The Stand

and scared, clustered around the parked station wagons in little groups.

The sandy-bearded man was carrying a pistol. The men behind him all had rifles. Two of them were wearing bits and pieces of army kit.

“Dismount, goddamn you,” the bearded man said, and one of the men behind him levered a round into the breech of his rifle. It was a loud, bitterly imperative sound in the misty morning air.

Glen and Harold looked puzzled and apprehensive. That, and no more. They’re sitting ducks, Frannie thought with rising panic. She did not fully understand the situation herself yet, but she knew the equation here was all wrong. Four men, eight women, her brain said, and then repeated it, louder, in tones of alarm: Four men! Eight women!

“Harold,” Stu said in a quiet voice. Something had come up in his eyes. Some realization. “Harold, don’t—” And then everything happened.

Stu’s rifle was slung over his back. He dropped one shoulder so that the strap slid down his arm, and then the rifle was in his hands.

“Don’t do it!” the bearded man shouted furiously. “Garvey! Virge! Ronnie! Get them! Save the woman!”

Harold began to grab for his pistols, at first forgetting they were still strapped into their holsters.

Glen Bateman still sat behind Harold in stunned surprise.

“Harold! ” Stu yelled again.

Frannie began to unsling her own rifle. She felt as if the air around her had suddenly been packed with invisible molasses, treacly stuff she would never be able to struggle through in time. She realized they were probably going to die here.

One of the girls screamed: “NOW! ”

Frannie’s gaze switched to this girl even as she continued to struggle with her rifle. Not really a girl; she was at least twenty-five. Her hair, ash-blond, lay against her head in a ragged helmet, as if she had recently lopped it off with a pair of hedge-clippers.

Not all of the women moved; some of them appeared to be nearly catatonic with fright. But the blond girl and three of the others did.

All of this happened in the space of seven seconds.

The bearded man had been pointing his pistol at Stu. When the young blond woman screamed, “Now! ”, the barrel jerked slightly toward her, like a divining rod sensing water. It went off, making a loud noise like a piece of steel being punched through cardboard. Stu fell off his bike and Frannie screamed his name.

Then Stu was up on both elbows (both were scraped from hitting the road, and the Honda was lying on one of his legs), firing. The bearded man seemed to dance backward like a vaudeville hoofer leaving the stage after his encore. The faded plaid shirt he was wearing puffed and billowed. His pistol, an automatic, jerked up toward the sky and that steel-punching-through-cardboard sound happened four more times. He fell over on his back.

Two of the three men behind him had jerked around at the blond woman’s cry. One pulled both triggers of the weapon he was holding, an old-fashioned Remington twelve-gauge. The stock of the gun was not resting against anything—he was holding it outside his right hip—and when it went off with a sound like a thunderclap in a small room, it flew backward out of his hands, ripping skin from his fingers as it went. It clattered on the road. The face of one of the women who had not reacted to the blond woman’s shout dissolved in an unbelievable fury of blood, and for a moment Frannie could actually hear blood raining down on the pavement, as if there had been a sudden shower. One eye peered unharmed through the mask of blood this woman now wore. It was dazed and unknowing. Then the woman fell forward onto the road. The Country Squire station wagon behind her was peppered with buckshot. One of the windows was a cataract of milky cracks.

The blond girl grappled with the second man who had turned toward her. The rifle the man held went off between their bodies. One of the girls scrambled for the lost shotgun.

The third man, who had not turned toward the women, began to fire at Fran. Frannie sat astride her bike, her rifle in her hands, blinking stupidly at him. He was an olive-skinned man who looked Italian. She felt a bullet drone by her left temple.

Harold had finally gotten one of his pistols free. He raised it and fired at the olive-skinned man. The distance was about fifteen paces. He missed. A bullet hole appeared in the skin of the pink housetrailer just to the left of the olive-skinned man’s head. The olive-skinned man looked at Harold and said, “Now I gonna keel-a you, you sonnabeesh.”

“Don’t do that! ” Harold screamed. He dropped his pistol and held out his open hands.

The olive-skinned man fired three times at Harold. All three shots missed. The third round came the closest to doing damage; it screamed off the exhaust pipe of Harold’s Yamaha. It fell over, spilling Harold and Glen off.

Now twenty seconds had passed. Harold and Stu lay flat. Glen sat cross-legged on the road, still looking as if he didn’t know exactly where he was, or what was going on. Frannie was trying desperately to shoot the olive- skinned man before he could shoot Harold or Stu, but her gun wouldn’t fire, the trigger wouldn’t even pull, because she had forgotten to thumb the safety catch to its off position. The blond woman continued to struggle with the second man, and the woman who had gone after the dropped shotgun was now fighting with a second woman for possession of it.

Cursing in a language which was undoubtedly Italian, the olive-skinned man aimed at Harold again and then Stu fired and the olive-skinned man’s forehead caved in and he went down like a sack of potatoes.

Another woman had now joined the fray over the shotgun. The man who had lost it tried to throw her aside. She reached between his legs, grabbed the crotch of his jeans, and squeezed. Fran saw her hamstrings pop out all the way up her forearm to the elbow. The man screamed. The man lost interest in the shotgun. The man grabbed his privates and stumbled away bent-over.

Harold crawled to where his dropped pistol lay on the road and pounced on it. He raised it and fired at the man holding his privates. He fired three times and missed every time.

It’s like Bonnie and Clyde, Frannie thought. Jesus, there’s blood everywhere!

The blond woman with the ragged hair had lost her struggle for possession of the second man’s rifle. He jerked it free and kicked her, perhaps aiming for her stomach, catching her in the thigh with one of his heavy boots instead. She went quick-stepping backward, whirling her arms for balance, and landed on her fanny with a wet splat.

Now he’ll shoot her, Frannie thought, but the second man whirled around like a drunken soldier doing an about-face and began to fire rapidly into the group of three women still cringing against the side of the Country Squire.

“Yaaah! You bitches!” this gentleman screamed. “Yaaaah! You bitches!”

One of the women fell over and began to flop on the pavement between the station wagon and the overturned trailer like a stabbed fish. The other two women ran. Stu fired at the shooter and missed. The second man fired at one of the running women and did not. She threw her hands up to the sky and fell down. The other buttonhooked left and ran behind the pink trailer.

The third man, the one who had lost and failed to regain the shotgun, was still staggering around and holding his crotch. One of the women pointed the shotgun at him and pulled both triggers, her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth grimacing in anticipation of that thunder. The thunder didn’t come. The shotgun was dry. She reversed it so she was holding it by the barrels and brought the stock down in a hard arc. She missed his head, but got the place where his neck joined his right shoulder. The man was driven to his knees. He began to crawl away. The woman, who was wearing a blue sweatshirt which said KENT STATE UNIVERSITY and tattered bluejeans, walked along after him, bludgeoning him with the shotgun as she went. The man continued to crawl, blood now running off him in rivers, and the woman in the Kent State sweatshirt continued to whale on him.

“Yaaaaah, you bitches!” the second man screamed, and fired at a dazed and muttering middle-aged woman. The distance between muzzle and woman was at the most three feet; she could almost have reached out and plugged the barrel with her pinky finger. He missed. He pulled the trigger again, but this time the rifle only dry-fired.

Harold was now holding his pistol in both hands, as he had seen cops do in the movies. He pulled the trigger and his bullet smashed the second man’s elbow. The second man dropped his rifle and began to dance up and