The Stand Read online

  And over this, arching for miles in every direction, the sky God had allocated to this little bit of Oklahoma.

  Nick thought: I can't leave him. I can't do that. And he was suddenly swept by a bitter and totally unexpected sadness, a feeling so deep he thought for a moment he would weep.

  They've gone to Kansas City, he thought. That's what's happened. They've all gone to Kansas City.

  Nick walked across the street and tapped Tom on the arm. Tom jumped and looked over his shoulder. A large and guilty smile stretched his lips, and a blush climbed out of his shirt collar.

  "I know it's for little boys and not for grown men," he said. "I know that, laws yes, Daddy tole me."

  Nick shrugged, smiled, spread his hands. Tom looked relieved.

  "It's mine now. Mine if I want it. If you could go in the drug and get something, I could go into the five-and-dime and get something. My laws, couldn't I just? I don't have to put it back, do I?"

  Nick shook his head.

  "Mine," Tom said happily, and turned back to the garage. Nick tapped him again and Tom looked back. "What?"

  Nick tugged his sleeve and Tom stood up willingly enough. Nick led him down the street to where his bike leaned on its kickstand. He pointed to himself. Then at the bike. Tom nodded.

  "Sure. That bike is yours. That Texaco garage is mine. I won't take your bike and you won't take my garage. Laws, no!"

  Nick shook his head. He pointed at himself. At the bike. Then down Main Street. He waved his fingers: byebye.

  Tom became very still. Nick waited. Tom said hesitantly: "You movin on, mister?"

  Nick nodded.

  "I don't want you to!" Tom burst out. His eyes were wide and very blue, sparkling with tears. "I like you! I don't want you to go to Kansas City, too!"

  Nick pulled Tom next to him and put an arm around him. Pointed to himself. To Tom. To the bike. Out of town.

  "I don't getcha," Tom said.

  Patiently, Nick went through it again. This time he added the byebye wave, and in a burst of inspiration he lifted Tom's hand and made it wave byebye, too.

  "Want me to go with you?" Tom asked. A smile of disbelieving delight lit up his face.

  Relieved, Nick nodded.

  "Sure!" Tom shouted. "Tom Cullen's gonna go! Tom's--" He halted, some of the happiness dying out of his face, and looked at Nick cautiously. "Can I take my garage?"

  Nick thought about it a moment and then nodded his head yes.

  "Okay!" Tom's grin reappeared like the sun from behind a cloud. "Tom Cullen's going!"

  Nick led him to the bike. He pointed at Tom, then at the bike.

  "I never rode one like that," Tom said doubtfully, eyeing the bike's gearshift and the high, narrow seat. "I guess I better not. Tom Cullen would fall off a fancy bike like that."

  But Nick was provisionally encouraged. I never rode one like that meant that he had ridden some sort of bike. It was only a question of finding a nice simple one. Tom was going to slow him down, that was inevitable, but perhaps not too much after all. And what was the hurry, anyway? Dreams were only dreams. But he did feel an inner urge to hurry, something so strong yet indefinable that it amounted to a subconscious command.

  He led Tom back to his filling station. He pointed at it, then smiled and nodded at Tom. Tom squatted down eagerly, and then his hands paused in the act of reaching for a couple of cars. He looked up at Nick, his face troubled and transparently suspicious. "You ain't gonna go without Tom Cullen, are you?"

  Nick shook his head firmly.

  "Okay," Tom said, and turned confidently to his toys. Before he could stop himself, Nick had ruffled the man's hair. Tom looked up and smiled shyly at him. Nick smiled back. No, he couldn't just leave him. That was sure.

  It was almost noon before he found a bike which he thought would suit Tom. He hadn't expected it to take anywhere near as long as it did, but a surprising majority of people had locked their houses, garages, and outbuildings. In most cases he was reduced to peering into shadowy garages through dirty, cobwebby windows, hoping to spot the right bike. He spent a good three hours trudging from street to street with the sweat pouring off him and the sun pounding steadily against the back of his neck. At one point he had gone back to recheck the Western Auto, but that was no good; the two bikes in the show window were his-and-hers three-speeds and everything else was unassembled.

  In the end he found what he was looking for in a small detached garage at the southern end of town. The garage was locked, but it had one window big enough to crawl through. Nick broke the glass with a rock and carefully picked the remaining slivers out of the old, crumbling putty. Inside, the garage was explosively hot and furry with a thick oil-and-dust smell. The bike, an old-fashioned boy's Schwinn, stood next to a ten-year-old Merc station wagon with balding tires and flaking rocker panels.

  The way my luck's running the damn bike'll be busted, Nick thought. No chain, flat tires, something. But this time his luck was in. The bike rolled easily. The tires were up and had good tread; all the bolts and sprockets seemed tight. There was no bike basket, he would have to remedy that, but there was a chainguard and hung neatly on the wall between a rake and a snowshovel was an unexpected bonus: a nearly new Briggs hand-pump.

  He hunted further and found a can of 3-in-One Oil on a shelf. Nick sat down on the cracked cement floor, now unmindful of the heat, and carefully oiled the chain and both sprockets. That done, he recapped the 3-in-One and carefully put it in his pants pocket.

  He tied the bike-pump to the package carrier on the Schwinn's back fender with a hank of hayrope, then unlocked the garage door and ran it up. Fresh air had never smelled so sweet. He closed his eyes, inhaled it deeply, wheeled the bike out to the road, got on, and pedaled slowly down Main Street. The bike rode fine. It would be just the ticket for Tom ... assuming he really could ride it.

  He parked it beside his Raleigh and went into the five-and-dime. He found a good-sized wire bike basket in a jumble of sporting goods near the back of the store and was turning to leave with it under his arm when something else caught his eye: a Klaxon horn with a chrome bell and a large red rubber bulb. Grinning, Nick put the horn in the basket and then went over to the hardware section for a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench. He went back outside. Tom was sprawled peacefully in the shade of the old World War II Marine in the town square, napping.

  Nick put the basket on the Schwinn's handlebars and attached the Klaxon horn beside it. He went back into the five-and-dime and came out with a good-sized tote bag.

  He took it up to the A&P and filled it with canned meat, fruit, and vegetables. He was pausing over some canned chili beans when he saw a shadow flit by on the aisle facing him. If he had been able to hear, he would already have been aware that Tom had discovered his bike. The Klaxon's hoarse and drawn-out cry of Howww-000-Gah! floated up and down the street, punctuated by Tom Cullen's giggles.

  Nick pushed out through the supermarket's doors and saw Tom speeding grandly down Main, his blond hair and his shirttail whipping out behind him, squeezing the bulb of the Klaxon horn for all it was worth. At the Arco station that marked the end of the business section he whirled around and pedaled back. There was a huge and triumphant grin on his face. The Fisher-Price garage sat in the bike's basket. His pants pockets and the flap pockets of his khaki shirt bulged with scale-model Corgi cars. The sun flashed bright, revolving circles in the wheelspokes. A little wistfully Nick wished he could hear the sound of the horn, just to see if it pleased him as much as it was pleasing to Tom.

  Tom waved to him and continued on up the street. At the far end of the business section he swerved around again and rode back, still squeezing the horn. Nick held his hand out, a policeman's order to stop. Tom brought the bike to a skidding halt in front of him. Sweat stood out on his face in great beads. The bike pump's rubber hose flopped. Tom was panting and grinning.

  Nick pointed out of town and waved byebye.

  "Can I still take my garage?"

  Ni
ck nodded and slipped the strap of the tote bag over Tom's bull neck.

  "We going right now?"

  Nick nodded again. Made a circle with his thumb and forefinger.

  "To Kansas City?"

  Nick shook his head.

  "To anywhere we want?"

  Nick nodded. Yes. Anywhere they wanted, he thought, but anywhere would most likely turn out to be somewhere in Nebraska.

  "Wow!" Tom said happily. "Okay! Yeah! Wow!"

  They got on Route 283 going north and had ridden only two and a half hours when thunderheads began to build up in the west. The storm came at them quickly, riding on a gauzy caul of rain. Nick couldn't hear the thunderclaps, but he could see forks of lightning stabbing down from the clouds. They were bright enough to dazzle the eyes with bluish-purple afterimages. As they approached the outskirts of Rosston, where Nick meant to turn east on Route 64, the veil of rain under the clouds disappeared and the sky turned a still and queerly ominous shade of yellow. The wind, which had been freshening against his left cheek, died away altogether. He began to feel extremely nervous without knowing why, and oddly clumsy. No one had ever told him that one of the few instincts man still shares with the lower animals is exactly that response to a sudden and radical drop in the air pressure.

  Then Tom was tugging at his sleeve, tugging him frantically. Nick looked over at him. He was startled to see that all the color had gone out of Tom's face. His eyes were huge, floating saucers.

  "Tornado!" Tom screamed. "There's a tornado coming!"

  Nick looked for a funnel and saw none. He turned back to Tom, trying to think of a way to reassure him. But Tom was gone. He was riding his bike into the field at the right of the road, beating a twisted, flattened path through the high grass.

  Goddamned fool, Nick thought angrily. You're going to break your fucking axle!

  Tom was making for a barn with an attached silo which stood at the end of a dirt road about a quarter of a mile long. Nick, still feeling nervous, pedaled his own bike up the highway, lifted it over the cattle-gate, and then pedaled up the dirt feeder road to the barn. Tom's bike lay on the dirt fill outside. He hadn't even bothered to put the kickstand down. Nick would have chalked this up to simple forgetfulness if he hadn't seen Tom use the kickstand several times before. He's scared right out of what little mind he has, Nick thought.

  His own uneasiness made him take one last look over his shoulder, and what he saw coming froze him coldly in his tracks.

  A horrible darkness was coming out of the west. It was not a cloud; it was more like a total absence of light. It was in the shape of a funnel, and at first glance it looked a thousand feet high. It was wider at the top than at the bottom; the bottom was not quite touching the earth. At its summit, the very clouds seemed to be fleeing from it, as if it possessed some mysterious power of repulsion.

  As Nick watched, it touched down about three quarters of a mile away and a long blue building with a roof made of corrugated metal--an auto supply place, or perhaps a lumber storage shed--exploded with a loud bang. He could not hear this, of course, but the vibration struck him, rocking him back on his feet. And the building seemed to explode inward, as if the funnel had sucked all the air out of it. The next moment the tin roof broke in two. The sections whirled upward, spinning and spinning like a top gone insane. Fascinated, Nick craned his neck to follow their progress.

  I am looking at whatever it is in my worst dreams, Nick thought, and it is not a man at all, although it may sometimes look like a man. What it really is is a tornado. One almighty big black twister ripping out of the west, sucking up anything and everything unlucky enough to be in its path. It's--

  Then he was grabbed by both arms and literally jerked off his feet and into the barn. He looked around at Tom Cullen and was momentarily surprised to see him. In his fascination with the storm, he had quite forgotten that Tom Cullen existed.

  "Downstairs!" Tom panted. "Quick! Quick! Oh my laws, yes! Tornado! Tornado!"

  At last Nick was fully, consciously afraid, ripped out of the half-entranced state he had been in and aware again of where he was and who he was with. As he let Tom lead him to the stairs going down into the barn's storm cellar, he became aware of a strange, thrumming vibration. It was the closest thing to sound he had ever experienced. It was like a nagging ache in the center of his brain. Then, as he went down the stairs behind Tom, he saw something he would never forget: the plank siding of the barn being pulled out board by board, pulled out and whirled up into the cloudy air, like rotted brown teeth being pulled out by invisible forceps. The hay littered on the floor began to rise and whirl in a dozen miniature tornado funnels, nodding and dipping and skipping. That thrumming vibration grew ever more persistent.

  Then Tom was pushing open a heavy wooden door, thrusting him through. Nick smelled wet mold and decay. In the last instant of light he saw they were sharing the storm cellar with a family of rat-gnawed corpses. Then Tom slammed the door shut and they were in perfect darkness. The vibration lessened but did not cease completely even then.

  Panic crept up on him with its cloak open and gathered him in. The blackness reduced his senses to touch and smell, and neither of them sent messages which were comforting. He could feel the constant vibration of the boards beneath his feet, and the smell was death.

  Tom clutched his hand blindly and Nick drew the retarded man next to him. He could feel Tom trembling, and he wondered if Tom was crying, or perhaps trying to speak to him. The thought eased some of his own fear and he slung an arm about Tom's shoulders. Tom reciprocated and they stood bolt upright in the dark, clinging to each other.

  The vibration grew stronger under Nick's feet; even the air seemed to be trembling lightly against his face. Tom held him more tightly still. Blind and deaf, he waited for what might happen next and reflected that if Ray Booth had gotten his other eye, all of life would be like this. If that had happened, he believed he would have shot himself in the head days ago and had done with it.

  Later he would be almost unable to believe his watch, which insisted that they had spent only fifteen minutes in the darkness of the storm cellar, although logic told him that since the watch was still running, it must be so. Never before in his life had he understood how subjective, how plastic, time really is. It seemed that it must have been at least an hour, probably two or three. And as the time passed, he became convinced that he and Tom were not alone in the storm cellar. Oh, there were the bodies--some poor guy had brought his family down here near the end, perhaps on the fevered assumption that, since they had weathered other natural disasters down here, they could weather this here one, too--but it wasn't the bodies that he meant. To Nick's mind, a corpse was just a thing, no different than a chair or a typewriter or a rug. A corpse was just an inanimate thing which filled space. What he felt was the presence of another being, and he became more and more convinced who--or what--it was.

  It was the dark man, the man who came to life in his dreams, the creature whose spirit he had sensed in the black heart of the cyclone.

  Somewhere ... over in the comer or perhaps right behind them ... he was watching them. And waiting. At the right moment he would touch them and they would both ... what? Go mad with fear, of course. Just that. He could see them. Nick was sure he could see them. He had eyes which could see in the dark like a cat's eyes, or those of some weird alien creature. Like the one in that movie, Predator, perhaps. Yes--like that. The dark man could see tones of the spectrum that human eyes could never attain to, and to him everything would look slow and red, as if the whole world had been tie-dyed in a vat of gore.

  At first Nick was able to divide this fantasy from reality, but as time passed, he became more and more sure that the fantasy was reality. He fancied he could feel the dark man's breath on the back of his neck.

  He was about to make a lunge at the door, open it and flee upstairs no matter what, when Tom did it for him. The arm around Nick's shoulders was suddenly gone. The next instant the door of the storm cellar b
anged open, letting in a flood of dazzling white light that made Nick raise a hand to shield his good eye. He caught just a ghostly, wavering glimpse of Tom Cullen staggering and stumbling up the stairs, and then he followed, groping his way in the dazzle. By the time he got to the top, his eye had adjusted.

  He thought that the light hadn't been so bright when they went down, and saw why immediately. The roof had been torn off the barn. It seemed to have been almost surgically removed; the job was so clean that there were no splinters and hardly any litter lying on the floor it had once sheltered. Three roofbeams hung down from the sides of the loft, and almost all the boards had been stripped off the sides. Standing here was like standing inside the picked skeleton of a prehistoric monster.

  Tom had not stopped to inventory the damage. He was fleeing the barn as if the devil himself was at his heels. He looked back just once, his eyes huge and almost comically terrified. Nick could not resist a look back over his shoulder and into the storm cellar. The stairs pitched and yawed downward into shadow, old wood, splintered and sunken in the center of each riser. He could see littered straw on the floor and two sets of hands protruding from the shadow. The fingers had been stripped down to the bone by rats.