forth in his hands, wishing he was anywhere but here. Flagg was in a good mood now, but Lloyd didn't think he would be after hearing about Trash.

  "I have one other item," he said reluctantly. "It's about the Trashcan Man." He wondered if this was going to trigger another tantrum like the jade-smashing outburst.

  "Dear Trashy. Is he off on one of his prospecting trips?"

  "I don't know where he is. He pulled a little trick at Indian Springs before he went out again." He related the story as Carl had told it the day before. Flagg's face darkened when he heard that Freddy Campanari had been mortally wounded, but by the time Lloyd had finished, his face was serene again. Instead of bursting into a rage, Flagg only waved his hand impatiently.

  "All right. When he comes back in, I want him killed. But quickly and mercifully. I don't want him to suffer. I had hoped he might ... last longer. You probably don't understand this, Lloyd, but I felt a certain ... kinship with that boy. I thought I might be able to use him--and I have--but I was never completely sure. Even a master sculptor can find that the knife has turned in his hand, if it's a defective knife. Correct, Lloyd?"

  Lloyd, who knew from nothing about sculpture and sculptors' knives (he thought they used mallets and chisels), nodded agreeably. "Sure."

  "And he's done us the great service of arming the Shrikes. It was him, wasn't it?"

  "Yes. It was."

  "He'll be back. Tell Barry Trash is to be ... put out of his misery. Painlessly, if possible. Right now I am more concerned with the retarded boy to the east of us. I could let him go, but it's the principle of the thing. Perhaps we can end it before dark. Do you think so, my dear?"

  He was squatting beside Nadine's chair now. He touched her cheek and she pulled away as if she had been touched with a red-hot poker. Flagg grinned and touched her again. This time she submitted, shuddering.

  "The moon," Flagg said, delighted. He sprang to his feet. "If the helicopters don't spot him before dark, they'll have the moon tonight. Why, I'll bet he's biking right up the middle of I-15 right now, in broad daylight. Expecting the old woman's God to watch out for him. But she's dead, too, isn't she, my dear?" Flagg laughed delightedly, the laugh of a happy child. "And her God is, too, I suspect. Everything is going to work out well. And Randy Flagg is going to be a da-da."

  He touched her cheek again. She moaned like a hurt animal.

  Lloyd licked his dry lips. "I'll push off now, if that's okay."

  "Fine, Lloyd, fine." The dark man did not look around; he was staring raptly into Nadine's face. "Everything is going well. Very well."

  Lloyd left as quickly as he could, almost running. In the elevator it all caught up with him and he had to push the EMERGENCY STOP button as hysterics overwhelmed him. He laughed and cried for nearly five minutes. When the storm had passed, he felt a little better.

  He's not falling apart, he told himself. There are a few little problems, but he's on top of them. The ball game will probably be over by the first of October, and surely by the fifteenth. Everything's starting to go good, just like he said, and never mind that he almost killed me ... never mind that he seems stranger than ever ...

  Lloyd got the call from Stan Bailey at Indian Springs fifteen minutes later. Stan was nearly hysterical between his fury at Trash and his fear of the dark man.

  Carl Hough and Bill Jamieson had taken off from the Springs at 6:02 P.M. to run a recon mission east of Vegas. One of their other trainee pilots, Cliff Benson, had been riding with Carl as an observer.

  At 6:12 P.M. both helicopters had blown up in the air. Stunned though he had been, Stan had sent five men over to Hangar 9, where two other skimmers and three large Baby Huey copters were stored. They found explosive taped to all five of the remaining choppers, and incendiary fuses rigged to simple kitchen timers. The fuses were not the same as the ones Trash had rigged to the fuel trucks, but they were very similar. There was not much room for doubt.

  "It was the Trashcan Man," Stan said. "He went hogwild. Jesus Christ only knows what else he's wired up to explode out here."

  "Check everything," Lloyd said. His heartbeat was rapid and thready with fear. Adrenaline boiled through his body, and his eyes felt as if they were in danger of popping from his head. "Check everything! You get every man jack out there and go from one end to the other of that cock-knocking base. You hear me, Stan?"

  "Why bother?"

  "Why bother?" Lloyd screamed. "Do I have to draw you a picture, shitheels? What's the big dude gonna say if the whole base--"

  "All our pilots are dead," Stan said softly. "Don't you get it, Lloy
d? Even Cliff, and he wasn't very fucking good. We've got six guys that aren't even close to soloing and no teachers. What do we need those jets for now, Lloyd?"

  And he hung up, leaving Lloyd to sit thunderstruck, finally realizing.

  Tom Cullen woke up shortly after nine-thirty that evening, feeling thirsty and stiff. He had a drink from his water canteen, crawled out from under the two leaning rocks, and looked up at the dark sky. The moon rode overhead, mysterious and serene. It was time to go on. But he would have to be careful, laws yes.

  Because they were after him now.

  He had had a dream. Nick was talking to him and that was strange, because Nick couldn't talk. He was M-O-O-N, that spelled deaf-mute. Had to write everything, and Tom could hardly read at all. But dreams were funny things, anything could happen in a dream, and in Tom's, Nick had been talking.

  Nick said, "They know about you now, Tom, but it wasn't your fault. You did everything right. It was bad luck. So now you have to be careful. You have to leave the road, Tom, but you have to keep going east."

  Tom understood about east, but not how he was going to keep from getting mixed up in the desert. He might just go around in big circles.

  "You'll know," Nick said. "First you have to look for God's Finger ..."

  Now Tom put his canteen back on his belt and adjusted his pack. He walked back to the turnpike, leaving his bike where it had been. He climbed the embankment to the road and looked both ways. He scuttled across the median strip and after another cautious look, he trotted across the westbound lanes of I-15.

  They know about you now, Tom.

  He caught his foot in the guardrail cable on the far side and tumbled most of the way to the bottom of the embankment beside the highway. He lay in a heap for a moment, heart pounding. There was no sound but faint wind, whining over the broken floor of the desert.

  He got up and began to scan the horizon. His eyes were keen and the desert air was crystal clear. Before long he saw it, standing out against the starstrewn sky like an exclamation point. God's Finger. As he faced due east, the stone monolith was at ten o'clock. He thought he could walk to it in an hour or two. But the clear, magnifying quality of the air had fooled more experienced hikers than Tom Cullen, and he was bemused by the way the stone finger always seemed to remain the same distance away. Midnight passed, then two o'clock. The great clock of stars in the sky had revolved. Tom began to wonder if the rock that looked so much like a pointing finger might not be a mirage. He rubbed his eyes, but it was still there. Behind him, the turnpike had merged into the dark distance.

  When he looked back at the Finger, it did seem to be a little closer, and by 4 A.M., when an inner voice began to whisper that it was time to find a good hiding place for the coming day, there could be no doubt that he had drawn nearer to the landmark. But he would not reach it this night.

  And when he did reach it (assuming that they didn't find him when day came)? What then?

  It didn't matter.

  Nick would tell him. Good old Nick.

  Tom couldn't wait to get back to Boulder and see him, laws, yes.

  He found a fairly comfortable spot in the shade of a huge spine of rock and went to sleep almost instantly. He had come about thirty miles northeast that night, and was approaching the Mormon Mountains.

  During the afternoon, a large rattlesnake crawled in beside him to get out of the heat of the day. It coiled itself by Tom, slept awhile, and then passed on.

  Flagg stood at the edge of the roof sundeck that afternoon, looking east. The sun would be going down in another four hours, and then the retard would be on the move again.

  A strong and steady desert breeze lifted his dark hair back from his hot brow. The city ended so abruptly, giving up to the desert. A few billboards on the edge of nowhere, and that was it. So much desert, so many places to hide. Men had walked into that desert before and had never been seen again.

  "But not this time," he whispered. "I'll have him. I'll have him."

  He could not have explained why it was so important to have the retard; the rationality of the problem constantly eluded him. More and more he felt an urge to simply act, to move, to do. To destroy.

  Last evening, when Lloyd had informed him of the helicopter explosions and the deaths of the three pilots, he had had to use every resource at his command to keep from going into an utter screaming rage. His first impulse had been to order an armored column assembled immediately--tanks, flametracks, armored trucks, the whole works. They could be in Boulder in five days. The whole stinking mess would be over in a week and a half.

  Sure.

  And if there was early snow in the mountain passes, that would be the end of the great Wehrmacht. And it was already September 14. Good weather was no longer a sure bet. How in hell's name had it gotten so late so fast?

  But he was the strongest man on the face of the earth, wasn't he? There might be another like him in Russia or China or Iran, but that was a problem for ten years from now. Now all that mattered was that he was ascendant, he knew it, he felt it. He was strong, that was all the retard could tell them ... if he managed to avoid getting lost in the desert or freezing to death in the mountains. He could only tell them that Flagg's people lived in fear of the Walkin Dude and would obey the Walkin Dude's least command. He could only tell them things that would demoralize their will further. So why did he have this steady, gnawing feeling that Cullen must be found and killed before he could leave the West?

  Because it's what I want, and I am going to have what I want, and that is reason enough.

  And Trashcan Man. He had thought he could dismiss Trash entirely. He had thought Trashcan Man could be thrown away like a defective tool. But he had succeeded in doing what the entire Free Zone could not have done. He had thrown dirt into the foolproof machinery of the dark man's conquest.

  I misjudged--

  It was a hateful thought, and he would not allow his mind to follow it to its conclusion. He threw his glass over the roof's low parapet and saw it twinkling, end over end, out and out, then descending. A randomly vicious thought, a petulant child's thought, streaked across his mind: Hope it hits someone on the head!

  Far below, the glass struck the parking lot and exploded ... so far below, the dark man could not even hear it.

  They had found no more bombs at Indian Springs. The entire place had been turned upside down. Apparently Trash had booby-trapped the first things he had come to, the choppers in Hangar 9 and the trucks in the motor pool next door.

  Flagg had reiterated his orders that the Trashcan Man was to be killed on sight. The thought of Trash wandering around out in all that government property, where God knew what might be stored, now made him distinctly nervous.

  Nervous.

  Yes. The beautiful surety was still evaporating. When had that evaporation begun? He could not say, not for sure. All he knew was that things were getting flaky. Lloyd knew it, too. He could see it in the way that Lloyd looked at him. It might not be a bad idea if Lloyd had an accident before the winter was out. He was asshole buddies with too many of the people in the palace guard, people like Whitney Horgan and Ken DeMott. Even Burlson, who had spilled that business about the red list. He had thought idly about skinning Paul Burlson alive for that.

  But if Lloyd had known about the red list, none of this would have--

  "Shut up," he muttered. "Just ... shut ... up!"

  But the thought wouldn't go away that easily. Why hadn't he given Lloyd the names of the top-echelon Free Zone people? He didn't know, couldn't remember. It seemed there had been a perfectly good reason at the time, but the more he tried to grasp it, the more it slipped through his fingers. Had it only been a sly-stupid decision not to put too many of his eggs in one basket--a feeling that not too many secrets should be stored with any one person, even a person as stupid and loyal as Lloyd Henreid?

  An expression of bewilderment rippled across his face. Had he been making such stupid decisions all along?

  And just ho
w loyal was Lloyd, anyway? That expression in his eyes--

  Abruptly he decided to push it all aside and levitate. That always made him feel better. It made him feel stronger, more serene, and it cleared his head. He looked out at the desert sky.

  (I am, I am, I am, 1 AM -- )

  His rundown bootheels left the surface of the sundeck, hovered, rose another inch. Then two. Peace came to him, and suddenly he knew he could find the answers. Everything was clearer. First he must--

  "They're coming for you, you know."

  He crashed back down at the sound of that soft, uninflected voice. The jarring shock went up his legs and his spine all the way to his jaw, which clicked. He whirled around like a cat. But his blooming grin withered when he saw Nadine. She was dressed in a white nightgown, yards of gauzy material that billowed around her body. Her hair, as white as the gown, blew about her face. She looked like some pallid deranged sibyl, and in spite of himself, Flagg was afraid. She took a delicate step closer. Her feet were bare.

  "They're coming. Stu Redman, Glen Bateman, Ralph Brentner, and Larry Underwood. They're coming and they'll kill you like a chicken-stealing weasel."

  "They're in Boulder," he said, "hiding under their beds and mourning their dead nigger woman."

  "No," she said indifferently. "They're almost in Utah now. They'll be here soon. And they'll stamp you out like a disease."

  "Shut up. Go downstairs."

  "I'll go down," she said, approaching him, and now it was she who smiled--a smile that filled him with dread. The furious color faded from his cheeks, and his strange, hot vitality seemed to go with it. For a moment he seemed old and frail. "I'll go down ... and so will you."

  "Get out."

  "We'll go down," she sang, smiling ... it was horrible. "Down, doowwwn ..."

  "They're in Boulder!"

  "They're almost here."

  "Get downstairs!"

  "Everything you made here is falling apart, and why not? The effective half-life of evil is always relatively short. People are whispering about you. They're saying you let Tom Cullen get away, just a simple retarded boy but smart enough to outwit Randall Flagg." Her words came faster and faster, now tumbling through a jeering smile. "They're saying your weapons expert has gone crazy and you didn't know it was going to happen. They're afraid that what he brings back from the desert next time may be for them instead of for the people in the East. And they're leaving. Did you know that?"