CONSTABLE'S OFFICE.
It's still littered with paper and office supplies from hell to breakfast, and the fallen bars still lie where they fell, but the place is empty. THE CAMERA MOVES through the door to the market. It is also empty. The overturned table and litter of cards in the canned goods aisle testifies that there was sudden trouble here, but trouble has departed now. The big clock over the checkout counters a battery job reads a minute past midnight.
203 INTERIOR: THE SUPPLY SHED BEHIND THE TOWN HALL NIGHT.
There are two wrapped bodies here those of BILLY SOAMES and CORA STANHOPE.
204 INTERIOR: THE TOWN HALL KITCHEN NIGHT.
Neat as a pin clean counters, swept floor, washed pots heaped high in the drainers. A small army of town ladies with too much time on their hands (no doubt generaled by MRS. KINGSBURY) has put things to rights, and the place is all ready for breakfast pancakes for two hundred or so. On the wall, the clock reads two past midnight. Like Wee Folks Day-Care, this place feels spooky, with the minimal lighting supplied by the gennie and the WIND SCREAMING outside.
Sitting on stools by the door are JACK CARVER and KIRK FREEMAN. They have HUNTING RIFLES
across their laps. Both are close to dozing.
KIRK How're we supposed to see anything in this?
JACK shakes his head. He doesn't know.
205 INTERIOR: THE TOWN OFFICE NIGHT.
The CB radio CRACKLES SOFTLY AND MEANINGLESSLY. There's nothing on it but static. At the door, HATCH and ALEX HABER are watching, also armed with hunting rifles. Well . . . HATCH is 179
watching. ALEX is dozing. HATCH looks at him, and we see him debating whether or not to elbow ALEX awake. He decides to have pity.
THE CAMERA SLIPS to URSULA'S desk, where TESS MARCHANT sleeps with her head pillowed on her arms. THE CAMERA STUDIES
226 STEPHEN KING
HER for a moment, then turns and FLOATS down the stairs. As it does, we hear a FAINT VOICE
THROUGH STATIC:
PREACHER (voice)
You know, friends, it's hard to be righteous, but it's easy to go along with so-called friends who tell you that sin is all right, that neglect is fine, that no God is watching and you can go ahead and do whatever you think you can get away with, can you say 'hallelujah'?
MUTTERED RESPONSE Hallelujah.
There are about ten people left in the TV area. They have gravitated to the few comfortable chairs and a couple of old rummage- sale-quality sofas. All but MIKE are asleep. On the TV, barely visible through the interference, is the slicky-hair PREACHER, looking every bit as trustworthy as Jimmy Swaggart in the courtyard of a triple-X motel.
MIKE
(speaks to the TV) Hallelujah, brother. Tell it.
He's in an overstaffed chair a little apart from the rest. He looks very tired and probably won't be awake for much longer. He's already started to nod out. On his hip he's wearing his revolver in a holster.
PREACHER
(continues)
Brethern, tonight I'd like to speak to you especially of the secret sin. And tonight I'd like to remind you, say hellelujah, that sin tastes sweet on the lips but sour on the tongue, and it poisons the belly of the righteous. God bless you, but can you say 'amen'?
MIKE cannot, as it happens. His chin has drifted down to his chest, and his eyes have closed.
PREACHER
(continues) But the secret sin! The selfish heart that says 'I need not STORM OF THE CENTURY 227
share; I can keep it all for myself, and no one'll ever know.' Think of that, brethern! It's easy to say, 'Oh, I can keep that dirty little secret, it's nobody else's business, and it won't hurt me,' and then try to ignore the canker of corruption that begins growing around it ... that soul sickeness that begins to grow around it ...
During this, THE CAMERA PANS some of the sleeping faces among them we see SONNY
BRAUTIGAN and UPTON BELL, SNORING on one sofa with their heads together, and on the other, JONAS and JOANNA STANHOPE with their arms around each other. Then we FLOAT AWAY AGAIN, toward those makeshift draw curtains. Behind us, the PREACHER'S VOICE fades. He continues to talk about secrets and sin and selfishness.
We DRIFT THROUGH the draw curtains. Here, in the sleeping area, we hear DORMITORY SOUNDS
OF REPOSE: COUGHS, WHEEZES, SOFT SNORES.
We pass DAVEY HOPEWELL, sleeping on his back with a frown on his face. ROBBIE BEALS, on his side, reaching across to SANDRA. They are holding hands in their sleep. URSULA GODSOE sleeping 180
with her daughter, SALLY, and her sister-in-law, TAVIA, close-by, the three of them drawn as tightly together as they can in the wake of PETER'S death.
MELINDA HATCHER and PIPPA are sleeping with their cots pushed together, forehead to forehead, and RALPHIE is cradled in his sleeping mother's arms.
We drift to the area where the kids were initially put to bed, and quite a few of them are still there BUSTER CARVER, HARRY ROBICHAUX, HEIDI ST. PIERRE, and DON BEALS.
The residents of Little Tall are sleeping. Their rest is uneasy, but they are sleeping.
206 INTERIOR: ROBBIE BEALS, CLOSE-UP.
He MUTTERS SOMETHING INCOHERENT. His eyeballs move rapidly behind his closed lids. He's dreaming.
228 STEPHEN KING
207 EXTERIOR: MAIN STREET, LITTLE TALL ISLAND DAY.
Standing in the street actually above it, as Main Street is buried under at least four feet of snow is a TV REPORTER. He is young and conventionally handsome, dressed in a bright purple Thermo-Pak ski suit, matching purple gloves, and wearing skis . . . the only way he could get to his stand-up position, one assumes.
There's four feet of snow in the streets, but that's only the beginning. The stores have been all but buried under MONSTER DRIFTS. Downed power lines disappear into the snow like torn strands of cobweb.
TV REPORTER
The so-called Storm of the Century is history in New England now folks from New Bedford to New Hope are digging out from beneath snowfall amounts that have added not just new entries but new pages to the record books.
The REPORTER begins to ski slowly down Main Street, past the drugstore, the hardware store, the Handy Bob Restaurant, the Tie-Up Lounge, the beauty parlor.
TV REPORTER
They're digging out everywhere, that is, except here, on Little Tall Island a little scrap of land off the coast of Maine and home to almost four hundred souls, according to the last census. About half the population sought shelter on the mainland when it became clear that this storm was really going to hit, and hit hard. That number includes most of the island's schoolchildren in grades K through high school. But nearly all the rest . . . two hundred men and women and young children . . . are gone. The exceptions are even more ominous and distressing.
208 EXTERIOR: THE REMAINS OF
