The Stand:BOOK III(32)

Dorgan didn't reply.

They arrived at the county jail and drove around to the rear. The two police cars parked in a cement courtyard. When Larry got out, wincing at the stiffness that had settled into his muscles, he saw that Dorgan had two sets of handcuffs.

"Hey, come on," he said. "Really."

"Sorry. His orders."

Ralph said, "I ain't never been handcuffed in my life. I was picked up and throwed in the drunk tank a couple of times before I was married, but never was I cuffed." Ralph was speaking slowly, his Oklahoma accent becoming more pronounced, and Larry realized he was totally furious.

"I have my orders," Dorgan said. "Don't make it any tougher than it has to be."

"Your orders," Ralph said. "I know who gives your orders. He murdered my friend Nick. What are you doing hooked up with that hellhound? You seem like a nice enough fella when you're by yourself." He was looking at Dorgan with such an expression of angry interrogation that Dorgan shook his head and looked away.

"This is my job," he said, "and I do it. End of story. Put your wrists out or I'll have somebody do it for you."

Larry put his hands out and Dorgan cuffed him. "What were you?" Larry asked curiously. "Before?"

"Santa Monica Police. Detective second."

"And you're with him. It's …  forgive me for saying so, but it's really sort of funny."

Glen Bateman was pushed over to join them.

"What are you shoving him around for?" Dorgan asked angrily.

"If you had to listen to six hours of this guy's bullshit, you'd do some pushing, too," one of the men said.

"I don't care how much bullshit you had to listen to, keep your hands to yourself." Dorgan looked at Larry. "Why is it funny that I should be with him? I was a cop for ten years before Captain Trips. I saw what happens when guys like you are in charge, you see."

"Young man," Glen said mildly, "your experiences with a few battered babies and drug abusers does not justify your embrace of a monster."

"Get them out of here," Dorgan said evenly. "Separate cells, separate wings."

"I don't think you'll be able to live with your choice, young man," Glen said. "There doesn't seem to be quite enough Nazi in you."

This time Dorgan pushed Glen himself.

Larry was separated from the other two and taken down an empty corridor graced with signs reading NO SPITTING, THIS WAY TO SHOWERS & DELOUSING, and one that read, YOU ARE NOT A GUEST.

"I wouldn't mind a shower," he said.

"Maybe," Dorgan said. "We'll see."

"See what?"

"How cooperative you can be."

Dorgan opened a cell at the end of the corridor and ushered Larry in.

"How about the bracelets?" Larry asked, holding them out.

"Sure." Dorgan unlocked them and took them off. "Better?"

"Much."

"Still want that shower?"

"I sure do." More than that, Larry didn't want to be left alone, listening to the echoey sound of footfalls going away. If he was left alone, the fear would start to come back.

Dorgan produced a small notebook. "How many are you? In the Zone?"

"Six thousand," Larry said. "We all play Bingo every Thursday night and the prize in the cover-all game is a twenty-pound turkey."

"Do you want that shower or not?"

"I want it." But he no longer thought he was going to get it.

"How many of you over there?"

"Twenty-five thousand, but four thousand are under twelve and get in free at the drive-in. Economically speaking, it's a bummer."

Dorgan snapped his notebook shut and looked at him.

"I can't, man," Larry said. "Put yourself in my place."

Dorgan shook his head. "I can't do that, because I'm not nuts. Why are you guys here? What good do you think it's going to do you? He's going to kill you dead as dogshit tomorrow or the next day. And if he wants you to talk, you will. If he wants you to tapdance and jerk off at the same time, you'll do that, too. You must be crazy."

"We were told to come by the old woman. Mother Abagail. Probably you dreamed about her."

Dorgan shook his head, but suddenly his eyes wouldn't meet Larry's. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Then let's leave it at that."

"Sure you don't want to talk to me? Get that shower?"

Larry laughed. "I don't work that cheap. Send your own spy over to our side. If you can find one that doesn't look like a weasel the second Mother Abagail's name gets mentioned, that is."

"Any way you want it," Dorgan said. He walked back down the hallway under the mesh-enclosed lights. At the far end he stepped past a steel-barred gate that rolled shut behind him with a hollow crash.

Larry looked around. Like Ralph, he had been in jail on a couple of occasions-public intoxication once, possession of an ounce of marijuana on another. Flaming youth.

"It's not the Ritz," he muttered.

The mattress on the bunk looked decidedly moldy, and he wondered a little morbidly if someone had died on it back in June or early July. The toilet worked but filled with rusty water the first time he flushed it, a reliable sign that it hadn't been used for a long time. Someone had left a paperback Western. Larry picked it up and then put it down again. He sat on the bunk and listened to the silence. He had always hated to be alone-but in a way, he always had been …  until he had arrived in the Free Zone. And now it wasn't so bad as he had been afraid it would be. Bad enough, but he could cope.

He's going to kill you dead as dogshit tomorrow or the next day.

Except Larry didn't believe it. It just wasn't going to happen that way.

"I will fear no evil," he said into the dead silence of the cellblock wing, and he liked the way it sounded. He said it again.

He lay down, and the thought occurred that he had finally made it most of the way back to the West Coast. But the trip had been longer and stranger than anyone ever could have imagined. And the trip wasn't quite over yet.

"I will fear no evil," he said again. He fell asleep, his face calm, and he slept in dreamless peace.

At ten o'clock the next day, twenty-four hours after they had first seen the roadblock in the distance, Randall Flagg and Lloyd Henreid came to see Glen Bateman.

He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his cell. He had found a piece of charcoal under his bunk, and had just finished writing this legend on the wall amid the intaglio of male and female genitals, names, phone numbers, and obscene little poems: I am not the potter, not the potter's wheel, but the potter's clay; is not the value of the shape attained as dependent upon the intrinsic worth of the clay as upon the wheel and the Master's skill? Glen was admiring this proverb-or was it an aphorism?-when the temperature in the deserted cellblock suddenly seemed to drop ten degrees. The door at the end of the corridor rumbled open. The saliva in Glen's mouth was suddenly all gone, and the charcoal snapped between his fingers.

Bootheels clocked up the hallway toward him.

Other footfalls, smaller and insignificant, pattered along in counterpoint, trying to keep up.

Why, it's him. I'm going to see his face.

Suddenly his arthritis was worse. Terrible, in fact. It seemed that his bones had suddenly been hollowed out and filled with ground glass. And still, he turned with an interested, expectant smile on his face as the bootheels stopped in front of his cell.

"Well, there you are," Glen said. "And you're not half the boogeyman we thought you must be."

Standing on the other side of the bars were two men. Flagg was on Glen's right. He was wearing bluejeans and a white silk shirt that gleamed mellowly in the dim lights. He was grinning in at Glen. Behind him was a shorter man who was not smiling at all. He had an undershot chin and eyes that seemed too big for his face. His complexion was one that the desert climate was never going to be kind to; he had burned, peeled, and burned again. Around his neck he wore a black stone flawed with red. It had a greasy, resinous look.

"I'd like you to meet my associate," Flagg said with a giggle. "Lloyd Henreid, meet Glen Bateman, sociologist, Free Zone Committee member, and single existing member of the Free Zone think tank now that Nick Andros is dead."

"Meetcha," Lloyd mumbled.

"How's your arthritis, Glen?" Flagg asked. His tone was commiserating, but his eyes sparkled with high glee and secret knowledge.

Glen opened and closed his hands rapidly, smiling back at Flagg. No one would ever know what an effort it took to maintain that gentle smile.

The intrinsic worth of the clay!

"Fine," he said. "Much better for sleeping indoors, thank you."

Flagg's smile faltered a bit. Glen caught just a glimpse of narrow surprise and anger. Of fear?

"I've decided to let you go," he said briskly. His smile sprang forth again, radiant and vulpine. Lloyd uttered a little gasp of surprise, and Flagg turned to him. "Haven't I, Lloyd?"

"Uh …  sure," Lloyd said. "Sure nuff."

"Well, fine," Glen said easily. He could feel the arthritis sinking deeper and deeper into his joints, numbing them like ice, swelling them like fire.

"You'll be given a small motorbike and you may drive back at your leisure."

"Of course I couldn't go without my friends."

"Of course not. And all you have to do is ask. Get down on your knees and ask me."