The Stand:BOOK III(19)

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 ballgame 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, Lloyd? 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.