The Stand

does not exist. He waited. He rolled in and out of a doze without knowing he had dozed. Before long he had slipped down the slide of sleep.

He was on a dark road that was very high. The stars seemed close enough to reach up and touch; it seemed you could just pick them off the sky and pop them into a jar, like fireflies. It was bitterly cold. It was dark. Dimly, frosted with starshine, he could see the living rockfaces through which this highway had been cut.

And in the darkness, something was walking toward him.

And then his voice, coming from nowhere, coming from everywhere: In the mountains I’ll give you a sign. I’ll show you my power. I’ll show you what happens to those who would set themselves against me. Wait. Watch.

Red eyes began to open in the dark, as if someone had set out three dozen danger lamps with hoods on them and now that someone was pulling the hoods off in pairs. They were eyes, and they surrounded the Trashcan Man in a fey ring. At first he thought they were the eyes of weasels, but as the ring tightened around him he saw they were great gray mountain wolves, their ears cocked forward, foam dripping from their dark muzzles.

He was afraid.

They are not for you, my good and faithful servant. See?

And they were gone. Just tike that, the panting gray timberwolves were gone.

Watch, the voice said.

Wait, the voice said.

The dream ended. He woke to discover bright sunshine falling in through the motel room window. The Kid was standing in front of it, seeming none the worse for wear from his bout with the now-defunct Adolph Coors Company the night before. His hair was combed into its former shining swirls and eddies, and he was admiring his reflection in the glass. He had slipped his leather jacket over the back of a chair. The rabbits’ feet dangled from the belt like tiny corpses from a gibbet.

“Hey, pusbag! I thought I was gonna hafta grease your hand again to wake you up. Come on, we got us a big day ahead. Lotta stuff gonna happen today, am I right?”

“You sure are,” the Trashcan Man replied with a queer smile.

When the Trashcan Man swam out of sleep on the evening of August 5, he was still lying on the blackjack table in the casino of the MGM Grand Hotel. Sitting backward on a chair in front of him was a young man with lank straw-blond hair and mirror sunglasses. The first thing Trash noticed was the stone which hung about his neck in the V of his open sport-shirt. Black, with a red flaw in the center. Like the eye of a wolf in the night.

He tried to say he was thirsty and managed only a weak “Gaw!” sound.

“You sure did spend some time in the hot sun, I guess,” Lloyd Henreid said.

“Are you him?” Trash whispered. “Are you—”

“The big guy? No, I’m not him. Flagg’s in L.A. He knows you’re here, though. I talked to him on the radio this afternoon.”

“Is he coming?”

“What, just to see you? Hell, no! He’ll be here in his own good time. You and me, guy, we’re just little people. He’ll be here in his own good time.” And he reiterated the question he had asked the tall man that morning, not long after Trashcan Man had stumbled in. “Are you that anxious to see him?”

“Yes… no… I don’t know.”

“Well, whichever way it turns out to be, you’ll get your chance.”

“Thirsty…”

“Sure. Here.” He handed over a large thermos filled with cherry Kool-Aid. Trashcan drained it at a draught, then leaned over, holding his belly and groaning. When the cramp had passed, he looked at Lloyd with dumb gratitude.

“Think you could eat something?” Lloyd asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

Lloyd turned to a man standing behind them. The man was idly whirling a roulette wheel, then letting the little white ball bounce and rattle.

“Roger, go tell Whitney or Stephanie-Ann to rustle this man up some fries and a couple of hamburgers. Naw, shit, what am I thinking about? He’ll ralph all over the place. Soup. Get him some soup. That okay, man?”

“Anything,” Trash said gratefully.

“We got a guy here,” Lloyd said, “name of Whitney Horgan, used to be a butcher. He’s a fat, loud sack of shit, but don’t that man know how to cook! Jesus! And they got everything here. The gennies were still running when we moved in, and the freezers’re full. Fucking Vegas! Ain’t it the goddamndest place you ever saw?”

“Yeah,” Trash said. He liked Lloyd already, and he didn’t even know his name. “It’s Cibola.”

“Say what?”

“Cibola. Searched for by many.”

“Yeah, been plenty people searchin for it over the years, but most of em go away sort of sorry they found it. Well, you call it whatever you want, buddy—looks like you almost cooked yourself gettin here. What’s your name?”

“Trashcan Man.”

Lloyd didn’t seem to think this a strange name at all. “Name like that, I bet you used to be a biker.” He stuck out a hand. The tips of his fingers still bore the fading marks of his stay in the Phoenix jail where he had almost died of starvation. “I’m Lloyd Henreid. Pleased to meet you, Trash. Welcome aboard the good ship Lollypop.”

Trashcan Man shook the offered hand and had to struggle to keep from weeping with gratitude. So far as he could remember, this was the first time in his life someone had offered to shake his hand. He was here. He had been accepted. At long last he was on the inside of something. He would have walked through twice as much desert as he had for this moment, would have burned the other arm and both legs as well.

“Thanks,” he muttered. “Thanks, Mr. Henreid.”

“Shit, brother—if you don’t call me Lloyd, we’ll have to throw that soup out.”

“Lloyd, then. Thanks, Lloyd.”

“That’s better. After you eat, I’ll take you upstairs and put you in a room of your own. We’ll get you doing something tomorrow. The big guy’s got something of his own for you, I think, but until then there’s plenty for you to do. We’ve got some of the place running again, but nowhere near all of it. There’s a crew up at Boulder Dam, trying to get all the power back on. There’s another one working on water supplies. We’ve got scout parties out, we’ve been pulling in six or eight people a day, but we’ll keep you off that detail for a while. Looks like you’ve had enough sun to last you a month.”

“I guess I have,” Trashcan Man said with a weak smile. He was already willing to lay down his life for Lloyd Henreid. Gathering up all of his courage, he pointed at the stone which lay in the hollow of Lloyd’s throat. “That —”

“Yeah, us guys who are sort of in charge all wear em. His idea. It’s jet. Not really a rock at all, you know. It’s like an oil bubble.”

“I mean… the red light. The eye.”

“Looks like that to you too, huh? It’s a flaw. Special from him. I’m not the smartest guy he’s got, not even the smartest guy in good ole Lost Wages, not by a long shot. But I’m… shit, I guess you’d say I’m his mascot.” He looked closely at Trash. “Maybe you too, who knows? Not me, that’s for sure. He’s a close one, Flagg is. Anyway, we heard about you special. Me and Whitney. That’s not the regular drill at all. Too many comin in to take special notice of many.” He paused. “Although I guess he could, if he wanted to. I guess he could take notice of just about anybody.”

Trashcan Man nodded.

“He can do magic,” Lloyd said, his voice becoming slightly hoarse. “I seen it. I’d hate to be the people against him, you know?”

“Yes,” Trashcan said. “I saw what happened to The Kid.”

“What kid?”

“The guy I was with until we got into the mountains.” He shuddered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay, man. Here comes your soup. And Whitney put a burger on the side after all. You’ll love it. The guy