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  He shrugged. "Near the end of July. In plenty of time to start getting ready for winter, anyhow. You worried?"

  "Nope," she said, mocking him. She stood up. "Look at him, he's getting filthy. "

  "Told you."

  He watched her go down the porch steps and gather up the baby. He sat there, where Mother Abagail had sat often and long, and thought about the life that was ahead of them. He thought it would be all right. In time they would have to go back to Boulder, if only so their children could meet others their own age and court and marry and make more children. Or perhaps part of Boulder would come to them. There had been people who had questioned their plans closely, almost cross-examining them ... but the look in their eyes had been one of longing rather than contempt or anger. Stu and Fran weren't the only ones with a touch of the wanderlust, apparently. Harry Dunbarton, the former spectacles salesman, had talked about Minnesota. And Mark Zellman had spoken of Hawaii, of all places. Learning how to fly a plane and going to Hawaii.

  "Mark, you'd kill yourself!" Fran had scolded indignantly.

  Mark had only smiled slyly and said, "Look who's talkin, Frannie."

  And Stan Nogotny had begun to talk thoughtfully about going south, perhaps stopping at Acapulco for a few years, then maybe going on down to Peru. "I tell you what, Stu," he said. "All these people make me nervous as a one-legged man in an ass-kickin contest. I don't know one person in a dozen anymore. People lock their houses at night ... don't look at me that way, it's a fact. Listenin to me, you'd never think I lived in Miami, which I did for sixteen years, and locked the house every night. But damn! That was one habit I liked losing. Anyway, it's just getting too crowded. I think about Acapulco a lot. Now if I could just convince Janey--"

  It wouldn't be such a bad thing, Stu thought, watching Fran pump water, if the Free Zone did fall apart. Glen Bateman would think so, he was quite sure. Its purpose has been served, Glen would say. Best to disband before--

  Before what?

  Well, at the last Free Zone Committee meeting before he and Fran had left, Hugh Petrella had asked for and had been given the authorization to arm his deputies. It had been the cause in Boulder during his and Fran's last few weeks there--everyone had taken a side. In early June a drunk had manhandled one of the deputies and had thrown him through the plate-glass window of The Broken Drum, a bar on Pearl Street. The deputy had needed over thirty stitches and a blood transfusion. Petrella had argued it never would have happened if his man had had a Police Special to point at the drunk. And so the controversy raged. There were plenty of people (and Stu was among them, although he kept his opinions mostly to himself) who believed that, if the deputy had had a gun, the incident might have ended with a dead drunk instead of a wounded deputy.

  What happens after you give guns to the deputies? he asked himself. What's the logical progression? And it seemed that it was the scholarly, slightly dry voice of Glen Bateman that spoke in answer. You give them bigger guns. And police cars. And when you discover a Free Zone community down in Chile or maybe up in Canada, you make Hugh Petrella the Minister of Defense just in case, and maybe you start sending out search parties, because after all--

  That stuff is lying around, just waiting to be picked up.

  "Let's put him to bed," Fran said, coming up the steps.

  "Okay."

  "Why are you sitting around in such a blue study, anyhow?"

  "Was I?"

  "You certainly were."

  He used his fingers to push the corners of his mouth up in a smile. "Better?"

  "Much. Help me put him in."

  "My pleasure."

  As he followed her inside Mother Abagail's house he thought it would be better, much better, if they did break down and spread. Postpone organization as long as possible. It was organization that always seemed to cause the problem. When the cells began to clump together and grow dark. You didn't have to give the cops guns until the cops couldn't remember the names ... the faces ...

  Fran lit a kerosene lamp and it made a soft yellow glow. Peter looked up at them quietly, already sleepy. He had played hard. Fran slipped him into a nightshirt.

  All any of us can buy is time, Stu thought. Peter's lifetime, his children's lifetimes, maybe the lifetimes of my great-grandchildren. Until the year 2100, maybe, surely no longer than that. Maybe not that long. Time enough for poor old Mother Earth to recycle herself a little. A season of rest.

  "What?" she asked, and he realized he had murmured it aloud.

  "A season of rest," he repeated.

  "What does that mean?"

  "Everything," he said, and took her hand.

  Looking down at Peter he thought: Maybe if we tell him what happened, he'll tell his own children. Warn them. Dear children, the toys are death--they're, flashburns and radiation sickness and black, choking plague. These toys are dangerous; the devil in men's brains guided the hands of God when they were made. Don't play with these toys, dear children, please, not ever. Not ever again. Please... please learn the lesson. Let this empty world be your copybook.

  "Frannie," he said, and turned her around so he could look into her eyes.

  "What, Stuart?"

  "Do you think ... do you think people ever learn anything?"

  She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, fell silent. The kerosene lamp flickered. Her eyes seemed very blue.

  "I don't know," she said at last. She seemed unpleased with her answer; she struggled to say something more; to illuminate her first response ; and could only say it again:

  I don't know.

  THE CIRCLE CLOSES

  We need help, the Poet reckoned.

  --Edward Dorn

  He awoke at dawn.

  He had his boots on.

  He sat up and looked around himself. He was on a beach as white as bone. Above him, a ceramic sky of cloudless blue stood tall and far. Beyond him, a turquoise sea broke far out upon a reef and then came in gently, surging up and between strange boats that were--

  (canoes outrigger canoes)

  He knew that ... but how?

  He got to his feet and almost fell. He was shaky. Bad off. Felt hung over.

  He turned around. Green jungle seemed to leap out at his eyes, a dark forested tangle of vines and broad leaves and lush, blooming flowers that were (as pink as a chorus girl's nipple)

  He was bewildered again.

  What was a chorus girl?

  For that matter, what was a nipple?

  A macaw screamed at the sight of him, flew away blindly, crashed into the thick bole of an old banyan tree, and fell dead at the foot of it with its legs sticking up.

  (sat him on the table with his legs stickin up)

  A mongoose looked at his flushed, beard-scruffy face and died of a brain embolism.

  (in come sis with a spoon and a glass)

  A beetle that had been trundling busily up the trunk of a nipa palm turned black and shriveled to a husk with tiny blue bolts of electricity frizzing for a moment between its antennae.

  (and starts dippin gravy from its yass-yass-yass.)

  Who am I?

  He didn't know.

  Where am I?

  What did it matter?

  He began to walk--stagger--toward the verge of the jungle. He was light-headed with hunger. The sound of the surf boomed hollowly in his ears like the beat of crazy blood. His mind was as empty as the mind of a newborn child.

  He was halfway to the edge of the deep green when it parted and three men came out. Then four. Then there were half a dozen.

  They were brown, smooth-skinned folk.

  They stared at him.

  He stared back.

  Things began to come.

  The six men became eight. The eight became a dozen. They all held spears. They began to raise them threateningly. The man with the beard-stubble on his face looked at them. He was wearing jeans and old sprung cowboy boots; nothing else. His upper body was as white as the belly of a carp and dreadfully wasted.

  The spe
ars came all the way up. Then one of the brown men--the leader----choked out one word over and over again, a word that sounded like Yun-nah!

  Yep, things were coming.

  Righty-O.

  His name, for one thing.

  He smiled.

  That smile was like a red sun breaking through a black cloud. It exposed bright white teeth and amazing blazing eyes. He turned his lineless palms out to face them in the universal gesture of peace.

  Before the force of that grin they were lost. The spears fell to the sand; one of them struck point-down and hung there at an angle, quivering.

  "Do you speak English?"

  They only looked.

  "Habla espanol?"

  No they didn't. They definitely did not habla fucking espanol.

  What did that mean?

  Where was he?

  Well, it would come in time. Rome wasn't built in a day, nor Akron, Ohio, for that matter. And the place didn't matter.

  The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there ... and still on your feet.

  "Parlez-vous francais?"

  No answer. They stared at him, fascinated.

  He tried them in German, and then bellowed laughter at their stupid, sheepy faces. One of them began to sob helplessly, like a child.

  They are simple folk. Primitive; simple; unlettered. But I can use them. Yes, I can use them perfectly well.

  He advanced toward them, lineless palms still turned outward, still smiling. His eyes sparkled with warm and lunatic joy.

  "My name is Russell Faraday," he said in a slow, clear voice. "I have a mission."

  They stared at him, all eyes, all dismay, all fascination.

  "I have come to help you."

  They began to drop on their knees and bow their heads before him, and as his dark, dark shadow fell among them, his grin widened.

  "I've come to teach you how to be civilized!"

  "Yun-nah!" the chief sobbed in joy and terror. And as he kissed Russell Faraday's feet, the dark man began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long.

  And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.

  February 1975

  December 1988

  BY STEPHEN KING

  NOVELS

  Carrie

  'Salem's Lot The Shining The Stand The Dead Zone Firestarter Cujo

  The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Christine Pet Sematary The Talisman (with Peter Straub) It

  The Eyes of the Dragon Misery

  The Tommyknockers The Dark Tower II: Drawing of the Three The Dark Half The Stand: The Complete

  & Uncut Edition

  AS RICHARD BACHMAN

  Rage

  The Long Walk Roadwork The Running Man Thinner

  COLLECTIONS

  Night Shift Different Seasons Skeleton Crew

  NONFICTION

  Danse Macabre

  SCREENPLAYS

  Creepshow Cat's Eye Silver Bullet Maximum Overdrive a cognizant original v5 release november 13 2010

  PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

  a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor

  with a dolphin are trademarks of Doubleday,

  a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell

  Publishing Group, Inc.

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious,

  and any resemblance to actual persons, living or

  dead, is purely coincidental.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to include the following copyrighted material:

  "Back in the U.S.A." by Chuck Berry. Copyright (c) 1959 by ARC Music Corporation. .

  "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Donald Roeser. Copyright by B.O. Cult Songs, Inc.

  "Stand by Me" by Ben E. King. Copyright (c) 1961 by Progressive Music Publishing Co., Inc., Trio Music, Inc., and A.D.T. Enterprises, Inc. All rights controlled by Unichappell Music, Inc. (Belinda Music, publisher). International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  "In the Garden" by C. Austin Miles. Copyright 1912, Hall-Mack Co., renewed 1940, The Rodeheaver Co., owner. All rights reserved. (c) Secured. Used by permission.

  "The Sandman" by Dewey Bunnell. Copyright (c) 1971 by Warner Bros. Music, Limited. All rights for Western Hemisphere controlled by Warner Bros. Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  "Jungle Land" by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright (c) 1975 by Bruce Springsteen, Laurel Canyon Music. Used by permission.

  "American Tune" by Paul Simon. Copyright (c) 1973 by Paul Simon. Used by permission.

  Lyrics from "Shelter from the Storm" by Bob Dylan. Copyright (c) 1974 by Ram's Horn Music. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  Lyrics from "Boogie Fever" by Kenny St. Lewis and Freddie Perren. Copyright (c) 1975 by Perren Vibes Music Co. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  "Keep on the Sunny Side" by A.P. Carter, Copyright (c) 1924, Peer International Corporation, BMI.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  King, Stephen, 1947-

  The stand : the complete & uncut edition / Stephen King.

  p. cm.

  I. Tide.

  PS3561.I483S57 1990

  813'.54--dc20 89-27548

  CIP

  Copyright (c) 1978 by Stephen King

  New Material Copyright (c) 1990 by Stephen King

  Illustrations Copyright (c) 1990 by Bernie Wrightson

  All Rights Reserved

  www.doubleday.com

  eISBN: 978-0-38552885-6

  v3.0