The Stand:BOOK III(34)

I'm going to die. If there's a God-and now I believe there must be-that's His will. We're going to die and somehow all of this will end as a result of our dying.

He suspected that Glen Bateman had already died. There had been shooting in one of the other wings the day before, a lot of shooting. It was in the direction that Glen had been taken rather than Ralph. Well, he had been old, his arthritis had been paining him, and whatever Flagg had planned for them this morning was apt to be very unpleasant.

The footsteps reached his cell.

"Get up, Wonder Bread," a gleeful voice called in. "The Rat-Man has come for yo pale gray ass."

Larry looked around. A grinning black pirate with a chain of silver dollars around his neck stood at the cell door, a drawn sword in one hand. Behind him stood the bespectacled CPA type. Burlson, his name was.

"What is it?" Larry asked.

"Dear man," the pirate said, "it is the end. The very end."

"All right," Larry said, and got up.

Burlson spoke quickly, and Larry saw that he was scared. "I want you to know that this is not my idea."

"Nothing around here is, as far as I can see," Larry said. "Who was killed yesterday?"

"Bateman," Burlson said, dropping his eyes. "Trying to escape."

"Trying to escape," Larry murmured. He began to laugh. Rat-Man joined him, mocked him. They laughed together.

The cell door opened. Burlson stepped forward with the cuffs. Larry offered no resistance; only put out his wrists. Burlson attached the bracelets.

"Trying to escape," Larry said. "One of these days you'll be shot trying to escape, Burlson." His eyes flicked toward the pirate. "You too, Ratty. Just shot trying to escape." He began to laugh again, and this time Rat-Man didn't join him. He looked at Larry sullenly and then began to raise his sword.

"Put that down, you ass," Burlson said.

They made a line of three going out-Burlson, Larry, and the Rat-Man bringing up the rear. When they stepped through the door at the end of the wing, they were joined by another five men. One of them was Ralph, also cuffed.

"Hey, Larry," Ralph said sorrowfully. "Did you hear? Did they tell you?"

"Yes. I heard."

"Bastards. It's almost over for them, isn't it?"

"Yes. It is."

"You shut up that talk!" one of them growled. "It's you it's almost over for. You wait and see what he's got waiting for you. It's gonna be quite a party."

"No, it's over," Ralph insisted. "Don't you know it? Can't you feel it?"

Ratty pushed Ralph, making him stumble. "Shut up!" he cried. "Rat-Man don't want to hear no more of that honky bullshit voodoo! No more!"

"You're awful pale, Ratty," Larry said, grinning. "Awful pale. You're the one who looks like graymeat now."

Rat-Man brandished his sword again, but there was no menace in it. He looked frightened; they all did. There was a feeling in the air, a sense that they had all entered the shadow of some great and onrushing thing.

An olive-drab van with LAS VEGAS COUNTY JAIL on the side stood in the sunny courtyard. Larry and Ralph were pushed in. The doors slammed, the engine started, and they drew away. They sat down on the hard wooden benches, cuffed hands between their knees.

Ralph said in a low voice, "I heard one of them saying everybody in Vegas was gonna be there. You think they're gonna crucify us, Larry?"

"That or something like it." He looked at the big man. Ralph's sweat-stained hat was crammed down on his head. The feather was frayed and matted, but it still stuck up defiantly from the band. "You scared, Ralph?"

"Scared bad," Ralph whispered. "Me, I'm a baby about pain. I never even liked going to the doctor's for a shot. I'd find an excuse to put it off, if I could. What about you?"

"Plenty. Can you come over here and sit beside me?"

Ralph got up, handcuff chains clinking, and sat beside Larry. They sat quietly for a few moments and then Ralph said softly, "We've hoed us one helluva long row."

"That's true."

"I just wish I knew what it was all for. All I can see is that he's gonna make a show of us. So everyone will see he's the big cheese. Is that what we came all this way for?"

"I don't know."

The van hummed on in silence. They sat on the bench without speaking, holding hands. Larry was scared, but beyond the scary feeling, the deeper sense of peace held, undisturbed. It was going to work out.

"I will fear no evil," he muttered, but he was afraid. He closed his eyes, thought of Lucy. He thought of his mother. Random thoughts. Getting up for school on cold mornings. The time he had thrown up in church. Finding a skin magazine in the gutter and looking at it with Rudy, both of them about nine years old. Watching the World Series his first fall in L.A. with Yvonne Wetterlin. He didn't want to die, he was afraid to die, but he had made his peace with it as best he could. The choice, after all, had never been his to make, and he had come to believe that death was just a staging area, a place to wait, the way you waited in a green-room before going on to play.

He rested as easily as he could, trying to make himself ready.

The van stopped and the doors were thrown open. Bright sunlight poured in, making him and Ralph blink dazedly. Rat-Man and Burlson hopped inside. Pouring in with the sunlight was a sound-a low, rustling murmur that made Ralph cock his head warily. But Larry knew what that sound was.

In 1986 the Tattered Remnants had played their biggest gig-opening for Van Halen at Chavez Ravine. And the sound just before they went on had been like this sound. And so when he stepped out of the van he knew what to expect, and his face didn't change, although he heard Ralph's thin gasp beside him.

They were on the lawn of a huge hotel-casino. The entrance was flanked by two golden pyramids. Drawn up on the grass were two flatbed trucks. On each flatbed was a cage constructed of steel piping.

Surrounding them were people.

They spread out across the lawn in a rough circle. They were standing in the casino parking lot, on the steps leading up to the lobby doors, in the turnaround drive where incoming guests had once parked while the doorman whistled up a bellhop. They spilled out into the street itself. Some of the younger men had hoisted their girlfriends on their shoulders for a better look at the upcoming festivities. The low murmuring was the sound of the crowd-animal.

Larry ran his eyes over them, and every eye he met turned away. Every face seemed pallid, distant, marked for death and seeming to know it. Yet they were here.

He and Ralph were nudged toward the cages, and as they went, Larry noticed the cars with their chains and trailer hitches. But it was Ralph who understood the implication. He had, after all, spent most of his life working with and around machinery.

"Larry," he said in a dry voice. "They're going to pull us to pieces!"

"Go on, get in," Rat-Man said, breathing a stale odor of garlic into his face. "Get on up there, Wonder Bread. You and your friend goan ride the tiger."

Larry climbed onto the flatbed.

"Gimme your shirt, Wonder Bread."

Larry took off his shirt and stood barechested, the morning air cool and kind on his skin. Ralph had already taken off his. A ripple of conversation went through the crowd and died. They were both terribly thin from their walk; each rib was clearly visible.

"Get in that cage, graymeat."

Larry backed into the cage.

Now it was Barry Dorgan giving the orders. He went from place to place, checking arrangements, a set expression of disgust on his face.

The four drivers got into the cars and started them up. Ralph stood blankly for a moment, then seized one of the welded handcuffs that dangled into his cage and threw it out through the small hole. It hit Paul Burlson on the head, and a nervous titter ran through the crowd.

Dorgan said, "You don't want to do that, fella. I'll just have to send some guys to hold you."

"Let them do their thing," Larry said to Ralph. He looked down at Dorgan. "Hey, Barry. Did they teach you this one in the Santa Monica P.D.?"

Another laugh rippled through the crowd. "Police brutality!" some daring soul cried. Dorgan flushed but said nothing. He fed the chains farther into Larry's cell and Larry spit on them, a little surprised that he had enough saliva to do it. A small cheer went up from the back of the crowd and Larry thought, Maybe this is it, maybe they're going to rise up -

But his heart didn't believe it. Their faces were too pale, too secretive. The defiance from the back was meaningless. It was the sound of kids cutting up in a studyhall, no more than that. There was doubt here-he could feel it-and disaffection. But Flagg colored even that. These people would steal away in the dead of night for some of the great empty space that the world had become. And the Walkin Dude would let them go, knowing he only had to keep a hard core, people like Dorgan and Burlson. The runners and midnight creepers could be gathered up later, perchance to pay the price of their imperfect faith. There would be no open rebellion here.

Dorgan, Rat-Man, and a third man crowded their way into the cage with him. Rat-Man was holding the cuffs welded to the chains open for Larry's wrists.

"Put out your arms," Dorgan said.

"Isn't law and order a wonderful thing, Barry?"

"Put them out, goddammit!"

"You don't look well, Dorgan-how's your heart these days?"