The Stand:BOOK III(46)

Stu looked, saw, throttled down, and stopped.

"What is it?" Tom asked anxiously.

"Overpass," Stu muttered. "I-I just don't believe it-"

"Overpass? Overpass?"

Stu turned around and grabbed Tom's shoulders. "It's the Golden overpass, Tom! That's 119 up there, Route 119! The Boulder road! We're only twenty miles from town! Maybe even less!"

Tom understood at last. His mouth fell open, and the comical expression on his face made Stu laugh out loud and clap him on the back. Not even the steady dull ache in his leg could bother him now.

"Are we really almost home, Stu?"

"Yes, yes, yeeessss! "

Then they were grabbing each other, dancing around in a clumsy circle, falling down, sending up puffs of snow, powdering themselves with the stuff. Kojak looked on, amazed …  but after a few moments he began to jump around with them, barking and wagging his tail.

They camped that night in Golden, and pushed on up 119 toward Boulder early the next morning. Neither of them had slept very well the night before. Stu had never felt such anticipation in his life …  and mixed with it was his steady nagging worry about Frannie and the baby.

About an hour after noon, the snowmobile began to hitch and lug. Stu turned it off and got the spare gascan lashed to the side of Kojak's little cabin. "Oh Christ!" he said, feeling its deadly lightness.

"What's the matter, Stu?"

"Me! I'm the matter. I knew that friggin can was empty, and I forgot to fill it. Too damn excited, I guess. How's that for stupid?"

"We're out of gas?"

Stu flung the empty can away. "We sure-God are. How could I be that stupid?"

"Thinking about Frannie, I guess. What do we do now, Stu?"

"We walk, or try to. You'll want your sleeping bag. We'll split this canned stuff, put it in the sleeping bags. We'll leave the shelters behind. I'm sorry, Tom. My fault all the way."

"That's all right, Stu. What about the shelters?"

"Guess we better leave em, old hoss."

They didn't get to Boulder that day; instead they camped at dusk, exhausted from wading through the powdery snow which seemed so light but had slowed them to a literal crawl. There was no fire that night. There was no wood handy, and they were all three too exhausted to dig for it. They were surrounded by high, rolling snowdunes. Even after dark there was no glow on the northern horizon, although Stu looked anxiously for it.

They ate a cold supper and Tom disappeared into his sleeping bag and fell instantly asleep without even saying good night. Stu was tired, and his bad leg ached abominably. Be lucky if I haven't racked it up for good, he thought.

But they would be in Boulder tomorrow night, sleeping in real beds-that was a promise.

An unsettling thought occurred as he crawled into his sleeping bag. They would get to Boulder and Boulder would be empty-as empty as Grand Junction had been, and Avon, and Kittredge. Empty houses, empty stores, buildings with their roofs crashed in from the weight of the snow. Streets filled in with drifts. No sound but the drip of melting snow in one of the periodic thaws-he had read at the library that it was not unheard of for the temperature in Boulder to shoot suddenly up to seventy degrees in the heart of winter. But everyone would be gone, like people in a dream when you wake up. Because no one was left in the world but Stu Redman and Tom Cullen.

It was a crazy thought, but he couldn't shake it. He crawled out of his sleeping bag and looked north again, hoping for that faint lightening at the horizon that you can see when there is a community of people not too far distant in that direction. Surely he should be able to see something. He tried to remember how many people Glen had guessed would be in the Free Zone by the time the snow closed down travel. He couldn't pull the figure out. Eight thousand? Had that been it? Eight thousand people wasn't many; they wouldn't make much of a glow, even if all the juice was back on. Maybe-

Maybe you ought to get y'self some sleep and forget all this nutty stuff. Let tomorrow take care of tomorrow.

He lay down, and after a few more minutes of tossing and turning, brute exhaustion had its way. He slept. And dreamed he was in Boulder, a summertime Boulder where all the lawns were yellow and dead from the heat and lack of water. The only sound was an unlatched door banging back and forth in the light breeze. They had all left. Even Tom was gone.

Frannie! he called, but his only answer was the wind and that sound of the door, banging slowly back and forth.

By two o'clock the next day, they had struggled along another few miles. They took turns breaking trail. Stu was beginning to believe that they would be on the road yet another day. He was the one that was slowing them down. His leg was beginning to seize up. Be crawling pretty soon, he thought. Tom had been doing most of the trail-breaking.

When they paused for their cold canned lunch, it occurred to Stu that he had never even seen Frannie when she was really big. Might have that chance yet. But he didn't think he would. He had become more and more convinced that it had happened without him …  for better or for worse.

Now, an hour after they had finished lunch, he was still so full of his own thoughts that he almost walked into Tom, who had stopped.

"What's the problem?" he asked, rubbing his leg.

"The road," Tom said, and Stu came around to look in a hurry.

After a long, wondering pause, Stu said, "I'll be dipped in pitch."

They were standing atop a snowbank nearly nine feet high. Crusted snow sloped steeply down to the bare road below, and to the right was a sign which read simply: BOULDER CITY LIMITS.

Stu began to laugh. He sat down on the snow and roared, his face turned up to the sky, oblivious of Tom's puzzled look. At last he said, "They plowed the roads. Y'see? We made it, Tom! We made it! Kojak! Come here!"

Stu spread the rest of the Dog Yummies on top of the snowbank and Kojak gobbled them while Stu smoked and Tom looked at the road that had appeared out of the miles of unmarked snow like a lunatic's mirage.

"We're in Boulder again," Tom murmured softly. "We really are. C-I-T-Y-L-I-M-I-T-S, that spells Boulder, laws, yes."

Stu clapped him on the shoulder and tossed his cigarette away. "Come on, Tommy. Let's get our bad selves home."

Around four, it began to snow again. By 6 P.M. it was dark and the black tar of the road had become a ghostly white under their feet. Stu was limping badly now, almost lurching along. Tom asked him once if he wanted to rest, and Stu only shook his head.

By eight, the snow had become thick and driving. Once or twice they lost their direction and blundered into the snowbanks beside the road before getting themselves reoriented. The going underfoot became slick. Tom fell twice and then, around quarter past eight, Stu fell on his bad leg. He had to clench his teeth against a groan. Tom rushed to help him get up.

"I'm okay," Stu said, and managed to gain his feet.

It was twenty minutes later when a young, nervous voice quavered out of the dark, freezing them to the spot:

"W-Who g-goes there?"

Kojak began to growl, his fur bushing up into hackles. Tom gasped. And just audible below the steady shriek of the wind, Stu heard a sound that caused terror to race through him: the snick of a rifle bolt being levered back.

Sentries. They've posted sentries. Be funny to come all this way and get shot by a sentry outside the Table Mesa Shopping Center. Real funny. That's one even Randall Flagg could appreciate.

"Stu Redman!" he yelled into the dark. "It's Stu Redman here!" He swallowed and heard an audible click in his throat. "Who's that over there?"

Stupid. Won't be anyone that you know -

But the voice that drifted out of the snow did sound familiar. "Stu? Stu Redman?"

"Tom Cullen's with me …  for Christ's sake, don't shoot us!"

"Is it a trick?" The voice seemed to be deliberating with itself.

"No trick! Tom, say something."

"Hi there," Tom said obediently.

There was a pause. The snow blew and shrieked around them. Then the sentry (yes, that voice was familiar) called: "Stu had a picture on the wall in the old apartment. What was it?"

Stu racked his brain frantically. The sound of the drawn rifle bolt kept recurring, getting in the way. He thought, My God, I'm standing here in a blizzard trying to think what picture was on the wall in the apartment-the old apartment, he said. Fran must have moved in with Lucy. Lucy used to make fun of that picture, used to say that John Wayne was waiting for those Indians just where you couldn't see him -

"Frederic Remington!" He bellowed at the top of his lungs. "It's called The Warpath! "

"Stu!" the sentry yelled back. A black shape materialized out of the snow, slipping and sliding as it ran toward them. "I just can't believe it-"

Then he was in front of them, and Stu saw it was Billy Gehringer, who had caused them so much trouble with his hot-rodding last summer.

"Stu! Tom! And Kojak, by Christ! Where's Glen Bateman and Larry? Where's Ralph?"

Stu shook his head slowly. "Don't know. We got to get out of the cold, Billy. We're freezing."

"Sure, the supermarket's right up the road. I'll call Norm Kellogg …  Harry Dunbarton …  Dick Ellis …  shit, I'll wake the town! This is great! I don't believe it!"

"Billy-"

Billy turned back to them, and Stu limped over to where he stood.