The Stand:BOOK III(37)

There was a whining sound above him. Kojak stood silhouetted against the western edge of the cut, hunkered down with his tail between his legs. He was staring west, toward Nevada.

"Kojak!" Stu cried in panic. That thudding noise had terrified him-it was as if God had suddenly stamped his foot down on the desert floor somewhere not too distant.

Kojak bounded down the slope and joined him, whining. As Stu passed a hand down the dog's back, he felt Kojak trembling. He had to see, he had to. A sudden feeling of surety came to him: what had been meant to happen was happening: Right now.

"I'm going up, boy," Stu muttered.

He crawled to the eastern edge of the gully. It was a little steeper, but it offered more handholds. He had thought for the last three days that he might be able to get up there, but he hadn't seen the point. He was sheltered from the worst of the wind at the bottom of the cut, and he had water. But now he had to get up there. He had to see. He dragged his splinted leg behind him like a club. He got up on his hands and craned his neck to see the top. It looked very high, very far away.

"Can't do it, boy," he muttered to Kojak, and started trying anyway.

A fresh pile of rubble had piled up at the bottom as a result of the …  the earthquake. Or whatever it was. Stu pulled himself over it and then began to inch his way up the slope, using his hands and his left knee. He made twelve yards and then lost six of them before he could grab a quartz outcropping and stop his slide.

"Nope, never make it," he panted, and rested.

Ten minutes later he started again and made another ten yards. He rested. Went again. Came to a place with no holds and had to inch to the left until he found one. Kojak walked beside him, no doubt wondering what this fool was up to, leaving his water and his nice warm fire.

Warm. Too warm.

The fever must be coming up again, but at least the shivering had subsided. Fresh sweat was running down his face and arms. His hair, dusty and oily, hung in his eyes.

Lord, I'm burning up! Must be a hundred and two, a hundred and three …

He happened to glance at Kojak. It took almost a minute for what he was seeing to sink in. Kojak was panting. It wasn't fever, or not just fever, because Kojak was hot, too.

Overhead, a squadron of birds suddenly flocked, wheeling aimlessly and squawking.

They feel it, too. Whatever it is, the birds feel it, too.

He began to crawl again, fear lending him additional strength. An hour passed; two. He fought for every foot, every inch. By one o'clock that afternoon he was only six feet below the edge. He could see jags of paving jutting out above him. Only six feet, but the grade here was very steep and smooth. He tried once to just wriggle up like a garter snake, but loose gravel, the underbedding of the Interstate, had begun to rattle out from beneath him, and now he was afraid that if he tried to move at all he would go all the way to the bottom again, probably breaking his other damn leg in the process.

"Stuck," he muttered. "Good fucking show. Now what?"

Now what became obvious very quickly. Even without moving around, the earth was beginning to shift downward beneath him. He slipped an inch and clawed for purchase with his hands. His broken leg was thudding heavily, and he had not thought to pocket Glen's pills.

He slipped another two inches. Then five. His left foot was now dangling over space. Only his hands were holding him, and as he watched they began to slip, digging ten little furrows in the damp ground.

"Kojak! " he cried miserably, expecting nothing. But suddenly Kojak was there. Stu flung his arms around his neck blindly, not expecting to be saved but only grabbing what there was to be grabbed, like a drowning man. Kojak made no effort to throw him off. He dug in. For a moment they were frozen, a living sculpture. Then Kojak began to move, digging for inches, claws clicking against small stones and bits of gravel. Pebbles rattled into Stu's face and he shut his eyes. Kojak dragged him, panting like an air compressor in Stu's right ear.

He slitted his eyes open and saw they were nearly at the top. Kojak's head was down. His back legs were working furiously. He gained four more inches and it was enough. With a desperate cry, Stu let go of Kojak's neck and grabbed an outcrop of paving. It snapped off in his hands. He grabbed another one. Two fingernails peeled back like wet decals, and he cried out. The pain was exquisite, galvanizing. He scrambled up, pistoning with his good leg, and at last-somehow-lay panting on the surface of I-70, his eyes shut.

Kojak was beside him then. He whined and licked Stu's face.

Slowly then, Stu sat up and looked west. He looked for a long time, oblivious of the heat that was still rushing against his face in warm, bloated waves.

"Oh, my God," he said at last in a weak, breaking voice. "Look at that, Kojak. Larry. Glen. They're gone. God, everything's gone. All gone."

The mushroom cloud stood out on the horizon like a clenched fist on the end of a long, dusty forearm. It was swirling, fuzzy at the edges, beginning to dissipate. It was backlighted in sullen orange-red, as if the sun had decided to go down in the early afternoon.

The firestorm, he thought.

They were all dead in Las Vegas. Someone had fiddled when he should have faddled, and a nuclear weapon had gone off …  and one hellish big one, from the look and the feel. Maybe a whole stockpile of them had gone. Glen, Larry, Ralph …  even if they hadn't reached Vegas yet, even if they were still walking, surely they were close enough to have been baked alive.

Close beside him, Kojak whimpered unhappily.

Fallout. Which way is the wind going to blow it?

Did it matter?

He remembered his note to Fran. It was important that he add what had happened. If the wind blew the fallout east, it might cause them problems …  but more than that, they had to know that if Las Vegas had been the dark man's staging area, it was gone now. The people had been vaporized along with all the deadly toys that had just been lying around, waiting for someone to pick them up. He ought to add all of that to the note.

But not now. He was too tired now. The climb had exhausted him, and the stupendous sight of that dissipating mushroom cloud had exhausted him even more. He felt no jubilation, only dull and grinding weariness. He lay down on the pavement and his last thought before drifting off to sleep was: How many megatons? He didn't think anyone would ever know, or want to know.

He awoke after six. The mushroom cloud was gone, but the western sky was an angry pinkish-red, like a bright weal of burnflesh. Stu hauled himself over into the breakdown lane and lay down, exhausted all over again. The shakes were back. And the fever. He touched his forehead with his wrist and tried to gauge the temperature there. He guessed it was well over a hundred degrees.

Kojak came out of the early evening with a rabbit in his jaws. He laid it at Stu's feet and wagged his tail, waiting to be complimented.

"Good dog," Stu said tiredly. "That's a good dog."

Kojak's tail wagged faster. Yes, I'm a pretty good dog, he seemed to agree. But he remained looking at Stu, seeming to wait for something. Part of the ritual was incomplete. Stu tried to think what it was. His brain was moving very slowly; while he was sleeping, someone seemed to have poured molasses all over his interior gears.

"Good dog," he repeated, and looked at the dead rabbit. Then he remembered, although he wasn't even sure he had his matches anymore. "Fetch, Kojak," he said, mostly to please the dog. Kojak bounced away and soon returned with a good chunk of dry wood.

He had his matches, but a good breeze had sprung up and his hands were shaking badly. It took a long time to get a fire going. He got the kindling he had stripped lighted on the tenth match, and then the breeze gusted roguishly, puffing out the flames. Stu rebuilt it carefully, shielding it with his body and his hands. He had eight remaining matches in a LaSalle Business School folder. He cooked the rabbit, gave Kojak his half, and could eat only a little of his share. He tossed Kojak what was left. Kojak didn't pick it up. He looked at it, then whined uneasily at Stu.

"Go on, boy. I can't."

Kojak ate up. Stu looked at him and shivered. His two blankets were, of course, below.

The sun went down, and the western sky was grotesque with color. It was the most spectacular sunset Stu had ever seen in his life …  and it was poison. He could remember the narrator of a MovieTone newsreel saying enthusiastically back in the early sixties that there were beautiful sunsets for weeks after a nuclear test. And, of course, after earthquakes.

Kojak came up from the washout with something in his mouth-one of Stu's blankets. He dropped it in Stu's lap. "Hey," Stu said, hugging him unsteadily. "You're some kind of dog, you know it?"

Kojak wagged his tail to show that he knew it.

Stu wrapped the blanket around him and moved closer to the fire. Kojak lay next to him, and soon they both slept. But Stu's sleep was light and uneasy, skimming in and out of delirium. Sometime after midnight he roused Kojak, yelling in his sleep.

"Hap!" Stu cried. "You better turn off y'pumps! He's coming! Black man's coming for you! Better turn off y'pumps! He's in the old car yonder!"

Kojak whined uneasily. The Man was sick. He could smell the sickness and mingling with that smell was a new one. A black one. It was the smell the rabbits had on them when he pounced. The smell had been on the wolf he had disemboweled under Mother Abagail's house in Hemingford Home. The smell had been on the towns he had passed through on his way to Boulder and Glen Bateman. It was the smell of death. If he could have attacked it and driven it out of this Man, he would have. But it was inside this Man. The Man drew in good air and sent out that smell of coming death, and there was nothing to do but wait and see it through to the end. Kojak whined again, low, and then slept.