The Stand:BOOK III(35)

"I'm telling you for the last time, my friend. Put your arms out through those holes!"

Larry did it. The cuffs were slipped on and locked. Dorgan and the others backed out and the door was shut. Larry looked right and saw Ralph standing in his cage, head down, arms at his sides. His wrists had also been cuffed.

"You people know this is wrong!" Larry cried, and his voice, trained by years of singing, rolled out of his chest with surprising strength. "I don't expect you to stop it, but I do expect you to remember it! We're being put to death because Randall Flagg is afraid of us! He's afraid of us and the people we came from!" A rising murmur ran through the crowd. "Remember the way we die! And remember that next time it may be your turn to die this way, with no dignity, just an animal in a cage!"

That low murmur again, rising and angry …  and the silence.

"Larry!" Ralph called out.

Flagg was coming down the steps of the Grand, Lloyd Henreid beside him. Flagg was wearing jeans, a checked shirt, his jeans jacket with the two buttons on the breast pockets, and his rundown cowboy boots. In the sudden hush the sound of those bootheels clocking their way down the cement path was the only sound …  a sound out of time.

The dark man was grinning.

Larry stared down at him. Flagg came to a halt between the two cages and stood looking up. His grin was darkly charming. He was a man completely in control, and Larry suddenly knew this was his watershed moment, the apotheosis of his life.

Flagg turned away from them and faced his people. He passed his eyes over them, and no eye would meet his. "Lloyd," he said quietly, and Lloyd, who looked pale, haunted, and sickly, handed Flagg a paper that had been rolled up like a scroll.

The dark man unrolled it, held it up, and began to speak. His voice was deep, sonorous, and pleasing, spreading in the stillness like a single silver ripple on a black pond. "Know you that this is a true bill to which I, Randall Flagg, have put my name on this thirtieth day of September, the year nineteen hundred and ninety, now known as The Year One, year of the plague."

"Flagg's not your name!" Ralph roared. There was a shocked murmur from the crowd. "Why don't you tell em your real name?"

Flagg took no notice.

"Know you that these men, Lawson Underwood and Ralph Brentner, are spies, here in Las Vegas with no good intent but rather with seditious motives, who have entered this state with stealth, and under cover of darkness-"

"That's pretty good," Larry said, "since we were coming down Route 70 in broad daylight." He raised his voice to a shout. "They took us at noon on the Interstate, how's that for stealth and under cover of darkness? "

Flagg bore through this patiently, as if he felt that Larry and Ralph had every right to answer the charges …  not that it was going to make any ultimate difference.

Now he continued: "Know you that the cohorts of these men were responsible for the sabotage bombing of the helicopters at Indian Springs, and therefore responsible for the deaths of Carl Hough, Bill Jamieson, and Cliff Benson. They are guilty of murder."

Larry's eyes touched those of a man standing on the front rim of the crowd. Although Larry did not know it, this was Stan Bailey, Operations Chief at Indian Springs. He saw a haze of bewilderment and surprise cover the man's face, and saw him mouthing something ridiculous that looked like Can Man.

"Know you that the cohorts of these men have sent other spies among us and they have been killed. It is the sentence then that these men shall be put to death in an appropriate manner, to wit, that they shall be pulled apart. It is the duty and the responsibility of each of you to witness this punishment, so you may remember it and tell others what you have seen here today."

Flagg's grin flashed out, meant to be solicitous in this instance, but still no more warm and human than a shark's grin.

"Those of you with children are excused."

He turned toward the cars, which were now idling, sending out small puffs of exhaust into the morning. As he did so, there was a commotion near the front of the crowd. Suddenly a man pushed through into the clearing. He was a big man, his face nearly as pallid as his cook's whites. The dark man had handed the scroll back to Lloyd, and Lloyd's hands jerked convulsively when Whitney Horgan pushed into the clear. There was a clear ripping sound as the scroll tore in half.

"Hey, you people! " Whitney cried.

A confused murmur ran through the crowd. Whitney was shaking all over, as if with a palsy. His head kept jerking toward the dark man and then away again. Flagg regarded Whitney with a ferocious smile. Dorgan started toward the cook, and Flagg motioned him back.

"This ain't right! " Whitney yelled. "You know it ain't! "

Dead silence from the crowd. They might all have been turned to gravestones.

Whitney's throat worked convulsively. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down like a monkey on a stick.

"We was Americans once!" Whitney cried at last. "This ain't how Americans act. I wasn't so much, I'll tell you that, nothin but a cook, but I know this ain't how Americans act, listening to some murderin freak in cowboy boots-"

A horrified, rustling gasp came from these new Las Vegans. Larry and Ralph exchanged a puzzled glance.

"That's what he is!" Whitney insisted. The sweat was running down his face like tears from the brushy edges of his flattop haircut. "You wanna watch these two guys ripped in two right in front of you, huh? You think that's the way to start a new life? You think a thing like that can ever be right? I tell you you'll have nightmares about it for the rest of your lives! "

The crowd murmured its assent.

"We got to stop this," Whitney said. "You know it? We got to have time to think about what …  what … "

"Whitney." That voice, smooth as silk, little more than a whisper, but enough to silence the cook's faltering voice completely. He turned toward Flagg, lips moving soundlessly, his eye as fixed as a mackerel's. Now the sweat was pouring down his face in torrents.

"Whitney, you should have kept still." His voice was soft, but still it carried easily to every ear. "I would have let you go …  why would I want you?"

Whitney's lips moved, but still no sound came out.

"Come here, Whitney."

"No," Whitney whispered, and no one heard his demurral except Lloyd and Ralph and Larry and possibly Barry Dorgan. Whitney's feet moved as if they had not heard his mouth. His sprung and mushy black loafers whispered through the grass and he moved toward the dark man like a ghost.

The crowd had become a slack jaw and staring eye.

"I knew about your plans," the dark man said. "I knew what you meant to do before you did. And I would have let you crawl away until I was ready to take you back. Maybe in a year, maybe in ten. But that's all behind you now, Whitney. Believe it."

Whitney found his voice one last time, his words rushing out in a strangled scream. "You ain't a man at all! You're some kind of a …  a devil! "

Flagg stretched out the index finger of his left hand so that it almost touched Whitney Horgan's chin. "Yes, that's right," he said so softly that no one but Lloyd and Larry Underwood heard. "I am."

A blue ball of fire no bigger than the Ping-Pong ball Leo was endlessly bouncing leaped from the tip of Flagg's finger with a faint ozone crackle.

An autumn wind of sighs went through those watching.

Whitney screamed-but didn't move. The ball of fire lit on his chin. There was a sudden cloying smell of burning flesh. The ball moved across his mouth, fusing his lips shut, locking the scream behind Whitney's bulging eyes. It crossed one cheek, digging a charred and instantly cauterized trench.

It closed his eyes.

It paused above his forehead and Larry heard Ralph speaking, saying the same thing over and over, and Larry joined his voice to Ralph's, making it a litany: "I will fear no evil …  I will fear no evil …  I will fear no evil … "

The ball of fire rolled up from Whitney's forehead and now there was a hot smell of burning hair. It rolled toward the back of his head, leaving a grotesque bald strip behind it. Whitney swayed on his feet for a moment and then fell over, mercifully facedown.

The crowd released a long, sibilant sound: Aaaahhhh. It was the sound people had made on the Fourth of July when the fireworks display had been particularly good. The ball of blue fire hung in the air, bigger now, too bright to look at without slitting the eyes. The dark man pointed at it and it moved slowly toward the crowd. Those in the front row-a whey-faced Jenny Engstrom was among them-shrank back.

In a thundering voice, Flagg challenged them. "Is there anyone else here who disagrees with my sentence? If so, let him speak now! "

Deep silence greeted this.

Flagg seemed satisfied. "Then let-"

Heads began to turn away from him suddenly. A surprised murmur ran through the crowd, then rose to a babble. Flagg seemed completely caught by surprise. Now people in the crowd began to cry out, and while it was impossible to make out the words clearly, the tone was one of wonder and surprise. The ball of fire dipped and spun uncertainly.

The humming sound of an electric motor came to Larry's ears. And again he caught that puzzling name tossed from mouth to mouth, never clear, never all of one piece: Man …  Can Man …  Trash …  Trashy …