The Stand:BOOK III(36)

Someone was coming through the crowd, as if in answer to the dark man's challenge.

Flagg felt terror seep into the chambers of his heart. It was a terror of the unknown and the unexpected. He had foreseen everything, even Whitney's foolish spur-of-the-moment speech. He had foreseen everything but this. The crowd-his crowd-was parting, peeling back. There was a scream, high, clear, and freezing. Someone broke and ran. Then someone else. And then the crowd, already on an emotional hair-trigger, broke and stampeded.

"Hold still! " Flagg cried at the top of his voice, but it was useless. The crowd had become a strong wind, and not even the dark man could stop the wind. Terrible, impotent rage rose in him, joining the fear and making some new and volatile mix. It had gone wrong again. In the last minute it had somehow gone wrong, like the old lawyer in Oregon, the woman slitting her throat on the windowglass …  and Nadine …  Nadine failing …

They ran, scattering to all the points of the compass, pounding across the lawn of the MGM Grand, across the street, toward the Strip. They had seen the final guest, arrived at last like some grim vision out of a horror tale. They had seen, perhaps, the raddled face of some final awful retribution.

And they had seen what the returning wanderer had brought with him.

As the crowd melted, Randall Flagg also saw, as did Larry and Ralph and a frozen Lloyd Henreid, who was still holding the torn scroll in his hands.

It was Donald Merwin Elbert, now known as the Trashcan Man, now and forever, world without end, hallelujah, amen.

He was behind the wheel of a long, dirty electric cart. The cart's heavy-duty bank of batteries was nearly drained dry. The cart was humming and buzzing and lurching. Trashcan Man bobbed back and forth on the open seat like a mad marionette.

He was in the last stages of radiation sickness. His hair was gone. His arms, poking out of the tatters of his shirt, were covered with open running sores. His face was a cratered red soup from which one desert-faded blue eye peered with a terrible, pitiful intelligence. His teeth were gone. His nails were gone. His eyelids were frayed flaps.

He looked like a man who had driven his electric cart out of the dark and burning subterranean mouth of hell itself.

Flagg watched him come, frozen. His smile was gone. His high, rich color was gone. His face was suddenly a window made of pale clear glass.

Trashcan Man's voice bubbled ecstatically up from his thin chest:

"I brought it …  I brought you the fire …  please …  I'm sorry … "

It was Lloyd who moved. He took one step forward, then another. "Trashy …  Trash, baby … " His voice was a croak.

That single eye moved, painfully seeking Lloyd out. "Lloyd? That you?"

"It's me, Trash." Lloyd was shaking violently all over, the way Whitney had been shaking. "Hey, what you got there? Is it-"

"It's the Big One," Trash said happily. "It's the A-bomb." He began to rock back and forth on the seat of the electric cart like a convert at a revival meeting. "The A-bomb, the Big One, the big fire, my life for you! "

"Take it away, Trash," Lloyd whispered. "It's dangerous. It's …  it's hot. Take it away … "

"Make him get rid of it, Lloyd," the dark man who was now the pale man whined. "Make him take it back where he got it. Make him-"

Trashcan's one operative eye grew puzzled. "Where is he?" he asked, and then his voice rose to an agonized howl. "Where is he? He's gone! Where is he? What did you do to him? "

The Stand

Lloyd made one last supreme effort. "Trash, you've got to get rid of that thing. You-"

And suddenly Ralph shrieked: "Larry! Larry! The Hand of God! " Ralph's face was transported in a terrible joy. His eyes shone. He was pointing into the sky.

Larry looked up. He saw the ball of electricity Flagg had flicked from the end of his finger. It had grown to a tremendous size. It hung in the sky, jittering toward Trashcan Man, giving off sparks like hair. Larry realized dimly that the air was now so full of electricity that every hair on his own body was standing on end.

And the thing in the sky did look like a hand.

"Noooo! " the dark man wailed.

Larry looked at him …  but Flagg was no longer there. He had a bare impression of something monstrous standing in front of where Flagg had been. Something slumped and hunched and almost without shape-something with enormous yellow eyes slit by dark cat's pupils.

Then it was gone.

Larry saw Flagg's clothes-the jacket, the jeans, the boots-standing upright with nothing in them. For a split second they held the shape of the body that had been inside them. And then they collapsed.

The crackling blue fire in the air rushed at the yellow electric cart that Trashcan Man had somehow driven back from the Nellis Range. He had lost hair and thrown up blood and finally vomited out his own teeth as the radiation sickness sank deeper and deeper into him, yet he had never faltered in his resolve to bring it back to the dark man …  you could say that he had never flagged in his determination.

The blue ball of fire flung itself into the back of the cart, seeking what was there, drawn to it.

"Oh shit we're all fucked! " Lloyd Henreid cried. He put his hands over his head and fell to his knees.

Oh God, thank God, Larry thought. I will fear no evil, I will f

Silent white light filled the world.

And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.

                       
       
           



       Chapter 74

Stu woke up from a night of broken rest at dawn and lay shivering, even with Kojak curled up next to him. The morning sky was coldly blue, but in spite of the shivers he was hot. He was running a fever.

"Sick," he muttered, and Kojak looked up at him. He wagged his tail and then trotted into the gully. He brought back a piece of deadwood and laid it at Stu's feet.

"I said sick, not stick, but I guess it'll do," Stu told him. He sent Kojak out for a dozen more sticks. Soon he had a fire blazing. Even sitting close would not drive the shivers away, although sweat was rolling down his face. It was the final irony. He had the flu, or something very like it. He had come down with it two days after Glen, Larry, and Ralph left him. For another two days the flu had seemed to consider him-was he worth taking? Apparently he was. Little by little he was getting worse. And this morning he felt very bad indeed.

Among the odds and ends in his pockets, Stu found a stub of pencil, his notebook (all the Free Zone organizational stuff that had once seemed the vital stuff of life itself now seemed mildly foolish), and his key ring. He had puzzled over the key ring for a long time, coming back to it over the last few days again and again, constantly surprised by the strong ache of sadness and nostalgia. This one was to his apartment. This one was his locker key. This one was a spare for his car, a 1977 Dodge with a lot of rust-so far as he knew it was still parked behind the apartment building at 31 Thompson Street in Arnette.

Also attached to the key ring was a cardboard address card encased in Lucite. STU REDMAN-31 THOMPSON STREET-PH (713) 555-6283, it read. He took the keys off the ring, bounced them thoughtfully on the palm of his hand for a moment, and then threw them away. The last of the man he had been went into the dry-wash and clinked into a dry clump of sage, where it would stay, he supposed, until the end of time. He slipped the cardboard address card out of the Lucite, and then ripped a blank page from his notebook.

Dear Frannie, he wrote at the top.

He told her all that had happened up until he had broken his leg. He told her that he hoped to see her again, but that he doubted it was in the cards. The best he could hope for was that Kojak would find the Zone again. He wiped tears absently from his face with the heel of his hand and wrote that he loved her. I expect you to mourn me and then get on, he wrote. You and the baby have to get on. That's the most important thing now. He signed, folded it small, and slipped the note into the address slot in the Lucite square. Then he attached the key ring to Kojak's collar.

"Good dog," he said when that was done. "You want to go look around? Find a rabbit or something?"

Kojak bounded up the slope where Stu had broken his leg and was gone. Stu watched his progress with a mixture of bitterness and amusement, then picked up the 7-Up can Kojak had brought him on one trip yesterday in lieu of a stick. He had filled it with muddy water from the ditch. When the water stood, the mud silted down to the bottom. It made a gritty drink, but as his mother would have said, it was a whole lot grittier when there was none. He drank slowly, slaking his thirst bit by bit. It hurt to swallow.

"Life sure is a bitch," he muttered, and then had to laugh at himself. For a moment or two he let his fingers fret at the swellings high on his neck, just under his jaw. Then he lay back, splinted leg in front of him, and dozed.

He woke with a start about an hour later, clutching at the sandy earth in sleepy panic. Had he had a nightmare? If so, it seemed to still be going on. The ground was moving slowly under his hands.

Earthquake? We got an earthquake here?

For a moment he clung to the idea that it must be delirium, that his fever had come back while he dozed. But looking toward the gully, he saw that dirt was sliding down in small, muddy sheets. Bounding, bouncing pebbles flashed mica and quartz glints at his startled eyes. And then a faint, dull thudding noise came-it seemed to push its way into his ears. A moment later he was heaving for breath, as if most of the air had suddenly been pushed out of the gully the flash flood had cut.